Generated by All in One SEO v4.9.10, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # Fazal Ali Official Website of Dr. Fazal Ali ## Sitemaps - [XML Sitemap](https://fazalali.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website. ## Posts - [Artificial Intelligence and the Scholarship Uplift](https://fazalali.com/2023/06/24/artificial-intelligence-and-the-scholarship-uplift/) - We are already at the point where we believe – Nothing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a domestic matter. It is trans-border. Offshore, it has no respect for exclusive economic zones where a sovereign state has special rights. On land, it penetrates the geographic boundaries of nation-states and amplifies the problems associated with porous borders. - [Democratising Thinking and Knowing with AI](https://fazalali.com/2023/06/18/democratising-thinking-and-knowing-with-ai/) - Artificial Intelligence (AI) will democratise knowing and thinking. The future is always open to suggestions. AI will alter schools. If democracy is to work, it requires knowledgeable and curious citizens and for that reason alone, education in the e-Age has a moral purpose. Democracy is about preparing citizens with the capabilities to take on the - [Policy Interoperability and the Hiroshima AI Process](https://fazalali.com/2023/06/10/policy-interoperability-and-the-hiroshima-ai-process/) - Falling behind the global marathon to attract future industries is not an option. Protectionism and subsidy races are zero-sum. Global Policy Interoperability to buttress Digital Trade and the global management of data is the future. The disruptive potential of generative AI, and immersive technologies like the Metaverse have led to an agreement on the “Hiroshima - [AI-AdTech and Luxury Beauty Brands](https://fazalali.com/2026/09/05/ai-adtech-and-luxury-beauty-brands/) - AI is not adding a new layer of advertising to the luxury beauty and personal care market. It is rewriting every layer. The West Indies needs to rebuild its advertising stack around AI, spanning ML-led bidding systems and identity graphs, transformer-based recommendation engines, and agentic advertising infrastructure This will enable the W.I. to map regional - [The AI Earth Manifesto](https://fazalali.com/2026/08/30/the-ai-earth-manifesto/) - A synoptic view of the highest-profile taxonomies of ethical principles for AI shows broad convergence on about 47 values, including artificial authority, human autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, algorithmic fairness, epistemic justice, and explicability, which encompasses both the epistemological sense of intelligibility and the ethical sense of accountability. Four of these are core axioms commonly used in - [Coding Culture with Data-Driven Innovation and AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/08/23/coding-culture-with-data-driven-innovation-and-ai/) - Ours is a civilisation of collisions. The modern world as we know it, was created from these impairments. As doubts about Columbus’s claims of having been close to Japan crept in, disagreements between Castile and Portugal were resolved in the Atlantic. What followed was a cortege of diplomatic standoffs, treaties and wars. Nothing stood in - [AI and the Unscripted Chaos of Live Sport](https://fazalali.com/2026/08/16/ai-and-the-unscripted-chaos-of-live-sport/) - Unscripted chaos in live sport is a hedge against AI disruption. Real-time athletic triumph depends on biological fragility, grit under severe stress, and spontaneous human error that algorithms cannot fake. At the Mondo Classic on 12th March 2026, Armand Duplantis, nicknamed “Mondo”, broke his own pole vault world record for the 15th time with a jump - [Creative AI and Data-Driven Innovation in Creative Industries](https://fazalali.com/2026/08/08/creative-ai-and-data-driven-innovation-in-creative-industries/) - Creative informatics sits at the intersection of the creative industries, digital, data, creative AI, commerce, the arts, culture, and heritage. In the Algorithmic Age, data-driven innovation can be as valuable as the creative product itself. Organisations and creatives in certain sub-sectors of the creative industries are mastering data-led approaches and innovating with data. Digital creative - [Building AI Models that prompt us to think more humanely](https://fazalali.com/2026/08/01/building-ai-models-that-prompt-us-to-think-more-humanely/) - To shape the future, we must fashion AI systems that prompt us to think better and more humanely than we naturally do. AI opens up the possibility of augmenting human intelligence and solving problems with wisdom. In that ferment lies the possibility of an efflorescence of machine ideas, new creations, even new species of ideas - [AI-Proof University Graduates](https://fazalali.com/2026/07/25/ai-proof-university-graduates/) - Ivy League universities are asking themselves: what value will graduates bring to the workplace that AI cannot provide? Firms and bureaucracies are asking: What would a work environment saturated with frontier AI models require of the university graduate? The University is in ruins. In its pursuit of bureaucratic "excellence", the University shifted from a cultural - [AI Officiates the FIFA 2026 World Cup](https://fazalali.com/2026/07/18/ai-officiates-the-fifa-2026-world-cup/) - The FIFA 2026 World Cup features an AI-enhanced football. The ball has an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Operating at 500Hz, it captures 3D acceleration, spin, and granular impact data 500 times per second to precisely timestamp exactly when a player touches the ball. The tournament includes digital twins of 16 stadiums, avatars of all 1248 - [The AI Silk Roads: From Dirt to Digital](https://fazalali.com/2026/07/11/the-ai-silk-roads-from-dirt-to-digital/) - Next is now. The New Silk Roads inscribe a geopolitical and technological realignment in which AI, not silk or spices, is the most prized commodity. The screen economies of “Next” turn on hyperscale campuses; parallel processing; extreme power density; rapid scalability; specialised accelerators (GPUs/TPUs), ultra-high-bandwidth networks; liquid cooling systems; megawatt-to-gigawatt power capacity to handle intensive - [Truth is Not Enough in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/07/04/truth-is-not-enough-in-the-age-of-ai/) - Truth is not enough in the Intelligent Age, because AI models don’t "know" what truth is. AI Assemblages function by predicting patterns and harmonising text rather than consulting reality. A factually correct statement can lack the context, nuance, or ethical judgment required to be genuinely useful. Vigilance is the only safeguard to avert conflating truth - [AI Reindustrialisation](https://fazalali.com/2026/06/27/ai-reindustrialisation/) - Global hyperscale AI infrastructure is undergoing a massive US$3 trillion capital investment supercycle. This capital expenditure is driven by hyperscalers eager to build advanced AI data centres and procure hardware. Forecasts project global capacity will double from 103 GW to nearly 200 GW by 2030. Driven by the explosive demand for Gen-AI foundation models, these - [AI and Labour](https://fazalali.com/2026/06/20/ai-and-labour/) - AI is a foundational layer of labour. It replaces, augments, and manages human workloads. Digital workers and AI agents autonomously handle multistep administrative tasks, navigate applications, collect data, fill out forms, and trigger workflows to deliver client-facing services with extreme velocity. Workers are completing tasks with greater agility and efficiency. But economies don’t reflect this - [AI and the Next World](https://fazalali.com/2026/06/13/ai-and-the-next-world/) - This is the next world. A Time of Artificial Life and Intelligence. An age in which every design choice reflects a vision for humanity. A hope that can easily overlook concrete lives. Because of poor judgment, we may already have lost control over the consequences of our choices. It is a moment that harbours both - [Moral Attrition and Memory in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/06/06/moral-attrition-and-memory-in-the-age-of-ai/) - The best lie is that a memory always feels so true. LLMs are trained on huge data scrapes that can sometimes "memorise" personal details. To comply with privacy provisions, developers use machine unlearning to make AI models forget particular data points. But this forced forgetting and unlearning is far from the complexity of human forgetfulness - [AI-Mood Boards and Robotic Archwire Bending for Carnival Costumes](https://fazalali.com/2026/05/30/ai-mood-boards-and-robotic-archwire-bending-for-carnival-costumes/) - The archwire-bending brand identity of the Trinidad Carnival has penetrated markets in the Middle East. In Dubai, the world witnessed all aspects of Fête, Jouvert and Mas’, and a "Callalloo" of costumes from top Carnival bands. The Trinidad and Tobago masquerade tradition is already pursuing export-led growth and diversification, expanding its carnival brand identity into - [Failure as Essential in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/05/23/failure-as-essential-in-the-age-of-ai/) - The future we are in now belongs to our children. Our fears can become a cage that makes them doubt their personal theories and capabilities. They are AI-natives. Let them be free to think and create. They will make lots of big mistakes. So what? Failure is better than never trying. To do nothing is - [AI as an always-on intelligent security fabric](https://fazalali.com/2026/05/16/ai-as-an-always-on-intelligent-security-fabric/) - Mythos is a “step change,” or a non-linear jump, in capability. It is a highly advanced, general-purpose frontier AI model that possesses unprecedented cybersecurity capabilities. Rather than being a traditional antivirus or network firewall, it is an AI tool capable of autonomously finding, chaining, and exploiting software vulnerabilities. It can act both as an advanced hacker - [Selecting Agents and Shielding Your AI Chats](https://fazalali.com/2026/05/09/selecting-agents-and-shielding-your-ai-chats/) - No one can shield their AI chats from prosecutors pursuing charges. Conversations with AI assemblages could be demanded by adversaries in litigation, in both criminal and civil cases. Chats with advocates are always confidential. But AI assemblages are not lawyers. Conversations with AI assemblages can erase the legal protections known as the attorney-client privilege, which - [AI-Gravity and Socio-Economic Operating Systems](https://fazalali.com/2026/05/02/ai-gravity-and-socio-economic-operating-systems/) - The future is still about figuring out what questions to ask. This is more important than finding the correct answer to the wrong question. We once learned to use search engines to do more impactful things. Now we are learning to use AI to usher in an era of incredible productivity and radical abundance. AI is rapidly reshaping - [The Defence of Data in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/04/25/the-defence-of-data-in-the-age-of-ai/) - Data centres and hyperscale cloud infrastructure are the new victims of war. Hyperscale cloud infrastructure offers unparalleled, rapid scalability for immense computing, storage, and networking demands. Managed by industry leaders such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud, these architectures can dynamically scale resources on demand. This enables companies to efficiently handle enormous workloads without the cost - [Screen Economies and AI-powered Price Tags](https://fazalali.com/2026/04/18/screen-economies-and-ai-powered-price-tags/) - AI-powered digital price tags, or Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs), are being adopted by major retail chains. These tiny screens can be updated wirelessly via a central system, delivering instant price updates for thousands of products and enabling price calibration, like ride-sharing apps, based on demand, time of day, competitor prices, and inventory levels. These frontier - [The 100 Model War and Shadow AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/04/12/the-100-model-war-and-shadow-ai/) - The Hundred Model War started in 2023. From Beijing to the southern Silicon Valley of Shenzhen, China is implementing its AI+ project, which was introduced in 2024 and expanded in 2025. The aim is to accelerate the integration of AI across economic and social sectors by embedding AI in manufacturing, healthcare, consumption, and governance to - [A Regional AI Research Resource and Lab similar to CERN](https://fazalali.com/2026/04/04/a-regional-ai-research-resource-and-lab-similar-to-cern/) - In many ways, AI-generated content is poisoning the internet, making it less reliable to access clear facts. And while it is indisputable that AI is impressive, it is also predictable. Brenda Mulberry ambitiously hopes to open the first T-shirt shop on the Moon. Her Minshallesque idea is a perfect edge case. Her knowledge is personally - [From Divine Attributes to AI Scaling Curves](https://fazalali.com/2026/03/28/from-divine-attributes-to-ai-scaling-curves/) - Deep within the glass-walled offices of Anthropic and OpenAI, the quest for the “orderly harmony” of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Baruch Spinoza, and Isaac Newton continues unhindered. Galileo likened the universe to a vast book “which stands continually open to our gaze,” but we cannot understand this book until we first - [Artificial Fertilisers and AI-driven Fertigation Systems](https://fazalali.com/2026/03/22/artificial-fertilisers-and-ai-driven-fertigation-systems/) - The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway through which about 20 per cent of the world's daily LNG supply transits. Traffic has decreased by approximately 70-90 per cent. Some ships are navigating the passage with special permission, while others remain anchored. Natural gas is used to manufacture nitrogen-based artificial fertilisers. One third of fertilisers - [High Unemployment and Endless Vacancies in the Intelligent Age](https://fazalali.com/2026/03/14/high-unemployment-and-endless-vacancies-in-the-intelligent-age/) - Every day, the future changes. It feels almost messianic, rushing toward us. So, what does the future hold? This question recurs each time extraordinary machinery appears. Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the new silver linings. But every silver lining has a dark cloud. In Book XVIII of Homer’s “Iliad”, set during the - [Agility Quotient and the Data Fabric of State Enterprises](https://fazalali.com/2026/03/07/agility-quotient-and-the-data-fabric-of-state-enterprises/) - Agility Quotient (AQ) assesses our capacity to persist through failure, navigate uncertainty, unlearn, and stay curious in the Intelligent Age. In the era of data-as-a-product, traditional metrics such as IQ and EQ are no longer enough to define leadership and determine competitiveness. Data-as-a-product is a feature of the autonomous economy that treats data as a - [A Ministry of Work in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/03/01/a-ministry-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/) - Why do jobs exist? The origin of the word “job” is linked to the period following the invention of the printing press, with its earliest use in the 16th century. While Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in Mainz, Germany, around 1450, the term “job” appeared as a contraction of the phrase “jobbe of worke” - [Autonomous Creative Economies](https://fazalali.com/2026/02/21/autonomous-creative-economies/) - Economies are no longer primarily industrial. Most of the work is service-oriented and relies on knowledge, ideas, and creativity. During the later stages of the Industrial Revolution, Victorian leaders established the City and Guilds of London Institute to develop a skilled industrial workforce. It was a new institution, founded in 1878 by the City of London and 16 - [Prosperity Engines and Specialised Education](https://fazalali.com/2026/02/14/prosperity-engines-and-specialised-education/) - As AI boosts work, Taiwan hosted a chip talent camp for teenagers from around the world. The camp was delivered in both Mandarin and English to attract talent. Synopsys curated the camp with chip manufacturers and universities in Taiwan amid surging global demand for AI. Development in the Intelligent Age demands that countries implement specialised - [Subsea Cables and Swarms of AI Chatbots](https://fazalali.com/2026/02/07/subsea-cables-and-swarms-of-ai-chatbots/) - Our immediate priority is to prevent the emergence of new social and economic divides in the Intelligent Age. Although the Internet is often depicted as existing in the “cloud”, it heavily depends on subsea cables. Subsea fibre-optic cables function as the high-capacity, low-latency backbone that supports AI by enabling large-scale data transfer among global data centres. They facilitate - [Intelligent Failure and the IP of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/01/31/intelligent-failure-and-the-ip-of-ai/) - Intelligent failure turns on limitless naivete and an absence of artificiality. Failure is intelligent when no formula exists to precisely map the terrain in advance. These failures begin with designing smart pilots that keep failures small. AI-assisted innovation and creativity have been nothing short of transformative. AI assemblages have achieved significant results by composing poetry, - [AI in a world that is always in movement](https://fazalali.com/2026/01/24/ai-in-a-world-that-is-always-in-movement/) - Every clean slate comes from some other beginning's end. The old order is not coming back. The exact shape of the new order is still contested, and it may not even be a single, planned system. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s view, offered in his 2001 Nobel Prize lecture, is that “The world is always in - [Technology Sovereignty and AI as Board-Level Imperatives](https://fazalali.com/2026/01/18/technology-sovereignty-and-ai-as-board-level-imperatives/) - Within a fragmented and rapidly shifting geopolitical environment, from Nuuk to Qom, and from Haifa to Havana, President Trump’s “America First” doctrine, his MAGA worldview, and his administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) domestic policy are increasingly intertwined. Together, they advance a deliberate push for U.S. dominance in AI through deregulation, with the clear aim of reshaping - [The Screen Economy and Data Chains](https://fazalali.com/2026/01/10/the-screen-economy-and-data-chains/) - We are in the twilight of human intellectual supremacy. The Screen Economy will chaperone an age of unconstrained flourishing of artificial life, the likes of which humans have never witnessed before. It will foment the most profound identity crisis that humanity has ever faced, with AI meshworks increasingly matching and exceeding our cognitive abilities. Brazil, - [Finding the Still Point in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2026/01/03/finding-the-still-point-in-the-age-of-ai/) - We live in a fractured world that is spinning ever so faster. Old engagements in Tiananmen Square, Kosovo, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War are pale to what portends, in Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, Sudan, Myanmar, the DRC, Haiti, Sahel, and Afghanistan. 2026 will be a collection of diplomatic manoeuvres to address the prospect of “civilisational - [How AI is Transforming Leadership](https://fazalali.com/2025/12/28/how-ai-is-transforming-leadership/) - Truth is tentative, and certainty elusive. Nothing is pinned. To know is to kill. What remains is keeping the conversation open. It is the only path to make sense of the last edit and to listen honestly. Genuine understanding is not a solitary, objective method, but an interplay of perspectives. The participants in a true - [AI for those who Escaped and those Left Behind](https://fazalali.com/2025/12/20/ai-for-those-who-escaped-and-those-left-behind/) - Brazil has dedicated approximately $4 billion (around R$23 billion) to its National AI Plan (PBIA), "AI for the Good of All." The focus is on infrastructure, innovation, public services, training, and AI governance. There is also an emphasis on high-performance computing, data centres, and fostering an inclusive AI ecosystem, alongside broader digital transformation investments. Brazil is investing in High-Performance - [AI's Deepening of the Democratic Deficit](https://fazalali.com/2025/12/14/ais-deepening-of-the-democratic-deficit/) - Politics is messy, and AI has deepened the democratic deficit. However, this messiness is preferable to the faux-omniscience of AI-Assemblages, which manufacture an illusion of knowing everything. A mirage that crafts a feeling of pervasive awareness, unlike true omniscience, a divine attribute of complete knowledge. Today, it is far more preferable that AI systems not - [The Voice of the Subalterns and AI](https://fazalali.com/2025/12/06/the-voice-of-the-subalterns-and-ai/) - In our plantation past, the overseers were always tall, because we were always on our knees. Our history has been imprisoned for far too long. In the Age of AI, the voice of the subaltern must find its place quickly, or else AI assemblages will be trained on discourses that have so far muted the - [The Economic Geography of AI](https://fazalali.com/2025/11/30/the-economic-geography-of-ai/) - Anticipation is indispensable, but determination is best for development. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become a driver for overcoming development traps that hinder sustained progress in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). These traps or structural challenges include inherited inequality, intergenerational immobility, low economic and productivity growth, often associated with an export structure concentrated in primary - [AI and the Iconography of Cathedrals at Christmas](https://fazalali.com/2025/11/15/ai-and-the-iconography-of-cathedrals-at-christmas/) - Once, the twin towers of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception signalled to pilgrims and immigrants that certainty and sanctuary were near. For those adrift in the Gulf of Paria, the towers were a guiding landmark on the 19th-century Port of Spain waterfront. The bell towers were originally built entirely of limestone, but earthquake tremors - [Integrating AI and Wearables into Diabetes Management](https://fazalali.com/2025/11/22/integrating-ai-and-wearables-into-diabetes-management/) - Diabetes is a significant and escalating public health challenge. