info.read.know

We’re living in digital serfdom — trading privacy for convenience This is the era of the digital nomad, and consequently, it’s also the era of the digital serf. The masses of serfs in the feudal period in Europe provided the labor, and the owners of property reaped the profits. Today, the labor is largely data, and…

The 2018 Global Innovation 1000 study Investigating trends at the world’s 1000 largest corporate R&D spenders. Who Works In Tech? A look into the workforce since 2014. Rage rooms: Why recreational smashing could be good for your mental health Rage rooms, also known as smash rooms or anger rooms, have opened in cities around the…

Why the world deserves a better toilet The toilets on display here in Beijing might one day replace a piece of technology that’s been with us for ages—and they could save millions of lives in the process. Mattermark Founder On Being Self-Taught In Silicon Valley Investing, writing, and engineering might seem like fundamentally different skills,…

How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town A rich ghost town sounds like a capitalist paradox. So what the heck is going on? Behind the darkened windows, there’s a deeper story about money and land, with implications for the future of cities and the rest of the United States. Neuroscientists Create Most Detailed Map Ever…

200 Years of Elections to the House of Representatives, Mapped This deliciously wonky interactive map is a reminder for midterm voters that, when it comes to electoral politics, “deviation from the norm is the norm.” 100 Years of Change in New York’s Skyline: 1920 – 2020 Manhattan is known for its iconic skyline, brimming with…

Crazy Rich Asia The film also stars Singapore, a place unfamiliar to most Westerners. For some, the real shocker in the movie will be just how crazy rich parts of Asia have become. What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia Three scholars wrote 20 fake papers using fashionable jargon to argue for ridiculous conclusions. Their…

If happiness is going to become the new GDP, we need to get better at measuring it Move over GDP: happiness is angling to become the metric of the future. Nation states have begun to compete in global happiness rankings and plan policy according to statistics of well-being. No Black Scientist Has Ever Won a…

Quartz Africa Innovators 2018: A list of 30 pioneers The 30 movers and thinkers on this list range across fields from the arts and science to technology and entrepreneurship and beyond. Why Fake News Campaigns Are So Effective These often effective efforts to manipulate public opinion traffic in misleading and distorted facts — and outright…

The Lungs of Guatemala City: Architects’ Efforts to Conserve an Urban Ecology While the architects of Barranco Invertido and their project Jungla Urbana are efforts to conserve and care for the ravines as ecological sites in and of themselves, they are just as much an effort to conserve or reignite a piece of Guatemalan heritage,…

35-Year-Old Unknown Creates the World’s Most Valuable Startup Bytedance’s said to be valued at over $75 billion in new round. 3D printed bioplastic: the future of construction? Currently most 3D printed construction projects use concrete, but Lafhaj is certain that is not the future. He says we need to move towards materials that use less…