Blog and book by Erica Thompson: “Mathematical models are here to stay. Whether they are determining supply chain vulnerabilities, demonstrating regulatory compliance, or informing policies for a zero-carbon future, quantitative models are at the heart of modern societies. And as computers become more powerful and more readily accessible, artificial intelligence and machine learning models are also being applied in many new areas. Given that, we urgently need to understand how best to use and work with models to make good and responsible decisions. Statistician George Box was quite right to point out that “all models are wrong”. They are... (More >)
Haste: The Slow Politics of Climate Urgency
Book edited by Håvard Haarstad, Jakob Grandin, Kristin Kjærås, and Eleanor Johnson: “It’s understandable that we tend to present climate change as something urgently requiring action. Every day we fail to act, the potential for catastrophe grows. But is that framing itself a problem? When we hurry, we make more mistakes. We overlook things. We get tunnel vision. In Haste, a group of distinguished contributors makes the case for a slow politics of urgency. Rather than rushing and speeding up, he argues, the sustainable future is better served by our challenging of the dominant framings through which we understand... (More >)
Nudging: A Tool to Influence Human Behavior in Health Policy
Book by František Ochrana and Radek Kovács: “Behavioral economics sees “nudges” as ways to encourage people to re-evaluate their priorities in such a way that they voluntarily change their behavior, leading to personal and social benefits. This book examines nudging as a tool for influencing human behavior in health policy. The authors investigate the contemporary scientific discourse on nudging and enrich it with an ontological, epistemological, and praxeological analysis of human behavior. Based on analyses of the literature and a systemic review, the book defines nudging tools within the paradigm of prospect theory. In addition to the theoretical contribution,... (More >)
The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a New Model for Citizen Power
Book by Maurice Pope: “Sortition — also known as random selection — puts ordinary people in control of decision-making in government. This may seem novel, but it is how the original Athenian democracy worked. In fact, what is new is our belief that electoral systems are democratic. It was self-evident to thinkers from Aristotle to the Renaissance that elections always resulted in oligarchies, or rule by elites. In this distillation of a lifetime’s thinking about the history and principles of democracy, Maurice Pope presents a new model of governance that replaces elected politicians with assemblies selected by lot. The... (More >)
‘Neurorights’ and the next flashpoint of medical privacy
Article by Alex LaCasse: “Around the world, leading neuroscientists, neuroethicists, privacy advocates and legal minds are taking greater interest in brain data and its potential. Opinions vary widely on the long-term advancements in technology designed to measure brain activity and their impacts on society, as new products trickle out of clinical settings and gain traction for commercial applications. Some say alarm bells should already be sounding and argue the technology could have corrosive effects on democratic society. Others counter such claims are hyperbolic, given the uncertainty that technology can even measure certain brain activities in the purported way. Today,... (More >)
I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique
Book by Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic: “For readers of “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” and viewers of “The Social Dilemma,” psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic tackles one of the biggest questions facing our species: Will we use artificial intelligence to improve the way we work and live, or will we allow it to alienate us? It’s no secret that AI is changing the way we live, work, love, and entertain ourselves. Dating apps are using AI to pick our potential partners. Retailers are using AI to predict our behavior and desires. Rogue actors are using AI to persuade us with bots and misinformation. Companies... (More >)
Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity
Book by Sander van der Linden: “From fake news to conspiracy theories, from pandemics to politics, misinformation may be the defining problem of our era. Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds – altering our beliefs and replicating at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, our primary strategies of fact-checking and debunking are an insufficient cure. In Foolproof Sander van der Linden describes how to inoculate yourself and others against the spread of misinformation, discern fact from fiction and push back against methods of mass persuasion. Everyone is susceptible to fake news. There are polarising narratives in society,... (More >)
Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity
Book by Ben Ramalingam: “… distils this expertise into an insightful, powerful, and engaging book that will show you how to reframe your set responses to stress and pressure and instead use them to harness the potential they hold not just for improving your work, your relationships, and your mindset, but for transforming them. Upshift takes readers on an epic journey from early humans’ survival of the Ice Age to present times in our inescapable, pernicious and ever-shifting digital landscape. You will hear remarkable stories from a vast range of upshifters—all of whom carved new routes around perceived barriers... (More >)
Handbook on Adaptive Governance
Book edited by Sirkku Juhola: “The interconnectedness of global society is increasingly visible through crises such as the current global health pandemic, emerging climate change impacts and increasing erosion of biodiversity. This timely Handbook navigates the challenges of adaptive governance in these complex contexts, stressing the necessarily compounded nature of bio-physical and social systems to ensure more desirable governance outcomes... (More >)
Public Management in an Information Age
Book by Albert Meijer, Alex Ingrams and Stavros Zouridis: “New information and communication technologies have drastically changed public management. Public managers are increasingly dependent on information gathered form complex systems and they need to be able to put in place sound IT and communication structures. This accessible text, aimed specifically at those studying and working in public management, offers readers a comprehensive understanding of ICTs and their implications for public management. It provides aspiring and current public managers a framework for the development of strategic public information management across the full range of public organizations. Written by leading experts... (More >)
