World Literature
sort by: Relevancy | Title | Rating try advanced search for more options
-
April 11, 2008 lecture by Gwendolyn Floyd and Joshua Kauffman for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar (CS547). This lecture shares REGIONAL's recent in-field Cuban research that spans the socio-technological, the political, and the top-secret. It reveals how their research led to the design of a simple and affordable digital device that would potentially accelerate Cuban social change. It also discusses how an...more
-
The boom in European colonial expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century, the so-called New Imperialism, can be seen to follow from three principle factors, in ascending order of importance: religious proselytizing, profit, and inter-imperial political strategy. With respect to the latter concern, the conflicts emerging from imperialism set the stage for World War I. Along with its military and industrial consequences,...more
-
Futures markets were started in Osaka, Japan in the 1600s to create an authoritative and meaningful market price for agricultural products, using standardized contracts. Since then, futures markets have been copied around the world to allow the hedging various future risks, financial and other. In the United States, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade have been the most popular futures trading markets. Although...more
-
With the emergence of democracies in Europe and the New World at the beginning of the nineteenth century, political philosophers began to re-evaluate the relationship between freedom and equality. Tocqueville, in particular, saw the creation of new forms of social power that presented threats to human liberty. His most famous work, Democracy in America, was written for his French countrymen who were still devoted to the restoration of the...more
-
If the early years of the twentieth century were marked by a general consensus that a major war was impending, no similar consensus existed concerning the likely form that war would take. Not only the carnage of World War I, but also the nature of its alliances would have been difficult to imagine. Indeed, in 1900 many people would have predicted conflict, rather than collaboration, between France and Britain. The reasons for the eventual...more
-
Tarun Khanna, Professor at Harvard Business School, highlights the ability of entrepreneurs to provide solutions to social problems by telling the story of a cardiac hospital in India. Khanna points out that the founder, a cardiac surgeon and entrepreneur, has been able to achieve incredible results unmatched by private or public institutions around the world by rethinking the scale on which healthcare is delivered. Khanna emphasizes that...more
-
In 1989, following the year when Dell, Inc. went public, Dell explains how the company had a large problem with inventory management. As a result, the company failed to transition properly in the industry from one technology to the other. However, because of this critical mistake, the company learned how to correctly manage their inventory, and according to Dell, became the best in the world at it. Later on, Dell also notes the company...more
-
In this lecture, Professor Donald Kagan tells the story of the emergence of the polis from the Dark Ages. He shows that by the time of the poet Hesiod, there is already a polis in place. He describes the importance of the polis in the Greek world and explains that it was much more than a mere place of habitation; it was a place where there was justice, law, community, and a set of cultural values that held Greeks together. Finally,...more
-
World population will continue to rise until at least 2050. Environmental impact is the product of the number of people and how much of their income and technology is devoted to either consumption or conservation. So far, the balance is far at the consumption end and, globally, environmental problems are increasing. Environmentalism has not come close to counteracting the footprint of a billion extra people every dozen years. The only...more
-
One way of understanding Napoleon's life is through attention to his Corsican origins. Although Napoleon himself would later disavow his earlier identification with the island in favor of French identity, many of his actions and attitudes agree with stereotypical notions of Corsican culture. Did Napoleon inaugurate the era of total war? This question, posed in a recent book, is up for debate. On one hand, the violence of the Revolution...more
-
Ramdas answers the questions, "How to approach womens' rights in other countries, without seeming an activist?"; "What are the universalities of human rights?" GFW has found that women in their respective countries are extremely good judges of what issues are most important, what risks are involved, and the best ways to address these problems without creating direct confrontation or conflict. They often fund groups of women, rather than...more
-
If the people who set the prices are the same people who set the production levels, then it's not really a market, and true supply and demand are a farce. David Rothkopf, author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, says that Europe is leading the planet in green energy technology thanks to government subsidies, including biofuels and wind energy. Rothkopf is optimistic that the US will eventually adopt...more