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now being used to enhance early diagnostics and risk assessment for emergent subtypes of diabetes. It is also enabling early identification of at-risk populations and the development of diabetes in unimaginable ways. Wearable devices, including continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) like the Dexcom G7 - [Conferring Electronic Personhood to AI](https://fazalali.com/2025/11/10/conferring-electronic-personhood-to-ai/) - Can AI itself be granted rights, including the right to life? This question prompts a deep philosophical and legal analysis of what constitutes "life" and "human dignity." It is a complex and debated issue whether AI will ever be granted the right to life, as it depends on the future development of AI consciousness and - [AI and a Let-it-Rip Approach to Development](https://fazalali.com/2025/11/01/ai-and-a-let-it-rip-approach-to-development/) - It was once the case in Trinidad and Tobago that many of us began our careers in the mailroom of a local company. My first job was in the storeroom of B.H. Rose of London Street, where I would count and distribute screws, rivets, and tools to workers building the Hall of Justice and the - [Open to the New and Procuring the Unknown](https://fazalali.com/2025/10/26/open-to-the-new-and-procuring-the-unknown/) - A nonstop low-grade fever of optimism fuels Wall Street. Over the last few months, markets have climbed sharply, propelled by the belief that AI will usher in a new Golden Era. No one knows for sure, but we are certain that optimism can be inebriating. Intoxication can make us ignore the warning signs that things - [Facing the Future - An AI Bill of Rights](https://fazalali.com/2025/10/18/facing-the-future-an-ai-bill-of-rights/) - California became the first state in the United States of America to pass the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act. This modest step forward is not perfect, but it marks a brave beginning as we face the future. It requires the developers of the largest frontier AI models, which can significantly impact society, to publicly - [Peace and Stability and AI Defence Tech](https://fazalali.com/2025/10/12/peace-and-stability-and-ai-defence-tech/) - With $3 billion in venture capital flowing into defence startups in 2024, which represents a 33 per cent year-over-year surge, and global military spending reaching an all-time high of $2.443 trillion, the world is witnessing the emergence of a new investment category. The emerging defence technology landscape has evolved in both scope and scale. In - [AI Pharmaceutical Discovery and Indigenous Knowledge](https://fazalali.com/2025/10/04/ai-pharmaceutical-discovery-and-indigenous-knowledge/) - On January 17, 2026, the UN High Seas Treaty is expected to come into force, recognising the knowledge of all First Nation Peoples, including the Nepuyo, Yao, Suppoya, Kalipuna, and Warao of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the first time that Indigenous Knowledge of marine environments is being formally recognised in the governance of international - [AI and the Future of the American Mediterranean](https://fazalali.com/2025/09/27/ai-and-the-future-of-the-american-mediterranean/) - Since the fifteenth century, the islands of the American Mediterranean have been deeply integrated into the global economy. The concept of economic globalisation is often viewed as a phenomenon of the late twentieth century. However, it has been a central aspect of life, work, and production in the region for more than five hundred years. - [Discord and an AI-generated Cabinet Minister](https://fazalali.com/2025/09/20/discord-and-an-ai-generated-cabinet-minister/) - A free press, free elections, the parliament, and an independent judiciary have in some places been reduced to commodities by the free market of corporate globalisation. The neo-liberal capitalists have cracked the code. They have grasped the practices of infiltrating the instruments of democracy. But today, to maintain democracy, it is becoming increasingly vital to - [Slow Violence and the Habitual Unfairness of the World](https://fazalali.com/2025/09/13/slow-violence-and-the-habitual-unfairness-of-the-world/) - Habitually, when we think of “violence,” it brings to mind acts that have the features of observability, intentionality, and perceptibility. But in the Age of AI, there is an alternate framing of “violence” – it is slow. “Slow violence” is attritional. It is progressive, unhurried, out of sight, and spreads across time and space. What - [AI Atlases and Digital Twins of Opioid Supply Chains](https://fazalali.com/2025/09/06/ai-atlases-and-digital-twins-of-opioid-supply-chains/) - Humans and technology are no longer separate but form a new evolutionary unit, where technology is not just a tool like a plough in Mesopotamia, but an integral part of our existence and development. Homo technologicus, information organisms in the Age of AI, are fashioned by and in symbiotic relationships with AI-Assemblages. This is a - [Floating Drones and the Caribbean's Insecurities](https://fazalali.com/2025/08/31/floating-drones-and-the-caribbeans-insecurities/) - When a flotilla of three ships blundered into its waters in 1492, the Caribbean was made central to the international security apparatus of our modern world. The legacies of colonial rule persist in formal dependencies lodged inside prisms of ambiguity like Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas, Christiansted and Frederiksted in St. Croix, island firmaments like - [Generative AI and the Lowly Drain Fish](https://fazalali.com/2025/08/24/generative-ai-and-the-lowly-drain-fish/) - Labelled as a lowly “drain fish”, the Trinidadian guppy has earned notoriety for its ability to invade new environments. Trinidadian guppies can be found in the oily, noxious waters of the La Brea Pitch Lake in southwest Trinidad. They live in conditions once considered uninhabitable for fish. These guppies show remarkable adaptations, such as the ability to - [AI Empire and Vestiges of the Plantation](https://fazalali.com/2025/08/16/ai-empire-and-vestiges-of-the-plantation/) - There is an inherited global hierarchy that persists in occupying the vestiges of old empires, resisting every effort to address inherited inequality and intergenerational immobility. In the Silicon Age, AI research initiatives restructure and embed for-profit companies within non-profit organisations to achieve innovation. This wizardry is rarely outside the reliance on large amounts of cheap - [AI Ethics and the Rule of Law](https://fazalali.com/2025/08/10/ai-ethics-and-the-rule-of-law/) - An impatient future does not need perfection. Progress always needs some initial action, and the beginning is always today. The European Union’s General-Purpose AI Code of Practice came into effect on Saturday, 2nd August 2025. As it stands, the code is a “world-first” and undisputed best-effort starting point. It is not perfect. It will evolve. - [AI and the Collapse of Trust](https://fazalali.com/2025/08/02/ai-and-the-collapse-of-trust/) - Beneath the veneer of the twin transitions—decarbonisation and digitalisation—lie two major challenges. The first involves rebuilding trust within and between nations. Trust is collapsing everywhere, including inside global institutions. Humanity seems to agree on only one thing: we no longer trust each other. Trust is fundamental to human dignity and our shared future. Without it, - [Desktop Robots and Coding Ideas in Classrooms](https://fazalali.com/2025/07/27/desktop-robots-and-coding-ideas-in-classrooms/) - Imagination is the motor of development. We have the option in the Age of AI to recraft the West Indies. We can act to realise a world we can re-imagine with indigenous knowledge and ideas. But ideas do not record reality. Ideas distort or exceed it. Ideas are the products of imaginative effort, because you - [AI-Powered Procurement](https://fazalali.com/2025/07/20/ai-powered-procurement/) - In the pre-AI era, your P&L was a backward-looking paper ledger. In the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the P&L becomes a forward-leaning tool for growth and competitiveness. Never has this been clearer than in procurement and spend management. Evangelists who adopt Agentic AI and GenAI will widen the gap between themselves and the antibodies. - [Copywriting your Body and Facial Features](https://fazalali.com/2025/07/12/copywriting-your-body-and-facial-features/) - AI-forgeries, voice clones, and unauthorized Deepfake videos that mimic people’s bodies, facial features, and voices often evade existing copyright protections. We can live with it if we are unaware, but knowing is suffering. Discourses on AI-generated forgeries have two focal points. The first is pornography, which is often the chief context in which synthetic media - [Pseudonymity and Visa Applications](https://fazalali.com/2025/07/05/pseudonymity-and-visa-applications/) - Governments have recently made it a requirement for student and scholar visa applicants to set their social media accounts to public. This has caused some panic and misunderstanding about privacy and risk assessments. We live in an unusual world. Much of the contemporary digital identity debate and citizen security revolves around pluralistic models of digital - [Digital Destiny and Artificial Intelligence](https://fazalali.com/2025/06/29/digital-destiny-and-artificial-intelligence/) - Nations must control their digital destiny. At a market stall in Berlin, shoppers line up to purge their mobile phones. They want indigenous Android operating systems without ties to foreign large technology companies. They want local digital services, including email, messaging, and zero-click AI search tools. The lines are growing longer. Citizens desire digital sovereignty, - [AI and Zero-Click Searches](https://fazalali.com/2025/06/22/ai-and-zero-click-searches/) - It is not over yet. We are the masters of our fate. Nothing is written. We still have the Adamic task of giving things their names in the Age of AI. For Caribbean content creators, AI is the new audience, not humans. This is changing every known digital economy plan. Once we shared the same - [Infosphere Agency and Teaching as Anthropology](https://fazalali.com/2025/06/14/infosphere-agency-and-teaching-as-anthropology/) - AI is everywhere, and things are spinning out of control. It is evolving faster than it is modernising the world. It is, therefore, natural for learners to ask what is actually in our power anymore. What residual authority do we have? What would it mean to have digital agency to control the way AI fits - [Steering AI Equitably and Sustainably](https://fazalali.com/2025/06/08/steering-ai-equitably-and-sustainably/) - Life without good politics, rigorous science, and trustworthy technology in the Age of AI can quickly become solitary, deprived, nasty, brutish, and brief, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes's “Leviathan.” Only imagination and benevolence can improve and safeguard the futures of billions of overlooked people. That future hinges on a new e-nvironmental ethics as we negotiate an - [The Law of AI and Policy Intent](https://fazalali.com/2025/06/01/the-law-of-ai-and-policy-intent/) - AI policy establishes a unified framework for the government to engage with AI confidently, safely, and responsibly in order to realise the benefits of AI. Laws give effect to policy intent. Attentive policy scrutiny and prompt attention to legislative design can illuminate a path to reach this result. The policy process must proactively consider legal - [Development and the DNA of AI](https://fazalali.com/2025/05/24/development-and-the-dna-of-ai/) - An AI Nation demands a capabilities approach to development. The DNA of AI must be spliced into the institutions, the economy, and the civic systems of the state. We are at the start of the AI diffusion climb. However, the slope is not the same for all nations. The climb requires a rethink of every - [Industrial Policy and Data Extractive Industries](https://fazalali.com/2025/05/17/industrial-policy-and-data-extractive-industries/) - Industrial policy is back. The Point Lisas Policy best exemplifies the range of choices associated with industrial development during the first Golden Age of expansion, from 1974 to 1982. However, global industrial policy today has made the extractive-led development agenda of Artificial Intelligence (AI) its centrepiece. Industrial policy is now enfolded in new techniques, tools, - [Cyber Economics and AI Defence Operations](https://fazalali.com/2025/05/11/cyber-economics-and-ai-defence-operations/) - Cyber economics is a catalyst for economic growth. It is the economics of information security. The defence of critical infrastructure, including drilling platforms, power grids, and deepwater internet cables, against foreign countries' interference involves a multi-faceted approach focused on protecting critical systems and data lakes from cyberattacks, including those originating from state-sponsored actors. Balancing economic profitability - [National Data Library and AI Opportunities Blueprint](https://fazalali.com/2025/05/03/national-data-library-and-ai-opportunities-blueprint/) - For long, we have been curious, but far too cautious. No longer being Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul’s “Mimic Men,” we have become pensive bystanders of the changes unfolding beneath our feet. Good governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) turns on building a National Data Library (NDL). No nation state today has the soft - [A Digital Census and a Housing Unit as a Unique Identifier](https://fazalali.com/2025/04/27/a-digital-census-and-a-housing-unit-as-a-unique-identifier/) - An AI-driven population census is the most wide-ranging data collection exercise a state can undertake. The census is a dashboard for statistics, measurements, and indicators produced during the intercensal period. It enables the statistical institute of the state to collect information from nearly every member of the population on a wide range of topics. In - [Open Minds and AI-generated Assessments](https://fazalali.com/2025/04/20/open-minds-and-ai-generated-assessments/) - Creeds constrain. Education must foster in every scholar the capacity to take joy in things beyond their understanding and to respond to the uncommon with an open mind. Advanced algorithms now create AI-generated assessments that display heightened ambiguity, complexity, intertextuality, and rigor. AI-generated tests are post-Tyler evaluation tools designed by AI that leverage natural language - [Tariff Turmoil and and the Industrialisation of Intelligence](https://fazalali.com/2025/04/12/tariff-turmoil-and-and-the-industrialisation-of-intelligence/) - We are on thin ice. The twin transitions to a new world manufacturing order, and the industrialisation of intelligence are here. As the Trump tariff turmoil is paused, China’s “Manus” which went viral on “X”, foreshadows a new technological order. Manus converts our ideas into actions. It thinks, plans, and executes tasks autonomously, with a - [Cyber Gangs and Identity Access Management](https://fazalali.com/2025/04/06/cyber-gangs-and-identity-access-management/) - In the Age of AI, bad actors have exploited digital toolboxes to impersonate individuals. Many of these toolkits are accessible on the dark web, where Cybercrime as a Service (CaaS) has flourished, fostering the development of intricate supply chains as malicious actors specialise in various facets of attack engineering. An attack surface may therefore involve - [AI and these brown leaves of islands](https://fazalali.com/2025/03/30/ai-and-these-brown-leaves-of-islands/) - The war has always been between what we should become and what we could become. Our unfinished souls remain moored in the sea, our monuments and memories locked in a blue vault. The AI future of these islands is as fluid as the sea that washes over the brown leaves of these islands, causing them - [AI and a Politics of Truthfulness and Compassion](https://fazalali.com/2025/03/22/ai-and-a-politics-of-truthfulness-and-compassion/) - The wealthiest one per cent controls more wealth than the majority of humanity. A politics of intelligence, rooted in truthfulness, algorithmic fairness, and compassion is urgent. Our own Aimé Césaire from Martinique reminds us: “There is not in the world one single poor lynched bastard, one poor tortured man, in whom I am not also - [AI and the Dragons that Dance](https://fazalali.com/2025/03/15/ai-and-the-dragons-that-dance/) - Technological Self-Reliance is a key goal of development. With the rapid advance of AI coding capabilities, the work of human coders will now incorporate double-checking AI-generated code rather than authoring it. However, AI will not replace human coders. Rather, AI is gradually altering the human skills needed in any coding-related job. In Beijing, apart from - [Ontologies and a Creolized AI-discourse](https://fazalali.com/2025/03/09/ontologies-and-a-creolized-ai-discourse/) - The ghosts of the future are already here. In describing his musical journey at the Monk Music Soundbridge Project launch at the Trinidad Hilton on Thursday, February 20th, 2025, Machel Montano described the present as a moment when “this is not here again” and “this is not here yet.” Instead of an “Ark,” we need - [The Carnivalesque and a Decolonised AI Discourse](https://fazalali.com/2025/03/02/the-carnivalesque-and-a-decolonised-ai-discourse/) - Mikhail Bakhtin defines the carnivalesque as a space for the "low" to challenge the "high". In the Age of AI, the carnivalesque becomes a temporary social space ripe for the inversion of societal norms and hierarchies, especially those that colour social categories and power relations in former plantation economies. Conceived as an ontology of resistance, - [AI and Intergenerational Climate Justice](https://fazalali.com/2025/02/23/ai-and-intergenerational-climate-justice/) - Climate change is an unsettling intergenerational justice issue. It deserves our undivided and full attention. Youth in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), future generations, coral reefs, wetlands, mangroves, and other ecosystems with no possibility of protecting their future well-being must tote the full burden of the actions of today’s adults. With every inaction the - [AI and our Post-Truth Predicament](https://fazalali.com/2025/02/15/ai-and-our-post-truth-predicament/) - We now live in a chilling era of “post-truth”. Some of us are paddling through piles of lies. Others are sinking in fictions, misinformation and myth. From the Stone Age to the Silicone Age, Homo Sapiens have witnessed a meteoritic rise in connectivity, and the flow of information, without a concomitant rise in truthfulness. The - [AI and the Bridgetown Initiative](https://fazalali.com/2025/02/09/ai-and-the-bridgetown-initiative/) - In his Socratic dialogue “The Republic” Plato wrote, “our need will be the real creator.” Faced with a dearth of high-end chips, Liang Wenfeng, a graduate of Zhejiang University built DeepSeek-R-1 using less advanced chips. Chip shortages lit the slow fuse of his imagination forcing him to use fewer chips than those used by Western tech - [Open AI Trojan Horse or Gift](https://fazalali.com/2025/02/01/open-ai-trojan-horse-or-gift/) - DeepSeek, a little-known Hong Kong AI startup, released a new model series — DeepSeek-R-1 on 20th January 2025. The new Open-source large reasoning model has reshuffled the market. It stirred up fears of a Trojan horse and hastened no shortage of hand-wringing and existentialism among Western-block techies. 2025 is the confluence of Open AI - [AI for Social Good](https://fazalali.com/2025/01/26/ai-for-social-good/) - One of the most consequential challenges of our time is the disruptive application of AI for social good. AI for social good offers unprecedented opportunities across many domains to build inclusive, just, interconnected, and flourishing societies. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a useful AI intervention could be using machine learning programs to identify students - [Algorithmic Bureaucracy and the Information Empires](https://fazalali.com/2025/01/18/algorithmic-bureaucracy-and-the-information-empires/) - The new “Information Empires” are not unlike those that bedevilled Montezuma, Emperor of the Aztecs, and Hyarima, the Nepuyo Cacique. In a flanking manoeuvre, on 1 December 1699, a party of Carib, Aruac, and Warao ambushed the Spanish Governor José de León y Echales as he approached the mission of San Francisco de los Arenales, - [AI-Crimes in the Silicon Age](https://fazalali.com/2025/01/12/ai-crimes-in-the-silicon-age/) - It is foreseeable that AI-crimes may create blurred boundaries and legal uncertainties. The following areas display the highest bent to exposure to AI-crimes: cartel offenses, insider dealing, market manipulation, price fixing, collusion, trafficking, selling, buying and possessing banned drugs, harassment, stalking, torture and information extraction, theft, robbery, forgery, and personation. Furthermore, “data deletion” has surfaced - [AI Exposure and Chatting up the Future](https://fazalali.com/2025/01/04/ai-exposure-and-chatting-up-the-future/) - If the lamplighters at dusk in 1878, who made their way ceremoniously along Rue des Trois Chandelles (Duncan Street), accompanied by a boy toting a ladder and a pail of whale oil, and another ringing a brass bell could see the CBTT, the magisterial coastal towers of the International Waterfront Centre, the Hyatt Regency, Furness - [AI and the Politics of Agriculture](https://fazalali.com/2024/12/29/ai-and-the-politics-of-agriculture/) - By 2050 we must increase world food production. FarmBeats uses AI, Edge, and IoT for agriculture. The digital architectures of FarmBeats is a mesh of long-range TV frequencies to connect with and capture data from solar powered sensors in the fields. This is buttressed by a flock of drones to gather aerial information as machine - [AI and Attention Markets](https://fazalali.com/2024/12/22/ai-and-attention-markets/) - To create value in the Attention Markets, businesses will rewire by deploying technology at scale. A clear digital transformation strategy that focuses on specific domains and is enabled by a set of specific capabilities is crucial for companies in Latin America and the Caribbean to compete and survive. Attention is a resource in the Age - [AI and Criminal Liability](https://fazalali.com/2024/12/16/ai-and-criminal-liability/) - What is unfolding is a spectre of regulation by AI, rather than regulation of AI. The rise of “cyber-physical” infrastructure has made the old demarcation between online and offline artificial. Data-driven agency is converting phones, kitchen appliances, trains, bridges, hospitals and wearables into a neural lace of uninterrupted scrutiny and surreptitious adaptation among the “inforgs” who experience reality as - [The Municipal Corporation as an AI Observatory](https://fazalali.com/2024/12/08/the-municipal-corporation-as-an-ai-observatory/) - New intelligent Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) built on Small Language Models (SLMs) are emerging during the infosphere revolution. Large Language Models (LLMs) have lit the slow fuse of imaginations. Training LLMs require arrays of Graphics Processing Units. These GPUs provide the parallel processing power needed to handle the huge datasets these models learn - [AI Assemblages and Data Ownership](https://fazalali.com/2024/11/30/ai-assemblages-and-data-ownership/) - We have crossed the human/machine divide. We have migrated into the infosphere. Its ubiquity depends on how much we accept its digital nature as fundamental to our reality. What matters most is not the AI assemblages and algorithms but the fact that the very fabric of reality is changing. Previous revolutions have happened without foresight - [AI and a Digital Pause](https://fazalali.com/2024/11/24/ai-and-a-digital-pause/) - No one is enough. No single thought is the perfect answer to all of our problems in the age of AI. We need everyone to collaborate and produce new knowledge in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Knowledge that feels the struggles of concrete history. Knowledge that listens to the laments of the overlooked, and - [AI and the tribute of Montezuma to Cortes](https://fazalali.com/2024/11/16/ai-and-the-tribute-of-montezuma-to-cortes/) - Understanding digital economies burdens governments in Latin America and the Caribbean to put AI assemblages, data, and data investments into a framework responsive to measurement and policy analysis. Data is an intangible asset: a storable, nonrival (yet excludable) factor input. However, it remains only partially captured in prevailing macroeconomic measurements. The use of data in - [AI and the Age of Elon](https://fazalali.com/2024/11/09/ai-and-the-age-of-elon/) - The Age of Elon is here. President-elect Donald Trump has announced the Golden Age of America. He has pledged to struggle for the future of every citizen with every breath in his body. He has promised not to rest until he has delivered a strong, safe, and prosperous America that all American children deserve. He announced: - [AI the Lamb and the Wolf](https://fazalali.com/2024/11/03/ai-the-lamb-and-the-wolf/) - Over millennia humans have found ways to build communities of strangers, based on clans, faith or none at all, trade along the Old Silk Roads, and in nation-states. History records our dis-ease with reality. History maps our unease. Time heals the fissures across our faces. And while we can use our imaginations to stitch - [Sovereign AI and Latin America and the Caribbean](https://fazalali.com/2024/10/26/sovereign-ai-and-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/) - The Exceptional Caribbean is the centre of the modern world. From here the modern world as we know it, was made. