Around The Web | What We’re Reading
In news this week our highlight was the ‘Pepsi moment’ ( yes we’re calling it that) when Ivanka Trump decided to take the stage at this years G20 conference in Berlin. We talk about that elsewhere.
For now absorb yourself in our global news update including Anna Wintour’s reflective piece on the state of the world to the science of personal space – yes, people actually study awkwardness.
Oh, and we’ve thrown in a piece on the sex tech industry, which to our surprise is worth $30 billion.
“To me, fashion is ceaselessly fascinating because it is an expression of self. And whatever year you might be looking at in Vogue, that’s what we are trying to do – reflect the time, reflect the moment.” The legend that is Anna Wintour discusses the road ahead for the business of fashion in Trump’s America and the wider spectrum in the face of new technologies and political disruption.
“It’s said that at the height of the rivalry, Puma and Adidas were like rival gangs. If you worked at one, you didn’t dare cross the river. Each side had its own bakery, its own bars and its own sports clubs.” In the early 1920s, Adi and Rudolf Dassler started a shoe business. When the relationship between the two brothers disintegrated, the company was split in two and thus began the biggest rift in the sportswear industry. Find out how the rivalry between the Nazi siblings created modern sportswear.
“In classical architecture they used heads of the king or whatever, and they put that on the façade. So we were thinking, what can we use as an ornament so when you look at this building in 10 or 20 years you can say ‘hey this is from that year!’ Enter emoji.” Discover the Dutch building using emojis as 21st Century gargoyles.
“When computer scientists made artificial intelligence sophisticated enough that human-robot relationships looked like a real possibility, they thought it would be a force for good…’Many who would otherwise have become social misfits, social outcasts, or even worse, will instead be better-balanced human beings.’ The highly lucrative $30 billion sex tech industry is pushing to create the world’s first sex robot, whose sole aim is to answer your every want and need.
“Personal space – how close we stand to our colleagues, our friends, strangers – varies widely between countries. Sociologists have studied the whys and hows, and they’ve come up with some theories about why these social norms exist.” Find out why anything from temperature to your gender can impact how you define personal space.
“An extraordinary chapter has just been added to the story of the First Americans…Researchers may have to come to terms with the fact that they have barely scratched the surface of the North American archaeological record.” A recent ground breaking discovery hints that the first American humans may have actually been Neanderthals.
“Philadelphia doctors have kept fetal lambs alive in a uterus-like plastic sack for weeks, a technological leap toward caring for premature infants that also raises questions over how early babies might be considered viable outside the womb.” In this amazing development, possibilities arise for greater survival of premature babies. Is this the next step?
