Future Tense event recap: Innovation where you least expect it.
3 years, 9 months ago

Future Tense event recap: Innovation where you least expect it.

Slate  

If President Abraham Lincoln built your company in 1862, simply maintaining the status quo isn’t acceptable. On March 8, Fritz, the chairman, CEO, and president of Union Pacific Railroad, joined Crow, president of Arizona State University, and New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter for a Future Tense conversation on the challenge of innovating at large, complex organizations that have been around for a while. “It’s a rare human that runs to put more energy in and runs to the challenge.” Michael Crow blew up Arizona State University in a different way. “If Abraham Lincoln is the creator of your company, ‘meh’ doesn’t really cut it.” Reconfiguring a university means reexamining that university’s purpose. You operate under a philosophical driver that questions “what would a people’s university look like, in the democracy called the United States of America, which was accessible and committed to the success of our economic democracy?” An institution that has existed for a long time or lived entrenched in the same model faces other implicit barriers to change besides finding a different motivation or philosophy, Slaughter pointed out.

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Future Tense newsletter: The backlash to Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown.
1 year, 10 months ago

Future Tense newsletter: The backlash to Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown.

Slate  

Sign up to receive the Future Tense newsletter every other Saturday. But when contemplating how tech has changed since 2011—or, perhaps more accurately, how the public’s relationship with tech has changed—the best and most timely example may be Netflix. But so much of the backlash to the new rules feels like it’s rooted in how streaming together made us feel …

Future Tense newsletter: No 2022 predictions here.
3 years ago

Future Tense newsletter: No 2022 predictions here.

Slate  

Sign up to receive the Future Tense newsletter every other Saturday. It’s from “Lisa the Greek,” a Season 3 episode in which Homer keeps losing money gambling on professional football, despite the guidance of Mr. 52 Percent, Smooth Jimmy Apollo, who every Sunday offers a “Lock of the Week” pick. After one bum pick, Smooth Jimmy says, “Well, folks, when …

Future Tense Newsletter: We Need More Low-Stakes Rules for Internet Conduct
3 years, 2 months ago

Future Tense Newsletter: We Need More Low-Stakes Rules for Internet Conduct

Slate  

Sign up to receive the Future Tense newsletter every other Saturday. There are communications methods that seemingly require the recipient to snap to—like a text sent outside of office hours—and there are ways that say, “I know I’m asking you to do something, but it can wait for a bit,” like an email. Like Slack vs. email, deciding which portal …

History’s lessons for science and technology during COVID-19.
54 years, 11 months ago

History’s lessons for science and technology during COVID-19.

Slate  

Anti-aircraft guns in London during the Blitz of 1940 were mostly for show. The task of creating the first “ ‘intelligent’ bullet,” Holmes writes, was thus akin to “shooting a light bulb out of a pistol.” The story of the rag-tag group of Americans who took on this challenge, “one of the toughest, most urgent scientific tasks of World War …

Will 2020 Change American Tech?
54 years, 11 months ago

Will 2020 Change American Tech?

Slate  

If we needed any reminders of the tech sector’s outsized power to shape how we live, 2020 has provided us with an avalanche of them, from the global pandemic to a social justice movement to address systemic racism and pressing debates about the boundaries of free speech in an election year. And yet many Americans continue to feel uneasy about …

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