Meritocracy began as a remedy, and its earliest proponents aimed to ensure mobility across societal hierarchies if not equality. Unfortunately, we are now in a world where privilege just exacerbates the disadvantages of those less fortunate. Education is no longer an answer, and efficiency is the discourse as opposed to what is morally right or wrong. In a polarised world, this is an important conversation to have. Great narratives, well articulated.
Brain Pickings has been one of my favourite websites for a long time, and thus, this book automatically went into the wishlist. But as with many good things, it took a while to get into the cart! This is not a book that one can (or should) categorise easily, but as a reader, what I […]
This is a book I’d highly recommend to everyone. It’s less about the technicality of money or “get rich” ideas, and instead focuses on emotional aspects which affect our relationship with money, and our behaviour.
An excellent graphic novel that is based on the life and work of Bertrand Russell, and includes the luminaries of the era. It operates at a meta level because we are also privy to the discussions and arguments of the creators of the comic. Deeply layered, with fantastic life lessons.
Cathy O’Neil does a great job of highlighting the dark side of “software is eating the world” as biases are being codified into systems as Weapons of Math Destruction. Multiple examples are used to understand the three characteristics of this phenomenon – scale, opacity and damage. “Algorithms are opinions embedded in code”, and right now, we’re not doing a great job of it.