Healthy ageing is vital for a healthy economy. Tech investors now want profits not just growth. The emergence of a worldwide carbon surveillance system. Is social media in terminal decline? The lure of longevity.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
David Bloom, Healthy ageing for a healthy economy
(CEPR, 16 November 2022)
Having just crossed the 8bn population threshold, we mustn’t forget that global ageing is the primary challenge we collectively face. As healthy ageing promotes healthy economies, policy preparedness must focus on: (1) initiatives that facilitate disease prevention and early detection, (2) wider reliance on innovative health care technologies, (3) retirement and pension flexibility, (4) development of age-friendly public spaces, (5) strengthened long-term care systems, and (6) health spending based on more appropriately designed and rigorously implemented health technology assessments (free access – reads in 5-6 min).
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Timothy Lee, The End of Silicon Valley’s 20-Year Boom
(Slate, 15 November 2022)
Over the past few weeks, a substantial number of big tech companies have announced massive layoffs – cutting jobs while hiring in the broader US economy remained strong. It therefore looks like Silicon Valley is tightening its belt more than other industries. This seems counter-intuitive as “an industry still chasing limitless growth doesn’t lay off legions of workers.” But the new reality is that investors now demand that tech companies focus on profits rather than growth. That means there could be even more pain ahead for tech workers (metered paywall – reads in 8-10 min).
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David Wallace-Wells, The Global Carbon Surveillance State Is Coming
(The New York Times, 16 November 2022)
The best-selling science writer and essayist explains why a new online tool that allows us to see emissions in near-real time (released during the COP27 by the nonprofit coalition Climate Trace) is a game-changer. It marks another step towards what is beginning to seem like the inevitable development of a sort of “global carbon surveillance state “- one which, even independent of any global enforcement mechanism, promises to change many aspects of the conventional picture of climate change and the way we deal with it (gifted article – reads in 7-8 min).
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Ian Bogost, The Age of Social Media Is Ending
(The Atlantic, 10 November 2022)
This begins with a bold affirmation: “It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end – and soon.” A penetrating analysis of how social media ended up creating a system erected and used exclusively to deliver an endless stream of content, that turned in the process billions of people seeing themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers. Bogost argues that “we cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad, deep in its very structure. All we can do is hope that it withers away and play our small part in helping abandon it” (metered paywall – reads in 8-10 min).
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Jessica Hamzelou, Inside the billion-dollar meeting for the mega-rich who want to live forever
(MIT Technology Review, 16 November 2022)
This short, humorous piece – a pendant to the first article – documents how hope, hype, and self-experimentation collided at the very exclusive “Longevity Investors Conference” organized in Gstaad (a high-end resort in Switzerland) for ultra-rich investors who want to extend their lives past 100. The science remains embryonic. In the words of the director of an Institute for Aging Research, it could be that the sale of most supplements is “good for the economy” and not much else (metered paywall – reads in 6-7 min).
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