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a civilization of the crossroads. The encounter with Europe was horrific for the Aztecs, the Mayans of the Yucatan, the indigenous enslaved on the Caura encomienda in - [Uncontrolled Development of AI and Virtual Identity](https://fazalali.com/2024/10/19/uncontrolled-development-of-ai-and-virtual-identity/) - We are in a stampede to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). But it is a race that humans will not win. - [The Silicone Wall and the Old First Empires](https://fazalali.com/2024/10/12/the-silicone-wall-and-the-old-first-empires/) - Christopher Columbus and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés participated in the Spanish colonisation of the West Indies. Both were impressed by the size of the canoes made from the silk cotton tree. The canoes were hollowed out of tree trunks in one piece; some could carry more than one hundred men. The Taino and Kalinago used - [AI and the New Inorganic Networks](https://fazalali.com/2024/10/06/ai-and-the-new-inorganic-networks/) - Future pull requires divine determination. Reality is limited. In the infosphere, we need perpetual daydreaming and the flow of grace. We must know our place in the future. Fear must depart leaving only delight behind. In his pitiless depiction of the postcolonial Caribbean, Sir V. S. Naipaul in the opening salvo of “A Bend in the - [AI Youth and Future Generations](https://fazalali.com/2024/09/28/ai-youth-and-future-generations/) - In Scroll 18 of Homer’s Iliad, Thetis the Sea Goddess arrives at the house of Hephaistos the God of Blacksmiths and Craftsmen. She finds Hephaistos busy with his bellows, hard at work, “making twenty tripods which were to stand by the wall of his strong-founded dwelling. And he had set golden wheels at the base - [AI and the Politics of Information](https://fazalali.com/2024/09/21/ai-and-the-politics-of-information/) - In the African Atlantic environment “Myall” is a channel or portal among the practitioners of Kumina. Kumina is a way of life. It is embedded into the psyche of the Myall community in Jamaica. The practice of beating willowy joints of bamboo grass, and she-goat skin drums made from breadfruit trees tied with stout vines - [A Cyber Risk-Pool Method for SIDS](https://fazalali.com/2024/09/14/a-cyber-risk-pool-method-for-sids/) - There is no shortage of analysis regarding the traditional vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States and Territories (SIDS). What eludes us is agreement on the solutions and consensus on the way forward during the infosphere revolution. The burden now is to subscribe to the digital reforms needed to offer the digital citizen of SIDS a - [AI and Minshall's Man Crab](https://fazalali.com/2024/09/08/ai-and-minshalls-man-crab/) - Soon, AI will play an increasingly essential role in criminal acts. Certain crimes would not occur “but for” the use of AI. “Only a god can save us.” So said Martin Heidegger, in an interview with Spiegel on September 23, 1966. Humanity is at an unprecedented crossroad. Difficult decisions must be made about how we - [Those Below the Interfaces and those Above the Assemblages](https://fazalali.com/2024/08/30/those-below-the-interfaces-and-those-above-the-assemblages/) - No doubt, Walcott’s epigrammatic utterance to the University of Miami conference on the Americas (1973), in his essay, “The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry,” “Nothing will always be created in the West Indies … because what will come out of there is like nothing one has ever seen before,” remains poignant fifty-one years later, in the Age of AI. Walcott reminds us, “Break a vase, and - [AI and Liability under Uncertainty](https://fazalali.com/2024/08/24/ai-and-liability-under-uncertainty/) - In ancient Rome, the determination of accountability and responsibility turned on a basic formula, “cuius commoda eius et incommoda,” (the one who derives an advantage from a situation must also bear the inconvenience). This rule is the core of the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP). In Trinidad and Tobago, it is reflected in the amended Water - [Development of a Sustainable Infosphere](https://fazalali.com/2024/08/17/development-of-a-sustainable-infosphere/) - Artificial dreams embody our unstoppable quest for non-biological intelligence. It is a quest that does not privilege the natural. It treats all forms of existence and mannerisms as authentic. Including ICT-mediated interactions with biological agents, and artificial, synthetic, hybrid, and engineered artefacts. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), we must take seriously the new - [The first AI Olympics](https://fazalali.com/2024/08/10/the-first-ai-olympics/) - This is the first AI Olympics. In Paris 2024, AI has permeated refereeing, broadcasting, and creating highlight videos in multiple formats and languages. The "bullet time" multi-camera replay system provides cinematic effects, high-quality replays from multiple angles, slow-motion, freeze-frame views, and immersive experiences at twelve venues where athletes compete in beach volleyball, tennis, judo, and - [Scaffolding Secure Development using AI](https://fazalali.com/2024/08/03/scaffolding-secure-development-using-ai/) - AI can release the imagination when put at the service of human intelligence. We can do more, better, and faster, using AI as a scaffold for development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). As a growing reservoir of smart agency, the larger the number of people who can access and enjoy the opportunities and - [Green and Blue AI in the Caribbean](https://fazalali.com/2024/07/28/green-and-blue-ai-in-the-caribbean/) - “If fortune shuts one door against us, it opens wide another […] and if I do not arrange to enter it, it will be my fault, and I cannot lay it to my ignorance ...” (Cervantes, Don Quixote, XXI). In the West Indies, the enveloping of our territories into increasingly AI-friendly spaces is the transformation - [An AI Technology Observatory for the W.I.](https://fazalali.com/2024/07/20/an-ai-technology-observatory-for-the-w-i/) - AI heralds the need for small island developing states (SIDS) in the West Indies to explore the structure of intergenerational solidarity between those disadvantaged today and those that will be advantaged tomorrow. This is needed to guarantee that the disruptive transition between tomorrow and today will be as fair as possible for everyone. It is - [Digital Governance and Distributed Responsibility](https://fazalali.com/2024/07/13/digital-governance-and-distributed-responsibility/) - Digital governance entails drafting and applying policies, protocols, and standards for the infosphere's reasonable development, use, and management. A meshwork of interconnected societal challenges related to the burgeoning growth of information produced, stored, transferred, and exploited in digitized form remains loosely coupled to legal uncertainties regarding human rights. The question is whether international human rights - [The AI Divide and the IMF AI Preparedness Index](https://fazalali.com/2024/07/06/the-ai-divide-and-the-imf-ai-preparedness-index/) - Ethics is not the preserve of one continent or culture. Every country, state, government, and agency developing or deploying AI is obliged to do so in line with a sweeping vision that draws upon a geographically, historically, culturally, and socially diverse array of perspectives, particularly those that originate from the crystal of ambiguities that is - [Artificial Authority and Human Autonomy](https://fazalali.com/2024/06/29/artificial-authority-and-human-autonomy/) - There can be no promise of a future based on human rights outside of the difficulties that arise from the transformations of agency brought about by AI on International Human Rights Law. The content of International Human Rights Law will be reshaped by AI’s decoupling of agency and intelligence. This decoupling of decision-making power delegates - [Institutional Innovation and Artificial Intelligence](https://fazalali.com/2024/06/22/institutional-innovation-and-artificial-intelligence/) - To witness its decline is to see a world emerging. Inheritors of a world we will cocreate with engineered artefacts that deal with tasks successfully with a goal in view, we are now witnessing the ascension of artificial agency. It is a human project in information societies enabled by novel forms of political or collective - [Justice as Algorithmic Fairness](https://fazalali.com/2024/06/15/justice-as-algorithmic-fairness/) - AI is not a novel form of intelligence. It is a form of agency. Decoupling intelligence from agency in the e-Age where society shapes AI-Assemblages, and AI-Assemblages shape the public manifestation of patterns of thought and behaviour, produces significant challenges regarding bias, fairness, privacy, trust, autonomy, responsibility, transparency, and explainability. AI has altered society, and - [Sovereignty and Digital Architectures](https://fazalali.com/2024/06/08/sovereignty-and-digital-architectures/) - The intersection of deep-sea cables, data embassies, and AI will revolutionize industries, enhance efficiency, and drive innovation forward. Through a deeper understanding of their interconnectedness, governments will harness the power of digital architectures to propel themselves into the future of digital transformation. The speed of data transmission along fibre is determined by the speed of - [AI SIDS and Gen Zers](https://fazalali.com/2024/06/01/ai-sids-and-gen-zers/) - Brain.AI, a San Francisco-based AI company, and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom have created a new phone technology. Humans cast an idea and the AI builds out the entire flow with connections you never thought of or imagined. In “anything to anything” mode the interface becomes a virtual assistant. With every prompt, the interface regenerates itself to - [Fluid Identities and AI-Assemblages](https://fazalali.com/2024/05/25/fluid-identities-and-ai-assemblages/) - When binary systems collide with the public manifestation of fluid identities, there are risks and realities of misrepresentation. An alarming consequence of this tragedy is that segments of the population may be rendered invisible or ambiguous in the eyes of AI-Assemblages. This erasure from view has far-reaching consequences concerning access to housing, employment, education, and - [Financing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)](https://fazalali.com/2024/05/18/financing-digital-public-infrastructure-dpi/) - “Somewhere between the O's and ones” (Nemo), we will find an infinite future. Once the “hardest to reach” were the “geographically isolated.” Today, they are the “digitally disconnected.” Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is a fresh conceptual model for services that are essential to participating in society and markets in the e-Age. Given the proliferation of - [From Plantation to Platform Labour](https://fazalali.com/2024/05/11/from-plantation-to-platform-labour/) - The AI revolution is not unlike the Industrial Revolution and every other technological and digital upheaval that preceded it. The transatlantic slave trade enlarged the pool of investable funds that produced a trade pattern that fostered industrialization in Europe. This in turn nurtured plantation societies in the West Indies. Likewise, the political and economic geography - [After the Future](https://fazalali.com/2024/05/04/after-the-future/) - Where are we? The future is here – it’s just not sprinkled equally. So what happens after the future? We cannot relinquish our reasoned agency and hope to live freely in a future that will never be our own. We must shoulder the responsibility to think for ourselves. A future that belongs to someone else - [Trustworthiness and the Moral Architecture of AI](https://fazalali.com/2024/04/27/trustworthiness-and-the-moral-architecture-of-ai/) - Once, “We were the colour of shadows when we came down with tinkling leg irons…for the silver coins multiplying on the sold horizon” (Derek Walcott, Omeros, Book Three, Chapter xxviii). Now we are certain that we are all free. After all, we are all still running. Straining to stitch the future to our past as - [AI the Odyssey and Ramleela](https://fazalali.com/2024/04/20/ai-the-odyssey-and-ramleela/) - In “Interview with the Vampire, (1991) Louis de Pointe du Lac re-counts his conflicted existence spanning two centuries. He wrestles with the idea of inherent evil, and like a modern-day Adam seeks the knowledge of the creator. Vampires make vampires. Likewise, Jean Baudrillard in “The Intelligence of Evil” (2005, p.80) makes the point – “Machines - [AI and Common Sense](https://fazalali.com/2024/04/14/ai-and-common-sense/) - AI is humans. Various aspects of machine learning applications, for example, model selection based on criteria such as robustness and complexity, and feature engineering that leverages data to create new variables that are not in the training set, must be carefully configured by human experts. AI needs humans to function. Only humans can mitigate some - [Learning Abilities in the Age of AI-Assemblage](https://fazalali.com/2024/04/06/learning-abilities-in-the-age-of-ai-assemblage/) - At the Stockholm-based KTH Royal Institute of Technology, some faculty are not at ease with the use of AI until a clear global policy is outlined. They believe that the unregulated use of AI can potentially hamper students’ learning ability. They value that learning involves freedom and discipline in gathering facts and probing the constellation - [EdGPT and the Concentration of AI Wealth](https://fazalali.com/2024/03/30/edgpt-and-the-concentration-of-ai-wealth/) - EdGPT models targeting curriculum co-design will allow learners in tutoring bars to produce occasions for learning, and interactive tasks that closely align with an effective pedagogical approach and specific curricular objectives and levels of challenge for particular students. - [Understanding AI as a Social Actor](https://fazalali.com/2024/03/23/understanding-ai-as-a-social-actor/) - The aim of AI is not to imitate humans. The aim is to offer humans the tools, technologies, and techniques to better realize human goals that support and enhance human well-being in a sustainable environment for all. AI is thus a family of techniques where algorithms uncover associations of predictive usefulness from data. Some of - [Reformatting Society using AI](https://fazalali.com/2024/03/16/reformatting-society-using-ai/) - Definitions are tools with heuristic utility. A thin technological definition of AI may be intelligence displayed or simulated by code or machines. In this sense, a basic general definition of AI in the spirit of the 1956 Dartmouth workshop that emphasizes the aim to simulate human intelligence in computers is useful. Definitions of AI abound - [Algorithms and Tech Emancipation](https://fazalali.com/2024/03/10/algorithms-and-tech-emancipation/) - During the transition to a new digitized, e-economy, lives and livelihoods will be interrupted. In just under a decade, AI and automation will rewrite the skills needed for the future of work. Even if the Fourth Industrial Revolution manages to level itself up, and a new workforce emerges in Latin America and the Caribbean, with - [A Digital Safety Commission and an Online Harms Act](https://fazalali.com/2024/03/01/a-digital-safety-commission-and-an-online-harms-act/) - If algorithms create the content – is it still speech? Is content moderation a euphemism for censorship? By the end of June 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States of America is expected to rule on the fraught issue of regulating freedom of speech in the digital era. In some quarters, the regulation of - [AI and Partialities and Prejudgements](https://fazalali.com/2024/02/24/ai-and-partialities-and-prejudgements/) - The last Enlightenment unfolded in the laboratories of Europe. It was a sorcery that created the unimaginable. The pandemic portal has accelerated the arrival of the next Enlightenment. An Enlightenment dripping in AI and Algorithms. A new end of history. The dilemma of this Enlightenment is that many of the partialities and prejudgements of the - [AI and Finding Privacy](https://fazalali.com/2024/02/17/ai-and-finding-privacy/) - The equal distribution of liberties may only be limited for the sake of liberty, and not for the sake of other social or economic advantages. In this sense, liberty is unlike other social goods. Today, privacy is our last remaining power, and any attempt to shield it is configured as a form of resistance. The - [AI Assemblages and the End of Historical Struggles](https://fazalali.com/2024/02/15/ai-assemblages-and-the-end-of-historical-struggles/) - The Iranian scholar Jalal al-e Ahmad wrote that development is not Westernization. In 1992, no one could get around Fukuyama’s theory of the end of history. He argued that the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy, which occurred when the Soviet Empire imploded, that humanity had reached not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but - [Defending Democracy against AI](https://fazalali.com/2024/01/21/defending-democracy-against-ai/) - The threat posed to democracy by artificial intelligence (AI) is not a dystopian messianic hallucination galloping towards us. It is a future that is already here. - [Will AI be Bleached Out in 2024](https://fazalali.com/2023/12/24/will-ai-be-bleached-out-in-2024/) - In 2024, AI will be imperceptible and ubiquitous. The illusion will be that it has faded, or failed. But it will not stall, or be bleached out. It will embroider itself indiscernibly into the very operating fabric of every enterprise on the planet. - [AI Act for AI Transformation](https://fazalali.com/2023/12/16/ai-act-for-ai-transformation/) - While digital transformation focuses on the nexus of people and technology, AI transformation emphasises the amalgam of automation and augmentation to optimize, and exponentially scale performance. - [A Green and Digital Bridge across Civilisations](https://fazalali.com/2023/12/09/a-green-and-digital-bridge-across-civilisations/) - We can no longer just keep on going. We must begin something new. To make a plan knowing upfront that the risk is that things may not be clear, and may even seem impossible. This is the moment to recall Lacan’s formula, “The real is impossible.” To centralize a discussion of the impossible as a - [AI and ChatGPT's Wizardry](https://fazalali.com/2023/12/02/ai-and-chatgpts-wizardry/) - The gap between pure brilliance and a convincing imitation of cleverness is only as wide as our own bias. When a machine provokes real human responses in us—engaging our understanding, our astonishment, our thankfulness, and even provoking fear—that performance clearly exceeds hollow mimicry. Can machines think? The British mathematician, Alan Turing, in his paper “Computing - [AI Capacities and Human Capabilities](https://fazalali.com/2023/11/25/ai-capacities-and-human-capabilities/) - AI does not know what it does not know. It is not sentient. The brittleness of what it knows is reflected in the shallowness of what it learns. Accordingly, it is unable to identify and avoid blunders that are vivid to the human. Its inability to notice glaring errors on its own highlights the need - [Should AI be cabined in a free society](https://fazalali.com/2023/11/19/should-ai-be-cabined-in-a-free-society/) - By 2040, AI will be a zillion times more powerful than it is now following Moore’s Law. Moore's Law addresses a doubling up of computer processing capability every two years. Moore makes this observation noticing that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. The law is credited to Gordon - [Non-Human Forms of Knowing and AI](https://fazalali.com/2023/11/11/non-human-forms-of-knowing-and-ai/) - In Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains that we all resemble prisoners chained inside a grotto, and we are yet to grasp that there is more to reality than the shadows of unchanging ideas projected on the walls of a cave. Convinced that what we perceive “reflects” reality has enabled humanity to make tremendous progress. Pythagoras unmasked - [Human Thinking and Artificial Intelligence](https://fazalali.com/2023/11/05/human-thinking-and-artificial-intelligence/) - If AI approximates “thinking”, then who are we? How does the evolution of AI affect human cognition, perception, and interpersonal interaction? The nascent age of AI obliges us to face whether there is a form of logic that humans have not mastered or cannot attain as it reaches realms of reality we have never known - [Roadmapping Central Bank Digital Currencies](https://fazalali.com/2023/10/28/roadmapping-central-bank-digital-currencies/) - Electronic payments in the EU reached €240 trillion in 2021. The Bank for International Settlements predicts that central banks representing one-fifth of the world’s population will likely issue digital currencies within the next three years. To prepare the Euro for the future, the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, envisions a digital euro - [Women in Water](https://fazalali.com/2023/10/21/women-in-water/) - Paradise is at the foot of our mothers. Above us – only sky. Every day, young girls and women spend 200 million hours fetching water. That is 8.3 million days. This exceeds 22,800 years. Globally, girls are twice as likely as boys to take charge of fetching water, according to the 2023 WASH report entitled “Progress on - [On the Edge of a New Ending](https://fazalali.com/2023/10/15/on-the-edge-of-a-new-ending/) - Between 1780 and 1850, in under three generations, a sweeping revolution, without precedent in the history of humanity, changed the face of England. In 1944 Dr. Eric Williams published Capitalism and Slavery. The Williams thesis held that capitalism as an economic model replaced slavery once the bourgeoisie had accumulated vast surplus capital that could be - [Claude and the Creator Economy](https://fazalali.com/2023/10/08/claude-and-the-creator-economy/) - The sprinters are crouched in the starting blocks of the Generative AI race. Where will the track take humanity – is unidentified. The destination – undisclosed. Next is an explosive horizontal burst in every direction. Discussions to explore the risks of misuse of frontier generative AI, at Bletchley Park can only address the unusual challenges - [Utilising AI for Tangible Public Good](https://fazalali.com/2023/10/01/utilising-ai-for-tangible-public-good/) - We are all in trouble. All of us. We are at a cross-road in human history. In November 2023 the UK government will host a global summit on futuristic “Frontier AI” at Bletchley Park in South East England. Every contemplation on the use of “Frontier AI” is now driven by the need for governments to - [AI and the Pursuit of Real Intelligence](https://fazalali.com/2023/09/23/ai-and-the-pursuit-of-real-intelligence/) - AI is now influential in the way we learn and understand new things. The challenge for schools is how to infuse AI to permit a new way of teaching to take shape. A pedagogy in which the teachers’ pedagogical actions are co-orchestrated by AI in multiple simultaneous classroom events. Learning inside this frame is built - [Artificial Hallucinations and AI-generated Plagiarism](https://fazalali.com/2023/09/16/artificial-hallucinations-and-ai-generated-plagiarism/) - AI has reimagined films, used the voices of deceased musicians to create new tracks, and can now make the sound of a brand “liquid”. Using AI, we can now create a patentable “sonic identity” for any product or service. Moreover, “sonic identity” allows a brand to take any shape according to the desired customer experience. - [Development Databases and Peripherality](https://fazalali.com/2023/09/09/development-databases-and-peripherality/) - Conceptual fuzziness persists around the idea of intra-metropolitan and post-industrial peripheries like Tower Hamlets in East London, and Swedish Northern peripheries. Nevertheless, spatial distributions like the 93rd Banlieue in Paris, peri-urban areas like Sea Lots, and rustic communities like Nepal in North Oropuche, have attracted the attention of spatial planners. Prior to the COVID-19 portal - [Block 43 and Climate Democracy](https://fazalali.com/2023/08/26/block-43-and-climate-democracy/) - Nuzzled between the Andes and the Amazon rainforest, is one of the world’s richest pockets of biodiversity - the Yasuní. The Yasuní has the greatest biodiversity per square metre on the planet. 