Douglas Coupland and William Gibson discuss culture, technology, and the craft of writing. Communications technologies are a global memory prosthesis, says Gibson, and aspire to an experience in which distinctions between the "virtual" and the "real" are dissolved. We are already the borg, Gibson says.
http://www.kwls.org/podcasts/douglas-coupland-william-gibson/
Business bloggers at Harvard Business Review discuss a variety of business topics including managing people, innovation, leadership, and more.
Business bloggers at Harvard Business Review discuss a variety of business topics including managing people, innovation, leadership, and more.
http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2011/11/the-myth-of-monotasking.html
Economist and trend-spotter Jeremy Rifkin predicts that the evolution of energy production and distribution — from fossil fuels to more decentralized renewable energy — will transform the global economy. He joins us to discuss his latest book, "The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World."
As the climate warms, oil disappears, and the economy shakes and shifts, how will our urban places adapt? Will density and communal living be important tools for human resilience, or will city life become costly and unworkable—or even unlivable? Listen to Kunstler share his forecast for the American city, elaborate on his feature in the July/August 2011 issue of the magazine, and answer listener questions.
Public Lectures and Events: podcasts - Podcasts - LSE
Speaker: Professor Niall Ferguson
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
This event was recorded on 24 November 2010 in Old Theatre, Old Building
Although never a "hot" war between the superpowers, the Cold War was waged partly through a series of proxy wars in Third World countries from Guatemala to Korea to Vietnam. Although a great deal of attention has been devoted to a select number of U.S. Interventions in the Third World, there is an urgent need to see the "Third World’s War" in perspective, showing how successful the Soviet Union was in pursuing a strategy of fomenting revolution and how consistently successive U.S. administrations behaved in response. Professor Niall Ferguson is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2010-2011 academic year.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm#generated-subheading9
Arthur Marcel lectures at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and in today’s talk he compares the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the Titanic to issues surrounding global warming.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2011/3191637.htm
Environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book, "Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years." Writing from the perspective of a father, Hertsgaard outlines the changes he foresees happening in the global environment over the next fifty years, emphasizing how his five-year-old daughter’s generation will have to contend with the disruptions of climate change.
Mark Bittman is one of the country’s foremost food writers, author of "The Minimalist" food column for The New York Times and of multiple James Beard Award and IACP/Julia Child Award-winning cookbooks, including How to Cook Everything. Selling more than a million copies, the book was described by a Washington Post reviewer as "the new, hip Joy of Cooking." Bittman also appears regularly on NBC’s Today Show and NPR’s All Things Considered, and has hosted three public television series. His latest cookbook is a follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, offering recipes that are both healthier for you and for the environment.
Nils Gilman describes deviant globalization as "the unpleasant underside of transnational integration."
There’s nice tourism, and then sex tourism, such as in Thailand and Switzerland. The vast pharmacology industry is matched by a vast traffic in illegal drugs. The underside of waste disposal is the criminal dumping in the developing world of toxic wastes from the developed world. Military activities worldwide are fed by a huge gray market in weapons. Internet communications are undermined by floods of malware doubling every year. Among the commodities shipped around the world are exotic hardwoods, endangered species, blood diamonds, and stolen art worth billions in ransom. Illegitimate health care includes the provision of human organs from poor people — you can get a new kidney with no waiting for $150,000 in places like Brazil, the Philippines, Istanbul, and South Africa. Far overwhelming legal immigration are torrents of illegal immigrants who pay large sums to get across borders. And money laundering accounts for 4-12% of world GDP — $1.5 to 5 trillion dollars a year.
These are not marginal, "informal" activities. These are enormous, complex businesses straight out of the Harvard Business Review. The drug business in Mexico, for example, employs 400,000 people. A thousand-dollar kilo of cocaine grows in value by 1400-percent when it crosses into the U.S. — nice profit margin there.
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