The design of addiction: Social media and Tobacco Social media companies design their platforms to be as addictive as possible, knowing this harms users’ mental health. How is this different from — or similar to — a tobacco company that knew its products caused cancer? Social media and tobacco are different industries. Even though tobacco…
Epistolary to Digital Messaging How has the transition from epistolary correspondence to instantaneous digital messaging reshaped not only temporal expectations of communication, but also the cognitive depth, rhetorical structure, and reflective quality of interpersonal discourse? Epistolary has a long history dating back 5000 years. Unfortunately, it has become less common in the late 20th century…
Cloning could theoretically let same-sex couples or single people have genetically related children without a partner. How might this shift the cultural and political debates around family, parenthood, and reproductive rights? This question is a controversial, complex ethical territory. In a status quo, same-sex couples or single people have limited choices should they harbor a…
Cultural literacy and Digital literacy Should cultural literacy be valued on par with digital literacy in education systems, or is it losing relevance in a data-driven world? Cultural literacy is the ability to comprehend and engage with one’s culture, such as languages, arts, traditions, histories, and practices. It’s what makes our civilizations. Even in this…