99.73% of the Yasuní consists of original natural vegetation. The Yasuní is the lungs of the Earth. It captures CO2 and pumps oxygen - [Outdated Blocks and Risk Dependencies](https://fazalali.com/2023/09/03/outdated-blocks-and-risk-dependencies/) - We are at an ideological turn that is dismantling every risk dependency. An uncommon moment has arrived. The blocks that have taken us this far are incongruent with the modalities of work necessary to take us further. Old drivers are fading. How do we plan a new beginning? Things have fallen apart and the core - [The Earth and Green AI](https://fazalali.com/2023/08/20/the-earth-and-green-ai/) - From the Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is clear that the planet is confronting an urgent greenhouse gas problem. With current global emissions of over 50 gigatons of CO2 annually, achieving net-zero emissions will require a challenging systemic transformation of industries, infrastructure, economies, and societies. Computing gives rise to two forms - [The Plight of the Planet and the Poor](https://fazalali.com/2023/08/12/the-plight-of-the-planet-and-the-poor/) - Despite rapid technological advances which were highly compressed over the last decade, inherited inequalities and intergenerational mobility remain a grave concern. In the IDB Working Paper #452 titled “Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America” (2001, p. 34), written by Jere R. Behrman, Alejandro Gaviria, and Miguel Székely, it is argued that economic growth alone is insufficient - [Biodiversity Sequence Information and Satellite Monitoring of Reefs](https://fazalali.com/2023/08/05/biodiversity-sequence-information-and-satellite-monitoring-of-reefs/) - The oral marine history painted in the narratives of divers, fishermen, and the first glass bottom boat tour operators portrays the Buccoo Reef Marine Park as a continuum of ecologies bridging mangrove clusters, emerald seagrass fields, impoverished zombie-like systems, and enchanting underwater aquariums. It is a web of bionetworks that have experienced loss from hurricane - ["X" and Live Stream Shopping](https://fazalali.com/2023/07/29/x-and-live-stream-shopping/) - We live in a world of second selves; of digital replicas and carbon copies for which there was never an original. In Post Corona, a string of innovations will be “created piece-meal ad hoc” from “unexplored connexions,” from “possibilities half-disclosed” and “half-concealed”. In this ferment lie the possibilities of a world in parenthesis. The Art - [AI Incubated Futures](https://fazalali.com/2023/07/22/ai-incubated-futures/) - Grasping the sociological import of AI, as it exists today, and what it incubates is a spectacle. AI doesn’t materialize inside some remote or far-flung sci-fi future: it originates now, within the social matrix we inhabit, regardless of our habitus. And with every effort and experiment, we are training the models deeper and unbeknownst to - [Circularity, Fast Fashion and Cement](https://fazalali.com/2023/07/15/circularity-fast-fashion-and-cement/) - The circular economy breaks the link between economic activity and the unfettered use of the earth’s scarce resources. The old industrial linear economy uses raw materials to make products that are discarded, sometimes even before the end of their useful life. So, how does circularity work? Fast fashion and concrete and cement offer two exceptional - [Debt, Development and Climate Defence](https://fazalali.com/2023/07/08/debt-development-and-climate-defence/) - The Transatlantic Triangular Trade financed the Industrial Revolution in Europe, which, in turn, produced a global climate catastrophe. This climate tragedy has adversely affected Small Island Developing States, including former plantation economies of the West Indies. The irony is that they face the worse effects of climate change and have done the least to bring - [CARICOM in the Cloud](https://fazalali.com/2023/07/01/caricom-in-the-cloud/) - On 4th July 2023, CARICOM will be fifty years old. A CARICOM Cloud Readiness Assessment is both timely and necessary. In a world enveloped by AI and the IoT, there are clear political and commercial imperatives to accelerate the process of legal reform to enable paperless trade across CARICOM. Electronic Communication across CARICOM has the - [Synthetic Media Malicious AI and Deepfaking](https://fazalali.com/2023/06/03/synthetic-media-malicious-ai-and-deepfaking/) - It is not unimaginable for “bad actors” to develop malicious AI. And it is certain that AI will alter the wealth of nations, and impact the vulnerability of economies. Margrethe Vestager the technology chief of the EU is already looking at a voluntary code of conduct for AI. A central challenge of AI is alignment. - [Unusual Thinking and Abbreviated Development](https://fazalali.com/2023/05/27/unusual-thinking-and-abbreviated-development/) - X-risks that include the risks of artificial life, engineered pandemics, and the threats posed by advanced artificial intelligence demand the development of collaborative and circumstantial strategies to minimize them. The probability spaces that arise require unusual thinking, especially when the velocity of technological change outstrips the ability of the state to bring forward primary legislation - [Biofactories and Modified Mosquitoes](https://fazalali.com/2023/05/20/biofactories-and-modified-mosquitoes/) - Biological control involves the use of living organisms to shrink a target population using predators, parasites, and pathogens. The aims are always to reduce the target population to an acceptable level and at the same time avoid side-effects to the ecosystem and the conservation of biodiversity, whilst avoiding toxicological and eco-toxicological effects. In mosquito control, - [Resilience and Threat Intelligence Centres](https://fazalali.com/2023/05/13/resilience-and-threat-intelligence-centres/) - “Lies have consequences” according to Justin Nelson, immediately after a judge announced a US$787.5 million settlement in the Dominion defamation lawsuit. Proximity is meaningless. The lengths of distances are not obstacles. Contiguity of cause and effect has faded. Misinformation travels without itineraries, destinations, reservations, addresses, fences or border control. Threat Intelligence Centres expand the threat detection and analysis capabilities - [Climate Resilient Development and Overburdened Communities](https://fazalali.com/2023/05/07/climate-resilient-development-and-overburdened-communities/) - The future gestures for the strengthening of communities that for too long have been left behind or left out completely. Carbon emissions reductions are just one measure of global progress on climate change. Also significant are measures of national and individual health, prosperity, and wellbeing. How can changemakers, innovators and bureaucrats, build a low-carbon economy - [Development and the Preservation of Residual Knowledge](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/29/development-and-the-preservation-of-residual-knowledge/) - The future is as much about decarbonisation and digitalization as it is about Indigenous Knowledge. The faces transported across the Atlantic brought with them encyclopaedic personal knowledge of medicinal plants. But ultimately, they had to substitute local flora by carefully curating apothecary gardens that assimilated the knowledge of First Nations. The West Indies has an enduring - [Algorithmic Management of Labour in the Cloud](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/23/algorithmic-management-of-labour-in-the-cloud/) - Wherever digital technologies collect and process data for the coordination of work, some form of algorithmic management is ubiquitously present in ways that significantly affect the organisation of work and job quality. But the algorithmic management of work is not new. It is an extension of a historical pattern of bureaucratisation of economic activity and - [Smart Data Unlocked for Open Finance](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/16/smart-data-unlocked-for-open-finance/) - The vulnerabilities of the retail banking model are being amplified by three trends that are reshaping the competitive environment. Firstly, consumers want more digital offerings and superior customer experiences (CX). Secondly, Neobanks have taken away market share from traditional banks’ revenue streams. And lastly, shifting in scale advantages from branches to innovation. The contemporary constellation - [Climate Justice and Human Rights](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/08/climate-justice-and-human-rights/) - During negotiations on the Paris Agreement, some diplomats secured the addition of language specifying that the text “does not involve or provide the basis for any liability or compensation.” Flowing from this, the Swedish climate activist and advocate for School Strikes, Greta Thunberg, skipped the Cop27 climate Summit hosted in the Red Sea resort town of - [Downward Vulnerability and Upward Mobility](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/01/downward-vulnerability-and-upward-mobility/) - The Executive Board of the IMF recently approved a rule change for countries facing “exceptionally high uncertainty”. The change relates to disruptions outside the control of state authorities, and the reach of their economic policies, as well as irregular tail risks. The rule change will allow financing with safeguards to meet urgent Balance of Payments - [Digital Trade and Platform Ecology](https://fazalali.com/2023/04/01/digital-trade-and-platform-ecology/) - By 2025, one of the world’s most advanced super-speed subsea internet cables will be completed. It will propel digital trade for decades into the future. Construction started in February 2023. SubCom LLC is laying a US$600-million cable on the sea floor. The cable will transfer data from Asia to Europe, via Africa and the Middle - [Sensitivity to Vulnerability](https://fazalali.com/2023/03/19/sensitivity-to-vulnerability/) - Secure development requires a practice of political economy that takes into account the uniqueness of the habitus of different segments of every slice of society. In this sense, it is more idiographic than nomothetic. From this vantage point, fresh perspectives emerge when, for example, the nexus of fuel and food is examined among the urban - [Secure Development](https://fazalali.com/2023/03/11/secure-development/) - Secure Development is the constellation of values, beliefs, technologies, working-knowledge, and practices that lessen vulnerabilities. The manufacture and recycling of EV batteries turn on an assortment of secure development factors: design adoptions, vehicle types, range, freight requirements, and supply chain sustainability and security from lithium fields. United European Car Carriers (UECC), a roll-on/roll-off shipping line in - [Traversing the Green Transition](https://fazalali.com/2023/03/04/traversing-the-green-transition/) - Humanity cannot sustain the green path it is traversing without ground-breaking advances in our Materials Science. A key value proposition for electric vehicles (EVs) is their ultra-low carbon footprint on the roads. Combustion engine vehicles from the last industrial revolution produce tailpipe emissions. But battery-powered EVs have emission challenges of their own: production of the - [Playing Cards, Cocoa Beans and Stable Coins](https://fazalali.com/2023/02/25/playing-cards-cocoa-beans-and-stable-coins/) - Long before the World Wars, and even long before Columbus rediscovered the Bahamas, the Aztecs used cocoa beans as currency. In Europe, metal-backed currencies were the culmination of all human empires of every epochs stripping away the entire planet of prized metals. Just how these metals moved to Fort Knox is rudimentary. During WW II, - [The Future is Fast and Local](https://fazalali.com/2023/02/18/the-future-is-fast-and-local/) - The future is fast. Berlin’s BER airport, a few kilometres from Tesla’s Gigafactory, took fourteen years to complete and was delivered at three times over the budget. Tesla outperformed BER in speed and cost-effectiveness. Stalling only pushes digital transformation further back into the future without tangible results. The future is not fearful of failure. Supply - [Mermaid's Tears and Greenwashing](https://fazalali.com/2023/02/12/mermaids-tears-and-greenwashing/) - Bails of plastic beverage containers overflow into the Drina River. The emerald waters now buoy a raft of plastic rubbish. The Drina River – which has an intense green hue due to the limestone terrain is a marvel for children and river rafters. The garbage from poorly regulated landfills pours a carpet of plastic and - [Uberisation of Universities and Gig Workers](https://fazalali.com/2023/02/05/uberisation-of-universities-and-gig-workers/) - Uberisation has oozed into cloistered University campuses. Many universities have faculty who deliver supervisions but who have precarious contracts. This is bad for students, the faculty and any prospect of departments having a rigorous research agenda. In the finance industry, the pandemic shuttering of businesses in 2020, and the meteoric rise of remote work, permitted - [Data Embassies, Residency, and Software Supply Chain Security](https://fazalali.com/2023/01/29/data-embassies-residency-and-software-supply-chain-security/) - The mandatory storage of data within strict geographical boundaries is fast becoming a hurdle to maintaining the security level and the resilience of data and “government as a service”. In a world entangled by algorithms and AI, cyberterrorism is a global security and data threat. In 2007, Estonia was a victim of the first distributed - [e-Ecosystems and the State as a Public Service](https://fazalali.com/2023/01/22/e-ecosystems-and-the-state-as-a-public-service/) - Before the unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine, and long before Bucha became unrecognizable, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was implementing “Diia”. Diia is Ukrainian for “action”. It is an acronym for “derzhava i ia” which loosely translates as – “the state and I”. This remains President Zelenskyy’s solitary flagship project. It is the centrepiece of President Zelenskyy’s Mission: “The - [Atmospheric Rivers and Vaccines for Honeybees](https://fazalali.com/2023/01/15/atmospheric-rivers-and-vaccines-for-honeybees/) - For decades we listened to deep space. And many messages were sent into the Milky Way. Nothing. Perhaps in the end, we will find that we have searched the entire universe, only to find ourselves. The Dual Transitions of digital transformation and carbon transparency have Edited Life and Artificial Intelligence as Twin Tracks. To combat - [Robot Tax and Automation Propelled Job Displacement](https://fazalali.com/2023/01/08/robot-tax-and-automation-propelled-job-displacement/) - The sorrows and desperation we can name will never exceed the richness of reality. There is always an excess. And this excess overflows with possibilities only half disclosed. As we scrutinize the horizon of intelligence, machine learning, and digital skills, what worries us most is a future that works. Time is needed for policies and - [Automation and Short-haul Supply Chains](https://fazalali.com/2023/01/01/automation-and-short-haul-supply-chains/) - At the close of 2022, there remains quite a lot of industrial and manufacturing assets that just won’t be relevant for much longer. Much of it will become stranded and subject to demographic decline. But not all of it will have to be replaced. In the fractured world that is emerging, the longer and more - [SSLeigh Bells, Net Benefits and Santa Speed Sites](https://fazalali.com/2022/12/25/ssleigh-bells-net-benefits-and-santa-speed-sites/) - Wetware companies that sell DNA, enzymes, proteins and cells, and software companies that make exclusive tools, like Photoshop, but for biology, and hardware manufacturers that make assemblers and synthesising machines, will be at the forefront of edited life in the next industrial revolution. A revolution that intertwines the internet, living supply chains, and digital tools. - [Personalized Vaccines, Edited Life, and Artificial Leaves](https://fazalali.com/2022/12/18/personalized-vaccines-edited-life-and-artificial-leaves/) - A new story of the Origins of Humanity is unfolding. In this post-modern Bosh-like Garden of Earthly Delights, Adam and Eve will download new abilities into any cell, flower, microbe or spider from a yet-to-be synthetic biology App Store. Viruses and bacteria are pointing the way towards this bizarre future. Viruses like HIV, Ebola, H1N1, SARS, - [Unseasonable Sights and the Climate Catastrophe](https://fazalali.com/2022/12/04/unseasonable-sights-and-the-climate-catastrophe/) - There is a widespread view that the hamlets and cities that hug the Mediterranean basin are the ultimate in climate, comfort, and culture. Year-round, millions flock to enjoy the mild climate, gastronomy, art and architecture, and the romantic charm of the old world. It is a world that millions have visited through Walcott’s Omeros and - [Net Zero Futures and Hydrogen Export Hubs](https://fazalali.com/2022/12/11/net-zero-futures-and-hydrogen-export-hubs/) - By 2050, clean hydrogen can help to abate seven gigatons of CO2 emissions annually. This is about twenty per cent of human-driven emissions if the world remains on its current global-warming trajectory. - [Copper Wires, Blue Crabs and Climate Change](https://fazalali.com/2022/11/27/copper-wires-blue-crabs-and-climate-change/) - Somewhere, there is always an end. In the rush to the abyss, few find compassion. It is a difficult and divided world. Earlier this year, as drought ravaged states, Zakhiku an ancient city founded around 1,800 BC by the Old Babylonian empire that ruled Mesopotamia between the 19th and 15th centuries BC, became visible at - [Fissured Workspaces and the App Economy](https://fazalali.com/2022/11/20/fissured-workspaces-and-the-app-economy/) - Productivity is a linchpin of economic growth and explains some aspects of cross-country differences in income per capita. In recent years, the productivity gap between frontier firms and the rest has widened significantly. This raises challenges for the inclusivity of growth. Unscrambling the dynamics of technology diffusion together with the changes brought about by digital - [Transitions from Knowledge Economies to Digital Value Chains](https://fazalali.com/2022/11/13/transitions-from-knowledge-economies-to-digital-value-chains/) - To remain pertinent and competitive and to thrive in the digital era, both the public and private sectors must transform themselves into digital enterprises. Many developed economies have already shifted toward knowledge economies and are now undergoing another shift toward intangible assets, digital tools, and technologies. Firms are now investing in these spaces as fresh - [Gogo Autonomous Ships and Last Mile Drone Delivery](https://fazalali.com/2022/11/06/gogo-autonomous-ships-and-last-mile-drone-delivery/) - Fragmented supply chains create bottlenecks. Assembling disengaged players along logistical chains onto a single digital platform to provide end-to-end freight forwarding, customs brokerage, cargo insurance, and supply chain financing is a fresh frontier. Operational productivity—especially the interface among ships, ports, and hinterlands—is core to value creation in the container-shipping industry. Ports bring together sellers, freight - [A Soil Health Database and the New Digital and Green Silk Roads](https://fazalali.com/2022/10/30/a-soil-health-database-and-the-new-digital-and-green-silk-roads/) - Soils have moulded humans. And humans have shaped soils by ploughing through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. In “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization” (2012), David Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, traces the use and abuse of soil in Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, - [e-quilibrium Overconcentration and Monopolization](https://fazalali.com/2022/10/23/e-quilibrium-overconcentration-and-monopolization/) - As rivers run dry, and glaciers melt into torrents, viruses shuttered in the ice, in lakebeds and in soils beneath Arctic ice are released after eternities of containment. Mapping the tree diagrams of these primeval viruses against the genealogies of possible hosts allow scientists at the University of Toronto to forecast possible viral spillovers. Greta - [Value-added futures as an export from Vietnam](https://fazalali.com/2022/10/16/value-added-futures-as-an-export-from-vietnam/) - In Bac Giang, along the Red River Delta, in Southeast Asia, Foxconn plans to invest $300M in a new 50.5-hectare industrial estate. Luxshare Precision and Foxconn, two of Apple’s principal suppliers, are negotiating an agreement to commence the manufacture of Apple Watches and MacBooks in Bac Giang, Vietnam. Sixty-five per cent of Air Pods, Apple’s - [Cybersecurity Chatbots Apps and Springboard Companies](https://fazalali.com/2022/10/09/cybersecurity-chatbots-apps-and-springboard-companies/) - Underfunding the future of cybersecurity and privacy concerns is costly. Using a freely accessible software interface, in September 2022, a cyber-breach captured 37,000 Medical Records, despite multiple layers of protection, and secure APIs deployed by a telecommunications giant. In the attack, data was appropriated from former and current clients – including names, email addresses, passport - [Funding the Future for Ultra-Thin Perovskite Solar Sheets](https://fazalali.com/2022/10/02/funding-the-future-for-ultra-thin-perovskite-solar-sheets/) - Kyoto on the island of Honshu was destroyed by numerous wars and fires but eluded the wreckage of WWII. It was dropped from a catalogue of target cities for the atomic bomb. The numerous classical Buddhist temples, walled gardens, imperial palaces, traditional wooden homes or Machiya, and Shinto shrines all escaped obliteration. Kyoto was once - [Bringing the Future Forward using a Fossil Fuel Registry](https://fazalali.com/2022/09/25/bringing-the-future-forward-using-a-fossil-fuel-registry/) - The Global Registry of Fossil Fuels is a new inventory that combines data from oil, gas, and coal fields in 89 countries, capturing nearly seventy-five per cent of global production. - [Agriculture at a Boiling Point](https://fazalali.com/2022/09/18/agriculture-at-a-boiling-point/) - What can countries, and our world become, if we nurture people’s reasoned agency and eliminate every unfreedom? A world where our institutions are re-imagined so we are better able to write new narratives about who we are, and the futures we treasure. Today, a world of worry enfolds humanity in chronic layers of interlaced uncertainties. - [Digital Independence and Political Sovereignty](https://fazalali.com/2022/09/11/digital-independence-and-political-sovereignty/) - There is no political sovereignty outside of technological independence. So how do states concretely address this ambition in practice? Some countries have elected to focus on (1) building the industrial, research, and innovation ecosystem, (2) securing digital and telecommunication businesses and infrastructure, and (3) regulating the digital sector and data protection. One blind spot remains - [Climate Disruption and Economic Displacement](https://fazalali.com/2022/09/04/climate-disruption-and-economic-displacement/) - Climate anxiety is not science fiction. It is a mêlée in the real world. Melting glaciers that feed the Indus River which flows through Sindh and Balochistan, have burst their banks. An ocean of water has submerged entire districts. Sindh is now a new and endless landscape of water. There are no openings for pilots - [The Online Operation: Small Grocer Opportunity in a Digital World](https://fazalali.com/2022/08/30/small-grocer-opportunity-in-a-digital-world/) - Article originally posted on August 22nd, 2022 in the IADB Blog – Caribbean Dev Trends – co-authored with Dominique Afoon Jones and Alix Lewis This series aims to explore how the digital grocery ecosystem will shape the future of retail in Trinidad & Tobago. In our previous case Accessing the Digital Shelf – The Small - [Dry Rivers and Disruptions to Global Shipping](https://fazalali.com/2022/08/28/dry-rivers-and-disruptions-to-global-shipping/) - The Black Book of Carmarthen, mentions a mythical lost land — an Atlantis. David Willis, Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford, uncovered a map that has its origins around 1280, held in the collections of the Bodleian. This map remains the earliest surviving complete map of the British Isles. Called “The Gough - [The Citizen at the Centre of Development](https://fazalali.com/2022/08/21/the-citizen-at-the-centre-of-development/) - Where you have been, and what you have done, are no longer key. For the change makers who reimagine governments, it is important to know where you are heading and what you intend to do - Next. With this in mind, 500 employees from multiple agencies in Rio de Janeiro, were selected to establish the - [Low-carbon and Resource-efficient Cities of the Future](https://fazalali.com/2022/08/14/low-carbon-and-resource-efficient-cities-of-the-future/) - Cities cover just 2% of the earth’s land surface. But within their perimeters, they consume 75% of the planet’s material resources. To calculate the amount of materials consumed by cities in the production of space, the UN uses the Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) as a measure. The DMC takes into account all raw materials extracted - [Decarbonization and Daylight Robbery](https://fazalali.com/2022/08/07/decarbonization-and-daylight-robbery/) - The drive to sustainability is racing ahead. A decade ago, zero-emission vehicles were just outlines of an emerging horizon. Today, they are no longer ideas. Moreover, they are autonomous. Range anxiety is now a novel feature of our daily existence. And as humanity races ahead we are already seeing many modifications to new and existing - [Supply-chain Carbon and Environmental Transparency](https://fazalali.com/2022/07/31/supply-chain-carbon-and-environmental-transparency/) - The Embodied Carbon Construction Calculator (EC3) is a cloud-based platform built by structural engineers, architectural firms, materials manufacturers, contractors, and data scientists to measure and reduce the environmental footprints of buildings. EC3 is the forerunner of what the connected platforms of a sustainable future will resemble. It brings together standardized material-manufacturer information across project phases. - [Connecting More Things and TV Whitespace](https://fazalali.com/2022/07/24/connecting-more-things-and-tv-whitespace/) - TV White Space can enable smart cities with connected home devices, sports stadiums, shopping centres, municipal areas, and many other public spaces. - [TV White Spaces and the Internet of Broken Things](https://fazalali.com/2022/07/17/tv-white-spaces-and-the-internet-of-broken-things/) - As the digital economy continues to enmesh the world, there is a genuine risk that those without adequate connectivity will be progressively excluded from participation. - [Mobile Broadband Benefits and Human Development](https://fazalali.com/2022/07/10/mobile-broadband-benefits-and-human-development/) - About 2.9 billion people are offline. This is about one-third of humanity. Countless others only enjoy basic connectivity. