Andrei Stoica

All people are flawed, a mix of good and bad, but we tend to see others as only one thing. The philosopher Amartya Sen calls this a “solitarist” approach to identity. And as we are biased toward negativity — a bad apple spoils the bunch — we are thrown off by a person’s bad character traits or past actions. Even minor ones. We identify people by th... See more

What happens when you give a load of engineers a brief? I always ask the question: What would’ve happened if you hadn’t given the brief for High Speed 2 to a load of engineering firms who immediately focused on speed, time, distance, capacity? What if you’d given the brief to Disney instead?

They would’ve said, “First of all, we’re going to rewrite ... See more

In this new book, Han describes the deleterious effects of that degeneration on storytelling. Storytelling used to bind us communally over the campfire; it connected us to our pasts and helped us imagine hopeful futures. The digital screen has replaced that fire, making us individuals performing factitious versions of ourselves to unseen peers, tai... See more

User-generated content does not need the benefit of large audiences or the approval of large broadcasting companies. Students do not need permission to attend. In corners of the internet that are easy to miss, the biggest renaissance of informal skills transfer in history is happening right now. Unlike textbooks or professors, the creators of these... See more