Co-designing with machines: moving beyond the human/machine binary
Letter from the Editor: I am happy to announce Welcome to the The Co-Desinging with Machines edition. As someone with one foot in industry redesigning organizations to flourish in a…
Tag: Culture
The Uninvited Invitados
Soon after Jeffrey Cohen and his wife, Maria, arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico, they were invited to a wedding. This experience, over two decades ago, ushered in their fieldwork…
Lao Camp Food (Part 2)
This is the second installment of a food journal I kept during several days in February camping with a bomb clearance team in Laos. If you missed my…
How Karl Marx Ruined My Dinner Party
At dinner one night, I made two fatal social errors in rapid succession. First, during casual conversation with two good friends, I began talking about American culture. Not…
Let’s Keep Arguing About Flags and Statues
The Confederate flag, which many people see as a symbol of America’s racist past, continues to spark debate. fauxto_digit/Flickr Last summer, the Confederate flag was finally taken down…
Lao Camp Food (Part 1)
I recently spent several days camping with a bomb clearance team in southern Laos. Quick history: Laos, per capita, is the most heavily bombed country on Earth. Between…
Rules of the Underworld
Since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war in 2006, approximately 80,000 people have been killed in organized crime–related incidents. More than 26,000 others are still missing. Despite attempts to…
Europe’s Destructive Spirals of Distrust
On February 6, 2016, thousands of people protested the immigration of Muslims, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and other cities across Europe. Peter Dejong/AP Photo Controversies around minori…
Creator brands: Brands that make culture
At their most powerful, brands actually make culture. Creator brands, let’s call them. Nike changed the way we thought about exercise, fitness, bodies and diet in the 1970s…
Hurricane Katrina’s Forgotten Survivors
Following Katrina, progress rebuilding New Orleans has been uneven. In the Lower 9th Ward, house foundations are still a common sight. Max Becherer/Associated Press When Hurricane Katrina…
Un Manjar: Viral Chilean slang
In Chile, “manjar” is a kind of sweet sauce, similar to dulce de leche or caramel. It’s often used as filling in layer cakes or atop pancakes.…
Should Chimps Be Considered People Under the Law?
A New York State Supreme Court ruling in 2014 decided that chimpanzees are not persons with rights because they cannot bear legal duties and responsibilities. But this is…
Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, but India is now the second…
Spaces of Waiting
Unable to access quality emergency obstetric care, millions of women across the global south, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, shoulder the burden of health care systems that are…
The Right to Own Living Memorials
Are you an organ donor? Have you donated your body to science? Have you donated a loved one’s body to science? If you answer yes to any of…
Shattered Homes and Hard Choices in Post-Quake Nepal
The days following Nepal’s devastating, 7.8 magnitude earthquake on April 25, 2015, passed for me in a blur of sleeplessness and checking Facebook. I ached to be there.…
The New Old National Pastime
I attended my first spring training 50 years ago this month as a rookie in the Detroit Tigers organization. The 91-acre Tiger Town complex in Lakeland, Florida, had…
On the Brazilian crisis, Pentecostalism and thinking out of the bubble
Pentecostal service in the Brazilian field site. Photo by: Juliano Spyer Brazil is in the midst of a heated national debate between people in favour of, and those contrary…
Game of Spoilers: A Spoiler-Free Investigation into the Role of Experience in Fandom
By Emily Jackson After surviving the long winter, fans of the HBO hit series Game of Thrones celebrated the premiere of season 6 this Sunday, April 24th. The…
Stop Blaming Parents for Our Society’s Failures
Yet another parenting article popped up in my Facebook feed this week. Not a How-To parenting article, which is annoying enough, but a You’re-Doing-Everything-Wrong parenting article. Generation X’s…
The Myth of the Virgin Rainforest
The little village of Pa Lungan sits in a grassy clearing, high in the hills of Malaysian Borneo, in a region called the Kelabit Highlands. The people here—a…
how to make TV now (the “whole world” approach)
Natalie Chaidez is the show runner for Hunters (Mondays, 10:00 eastern, SyFy). Recently Sean Hutchinson asked her what she was aiming for. Our idea of aliens is cliched, she replied. She wanted to &#…
Are We to Blame for the Colorado Theater Shooter?
Around midnight on July 20, 2012, James Holmes entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, for a showing of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises and took…
The ‘wicked grin’ test (as a new creative measure)
How do you know when something in our culture is really good? I think it’s when it makes us grin a wicked grin. This is one of those: Dave Chappelle does…