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the cost of digital exclusion. There exists a very close relationship between connectivity and human development, although the interdependence works both ways, connectivity drives development, and more development leads to more - [Countermeasures, Corrective Controls and Cybersecurity](https://fazalali.com/2022/07/03/countermeasures-corrective-controls-and-cybersecurity/) - The spiralling growth of breaches, and digital payment fraud are worrisome. Security, therefore, remains a shared responsibility of organizations, platform providers, as well as the users of all interfaces. - [Data Free Trade Agreements and Small States outside Economic Unions](https://fazalali.com/2022/06/26/data-free-trade-agreements-and-small-states-outside-economic-unions/) - Data-fuelled applications could make the metaverse an $8 trillion to $13 trillion addressable market by 2030, using computer vision, natural language, virtual assistants, robotic process automation, and advanced machine learning. This definition of the metaverse includes smart manufacturing, tourism value chains, NFTs, and digital forms of money. The digital competitiveness of small states like New - [Gross Data Product (GDP) and the New World Data Order](https://fazalali.com/2022/06/19/gross-data-product-gdp-and-the-new-world-data-order/) - Data is the gold of the New Wired World. Reaping the benefits of data-driven innovation hinges on balancing privacy and privilege. - [Incentives and Infrastructure in the Decade of the Battery](https://fazalali.com/2022/06/12/incentives-and-infrastructure-in-the-decade-of-the-battery/) - To achieve net-zero emissions targets in the decade of the battery, Electric Vehicles (EVs) will fashion the intersection between mobility and infrastructure. By July 2021, two-thirds of Oslo’s residents owned an EV. The highest density of public charging stations in Europe is in the Netherlands. Much of the EV adoption leadership has its epicentre in - [Crowdsourced Mapping and Blockchain in Crisis Zones](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/29/crowdsourced-mapping-and-blockchain-in-crisis-zones/) - Digital technologies hold the greatest potential to increase the timeliness, reach, and impact of disaster preparedness and response efforts. - [Electrified Futures and Energy Storage Supply Chains](https://fazalali.com/2022/06/05/electrified-futures-and-energy-storage-supply-chains/) - An industry exists when a network of organizations—including suppliers, distributors, customers, competitors, manufacturers, government agencies, and many others—are involved in the delivery of a defined product or service through both competition and cooperation. For example, each entity in the fashion industry is part of an ecosystem that includes: perfumers, jewellers, fabric mills and textile printers; - [Accessing the Digital Shelf – The Small Vendor Reality](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/24/accessing-the-digital-shelf-the-small-vendor-reality/) - In the local grocery sector SMEs have recognized the urgency of digital adoption to remain competitive and propel business growth with technology. However, most have not taken the plunge, challenged by factors such as their lack of in-house tech skills and the potentially high costs. - [Tourism Value Chains and Intelligent Connectivity](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/22/tourism-value-chains-and-intelligent-connectivity/) - Digital technologies have significant implications for tourism businesses, and for the structure and operation of tourism value chains. - [Meta-Life and Payment Rails](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/15/meta-life-and-payment-rails/) - The old world of cash, with low entry barriers, and narrow potential for surveillance, is bowing to novel transactional systems using a decentralized blockchain-based digital substrate. - [Republic Realm and Altcoins](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/08/republic-realm-and-altcoins/) - A metaverse remains a dream - a future iteration of the internet that will allow users to work, meet, game, and socialize in 3D spaces. - [Public Value and Executive Authorithy](https://fazalali.com/2022/05/01/public-value-and-executive-authorithy/) - Public value is created by public managers who must navigate a strategic triangle of valued outcomes inside the constraints of talents and capabilities, resources, and an authorizing environment of formal and informal jurisdiction, legal frameworks and cabinet mandate. - [The Digital Grocery Ecosystem – Shaping the future of retail](https://fazalali.com/2022/03/31/the-digital-grocery-ecosystem-shaping-the-future-of-retail/) - Advancements in digital grocery transformation represent a paradigm shift in the grocery model from the traditional brick and mortar of the past to today’s digital ecosystem. - [Talent Attractiveness Talent Competitiveness and Migration](https://fazalali.com/2022/04/24/talent-attractiveness-talent-competitiveness-and-migration/) - The deployment of digital technologies across all economic sectors, including the non-tech sectors, demands a more digitally skilled workforce at all skills levels and at all ages. - [Chip Schools to close the Chip Talent Gap](https://fazalali.com/2022/04/17/chip-schools-to-close-the-chip-talent-gap/) - Chip Talent involves electronic information engineering, automation, microelectronics and other interdisciplinary sciences. - [Intellectual Capital Assets for Knowledge Based Futures](https://fazalali.com/2022/04/10/intellectual-capital-assets-for-knowledge-based-futures/) - Intangible assets are difficult to pledge as collateral. Intangibles have features that make their financing intricate. Asymmetry of information between investors and innovators makes it difficult to evaluate the risks. This makes the return on investment precariously inexact. High information asymmetry and low collateralisation amplify the inherent divergence between the internal and external costs of - [IP Moats and a Culture of Intangible Assets](https://fazalali.com/2022/04/03/ip-moats-and-a-culture-of-intangible-assets/) - In Antarctica, the Conger ice shelf collapsed. But it is not just ice shelves that are crumbling. As we cross the Pandemic gateway into carbon neutrality and digital economies, banks have embraced a culture of considering intangible assets, including patents, formulas and trademarks as viable financing collateral. The IoT is melting away vintage prerequisites like - [Data Lakes and Future-forward Bureaucracies](https://fazalali.com/2022/03/27/data-lakes-and-future-forward-bureaucracies/) - It is in the DNA of digital natives to push automation beyond its edges. Startups achieve scalability, reliability, resilience, and efficiency faster than counterparts held back by technical debt, and manual paper-based vaults. To capture data, some agencies typically implement data lakes, lab environments, and next-generation tooling for advanced analytics. Data lakes in bureaucracies use - [Road SurfaceDNA and Cars as Customizable Platforms](https://fazalali.com/2022/03/20/road-surfacedna-and-cars-as-customizable-platforms/) - Cars are now digital devices. The centre of gravity has shifted to data in the automotive industry. As Electric Vehicles (EVs) become more software-centric, and Software-as-a-Service Subscriptions are announced, cars become customizable platforms. The connected car is a platform that offers the mobile public LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, immersive experiences that make cabins into virtual theme parks - [A CARICOM Single ICT Space](https://fazalali.com/2022/03/13/a-caricom-single-ict-space/) - The Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR) that escorts a humanity of deep multi-layered cooperation between machines and humans is already an overlay on the present Industrial Revolution. As we unravel the trials of the 4IR, we witness that the tools of the 5IR, an immersive 3D version of the internet, have already crossed the Valley of - [G5 Collaborative Regulation for 5G](https://fazalali.com/2022/03/06/g5-collaborative-regulation-for-5g/) - Tomorrow is coming faster than yesterday came today. Digital transformation (DT) has changed the Work of Nations and improved access to and delivery of services across multiple sectors and markets. This upheaval births conundrums and chances. It demands greater collaboration among policy-makers, regulatory authorities, local government, and chambers of commerce to effectively harness technological progress - [Low Earth Orbit Satellite Broadband and the Middle Mile](https://fazalali.com/2022/02/27/low-earth-orbit-satellite-broadband-and-the-middle-mile/) - The Carnivalesque mode of François Rabelais and Mikhail Bakhtin are both widely known for their grotesque preoccupation with the earthiness of festive forms. For Bakhtin, the Carnival glorifies the lower stratum or the belly as the location of procreation, evacuation, birth, death and disease. Many infirmities and illnesses are inevitably in the belly. In the - [Learning Road Maps in the Age of AI](https://fazalali.com/2022/02/20/learning-road-maps-in-the-age-of-ai/) - It is not unhelpful to assume that by the next century intelligence will escape the constraints of biology. Decisions made by algorithms, machines, and networks may lack malice aforethought but it is possible that their interests may not include us. Everything is already taking us there. But incrementalism is insufficient. Incremental thinking isn’t enough. The - [Digital Capability and Inclusive Capitalism](https://fazalali.com/2022/02/13/digital-capability-and-inclusive-capitalism/) - The struggles to contain COVID-19 have had a weighty impact on industries and workers worldwide. The pandemic experience has accelerated companies’ digital transformation. Building on Rawls’ development ethics in his “Theory of Justice”, Sen proposes a capabilities approach to development that hinges on social arrangements that are valued primarily around the extent to which citizens - [Digital Genus and Glocalization](https://fazalali.com/2022/02/06/digital-genus-and-glocalization/) - The term Glocalization is used to describe a product or service that is developed and distributed globally but is also adjusted to accommodate the user or consumer in a domestic market. - [Digital Re-Imagination of Public Services](https://fazalali.com/2022/01/30/digital-re-imagination-of-public-services/) - The Ministry of Possibilities is the world’s first virtual ministry where government systems of the future are built using squads of agile sprint teams that design disruptive solutions to problems. - [Digital Fashion, DAOs and the Metaverse](https://fazalali.com/2022/01/23/digital-fashion-daos-and-the-metaverse/) - The silence in the skies is a prompt to break with the past and imagine the world anew. A silence to ferret through unmapped paths, dead ends, abandoned alleys, and blind spots. Routes that offer an array of probable outcomes, all of which have possible likelihoods and varying impacts. It is a silence that allows multinationals - [Divergence in Development and Differences in Vaccination Progress](https://fazalali.com/2022/01/16/divergence-in-development-and-differences-in-vaccination-progress/) - Half of the world’s population was still unvaccinated, 40% remain offline, and only 35% of the world’s students live in countries where schools and universities are now fully open - [The Restfulness of a Fake Normality](https://fazalali.com/2022/01/09/the-restfulness-of-a-fake-normality/) - Throughout history, people were born into, and generally continued their lives in a fairly inelastic economic band. It was acceptable that the distribution of economic benefits and burdens was fixed by destiny or deity. However, it was only when humans accepted that the distribution of economic benefits and burdens could be impacted by states, did - [Virtual Employees and Time-Poor Citizens](https://fazalali.com/2022/01/02/virtual-employees-and-time-poor-citizens/) - Satisfaction is the differential between expectation and the actual experience. Exceeding expectation is key to understanding delivery. It is an art perfected by great brands. Satisfaction is not about statements of intent that set expectations. Customer Experience (CX) leaders offer continuous non-sales led communication. Proactive expectation setting communications is the new normal. CX has become - [Digital Citizens in a Learning Society](https://fazalali.com/2021/12/26/digital-citizens-in-a-learning-society/) - Schooling merits attention. During the first industrial upheaval, steam-powered engines triggered a waterfall of global disruptions. The middle-class was born. General public education was introduced. And while there was widespread expectation that jobs would be lost, job opportunities blossomed proportional to the economic expansion. During the 4th Industrial Revolution, the Coronavirus accelerated the “Twin Transitions” - [The Network Effect and Brain Gain](https://fazalali.com/2021/12/19/the-network-effect-and-brain-gain/) - Schools change because students learn in new ways. Today tutoring bars have replaced classrooms, and playlists have displaced subjects. Curriculum architectonics as a matrix makes “knowledge construction” Open Source. No one owns the truth. Everyone has the right to be heard. What remains is a fracture between the fake and fact. In his magnum opus - [Experience Excellence and Digital Transformation](https://fazalali.com/2021/12/12/experience-excellence-and-digital-transformation/) - The “Twin Transitions” to a green and digitalized world puts every achievement of previous upheavals into the footnotes of history. The 4th Industrial Revolution brings into being a new humanity of machines, interfaces, and neural-lace. Coal was the driver of the First Industrial Revolution with steam-powered machines powering the mechanization of production. The Second Industrial Revolution began with - [Industry Cloud and Digital Transformation](https://fazalali.com/2021/12/05/industry-cloud-and-digital-transformation/) - Competiveness is the crux of digital transformation. The future state is clear: Industry clouds will dominate. But getting there will not be painless. In a year that reflects the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on economic competitiveness, it is evident that competitiveness is driven by continuous innovation in knowledge economies. The deep challenge for Latin America and - [PinkCab and the Network Economy](https://fazalali.com/2021/11/28/pinkcab-and-the-network-economy/) - The spine of the national and globalized digital economy is hyperconnectivity. This bourgeoning interconnectedness of humans, machines and transactions using virtual assets, time stamps, Clickwrap and Browse-wrap contracts that results from the Internet of Things (IoT), market platforms, mobile technologies, and low-priced sensors is undermining conventional notions about: 1) how companies are structured; 2) how - [Smart Nations and Things Pre-Pandemic](https://fazalali.com/2021/11/21/smart-nations-and-things-pre-pandemic/) - This change is long-lasting. The world is set for a new Network and so Anand Agarwal of Sterlite Technologies asks: Is the Network ready for the next phase of mortality? Who does Latin America and the Caribbean partner with to answer this question? Mixed-reality spectacles are now a meshwork of different pieces of technology which - [Open Data: An Economic Opportunity](https://fazalali.com/2021/11/14/open-data-an-economic-opportunity/) - Machine readable information, particularly government data sets, if they become transparent, have the potential to empower citizens, change how governments work and improve service delivery - [Talent Clouds, Soft Laws and Policy Labs](https://fazalali.com/2021/11/07/talent-clouds-soft-laws-and-policy-labs/) - Beyond broadband, Digital Transformation requires Policy Labs, Open Roles, Soft Laws, Policy Prototyping and Talent. The pandemic accentuated the need for flexible, mission-centric governance. Governments are now using agile sprints to tackle legacy development tasks and pandemic disruptions of the old orthodoxy. While 73% of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have a Digital Transformation - [Digital Labour and Hybrid Hiring of Gig Talent](https://fazalali.com/2021/10/31/digital-labour-and-hybrid-hiring-of-gig-talent/) - Digital platforms, through the application of big data, AI and cloud computing, are shifting the nature of work and economic structures. - [Digital Shelves and e-Currencies](https://fazalali.com/2021/10/17/digital-shelves-and-e-currencies/) - Barbados’ Bitt Inc., which designed, ‘DCash’, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union’s first Digital Currency, issued by a Currency Union Central Bank, is technical lead for Nigeria’s eNaira. Abuja’s digital wallet is a shift away from analogue money. The aim is to accelerate Financial Inclusion. Unlike cryptocurrencies, ‘DCash’, is issued by an official Central Bank, has - [Information Governance and Digital Transformation](https://fazalali.com/2021/10/24/information-governance-and-digital-transformation/) - Information Governance refers to the management of information to support an organization’s present and future. - [Sand Dollars and Sandboxes for Digital Transformation](https://fazalali.com/2021/10/10/sand-dollars-and-sandboxes-for-digital-transformation/) - In the Eastern Caribbean, the pace of digital transformation and the enhancement of citizen experiences remain low despite numerous public sector modernization attempts. - [Pan Yards as Nodes across the Digital Skills Ecosystem](https://fazalali.com/2021/10/03/pan-yards-as-nodes-across-the-digital-skills-ecosystem/) - The present network of steel membrane orchestras across Trinidad and Tobago offers a fertile field of nodes to pilot such an intervention across the digital skills ecosystem. - [Ghost Kitchens and Embedded Finance](https://fazalali.com/2021/09/26/ghost-kitchens-and-embedded-finance/) - ENDS is Jamaica’s Coronavirus E-commerce National Delivery System. It makes special provisions for restaurants and offers a digital-passport for delivery operators to function during lockdowns. In Latin America, North Africa, Europe and Asia, Delivery Hero, a Berlin based company, reported a 400% YoY growth in Q1, 2021. As the forerunner of q-commerce, Delivery Hero is - [A University of the Unfortunate](https://fazalali.com/2021/09/19/a-university-of-the-unfortunate/) - Seventy-seven million rural citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are unable to access internet services that meet rudimentary standards of worth. Thirty-two per cent (32%) of the LAC population, that is 244 million people, have no internet access while seventy-one per cent (71%) of the urban population have wide-ranging connectivity options. The connectivity - [Multiplying Points of View](https://fazalali.com/2021/09/12/multiplying-points-of-view/) - The paradigm shift is in a rapid departure away from credentials towards skill acquisition and authentication and the unpacking of the curriculum into bite size bits or building blocks that are open-always to reconfiguration. - [Agile Labs and Low-Code No-Code](https://fazalali.com/2021/09/05/agile-labs-and-low-code-no-code/) - Digital reimagination using “Agile Labs” allows government to profoundly enhance user experiences of public services. The UN is a bureaucracy of tangled and overlapping agencies, silos and barricaded budgets that reflects a world made in 1945. Equally, the ownership of many government service-products remain diffused across countless departments, agencies, and geographic units, each with cloistered - [Vertical Fields and Shipping Container Grow Boxes](https://fazalali.com/2021/08/29/vertical-fields-and-shipping-container-grow-boxes/) - Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, analytics, connected sensors, big data, robotics, and other emerging technologies have increased yields, improved the efficiency of water and other inputs, and built sustainability and resilience across open field crop cultivation and animal husbandry. - [Money Grows on Trees](https://fazalali.com/2021/08/22/money-grows-on-trees/) - Money grows on trees. Forty miles south of Lyon in France, Valrhona specializes in luxury chocolates made from cocoa grown on trees in Montserrat, Trinidad. A Valrhona bar of twelve pieces that weighs 2.6 oz. each is sold for $152.53. Oxbury is a new specialist bank for farming and food – and the UK’s latest - [Digitagility and Internet Inequality](https://fazalali.com/2021/08/15/digitagility-and-internet-inequality/) - Successful transformation projects have the following features: aspirational goals, a balanced portfolio of pragmatic initiatives, and an integrated nerve centre planning team sprints. Every challenge of the Covid-19 twin transition requires a decidedly agile mind-set and a scrum framework. Implementing an agile mind-set within government can be challenging. Government agencies are waterproof to any form - [Digital IQ and Antibodies](https://fazalali.com/2021/08/08/digital-iq-and-antibodies/) - Development pushes against structure. Digital transformation for development pushes against the stability of matrixed government and industrial age infrastructure. Digital transformation is as much about talent and citizen developers as it is about technology. It allows economies to draw on the cascading knowledge spillovers from the internet and to take advantage of platform markets enabled - [The Unremarkables and Unfinished Learning](https://fazalali.com/2021/08/01/the-unremarkables-and-unfinished-learning/) - There is no “New Normal”. Only a prolonged “Never Normal” — Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA). Countless networked parts. Data overload. Unstable challenges of unknown duration. Unknown unknowns. Unclear relationships. Cause and effect severed. Every response requiring hypothesising and experimentation, investing in information, testing, reshuffling, and building in slack. Facing multilayers of possible futures, - [Smart Island States](https://fazalali.com/2021/07/25/smart-island-states/) - Nothing moved for decades in the West Indies and then, in days, decades happened. The West Indies is not what it is, but what we will use the COVID-19 accelerator to make of it. All of our future and history is ours to write. The pandemic proved to be an accelerant of existing trends as - [A People-Plan, Agile Government and Policy Levers](https://fazalali.com/2021/07/18/a-people-plan-agile-government-and-policy-levers/) - The impending COVID-19 recession and the pandemic-influenced shift towards increased automation constitute a “Double Disruption”. But the challenges of disruption are a window of opportunity to accelerate the twin transitions to a green and digitalized economy. What intertwines these twin transitions is the imperative to upskill and future-proof the workforce by focusing on a People-Plan - [The Paradox of Non-Freedom as Freedom](https://fazalali.com/2021/07/11/the-paradox-of-non-freedom-as-freedom/) - Xi Jinping says, “There can be no nothingness in history.” Knowledge is always perspectival. There are no immaculate perceptions. Knowledge from no-point-of-view is as incoherent as the notion of seeing from no particular vantage point. Equally unlikely is an all-inclusive perspective, which could contain all others and, hence, make reality available as it is in - [Deleted Viral Sequences Excavated from the Cloud](https://fazalali.com/2021/07/04/deleted-viral-sequences-excavated-from-the-cloud/) - The Wuhan market virus varieties may not be representative of the full diversity of coronaviruses already loose by December 2019. - [Banking Stress Test and Climate Financial Risks](https://fazalali.com/2021/06/27/banking-stress-test-and-climate-financial-risks/) - Precarity is now central alongside vulnerability, risk, and uncertainty. Covid-19 has heightened the precariousness of labour markets, the vulnerability of individuals and the fragility of banks and businesses which could all be the product of markets, tenancies, past tragedies, and inequalities. An overlapping problem allied to “Vaccine Colonialism” and the future infectiousness of viral variants - [Extra-Lessons and Learning-Loss](https://fazalali.com/2021/06/20/extra-lessons-and-learning-loss/) - As the light of new knowledge surges, so too does the darkness that accompanies every advance beyond the stubborn facts. Sir Kevan Collins is the UK’s new Education Recovery Commissioner. There is no recovery outside of managing the learning-loss experienced during the pandemic. At the end of 2019, a fatal illness appeared in Wuhan. By - [Bennett's Implausible Palestinian Peace](https://fazalali.com/2021/06/13/bennetts-implausible-palestinian-peace/) - The idea of government owes its heritage to the need to contain the harms which associated individuals must fear from one another. But government itself is not free from wrongs. It is bejewelled by a cathedral trail of political miscarriages which, once adopted, become principles. So it is not unforeseen to find prevarication prevailing where - [Green Hydrogen in a Post-Fossil-Fuel World](https://fazalali.com/2021/06/06/green-hydrogen-in-a-post-fossil-fuel-world/) - Incrementalism is dead. We are in the midst of a dis-continuous shift. Every institution and apparatus of state must be re-invented. The world under construction during this COVID-Portal is different from the ones we made before. But ambiguity dampens investment. Even a silhouette will do. Not even clarity is required. Just a few faint construction - [Gazans and Fields of Mediterranean Natural Gas](https://fazalali.com/2021/05/30/gazans-and-fields-of-mediterranean-natural-gas/) - Gazans live on a narrow slip of land hugging the Mediterranean Sea. It resembles Vietnam, a thin S-shaped country slithering along the rim of the South China Sea. The Gaza Strip is 25 miles long and 3.7 miles wide in some places. An Israeli armed buffer zone renders much of the land off-limits to the - [The Al Aqsa Nakbah](https://fazalali.com/2021/05/23/the-al-aqsa-nakbah/) - Equality is a basic norm of the law of nations. Arising from this are the principles of self-determination, self-defence and the right to form defensive alliances. A supplementary principle is that treaties must be kept. Collectively, these rules define when a nation has a just cause in war, its, “jus ad bellum”. But there are - [Building from the Bottom Up and the Middle Out](https://fazalali.com/2021/05/16/building-from-the-bottom-up-and-the-middle-out/) - Once the C-19 public support actions, including loan guarantees and moratoria, are withdrawn, postponed insolvencies would suddenly materialize and trigger a recessionary dynamic, potentially causing a future ripple of zombie firms and unforeseen liquidations. The current quiet of a low rate of bankruptcies and insolvencies is a retreating sea of troubles before a tidal wave - [The Piety in Politics](https://fazalali.com/2021/05/09/the-piety-in-politics/) - Muqtada al-Sadr is from the notable Sadr family hailing from Jabal Amel, Lebanon, before he settled in Najaf. His father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, stood against Saddam. He is married to the daughter of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, both of whom are revered for their anxiety for the poor. His uncle, Mohammad Baqir - [Climate as a New Frontier of Productivity](https://fazalali.com/2021/05/02/climate-as-a-new-frontier-of-productivity/) - If we don’t catch up on clean energy investments, we will miss the chance to shape the world’s climate future. - [A Parallel Pandemic of Porntubes](https://fazalali.com/2021/04/11/a-parallel-pandemic-of-porntubes/) - Digital migration made us gravitate to Apps to meet the needs of indoor lifestyles, largely in education, entertainment and e-commerce. UNICEF was first to highlight that children are at increased risk of harm online as the pandemic led to an unprecedented rise in screen time. School closures and strict containment measures mean that mothers resorted - [Tobago and Tangra](https://fazalali.com/2021/04/25/tobago-and-tangra/) - “When a disaster or pandemic comes, a plan should be kept ready. For showing a future path to economic development, we have set up a global advisory board to frame the coronavirus response policy in Bengal. I want good people on the board and Abhijit Banerjee will head the team,” said Mamata Banerjee. Abhijit is - [The Knots we Untie](https://fazalali.com/2021/04/18/the-knots-we-untie/) - Behind every silver lining, a dark cloud lurks. Prime Minister Mia Mottley, on the sunset of April 13th 2021, to mark the rise of the crescent moon of Ramadhan Shareef, wrote that one year into the pandemic our concerns are not about unknowns. Furthermore, the patterns of spikes and falls, variants and mutants, lockdowns and - [Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing](https://fazalali.com/2021/04/04/knowing-the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing/) - Humanity is many things – adoring, inquisitive, rational, altruistic, creative and self-interested. But the market is one thing only: self-interest. The market is humanity distilled. It is not drones and AI that are consuming work, but dysfunctional corporate governance that has stopped valuing workers. We are at risk of being overwhelmed by a utopia of - [Digital by Design or Digital by Default](https://fazalali.com/2021/03/28/digital-by-design-or-digital-by-default/) - In Gros Islet, St. Lucia, Walcott waited his turn for a trim. With his back turned to Walcott the barber looked into the tarnished oval mirror and said, “So the world is waiting for Obama.” Today, the world is waiting for Mia Mottley as she adroitly contests a debilitating emerging market debt crisis at the - [The Curse is Lifted](https://fazalali.com/2021/03/21/the-curse-is-lifted/) - Stormzy, the London grime super star, plans to send his children to school at Brampton Manor on the East Side of London. Rose Hill, Escallier and Bethlehem in East Port of Spain display similar symptoms of multiple deprivations as Tower Hamlets and Newham in East London. The diversity of deprivations on the East Side of - [The Concordat and Children in Conflict with the Law](https://fazalali.com/2021/03/14/the-concordat-and-children-in-conflict-with-the-law/) - We make our children and their minds. Brains are biological. Minds are made in the cradle of the habitus. Only after the bough breaks we grasp that we placed them on a tree top. Rocking in the winds of styles, mannerisms, TikTok, and viral ideologies. Friends carry them and never bring them back. As a - [Forged from the love of liberty](https://fazalali.com/2021/03/06/forged-from-the-love-of-liberty/) - Any attempt to address inequalities in the provision and outcomes of schooling must be from the position of original-equality. Acting from beneath a veil of ignorance, one is unable to know in advance what their ethnicity may be, what their postal code will be, which strata of society they may come to inhabit, who their - [Moderating Disruption](https://fazalali.com/2021/02/28/moderating-disruption/) - Life never reveals its loveliness to those who never stumble. Boris Pasternak said that the virtue of those who have never fallen or failed isn’t of much value. Their lives are lifeless. Educated Europeans of Columbus’ day knew that the world was round. Around 723 AD, Saint Bede the Venerable wrote in his “Reckoning of - [The Power of Love](https://fazalali.com/2021/02/21/the-power-of-love/) - If some of us are free; we know it— because we are still running. The world today is one where we find everywhere that people are continually being pushed to pick one part of themselves to belong. Their every action crinkled into self-doubt and met by incomprehension, mistrust and outright hostility. Forced to face one - [Creativity the Key to Recovery](https://fazalali.com/2021/02/14/creativity-the-key-to-recovery/) - A recovery strategy grounded in the creative industries and a new virtual learning school system makes “Virtual Production” (VP) a pivot-in-action. VP offers a chance for a real time surround live production where visual effects have no barriers, resulting in both occurring simultaneously. It blends video game technology with film techniques into the pre-production and - [Calypso Carnival and the Caliphate](https://fazalali.com/2021/02/07/calypso-carnival-and-the-caliphate/) - We need a world that takes into account the best interests of the child, and founded on principles of democracy, equality, non-discrimination, peace and social justice and the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights, including the right to development. - [Refilling the future](https://fazalali.com/2021/01/31/refilling-the-future/) - Suntory has always been thinking about and acting towards sustainable society. Suntory’s “Institute for Water Science” works with earth scientists, local governments and communities to nurture biodiversity, cultivate natural ground water, and protect forests that function as sanctuaries. Through its “Mizuiku” programme, Suntory has captivated the imaginations of over 180,000 students in Vietnam, Indonesia and - [Allowing ourselves to become nothing](https://fazalali.com/2021/01/24/allowing-ourselves-to-become-nothing/) - Geographically, more firms in China have prospered and outperformed those in the US during the pandemic. The victors are all beneficiaries of COVID-19. Sea Group, South-east Asia’s most valuable company, showed Covid-19 resistance in all three of its core businesses: gaming, ecommerce and digital payments. Pinduoduo was turbocharged as hundreds of millions of Chinese shoppers - [America's Bastille Day or Rexit](https://fazalali.com/2021/01/17/americas-bastille-day-or-rexit/) - During the United States' lengthy Civil War, the Confederate bunting never crossed the portico of the US Capitol Building that now fortifies the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. But on January 6, 2021, wild-eyed men wandered about the corridors of the Capitol with a Confederate pennant streaming alongside the Stars and - [Friends with few benefits](https://fazalali.com/2021/01/10/friends-with-few-benefits/) - Foreign residential areas in China were classified as “settlements” or “concessions”. In some instances, local administrative authorities were established by aliens and they were either formally or tacitly recognized. Hankou was once the largest of three former cities (the others being Hanyang and Wuchang) that now constitute modern-day Wuhan - the capital of Hubei province. - [XP School, Seller X and School 21](https://fazalali.com/2021/01/03/xp-school-seller-x-and-school-21/) - Where it began – we can’t begin to knowing. Milan or Wuhan? But by December 2031, ten years later, we imagined a new world into being. One in which the internet-of-things embeds sensors and software to exchange data with distant devices and systems. A world in which “explorations” replace school subjects and construction procurement pivots - [Infiltrators, DREAMers and the Undocumented](https://fazalali.com/2020/12/27/infiltrators-dreamers-and-the-undocumented/) - Escaping persecution, Dom Mayeul de Caigny and Dom Hugh van der Sanden fled the monastery of São Bento in Bahia, in 1912. They found refuge in a cocoa estate in Trinidad’s northern range 4,300 feet above sea level. Drowning in despair, they recalled the sorrow of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who suffered the anxieties and - [Pandemic-pods or Home-schooling](https://fazalali.com/2020/12/20/pandemic-pods-or-home-schooling/) - The pandemic must be a time to develop and implement radical policies that will create a more socially mobile society and a better functioning economy - [Exporting Extremism](https://fazalali.com/2020/12/13/exporting-extremism/) - The Trump anomaly is over. But Trumpism and the post-American society that the anti-trump coalition represents cannot coexist. One must extinguish the other. Trump is a “leader”. Someone on whom people can project their dreams. Neither Macron nor Merkel has the ability to demolish the norms and customs of governance to embed their own agenda. - [A Concordat for the 80%](https://fazalali.com/2020/12/06/a-concordat-for-the-80/) - A New Concordat between businesses and all state schools to fund quality pedagogy to the 80% not covered by other arrangements. - [Yellow Is Forbidden](https://fazalali.com/2020/11/29/yellow-is-forbidden/) - Yuppie is fashion’s next big thing. Paradoxically, the new corporate costume of Generation-Z is the power-suit silhouette of the 80s. The look of interns hoping to navigate capitalist structures in our COVID-19 remote-work-world revolves around the revival of the suited Wall Street look with a touch of knowing self-reference embellished with rudiments of playful style. - [Weirdos and misfits with odd skills](https://fazalali.com/2020/11/22/weirdos-and-misfits-with-odd-skills/) - The orthodox canons around 9-to-5, office-centric work, and 8-to-2 “Old Schools” are delusions. The pandemic is not fading. We must reimagine our lives. More than half of the global workforce is functioning remotely. We are on the cusp of a prolonged period of hybrid working – from home and office in different proportions. COVID-19 has - [Dragonfly-eye View and Flamingoes](https://fazalali.com/2020/11/15/dragonfly-eye-view-and-flamingoes/) - Every solution pathway within the existing system is now fatigued. The situation is disheartening as there is no hope of a solution within it. After a summer of complacency and compromises with the global capitalist order genuflecting before a virus, we accept with brutal certainty, that nothing we tried has worked to contain the pandemic - [Colour Blindness and Black Feet](https://fazalali.com/2020/11/08/colour-blindness-and-black-feet/) - France has a secular almanac that is rhythmed by moments in the Catholic faith. Nowadays only five per cent of the French attend mass. Fifty-one per cent describe themselves as following the family tradition of being Catholic. Half of these don’t believe in God. But France is also home to the largest Muslim and Jewish - [Voice and Veracity](https://fazalali.com/2020/11/01/voice-and-veracity/) - Voice and Veracity - [The Concordat in COVID-19](https://fazalali.com/2020/10/25/the-concordat-in-covid-19/) - Tyrants are tall because the ill-fated stand on their knees. But their children are unfearful. Children everywhere have called upon examinations syndicates to account for marks that limit their prospects. COVID-19 has unmasked the maze and the mysticism. And like the adagio of Minshall’s moko jumbie “The Dying Swan — Ras Nijinsky in drag as - [Back to Square One](https://fazalali.com/2020/10/18/back-to-square-one/) - Every morning, we recite the mantra of numbers: how many new infections, how many full recoveries, how many new deaths. We miss that outside of the virus, it’s not just life, but there is also death. - [Take-home litigation over Covid-19 infections](https://fazalali.com/2020/10/11/take-home-litigation-over-covid-19-infections/) - The COVID-19 pandemic proves that market forces alone and trickle-down economic policies have failed miserably to change the life of the poor. In an encyclical on the theme of human fraternity entitled “Fratelli Tutti” (Brothers All), Pope Francis mourned that many languish without anything while others dribble in lavishness. In the spirit of St. Francis, - [Envy and Equality](https://fazalali.com/2020/10/04/envy-and-equality/) - On Republic Day 2020, Archbishop Gordon examined our oscillating five-year cycle of viral racism from plantocracy to pandemic and unearthed a visceral dread of exclusion from the patrimony of the state as a probable cause. From behind the outward, he questioned whether the problem was in fact endemic xenophobia or one of envy and equality - [COVID-19 in a Dutch Diseased Economy](https://fazalali.com/2020/09/27/covid-19-in-a-dutch-diseased-economy/) - Prejudice determines how chemical plants proliferate among the undervalued in Couva while the bourgeoisie are buoyed in ocean breeze villas listening to Norah Jones on Alexa peering over Deans Bay sipping a stirred Bombay Blue Sapphire drizzled with juniper in tonic water. - [Spacial Inequality and Self-Determination](https://fazalali.com/2020/09/20/spacial-inequality-and-self-determination/) - The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended Tobago's status as a neutral territory and inaugurated a British plantation economy. The Board of Trade surveyed Tobago and the island was carved into 100–500 acre plots and peddled to planters. The upper heights of the Main Ridge were reserved as "Woods for the Protection of the Rains" - [Spatial Inequality and Environmental Injustice](https://fazalali.com/2020/09/13/spatial-inequality-and-environmental-injustice/) - Vespucci, in a letter to Lorenzo di Pier in 1503, and published in 1503–04 under the title ‘Mundus Novus’, makes the first explicit mention in print of the hypothesis that the lands discovered to the west were not the edges of Asia, as asserted by Columbus, but rather a New World. Thereafter, settlements followed an - [The health of public debt](https://fazalali.com/2020/09/06/the-health-of-public-debt/) - Extreme emergency was a fire blanket for the blank cheque method killing every control around transparency and accountability. - [The World We Made](https://fazalali.com/2020/08/30/the-world-we-made/) - Humans are biohazards — machines are not. Welcome to the darkness. - [The touch of death](https://fazalali.com/2020/08/23/the-touch-of-death/) - In the paranoia of the pandemic, we clutch like children to any fable that could help us find a direction out of the grim particulars of the present. - [Building it Better](https://fazalali.com/2020/08/16/building-it-better/) - The thunderclap of economic consequences enfolded by Covid-19 has compelled Boris to recommit to his election promise of a ‘levelling up’ agenda. Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, allocated £900m to three hundred ‘shovel ready’ projects which include new commercial spaces and a rapid rail station in Kent. A new taskforce, ‘Project Speed’ led by - [A Pandemic of Poverty and Stolen Hope](https://fazalali.com/2020/08/09/a-pandemic-of-poverty-and-stolen-hope/) - The Colonial Bank and the Royal Bank accepted nothing less than 24 cents or one shilling to open an account. This haughty sum barricaded the blacks. Petioni decided that depositors could open accounts at the new bank with just 2 cents. - [Democracy in Education](https://fazalali.com/2020/08/02/democracy-in-education/) - Voting is morally weighty even if it is just multiple choice. Penning an extended essay is quite burdensome as an alternative to an ‘x’. Electoral outcomes can be harmful or beneficial and can do widespread harm with little benefit to anyone. When we vote, we can make government better or worse. Voting can enrich lives - [The Untruthful and the Omitted](https://fazalali.com/2020/07/26/the-untruthful-and-the-omitted/) - Are voters insensitive to lies? Rumi writes that the tongue is a guttering where words flow. But if the roof is not clean, then the words get thick and muddy. But what is more chilling is the fake eloquence of those who have erected elaborate gutters that drain water from other roofs. So why do - [SMEs and the Next Normal](https://fazalali.com/2020/07/19/smes-and-the-next-normal/) - The Sufi mystic, Rumi, says: ‘Sometimes the scale pans may weigh correctly, but the balancer is off.’ Prior to COVID-19, people managed to find the right shoe in the dark. So they left behind the off-balancers and shopped instead on Amazon. Before Bezos, friction across supply chains served only to increase costs. So Bezos built - [Living as a Tax Exile in your Native Land](https://fazalali.com/2020/07/12/living-as-a-tax-exile-in-your-native-land/) - Are tax avoiders guilty of homicide as shortages of beds and respirators at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the deaths of thousands. Perhaps tax evaders are not just guilty of lawlessness but are even more violent than the anarchists during the lockdowns. Tax is political. Who we tax, and why we tax, takes - [The Infected and the Invincible](https://fazalali.com/2020/07/05/the-infected-and-the-invincible/) - The virus is uncovering the extent of inequalities within many countries, including OECD countries. In the process, it is exposing the deficiencies of the social contract and the ways in which slum dwellers are systematically at-risk. COVID-19 lays open the social and economic fault lines in our urban spaces among the 1.2 billion urban poor - [Limiting Learning Loss](https://fazalali.com/2020/06/28/limiting-learning-loss/) - School-system leaders expect learning loss to be limited, but vulnerable learners will fall further behind during the pandemic as home schooling amplifies social disadvantages. We are in the throes of an irreversible humanitarian crisis that has permanently changed the world. Over 154 million children, about 95 per cent of those enrolled in Latin America and - [Make no Mistake](https://fazalali.com/2020/06/21/make-no-mistake/) - Make no mistake, anti-racist protests that swept across the globe from the US, the COVID-19 viral infection that spread across the earth from Wuhan creating an economic crisis and the worldwide ecological protest of the Extinction Rebellion are all connected. The colour of wealth gives anti-racist protests, that vigorously violate social distancing measures, a boost - [Social codes and Code repositories](https://fazalali.com/2020/06/14/social-codes-and-code-repositories/) - With the poise of a Cazabon Martiniquais creole, Ms. Davis sold chillibibi and chennette in the soft shadow of a Samaan tree outside the gates of a primary school in Barataria. Basil Davis was her son. He was a pupil at the school. It was a time when the ‘Black-Market’ economy thrived with sales of - [Structural Inequality Basil Davis and George Floyd](https://fazalali.com/2020/06/07/structural-inequality-basil-davis-and-george-floyd/) - ‘If malice or violence reigns then none of us are free.’ ‘Where there is no law there is no opportunity.’ Where there is no safety there is no future.’ ‘Where there is no justice there is no liberty.’ Floyd lives now- forever. - [Loneliness in the time of pandemic](https://fazalali.com/2020/05/31/loneliness-in-the-time-of-pandemic/) - Structural inequality means that COVID-19 has harmed some people more than others, while tax injustice and pallid procurement have jockeyed friends further up the canal. In ‘The Triumph of Injustice’, Saez and Zucman track tax rates across income distribution to underscore how tax injustice invigorates inequality. Their remedies have been embraced by Elizabeth Warren and - [Mask-19, Classrooms and Competitiveness](https://fazalali.com/2020/05/24/mask-19-classrooms-and-competitiveness/) - School-system leaders must weigh four loosely coupled components as they unravel the sequencing puzzle around a planned selective reopening of schools: public health risks, schools’ significance to the economy, effects on students’ flourishing and erudition, and safeguarding. - [Reimagining Education](https://fazalali.com/2020/05/17/reimagining-education/) - In geographies surfacing from the first wave of COVID-19 cases, the social contours of countries have been left at very different points of varying challenges, from descending degrees of economic despair to fear of famine. What is clear is that we will not be returning to where we were. In Italy, 700, 000 youngsters under - [Flattening the Insolvency Curve during COVID-19](https://fazalali.com/2020/05/03/flattening-the-insolvency-curve-during-covid-19/) - One measure to limit the economic fall-out is to contain the large numbers of business and personal insolvencies that are expected to eventuate. Many countries have already made adjustments to their insolvency laws. - [Covid-19 and the New Geo-Social Classes](https://fazalali.com/2020/05/10/covid-19-and-the-new-geo-social-classes/) - The social question is always entangled with earthly conditions. It is our story that the colour of men gets darker the deeper we go into the hull of ships that marooned us in lands where fireflies make every dusk a divali. Modern economic growth first emerged during the industrial revolution, with its cotton textile factories, - [Meeting this moment](https://fazalali.com/2020/04/26/meeting-this-moment/) - There is uneasiness about tomorrow; about our livelihoods, our wellbeing and our lives. Bounding this uncertainty is the immediate imperative. How we plan to resume work, requires that we solve for both the virus and the economy simultaneously. To achieve this, requires behaviours that stem the contagion as we work towards a future-state in which - [Cuba: if not now, when?](https://fazalali.com/2020/04/19/cuba-if-not-now-when/) - The Talmud teaches us- “If I am not for myself, who will be for me. And if not now, when?” The Jack Ma Foundation tried to send 100,000 facemasks, 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, ventilators, gloves and gowns to Havana. But the cargo carrier, Avianca Airlines based in Colombia, declined to carry the packet. How easy - [Taking Liberties](https://fazalali.com/2020/03/29/taking-liberties/) - There will be no return to innocence. Most of us will survive. But we may not have prepared for what awaits us. - [COVID-19 and the Rise of Green Clouds](https://fazalali.com/2020/04/12/covid-19-and-the-rise-of-green-clouds/) - COVID-19 has presented us with a novel idea of a flat world. One that repels the rat race. A world that has rubbished economic globalization, redirected supply chains and reduced supply lines. Spooked from lushness, we fall into the inferno of hermetic existence. Elizabeth II, Queen of England, reminded persons of all faiths, and those - [Political polarization and pandemic](https://fazalali.com/2020/04/05/political-polarization-and-pandemic/) - COVID-19 has presented us with a novel idea of a flat world, where we have only a basic need for a little food, and for tasks that count like loving someone. - [The interregnum between Wuhan and Wall Street](https://fazalali.com/2020/03/22/the-interregnum-between-wuhan-and-wall-street/) - Now, we must shut down the world economy to barricade the spread of a contagion, first reported in Wuhan in 2019, and later declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the WHO. - [What futures are we educating for?](https://fazalali.com/2020/03/15/what-futures-are-we-educating-for/) - How do we prepare learners for jobs that require talent in domains that are traditionally compartmentalized? - [Viruses of Mind](https://fazalali.com/2020/03/08/viruses-of-mind/) - These unfreedoms are intended for the collective punishment of those who have fallen prey to the conviction, that it is not virtuous to solve the mysteries of faith, but to revel in their insolubility. - [Fiscal Legitimacy](https://fazalali.com/2020/03/01/fiscal-legitimacy/) - As outsiders to government, think tanks offer independent monitoring of public policy, propose policy alternatives and have greater affordances for disruptive thinking. They nurture development by minding the gap between knowledge and practice. Governments always take a long view as stewards of the nation’s interest and assets, but they are tempered by the shorter-term of - [T-Levels Vs. A-Levels](https://fazalali.com/2020/02/23/t-levels-vs-a-levels/) - Every Bajan must know what excellence looks like, what excellence feels like, what excellence tastes like - [Canceling each other out](https://fazalali.com/2020/02/16/canceling-each-other-out/) - Where can we find an equal tribute to the tragedy of slavery, the trickery of indentureship, the annihilation of the First Peoples and the disparity and shame created by the Cedula. - [An Enduring Inequality](https://fazalali.com/2020/02/09/an-enduring-inequality/) - If we don’t forgive each other today, then everything we hope for in the future will drown in the undertow of our miserable beginnings. - [The Scramble for the Poles](https://fazalali.com/2020/02/02/the-scramble-for-the-poles/) - Zhongshan Zhàn station is not in Wuhan, China. It is China’s Polar Research Institute on the eastern rim of Antarctica’s Prydz Bay. This deep estuary of Antarctica between the Lars Christensen Coast, and the Ingrid Christensen Coast, is at the downstream end of a titanic glacial drainage system, that originates in the East Antarctic interior. The - [Oxygen Bars and Flood Water Cathedrals](https://fazalali.com/2020/01/26/oxygen-bars-and-flood-water-cathedrals/) - It is possible that Greta Thunberg in her cerulean blue jeans and a scarlet hoodie may come looking for a lost sheep inside the plantation of fabrications planted by bureaucrats. - [Intelligent Life](https://fazalali.com/2020/01/19/intelligent-life/) - daily commute via high-speed rail and driverless vehicles running on smart grids, auto-delivery drones and fully interconnected and automated homes with smart Internet of Things (IoT) appliances - [McDoubles and RotiHut](https://fazalali.com/2020/01/12/mcdoubles-and-rotihut/) - The first act of entrepreneurship must be intellectual and philosophical - [Spatial Stigma](https://fazalali.com/2020/01/05/spatial-stigma/) - Spatial stigma is not an abstraction. Ethnic enclaves disqualify residents from employment and getting into good schools; it subpoenas stricter policing; all in all, it crafts a positive feedback loop of unemployment, poverty, rage, and political apathy. Residentially segregated communities in the “banlieues” of Paris along with those on the outskirts of Oslo, Copenhagen and - [The Lithium Triangle](https://fazalali.com/2019/12/29/the-lithium-triangle/) - BloombergNEF predicts that investment in power storage will hit about US $9bn in 2020. This is about four times the level of investment in 2017. The U.S. energy storage market is expected to grow by a factor of 12 in the next five years — from 430 megawatts in 2019 to more than 5 gigawatts - [The Scale of Economic Inequality and Schooling](https://fazalali.com/2019/12/22/the-scale-of-economic-inequality-and-schooling/) - The UK’s Equality Trust lists six billionaires topping the wealth league with a combined fortune of £39.4bn. This is roughly equal to the assets of the poorest 13 million Britons. Gopichand and Srichand Hinduja top the table with a £12.8bn fortune. The Equality Trust estimates that 14 million people in the UK “live in poverty.” - [A thorn in the side of the state](https://fazalali.com/2019/10/13/a-thorn-in-the-side-of-the-state/) - A thorn in the side of the state - [The Rule of Power](https://fazalali.com/2019/12/15/the-rule-of-power/) - by Fazal Ali - [Between Prohibition and Legalization](https://fazalali.com/2019/12/08/between-prohibition-and-legalization/) - You can’t patent an illegal product. So what is more important than legalization is how to move cannabis from being an illicit pleasure to being a licit business. - [Dutch Stichting](https://fazalali.com/2019/11/24/dutch-stichting/) - An impatient future is ahead and it requires reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight to preserve market integrity, in­vestor protection and en­force­ment ca­pac­i­ty. - [I am I](https://fazalali.com/2019/11/17/i-am-i/) - In the wake of the #MeToo movement, our categories around gender identity need “Tidying Up”. - [Joker](https://fazalali.com/2019/11/10/joker/) - The world is a dangerous place to live - [Toptalent and open innovation](https://fazalali.com/2019/11/03/toptalent-and-open-innovation/) - Firms no longer want to manage defined benefit pension plans. They want talent dedicated to a defined task and expect it to roam freely once the job is done. - [Innovation Hotbeds and Talent Hotspots](https://fazalali.com/2019/10/27/innovation-hotbeds-and-talent-hotspots/) - It is critical for companies in newly industrialized countries to have a presence in innovation hotbeds for a better vantage point on advances along frontiers - [Agile Lite Talent Thick](https://fazalali.com/2019/10/20/agile-lite-talent-thick/) - To become nimbler and more user-focused, First Citizens Bank was the first local bank to embrace the disruption created when web and mobile technologies unsettled the global finance industry. Larry Howai made First Citizens first. The result of Howai’s hard work is what Ralph Hamers, CEO of the global banking group ING, calls “banking on - [Getting it right in T&T - Fiscal Responsibility](https://fazalali.com/2019/10/09/getting-it-right-in-tt-fiscal-responsibility/) - The persistently weak economy in Trinidad and Tobago is a product of fiscal and broader macroeconomic mismanagement under successive governments. Policy choices have created: an economy increasingly dependent on the energy sector; an overvalued currency that subsidizes imports, and penalizes exports, by eroding competitiveness for local products; unsustainable Government debt, evidenced by recurring primary deficits, - [Criminality and consent](https://fazalali.com/2019/10/06/criminality-and-consent/) - In her depiction of life inside New York city clubs, Jennifer Lopez regretted in the 2019 film “Hustlers” that, “This whole country is a strip club. You’ve got some people throwing the money and you’ve got people doing the dance”. Cardi B provides us with a vicarious experience of this naked truth with her riveting - [The Power of Place](https://fazalali.com/2019/09/29/the-power-of-place/) - Some refugees have the employability and language skills to succeed anywhere. Some locations have strong labour markets and charitable companies that would benefit any refugee. These commonplace observations attract brilliant minds working in artificial intelligence and human geography at Oxford and Stanford. Can an algorithm solve the problem of burden-sharing in the international refugee regime? - [Fake Democracies and Oligarchs](https://fazalali.com/2019/09/22/fake-democracies-and-oligarchs/) - It is logical that the eradication of corruption will enable states to deliver to their people better, healthier and more prosperous lives. - [People on the periphery](https://fazalali.com/2019/09/15/people-on-the-periphery/) - Pedro Opeka is a living saint. His Cathedral is a granite stone pit from which he mines precious stones. They are not as beautiful as Laventille Blue Limestone once quarried to build the Governor's House, the Balmoral home of Stollmeyer, Police Headquarters, St James Barracks, the Royal Gaol, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and - [My Seditious Heart](https://fazalali.com/2019/09/08/my-seditious-heart/) - Political art penetrates the public imagination, but is it seditious? - [The Ministry of Truth](https://fazalali.com/2019/08/31/the-ministry-of-truth/) - Fabrication of misinformation is old. What is new is the technology to effectively disseminate propaganda. - [Tax and Cultural Code](https://fazalali.com/2019/08/25/tax-and-cultural-code/) - Critical tax reform can reshape West Indian societies. This will enable states to give expression to their own cultural code, respond to people on the margins and drive the competitiveness of indigenous companies by taxing domiciles with no physicality. - [Come September](https://fazalali.com/2019/08/18/come-september/) - Globalization has driven a 2.5 per cent increase in the world’s total income over the last decade. But during that time, the poor has increased by 100 million. - [Memers and the misery of others](https://fazalali.com/2019/08/11/memers-and-the-misery-of-others/) - Minds are made inside the milieu we choose to immerse our children inside. - [History is a human](https://fazalali.com/2019/08/04/history-is-a-human/) - CSME serves to remove restrictions allowing the free movement of goods, services, persons, capital and technology. - [BoJo and a post-historical West Indies](https://fazalali.com/2019/07/28/bojo-and-a-post-historical-west-indies/) - 264 people have as much wealth as the remaining 7 Billion dwellers on earth. There is greater inequality today than at any other time in human history. - [Hong Kong's Pirouette](https://fazalali.com/2019/07/21/hong-kongs-pirouette/) - The thrill to find El Dorado or to stand anywhere unknown has faded. However, the modern day equivalent of fulfilling this Victorian desire can be had in a city built from scratch so recently, in the proverbial middle of nowhere, that it remains hidden. Khorgas is China’s youngest city. Herodotus imagined that the north wind - [Made in the CSME](https://fazalali.com/2019/07/14/made-in-the-csme/) - It is a simple search for who is doing what well, how they do it, where they are working and how we can bring such people together to create new products for export. - [Under scrutiny for insincerity](https://fazalali.com/2019/07/07/under-scrutiny-for-insincerity/) - The trouble with the idea of Heaven is that for the fervent it justifies creating Hell on earth. Poverty is hell. Muammar Gaddafi reigned over Libya for 42 menacing years. In 2010 he sold 20% of Libya’s gold reserves for $1.7 billion. In that year Libya’s petroleum revenues exceeded $30 billion. Money was no problem. - [Incumbents and Insurgents](https://fazalali.com/2019/06/30/incumbents-and-insurgents/) - ...those who happily elect corrupt officials, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but are accomplices - [Tropical Capitalism](https://fazalali.com/2019/06/23/tropical-capitalism/) - Best reasoned that the government had adopted education policies, land policies, tax policies and labour policies that made it impossible for entrepreneurship to flourish. - [A Land of Small Things](https://fazalali.com/2019/06/16/a-land-of-small-things/) - In a land of small things, the police have no vehicles to respond to a burglary and a driving licence can be bought. The price of petrol is prohibitive for the poor and medicine is scarce; admission to a school requires a donation; losing your national identification card is a tragedy - [Democratic fatigue](https://fazalali.com/2019/06/09/democratic-fatigue/) - Development planning is vulnerable to democratic fatigue, referendum fever, truth decay, government paralysis stemming from relentless media scrutiny, widespread public distrust, change in administration, and upheavals - [The Rule of Thieves](https://fazalali.com/2019/05/19/the-rule-of-thieves/) - In the past, rich countries had no legal authority to stem the flow of dirty money into their coffers. - [A Position of Trust](https://fazalali.com/2019/05/12/a-position-of-trust/) - Parents should be certain that when they send their child to school they are sending them to a safe and supportive environment where they will not be subjected to sexual harassment or violence - [The Voice of the Child](https://fazalali.com/2019/05/05/the-voice-of-the-child/) - For both the adult and the child, life is development and developing is life. The calculus of the difference between the child and the adult resides in the way adults relate to children who are in their power—that is, in education. Education nurtures judgement and aims to improve citizens to become better human beings by - [Posthumous Reproduction](https://fazalali.com/2019/04/28/posthumous-reproduction/) - Posthumous reproduction raises a wide range of legal and ethical issues that include, inter alia, the ownership of gametes, the inheritance rights and benefits of posthumously conceived children, and the social construction of families. - [The Cup of a Carpenter](https://fazalali.com/2019/04/21/the-cup-of-a-carpenter/) - Gregorian chants reverberate across the vaulted ceiling and along a beaded procession of archways that lead to a single dais on the far side of Valencia’s Cathedral. Ladies in veils cross the doorway and genuflect in adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. A small set of steps take them to an altar encased by a - [Black Skins, White Masks](https://fazalali.com/2019/04/14/black-skins-white-masks/) - The ‘Earth is made Wretched’ by the urban elite who coalesce to form a nation after independence but without delay they re-create the colonial within the decolonized state becoming Black Skins in White Masks. - [Brexit and Empire](https://fazalali.com/2019/04/07/brexit-and-empire/) - This is the dawn of an unromanticized version of colonial history, a post-BREXIT cautionary tale and a footnote on managing migrants from Caracas. - [Owing China](https://fazalali.com/2019/03/31/owing-china/) - We are thrilled to possess something like a gift of human creativity when we own something, Made in Italy - [Cowboys and Indians](https://fazalali.com/2019/03/24/cowboys-and-indians/) - The first novel to traffic stereotypes of race as a divisive idea was James Cooper's ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ (1826). The extinction of the Mohicans was conveyed in the novel as a consequence of European settlement. In the novel, there is no Apocalypse, since only one race ends; there is also no suggestion of - [The Rhetoric of Recycling](https://fazalali.com/2019/03/17/the-rhetoric-of-recycling/) - The Privy Council Judgement on Appeal No. 0028 of 2016 brought by Fishermen and Friends of the Sea delivered on November 27, 2017 allowed Lords Mance, Wilson, Carnwath, Hughes and Briggs to reiterate the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’. They adjured that this tenet is a ‘basic principle of international and domestic environmental laws designed to achieve - [Trafficking the Silk Roads](https://fazalali.com/2019/03/10/trafficking-the-silk-roads/) - Today, fugitives and asylum applicants give rise to a different set of trafficking, smuggling and immigration problems. - [The Chief in the Cloud](https://fazalali.com/2019/03/03/the-chief-in-the-cloud/) - Soon our children at school may speak to a hologram of a Carib Chief in the Cloud. To have a virtual conversation tomorrow with anyone about their life without them being in the room is quite possible. At the Illinois Holocaust Museum a 3-D projection of Aaron Elster answers questions at the Illinois Holocaust Museum. - [Leadership Influence and the Concordat](https://fazalali.com/2019/02/23/leadership-influence-and-the-concordat/) - Moral authority is a transformative power that takes people to higher levels of living and leading. - [The Beckham Effect](https://fazalali.com/2019/02/17/the-beckham-effect/) - In his East London backyard, David was not corrected or criticised by any Gandalf of football wizardry; so he was less critical of himself and took more risks. - [An American Mediterranean Sea](https://fazalali.com/2019/02/09/an-american-mediterranean-sea/) - Cold war alliances have resurfaced - with the East backing an embattled socialist leader fighting off an internal opponent buttressed by the West. - [Fragmentation and Football](https://fazalali.com/2019/02/03/fragmentation-and-football/) - The struggle for humanization and for the overcoming of alienation can be easily rendered invisible unless the truth of our beginning is given destiny. - [The Bolivarian Spring](https://fazalali.com/2019/01/27/the-bolivarian-spring/) - A forward Soviet outpost on La Orchila Island is far from the end of it. Hyperinflation in Venezuela will reach 10,000,000% in 2019. It was not so long ago when Concorde jets were swooping in to whisk shoppers off to Paris from Simón Bolívar Airport and Pan Am was routing its New York-Buenos Aires flights - [The Book Liberator](https://fazalali.com/2019/01/20/the-book-liberator/) - Fifteen elephants and two hundred mules were needed to tote the treasure of Maqdala. In 1868, a British expeditionary force laid siege to the mountain fortress of Emperor Tewodros II in what was then Abyssinia. Hundreds of magisterial manuscripts and countless royal and religious relics were plundered from churches and the defeated ruler’s palace. Among - [We the people...](https://fazalali.com/2019/01/13/we-the-people/) - The politics of bank notes - [GAFA Tax & Trans-Pacific Tariffs](https://fazalali.com/2019/01/06/gafa-tax-trans-pacific-tariffs/) - Trump-Tariffs have shaken the foundations of global trade; but every good tax deserves another and countries have responded in kind. Eleven nations have gone ahead with a revised Trans-Pacific Agreement. The ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters have scorched a cavernous hole in the French national budget and Germany contemplates the introduction of a new tax in 2019 - [Brand Identity and Schooling](https://fazalali.com/2018/12/23/brand-identity-and-schooling/) - An exceptional school must create a brand that is obsessed to deliver some benefit. - [Refineries and Retail](https://fazalali.com/2018/12/16/refineries-and-retail/) - OPEC oil producers, bunker fuel sellers and shipping companies will have to comply with the new rules to curb pollution produced by the world’s ships. The U.N. International Maritime Organization (IMO) has mandated that, as of January 1st, 2020 the sulphur content of fuels used by ships will have to be reduced from 3.5 % - [Fabless Manufacturing](https://fazalali.com/2018/12/30/fabless-manufacturing/) - Antonio Gramsci defines common sense as: clear-sightedness. It is not book-sense nor is it the sophistry of spin doctors - [#MeToo](https://fazalali.com/2018/12/09/metoo/) - Whether they are beatified or blameworthy- women continue to experience veils of violence. - [A Fractured Future](https://fazalali.com/2018/12/02/a-fractured-future/) - Ahead of us is a fractured future in a glistening world of unprecedented opulence and dreadful deprivation on the dark side. - [War and Peace](https://fazalali.com/2018/11/09/war-and-peace/) - Security in the 21st century will depend on economic stability. The avoidance of internal armed violence hinges on the performance of national governments. - [Poetry and Painting](https://fazalali.com/2018/11/24/poetry-and-painting/) - And therein lies the secret of all pedagogy. The teacher leads the learner to the threshold of their own ruminations, rather than invite the postulant into the temple of misunderstandings treasured by the sage. - [Blockchain Islands](https://fazalali.com/2018/11/18/blockchain-islands/) - In the Azraq refugee camp, 2017, many Syrian refugees did not pay for their food with cash, but by a scan of their eyes. Purchases were recorded on a Blockchain platform. - [Crime and Punishment](https://fazalali.com/2018/11/04/crime-and-punishment/) - The temptation to profit from access to confidential information is simply too great and far beyond the character of most and the chance too easy to pass up. - [Frailty and Faith](https://fazalali.com/2018/10/28/frailty-and-faith/) - No one owns the truth and everyone has a right to be heard - [An Inflection Ahead](https://fazalali.com/2018/10/21/an-inflection-ahead/) - The West Indies will find no immunity or exemption from the consequences of our failure to embrace the profound changes that will unfurl at this inflection point. - [Islamic Identity and Terrorism](https://fazalali.com/2018/10/14/islamic-identity-and-terrorism/) - How does the state pivot its intolerance to terror against the terror that tolerance brings? - [Flags and Illicit Financial Flows](https://fazalali.com/2018/10/05/flags-and-illicit-financial-flows/) - For every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows bundle off an important source of revenue to finance development, causing worsening living standards and dwindling economic growth rates in poor countries. - [Deindustrialization and Reversed Development](https://fazalali.com/2018/09/30/deindustrialization-and-reversed-development/) - To lead a life in resentment against an imposed inferiority deflects attention away from setting bold new objectives and priorities which we have reason to pursue and value in a modern world. - [Venture Philanthropy](https://fazalali.com/2018/09/23/venture-philanthropy/) - Today, development partners recognise that the winds of change include private funders and investors including venture philanthropy as important parts of the global development architecture for former colonies. - [The Pillars of Male Power](https://fazalali.com/2018/09/15/the-pillars-of-male-power/) - Why is testosterone used as a yardstick to separate students, scholars, athletes and academics over and above their abilities. - [Cathedral Spires in a Green Night](https://fazalali.com/2018/09/09/cathedral-spires-in-a-green-night/) - CARIFESTA 2019 is a perfect platform to explore the trade potential of the publishing industry as part of the creative and cultural industries. - [Beyond Limited Liberty](https://fazalali.com/2018/09/02/beyond-limited-liberty/) - Mornings on the Zanzibar archipelago in the Indian Ocean figure with lines of handsome women elegantly carrying firewood and pails of water on their heads, fishing craft with fishermen arching poles, and dhows with their single sails silhouetted against the sun like a brass gong vibrating over the canes in Couva. During Ottoman rule, hundreds - [Mx., a 3rd Gender](https://fazalali.com/2018/08/19/mx-a-3rd-gender/) - Gender fluidity allows individuals to be categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither man nor woman. - [Social Media and Campaign Finance](https://fazalali.com/2018/08/26/social-media-and-campaign-finance/) - The right to report social media campaigning that a citizen believes to be unlawful and misleading is now under consideration by a Westminster Parliamentary Committee. The approach recommended is to make amendments to the corpus of electoral law. