Tag Archives: technology
A future obscured by exponential growth
A couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I think most of us realised how hard it is to comprehend the phenomenon of exponential growth. Mathematically, it’s trivial – a geometric progression – but more physically, the difference between linear and … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged COVID-19 epidemic, COVID-19 pandemic, exponential growth, Factorio, Homo sapiens, logistics, MachinePix, predicting the future, quality control, rotary screen printer, supply chain management, technology, wheat and chessboard problem
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‘Hunters’, sci-fi and pseudoscience
One of the ways in which pseudoscience is connected to authoritarian governments is through its newfound purpose and duty to supply an alternate intellectual tradition that subsumes science as well as culminates in the identitarian superiority of a race, culture … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Adolf Hitler, Bharatiya Janata Party, civil aviation, Delhi riots, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, electricity, ethnic cleansing, Hindutva, Hunters, identity politics, John Forster, Nazism, occult, provincialism, pseudoscience, sci-fi, science fiction, technology, The Coming Race, Vril
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Science v. tech, à la Cixin Liu
A fascinating observation by Cixin Liu in an interview in Public Books, to John Plotz and translated by Pu Wang (numbers added): … technology precedes science. (1) Way before the rise of modern science, there were so many technologies, so … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Bernhard Riemann, Cixin Liu, glass ceiling, Large Hadron Collider, mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry, particle physics, Riemannian geometry, technology, Three Body Problem
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No country for new journalism
Through an oped in Nieman Lab, Ken Doctor makes a timely case for explanatory – or explainer – journalism being far from a passing fad. Across the many factors that he argues contribute to its rise and persistence in western markets, there is evidence that he believes explainer journalism’s historical basis is more relevant than its technological one, most simply by virtue of having been necessitated by traditional journalism no longer connecting the dots well enough. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged business models, explainers, history, India, journalism, mainstream media, news, purchasing power, regional media, regionalism, technology, The Hindu, The New York Times, Upshot
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The cost of solutions
Hereby, a new metric: Solution cost (SC) SC = Cost of finding the solution to a particular problem – (Rate at which the applications of the solution become cheaper * t), t = No. of years across which SC is … Continue reading