Bloomberg on China: “Rising joblessness means less income for young people and reduced spending on goods like mobile phones or entertainment and travel, which curbs economic output. While it’s difficult to quantify, research suggests young people in China are an important driver of overall consumption in the economy, and are big luxury spenders too. That said, the 16-24 age group makes up about 7% of China’s urban labor force, according to Citigroup Inc., so is not as big of a driver of consumer spending as older groups. High unemployment affects confidence in the economy and could weaken productivity if it’s prolonged. In China, it’s also driving social disaffection among young people, prompting many to drop out of the rat race completely in a phenomenon known as “lying flat.” And it risks stoking social instability if young people become more angry and frustrated about their lack of opportunities.”
Rauno Freiberg: “Design can feel like there’s no science to it—only feel and intuition. Even researchers have trouble grounding interaction design practices in science, inherently treating them as a mysterious black box. While from my own experience that’s partly true, I have been trying to deconstruct and excavate the why behind great displays of interaction design. The essence of the word “interaction” implies a relationship between a human and an environment. In my experience, great revelations surface from making something—filling your headspace with a problem—and then going for a synthesizing daydreaming walk to stir the pot.
WSJ: “The world is undertaking two great technological transitions—toward greener energy production and toward more AI-enhanced decision-making. The two are intimately linked. Machine learning has long helped to analyze and improve engineering, such as finding more-efficient battery designs, as well as orchestrating and improving energy delivery. Now cutting-edge AI is poised to take that collaboration a step further. AI can analyze data, find patterns in it and then concoct solutions to problems faster than any human researcher could. But it isn’t a straight path to sustainability. Ever more-complex AI models consume ever more energy to run, for instance—eliminating some of the climate-friendly gains AI produces…Building better batteries. Improving policy-making. Matching supply and demand more accurately. Artificial intelligence may make it easier to arrive at a greener future.”
