Articles 2015
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Democracy's Destabilizer: TMI
Bloomberg View, December 28, 2015
Information used to be scarce. Now it’s overwhelming. In his book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium,” Gurri considers the political implications of this change. He argues that the shift from information scarcity to abundance has destroyed the public’s established trust in institutional authorities, including media, science, religion, and government.
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Progressive and Racist. Woodrow Wilson Wasn't Alone.
Bloomberg View, December 08, 2015
Black student protesters are demanding that Princeton take Woodrow Wilson's name off the university's public policy school and a residential college. A new work of intellectual history coincidentally published by Princeton University Press and written by a Princeton faculty member offers a compelling -- though implicit -- case that Wilson’s name is ideally suited for the public-policy school but deeply ironic for the residential college. It also reveals the largely forgotten intellectual origins of many current controversies, including disputes over tightening voter identification laws, raising the minimum wage and restricting immigration.
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Heard Bad Things About Yik Yak? Try Using It
Bloomberg View, November 13, 2015
Yik Yak is a social-media app that in just two years has become an everyday part of the American college experience. If you’ve heard of it, chances are you think it’s awful. It has a terrible reputation as a dangerous source of vitriol, threats and ethnic slurs. What I found when I took a look at it astonished me.
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Responding to "The Lure of Luxury"
Boston Review, November 02, 2015
Why do people buy things they “don’t really need”? -
Hollywood Gives Its Black Geek a Promotion
Bloomberg View, October 21, 2015
Hollywood loves to show black geeks, as long as they don't have backstories or personal lives. Malcolm Arakanbe to protagonist of the delightful teen movie "Dope," is not that kind of geek.
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Don't Stop Kids from Playing Rough
Bloomberg View, October 05, 2015
Prohibiting rough-and-tumble play doesn’t make recess safer or kids less apt to hurt others. To the contrary, bans deprive children of the very experiences they need to master peaceful social interactions.
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Princeton's School of Hard Knocks
Bloomberg View, September 02, 2015
Every January a great team loses the Super Bowl. Every April three of the Final Four go down. And every September, extraordinary students arrive at highly selective universities only to discover that one out of every two really will wind up in the bottom half of the freshman class--and one out of every five in the bottom quintile.
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Big Data Builds a Better "Help Wanted" Ad
Bloomberg View, August 20, 2015
Using an enormous and continually updated database of job postings and results, Textio, a Seattle-based startup, applies machine learning and natural language processing techniques to see what works -- and what doesn’t -- in job ads, whether for candidates in general, specific industries, or male or female job seekers. The results provide a fascinating peek into contemporary business.
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Robots Won't Rule the Checkout Lane
Bloomberg View, August 10, 2015
To see why robots aren't going to wipe out everyone's job anytime soon, look no further than the annoyed and bewildered customers confronting store self-checkout units squawking, "Unexpected item in bagging area" and "Help is on the way."
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Big Data Knows You Like Losers
Bloomberg View, July 29, 2015
Some customers are "harbingers of failure," disproportionately drawn to new products destined to fail.