Society

How technology changes work, education, rights, demographics, and the way people think.

2026

Issue #195Society

Did AI Write the U.S. Declaration of Independence?

AI detectors misfire on up to 61% of human writing—and well-written prose is the riskiest target.

Issue #169Society

The Harvard Student Who Needed ChatGPT to Read a Novel

Reading isn't vanishing — it's splitting into the 20% who read and the 80% who don't

Issue #163Society

In 10 Minutes, We Learned to Give Up

We worried about writing, calculators, and Google too — but this time feels different.

Issue #153Society

Your Thinking Muscle Collapses in 10 Minutes

AI isn't taking your job—it's taking your ability to think.

Issue #150Society

GoPro Workers Training the Robots That Replace Them

China owns the brain, India builds the eyes—but who owns the data?

Issue #146Society

Fable Can't Enter China, But GPT Can

Chips got blocked, but the models didn't—and that gap is sovereign AI's real face.

Issue #145Society

Laid-Off Workers Share One Surprising Trait

Gallup surveyed 23,717 U.S. workers and found it wasn't skill that predicted layoffs — it was attitude.

Issue #144Society

Korea's 710,000 'Resting' Youth Would Be Patients in Britain

44% of UK youth not working cite health issues as the reason—Korea's data tells a different story.

Issue #143Society

The Hidden Bill for 588,000 Remote Workers' Mental Health

They loved working from home — but 588,000 Americans didn't see this mental health bill coming.

Issue #140Society

Polymarket Faked Bets to Rack Up 140 Million Views

A prediction market sold FOMO instead of transparency.

Issue #137Society

China Optimizes, Japan Orchestrates, Korea Bets ₩800T

Three countries, three different bets on where the real AI fight happens — and the layer Korea's plan leaves empty.

Issue #134Society

The Coupang Leak Meant Spam. This One Meant Lives

A hack of the UN World Food Programme exposed the names and home locations of 600,000 Gaza households living in a war zone.

Issue #127Society

Fortune-Telling Chatbots and Korea's Claim to AI's Top 3

The world's most AI-enthusiastic public still faces a 40% model gap — and enthusiasm alone won't close it.

Issue #123Society

The World's Strongest AI Went Dark 3 Days After Launch

In 1999 the US called a computer a weapon; in 2026 it pulled the plug on an AI model — and sovereignty went from slogan to survival.

Issue #119Society

History Repeats? The 📠 Office Automation Era of 1979

Workers feel 3x faster while executives measure 1.8% — the exact gap that opened when word processors first hit the office.

Issue #117Society

Korea Walks the Path Apple and the EU Abandoned

From July 1, every image uploaded to Korean communities gets AI-scanned — at operators' full expense, with no government subsidy.

Issue #116Society

Australia Banned Teens From Social Media. Did It Work?

Six months into its under-16 social media ban, Australia's official numbers tell two contradictory stories.

Issue #113Society

What's Peter Thiel Up To? He Found a Country-Sized Lab

A billionaire who placed third in a local chess tournament is quietly building a plan B.

Issue #107Society

Why a Math-Major Pope Wrote an Encyclical on AI

The same question the Vatican asked 135 years ago about the Industrial Revolution is back — now about AI.

Issue #105Society

How a Hot Dog Vendor Changed a Psychologist's Life

The key to happiness isn't your closest friends — it's the strangers you pass every day.

Issue #96Society

How AI Agents Could End the UI-Based Annoyance Economy

Canceling a subscription takes 4 pages and 6 clicks — this annoyance costs $165 billion a year.

Issue #91Society

Why the FAA Is Recruiting Gamers With $155K Salaries

In an era when skills replace degrees as the hiring bar, air traffic control just became the first real test case.

Issue #88Society

What Happens When AI Agents Negotiate Your Purchases

A world is coming where those with less information won't even know they're losing out.

Issue #81Society

Meta's AI Bet: Winning Over 250 Million Small Merchants

Meta thinks the real AI war isn't won with big corporations — it's won with your neighborhood shop owner

Issue #80Society

No Workers Left: Why Japan Is Betting Everything on Robots

Japan's robot strategy isn't about efficiency — it's about survival, and that desperation may become its edge.

Issue #79Society

What Teens Actually Talk About With AI Chatbots

The headlines scream danger, but kids turned to chatbots because we left them alone first

Issue #78Society

Silent Users, Talkative AI: What Filled the Void

Half of social media users no longer post — and AI is quietly stepping into that silence.

Issue #72Society

When a Philosophy PhD Says 'The Humanities Are Dead'

The world isn't a seesaw—one side rising rarely means the other crashes down.

Issue #71Society

The Cornfield Theory That Still Explains Tech Adoption

Technology moves faster than ever, but the psychology behind how people accept change hasn't changed at all.

Issue #70Society

How Child Safety Laws Are Building an Internet ID System

Child protection is real, but should the fix mean embedding everyone's identity into the operating system?

Issue #69Society

US Cyber Strategy Shrinks from 39 Pages to 7

Why a strategy that hits harder but defends less isn't just America's problem

Issue #63Society

When Silicon Valley Talks 'Taste,' What's It Really Hiding?

Is 'knowing what to build' really the same thing as taste, or something else entirely?

Issue #57Society

PhD Students in the AI Era: Blessing or Curse?

If AI now does the work a PhD is meant to teach, what does the degree actually prove?

Issue #56Society

arXiv Leaves Cornell After 35 Years to Go Independent

The nonprofit platform hosting cutting-edge AI and physics research is severing its 35-year tie to Cornell University.

Issue #55Society

What Happens When You Measure Journalism by Data

Bezos didn't bring restructuring to The Washington Post—he brought Amazon's entire operating philosophy

Issue #50Society

If AI Must Pay Taxes, How Much Should It Owe?

The era of taxing labor is ending—the real question is what comes next.

Issue #45Society

Give AI Agents a Prepaid Card, Not Your Credit Card

The age of handing AI agents a 'wallet' has begun. The real challenge isn't technology — it's designing trust.

Issue #38Society

How a Crayfish Bot Is Reshaping China's Tech Stack

China's 'crayfish-raising' craze is no fad—it's shaking up cloud, messaging, and AI model markets all at once.

Issue #37Society

Yakult Ladies: Japan's Safety Net, Korea's Delivery App

The same probiotic drink delivery workers prevent lonely deaths in Japan and deliver credit cards in Korea.

Issue #31Society

AI Firms' Ethical Red Lines Collapse in Wartime

Principles are easy to set in peacetime — war is where they're actually tested.

Issue #30Society

How Huxley's 1961 'Law of Technology' Became the Algorithm

Technology was built to serve us—now we exist to serve it.

Issue #15Society

Companies Want to Hire, Korea's Youth Don't Want to Go

The government and corporations shook hands perfectly—the only thing missing is the young workers' consent.

Issue #13Society

Orwell's 1946 Warning on Language and Thought

Clear language isn't the result of clear thinking — it's the precondition for it

Issue #14Society

Why the Pentagon Pizza Theory Didn't Hold Up

The more seductive a hypothesis feels, the sharper your scrutiny needs to be.

Issue #4Society

In the AI Era, Cultivate Taste, Not Skills

Technology creates dependence, but taste becomes an asset nothing can replace.

Issue #1Society

China Awards PhDs for Products, Not Papers

China now lets engineers earn PhDs through deployed technology instead of journal papers. How the Practical PhD model is changing doctoral education.

Issue #5Society

Jensen Huang Never Did 'Self-Development.' He Just Worked.

Ask any successful person for their secret, and you'll always get the same answer: "I just did it."