Category Archives: Societies

Thought of the day

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Peter Sahui

When Sebastian Thrun, then of Stanford, taught his artificial intelligence course online, the best performers were not the students from Stanford. Generally the best performers were the students abroad, often from poor countries and very often from India. All of … Continue reading →

Posted in Science and technology, Societies | 2 Comments

A TED talk worth watching: are droids taking our jobs?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Peter Sahui

After I watched this TED talk, there was no way I could not post it to a site named “The Optimist”. Enjoy!  

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The price of extractive institutions

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Peter Sahui

John Kay writes (behind a paywall at the Financial Times, but also reprinted on his website):   … The real damage imposed by men such as Mr Mubarak is not the money they might have stolen. The tragedy is that … Continue reading →

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Social media before the Internet

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Peter Sahui

Some interesting trivia from Knowledge@Wharton:   In The Victorian Internet, author Tom Standage recounts the tale — apparently gleaned from the 1849 publication Anecdotes of the Telegraph — of a marriage ceremony conducted over the telegraph. With the bride in … Continue reading →

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The data of cities

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Peter Sahui

A fascinating article in The Economist:   … Carlo Ratti, who heads the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of the first to sift through the data produced by telecoms networks. One aim was to find … Continue reading →

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What traditional agriculture has to do with female labour force participation

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Peter Sahui

  I love to discover why something is the way it is, and my favourite historical reads are often those that deliver this kind of “big picture” revelation. It was in this vein that, a while back, I discussed research … Continue reading →

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Book review: Adapt, by Tim Harford

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Peter Sahui

Please note I am not an expert in the topics covered by this book; rather, my perspective is that of an interested lay reader.   Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure, by Tim Harford (2011): At the very top … Continue reading →

Posted in Behaviour, Reviews, Societies | Leave a comment

Here’s a fascinating blog on economic history – Bloomberg’s “Echoes”

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Peter Sahui

So I’ve taken a bit of a break from reading non-fiction – the last non-fiction book I finished was Niall Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest, about a month ago. (Stay tuned for the review!) Since then, I’ve been … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Societies | 1 Comment

Could rainfall help explain why some societies are democratic and others, not?

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Peter Sahui

A number of authors have argued that geography has been a decisive, or the decisive, factor explaining differences between human societies. Probably the most famous in mainstream circles is Jared Diamond, who argues in Guns, Germs and Steel that Eurasian … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Societies | 1 Comment