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in - [Privacy and Human Rights](https://fazalali.com/2018/08/11/privacy-and-human-rights/) - Balancing the right to privacy with the competing right to freedom of expression remains contextual and cultural. - [Political Patronage and Payments](https://fazalali.com/2018/07/07/political-patronage-and-payments/) - the government’s new ‘Malaysia Hope Fund’ raised 7m Malaysian ringgit ($1.8m; £1.3m) within the first day of its existence using crowdfunding. - [Girls in Civil Aviation](https://fazalali.com/2018/07/15/girls-in-civil-aviation/) - 620,000 pilots will be needed by 2036, to fly the world’s 100-seat-and-larger aircraft. No less than 80 percent of these future aviators will be new pilots not yet flying today! - [Design and Innovation by Invitation](https://fazalali.com/2018/06/23/design-and-innovation-by-invitation/) - A matrix as an open template to cultivate the Creative Industries to contribute to the proposed bus rapid transit system. - [Crime Scenes, Crops and Border Control](https://fazalali.com/2018/06/16/crime-scenes-crops-and-border-control/) - The WHO observed that Venezuela was the first country to eradicate Malaria in 1961. It is now an alarming exception displaying a 365% increase in malaria cases from 2000 - 2015. - [Failing Forward](https://fazalali.com/2018/08/04/failing-forward/) - Term- politicians are unable to tackle existential threats to humanity like climate change, because thinking about the end of the world is too much for democracy to cope with. - [Property Tax and Equity in Education](https://fazalali.com/2018/07/21/property-tax-and-equity-in-education/) - The concept of backpack funding, where per pupil student funding follows the student to whichever school they choose to attend, is designed, in part, to give low-income students the chance to escape failing schools and delinquent teachers. - [Public Manifestation of Faith](https://fazalali.com/2018/06/30/public-manifestation-of-faith/) - The hope for humanity might lay in peace studies and faith-based-education not religious instruction. - [Rumi and Coldplay](https://fazalali.com/2018/07/28/rumi-and-coldplay/) - Rumi has aided the spiritual journeys of Madonna and Tilda Swinton who have incorporated Ruminesqued aphorisms into their lyrics. - [The Blue Economy](https://fazalali.com/2018/06/06/the-blue-economy/) - Ocean derived goods from marine ecosystems are given cultural value. The worth assigned to them depends on their aesthetic or religious significance, their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining them. - [Pride and Prejudice](https://fazalali.com/2018/05/30/pride-and-prejudice/) - Indentureship remains a variegated fretwork of shades of servitude. - [Spirits Players](https://fazalali.com/2018/05/26/spirits-players/) - The character of French West Indian agricultural rum was akin to brandies with its peppery vegetal fragrance flourishing from the dark-chocolate volcanic earth at the foot of Mount Pelée. - [The Spirit of Elitism](https://fazalali.com/2018/05/18/the-spirit-of-elitism/) - ...the world is what it is- and at every bend in the river it is divided between the ‘have yachts’ and the ‘have nots’... - [Coral reefs and Reef Islands](https://fazalali.com/2018/05/08/coral-reefs-and-reef-islands/) - The Caribbean is home to 9% of the world’s coral reefs, but a mere one-sixth of the original coral cover remains. - [China in Cocoa and Coconut](https://fazalali.com/2018/05/05/china-in-cocoa-and-coconut/) - Both China and India have seen strong growth in cocoa ingredients in recent years, with China posting an average annual growth rate of 6% and India 16% over 2008-2103. - [Free Movement of Capital and Talent](https://fazalali.com/2018/04/28/free-movement-of-capital-and-talent/) - Changes in technology, trade and globalization actively destroy and create new jobs. Adjusting to these changes with CSME Application Processing System can contribute to competiveness, productivity and labour market outcomes. - [Immigration, Education and Industry](https://fazalali.com/2018/04/20/immigration-education-and-industry/) - Talented immigrants respond to opportunities that give them the best return on the investment they have made to nurture their cap-abilities. Nonetheless, the ‘immigration package’ that is available to prospective residents affects their ability to take advantage of opportunities in the host country. - [Port Economics and Maritime Logistics](https://fazalali.com/2018/04/13/port-economics-and-maritime-logistics/) - Undoubtedly, since the Spanish West Indies, the unravelling of port economics and global supply chains remains a rich passage to competitiveness and prosperity. - [The Imprisoned Mind](https://fazalali.com/2018/04/06/the-imprisoned-mind/) - In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years? - [Degree Apprenticeships](https://fazalali.com/2018/04/02/degree-apprenticeships/) - Useless degrees from poorly performing universities are a misery. New pathways are needed. One alternative route is an industrially-designed degree-apprenticeship. - [OpenSource Syllabus](https://fazalali.com/2018/03/26/opensource-syllabus/) - Burning Glass Technologies in Boston filters data from online job advertisements to classify emerging combinations of skill that hybrid jobs are competing for globally. In the U.S., 49% of the postings in the quartile of occupations with the highest salaries are for jobs that require coding. Coding is now requisite far beyond the technology sector. - [Stackable Credentials](https://fazalali.com/2018/03/18/stackable-credentials/) - Stackable credentials where qualifications are fitted together like Lego bricks is a new frontier. - [Unfollow](https://fazalali.com/2018/03/10/unfollow/) - Tomorrow, we will all look back at the ‘Dark Ages of Today’ and marvel at the unfollowers who saw the similarity between things that are different and unfollowed with Blockchain, Barcodes and Bitcoin. - [EQ and Economic Prosperity](https://fazalali.com/2018/03/03/eq-and-economic-prosperity/) - In bracing for Brexit, Xavier Rolet, Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange cautioned Europe that Brexit could trigger a financial crisis if France and Germany try to demolish London’s status as a global financial centre. The OECD warned that a no-deal Brexit would wipe out around £40bn off UK economic growth by 2019. But - [East of Eden](https://fazalali.com/2018/02/24/east-of-eden/) - The youth who hoped for a foothold in the land of the future lament that prestigious institutions that grant privilege are distancing themselves from the heaps of frustrated hopes which they once kindled and inflamed. - [Unmasking Schools](https://fazalali.com/2018/02/18/unmasking-schools/) - Pope Francis proclaimed in his Ash Wednesday Homily that Lent is the opportunity to ‘Unmask’- to ‘see’ the faces of children yearning for the future. Moral education was accentuated in the Middle Ages, not intellectual enlightenment. Today, prowess is prized over discipline. At one time, the Church attended mostly to formation, rather than the transmission - [NiNi Youth- A new fault line](https://fazalali.com/2018/02/11/nini-youth-a-new-fault-line/) - Across India, 260m children attend school; and while primary enrolment is universal- learning is not, according to Yamini Aiyar of Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research. 99% of applicants failed the Central Teacher Eligibility Test in 2012. From 2004 to 2007, the World Bank estimates that a quarter of teachers are absent on any given day - [Shenzhen to Santiago: One Belt One Road](https://fazalali.com/2018/02/04/shenzhen-to-santiago-one-belt-one-road/) - Herodotus marvelled how roads linking Asia with Persepolis allowed cities to grow along the alluvial plains of the Oxus and Laxartes rivers. By 1492 three caravels set sail in a quest to improve trade routes and treaties with China. The most recent shipwreck in that search is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Despite its marooning, and quite - [Green Energy Policy and Food Security](https://fazalali.com/2018/01/27/green-energy-policy-and-food-security/) - Food security may have been the preserve of Ministries of Agriculture, but today decisions made in Ministries of Energy have the gravest implications for crop yields. - [Creatively Cuban](https://fazalali.com/2018/01/20/creatively-cuban/) - It was a rare moment of alliance- but one that would never be repeated, when Fulgencio Batista fell and Fidel Castro toured Washington monuments with Nixon. Returning to Cuba, Castro seized private lands, nationalised companies- including subsidiaries of U.S. corporations- and taxed American products, halving U.S. exports in just two years. For fourteen days in - [Society 5.0 The Shinto and the Shariah](https://fazalali.com/2018/01/14/society-5-0-the-shinto-and-the-shariah/) - Lascaux cave art in France illustrates how intelligence acts as an apparatus for human interaction with the world, permitting learning and adaptation to nature. Today, it is the environment that must adapt to humans. We have evolved to become the major selective mechanism on the planet, engineering even plants to be disease resistant and to - [Data Refineries and Algorithms](https://fazalali.com/2018/01/07/data-refineries-and-algorithms/) - Data are to the eAge what oil was to the last one- a driver of growth. Wells of data have created new politics, infrastructure, economics, businesses and monopolies. Digital information is mined, refined and commodified. Data are the ultimate externality; we will produce them whatever we do. However, the quality of data has changed. The - [Cognitive Capitalism](https://fazalali.com/2017/10/29/cognitive-capitalism/) - The information revolution is as transformative to our being-in-the-world as capitalism and slavery were to the industrial revolution. - [iMotions](https://fazalali.com/2017/12/30/imotions/) - The Welcome Genome Campus is a global hub of institutes and industry in genomics and computational biology and the most unlikely place to find Wayne McGregor- a choreographer, who for two decades has been exploring linkages across dance, cognition, mathematics and neuroscience. McGregor had his genome sequenced in order to turn the data into dance. - [The writing is through the wall](https://fazalali.com/2017/12/24/the-writing-is-through-the-wall/) - The unstructured proliferation of mobile phones and laptops in education settings, along with varying claims about the impacts of multipurpose technologies on academic advance, along with a paucity of policy on usage, has created a continuum of responses from industrial and emerging market countries in the clutches of economic globalisation. In the un-flat parts of - [Upstarts](https://fazalali.com/2017/12/16/upstarts/) - MIT was incorporated in 1861. Its motto is- Mens et Manus (mind and hand). The seal displays a craftsman at the anvil and a scholar with a book. The mission is to make cutting-edge ideas useful to industry. Today angel backed startups touting innovative materials and patented designs resemble technology firms from Silicon Valley. Head-hunters scouring for - [Care](https://fazalali.com/2017/12/09/care/) - Care remains an innate human responsiveness to the appeal of the other who is vulnerable. - [Is the Future Finnish](https://fazalali.com/2017/12/02/is-the-future-finnish/) - Finland now includes collaborative classroom practices with learners interacting with several teachers simultaneously during periods of phenomenon-based project studies. - [Converging at the GATE after divergence at 11+](https://fazalali.com/2017/11/26/converging-at-the-gate-after-divergence-at-11/) - BMW spent €400 million building a new factory near Leipzig. The 110-metre ‘i’ assembly line has fourteen work stations because of a new parallel assembly process and the fewer parts used in the new carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) structure of their vehicles. There is no paint shop. A traditional press shop is absent because the passenger - [Capability Grows The Economy](https://fazalali.com/2017/11/20/capability-grows-the-economy/) - Competitiveness cannot arise from natural resources but rather from cap-abilities. In NY, investment firms prosper in proximity to banks that finance them and the clients who hire them and a pool of specialized talent huddled into a knot. Equally, the Pearl-River-Delta (PRD) is a hardware-hub of innovative clusters creating value from knowledge. Accounting for 1% - [Liberté, égalité, fraternité](https://fazalali.com/2017/11/12/liberte-egalite-fraternite/) - Icons sustain an image of the minority who by dint of their special potential scale the towers of accomplishment. Confirming a natural rank of ability, they represent a rationalisation for the mundane feats of the rest of us. However, when the existence of these innately talented beings is dissected it turns out that they are - [CopyCat](https://fazalali.com/2017/11/05/copycat/) - Along the old silk roads, caravans of snow-white porcelain vases, red sea pearls, lapis lazuli, myrrh, coriander, rugs, tapestries, precious stones, religious codes, perfumery, paper, dyes, slaves, literature, fashion, ornaments, ledgers, engineering, legal systems and medicines journeyed and shrank the known-world before the eyes of the imperial courts in Chang’an. To guarantee the protected passage - [The Veil of Ignorance](https://fazalali.com/2017/10/22/the-veil-of-ignorance/) - Poverty is epistemic- it is a deprivation of capability. When an individual gets a disproportionate amount of service, or an inequality and unfairness arises when services are distributed then distributive justice is absent. Any attempt to address inequalities in the provision and outcomes of schooling can only be addressed from the “original position” of equality—that - [Immaculate Perception](https://fazalali.com/2017/10/08/immaculate-perception/) - Those who think for themselves know that that the cobwebs they spin are fragile and incomplete; but those content to be disciples and become entangled in the gossamer of others, forget that brittleness and imagine that they have landed on stable ground. Franchised ideas, which were originally intended to be only skeletal in creating a - [Creativity must be given parity of place in education](https://fazalali.com/2017/10/15/creativity-must-be-given-parity-of-place-in-education/) - That future-of-work eludes us and we accept that the curriculum we enact today is the appropriate carter into that unknown future - [Lets educate a creative class](https://fazalali.com/2017/09/24/lets-educate-a-creative-class/) - How do we future proof the workforce of Trinidad and Tobago? - [Serendipity & Thinking Long and Hard](https://fazalali.com/2017/10/01/serendipity-thinking-long-and-hard/) - Maryam Mirzakhani recently died at the age of forty (40). Her story is one of genius, grit, immigration, isolation, exile, and thinking long and hard. - [This monograph is not a blueprint](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/05/this-monograph-is-not-a-blueprint/) - This monograph, Education for Liberty, explores the release of the imagination allowing learners to use their actual minds to create their possible worlds. - [The New Aims of Education](https://fazalali.com/2017/04/07/the-new-aims-of-education/) - The New Aims of education must result in graduates who are entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators - [Finding Your Way](https://fazalali.com/2017/09/06/finding-your-way/) - It takes courage to find your way in a foreign land when the terror of being lost sets in - [Modus Co-Vivendi](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/04/modus-co-vivendi/) - Nowadays the borders of the global and the local cut across into each other. In these liminal spaces projects like Miracle Worker arise. Iconic musicians from different ethnic backgrounds with definitive vocal and musical styles and separate listening audiences, come together to perform, preserving their singularity and styles. Very much like troupes of school children today traveling - [A multi-centered world](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/04/a-multi-centered-world/) - The colonial recipe of assimilation and conversion when dealing with difference is no longer tenable in a multi-centered world. Culture must be about making things different from what they are, the future unlike the present. - [Epistemic Poverty](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/05/epistemic-poverty/) - The aim of plantation schooling was never to make the enslaved, the emancipated, or the indentured the owners of capital or the landlords of profits. Inequality remains the root of domination. The question of social inequality and redistribution, from Marx to Stiglitz (2012) and Piketty (2015), has been posed primarily in terms of opposition between - [The Ultimate Objective of The Economy](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/05/the-ultimate-objective-of-the-economy/) - Perhaps growth needs to shift away from measures in the rise in material production. Prosperity needs to be sought and built outside of the trappings of opulence and inside the non-material areas of relationships, families, neighborhoods, communities, the future, and the meaning of life. Well-being and freedom to live a decent human life need to be - [The Entrepreneurial State](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/06/the-entrepreneurial-state/) - The Entrepreneurial State must design a system of education that merges into the realities of a border-less world economy, a capabilities approach to development, the intellectual and moral imperative to change the world, and the rise of an elite cosmopolitan class of entrepreneurs and creatives - [From Old Schools to Tutoring Bars & Apps](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/04/from-old-schools-to-tutoring-bars-apps/) - In pursuit of profits, the lowest tier of some industries have been relinquished to newcomers allowing the brand leader to focus on the upper segments where not only the margins are larger, but the competition against those they once emulated, is much more eye-catching. The newcomer usually takes advantage of some technological core or disruptive - [A Diasporic Society](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/05/a-diasporic-society/) - Ours is a Diasporic society. It is an inheritance of tremendous worth. Failure to embrace it as an asset would be a catastrophe. Distance was never an obstacle in our history, and distance across the globe today can no longer limit the distribution of probabilities. We are entangled in the World Wide Web. Stimuli travel - [Collisions](https://fazalali.com/2017/09/04/collisions/) - The futures we dare to imagine will always collide with the reality of our present circumstances. This is why the recasting of education will be a series of collisions between our actual life-worlds and our possible lives. - [12 Years a Slave – The Impetus](https://fazalali.com/2016/04/07/12-years-a-slave-the-impetus/) - 12 Years a Slave the 2013 period drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir provided the impetus for this project. Steve McQueen is a film director, producer, screenwriter, and video artist. He was born on the 9th October, 1969 in London, England to Trinidadian and Grenadian parents. He is the Director of this award winning film. As much as ## Pages - [Education for Liberty](https://fazalali.com/education-for-liberty/) - Education for liberty aims to release the imagination; to allow learners to use their actual minds to create their possible worlds. - [About](https://fazalali.com/about/) - A little more about Dr. Fazal Ali - [Blog](https://fazalali.com/blog/) - [A New Ecology](https://fazalali.com/education-for-liberty/a-new-ecology/) - How do we future-proof the workforce of West Indies? - [Inequality](https://fazalali.com/education-for-liberty/inequality/) - Any attempt to address inequalities in the provision and outcomes of schooling can only be addressed from the “original position” of equality—that is, from behind a veil of ignorance. Acting from behind such a shroud, one is unable to know in advance which layer of society they may come to inhabit, what their ethnicity may - [Recommended Readings](https://fazalali.com/readings/) - Click on each item listed below for a brief summary and my take-aways from that reading: The Importance of Small Decisions, MIT Press, 2019. Customer Driven Transformation, KoganPage Press, 2018. - [The Importance of Small Decisions](https://fazalali.com/readings/the-importance-of-small-decisions/) - Reading Recommendation: The Importance of Small Decisions, MIT Press, 2019. Summary: Economic models of choice once assumed that we make rational decisions. These concepts are now out of the window as we have developed alternative ideas around notions of consumer preferences. Economist now consider whether a consumer may choose a higher-priced item to determine if - [Customer Driven Transformation](https://fazalali.com/readings/customer-driven-transformation/) - Recommended Reading: Customer Driven Transformation, KoganPage Press, 2018. Summary: How did the customer experience (CX) of Netflix, Airbnb and Uber become the brand? Reinvent your value proposition and deliver delightful services that work. Customer-Driven Transformation shows how to instil an outside-in approach to strategy moving away from a management strategy that is resource optimization-led towards being - [The Shift](https://fazalali.com/theshift/) - The aims of education - [A palimpsest of periods in West Indian education](https://fazalali.com/palimpsest/) - This palimpsest sets West Indian Education inside a frame of world events before and after Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492. Prelude: The Old World The University of Oxford. There is no clear date of foundation, but teaching commenced in some form in 1096 and developed rapidly from 1167 onwards - [Resources](https://fazalali.com/resources/) - Some useful links and resources - [Write Me](https://fazalali.com/write-me/) - Your Name (required) Your Email (required) Subject Your Message - [Art](https://fazalali.com/art/) - Original works of Art done by Dr. Fazal Ali - [Reports](https://fazalali.com/resources/reports/) - Global Competitiveness Reports 2014- 2015 http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2014-2015/ 2015-2016 http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/ 2016–2017 https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2016-2017-1 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/manufacturing/articles/global-manufacturing-competitiveness-index.html 2017 Index of Economic Freedom http://www.heritage.org/index/ Regional Education and Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy and Action Plan http://today.caricom.org/tag/regional-education-and-human-resource-development-2030-strategy-and-action-plan/ Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/futureculture/ - [Learning](https://fazalali.com/resources/learning/) - Credly (Digital Credential Strategy) https://credly.com/ Degreed- Lifelong Learning Platform https://degreed.com/ LinkedIn Learning https://learning.linkedin.com Pluralsight a technology learning platform https://www.pluralsight.com/ General Assembly: Explore innovative courses in design, marketing, technology, and data — online and on campuses worldwide https://generalassemb.ly/ The University Learning Store http://universitylearningstore.org/ MOOCS Open2Study https://www.open2study.com/ Canvas https://www.canvas.net/ FUN https://www.fun-mooc.fr/ edX https://www.edx.org/ Quipper https://www.quipper.com/ TOOLS - [What's Next](https://fazalali.com/whats-next/) - My interest in liberty and inequality started to take shape when I met Amartya Sen, who was Master of Trinity, Cambridge at the time. His work in welfare economics led me to coin the term epistemic poverty as a descriptor of a distinct type of poverty. Epistemic poverty is a poverty of minds. Epistemic poverty is - [ARTEFACTS](https://fazalali.com/artefacts/) - I have always tried to change the world- to make it better than I found it. - [Featured Articles](https://fazalali.com/resources/articles/) - Worthless degrees: graduates earn less than school-leavers https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/worthless-degrees-graduates-earn-less-than-school-leavers-qsdwb6g98 Expectations of children are too low in comprehensive schools, says Ofsted http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10117739/Expectations-of-children-are-too-low-in-comprehensive-schools-says-Ofsted.html A-level results show education gap widening http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2560123/A-level-results-show-education-gap-widening.html Schoolchildren 'being failed by comprehensive education' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8493158/Schoolchildren-being-failed-by-comprehensive-education.html Microsoft’s Jobs of the Future https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2016/08/09/human-limb-designers-and-nine-other-jobs-we-will-need-in-the-future/#sm.0000xiyf75grrdhor7r27sr5rnrxx#gSZrKFI8AUGHp4Ki.97 How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background PDF - [Science Parks](https://fazalali.com/resources/science-parks/) - Research Triangle Park http://www.rtp.org/ Fin Chi (Finland and China) http://www.finchi.cn/ North West Cambridge http://www.nwcambridge.co.uk/ Innopolis http://www.innopolis.com/en/ Zhongguancun http://en.zhongguancun.gov.cn/ Yildiz Teknopark http://www.yildizteknopark.com.tr/en/ Research Triangle Park http://www.rtp.org/ - [Videos](https://fazalali.com/resources/videos/) - Miracle Worker (Music Video) Dust My Shoulders Off (Music Video) Rudranath Capildeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRbmzTOz5VM - [Sample Page](https://fazalali.com/sample-page/) - This is an example page. 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It's different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this: Hi there! I'm a bike messenger - [Options](https://fazalali.com/options/) - November is a versatile and powerful multipurpose WordPress blog theme perfect for any personal blog or magazine. With over 150 styling options at your fingertips, November makes customizing your blog and changing colors, fonts, and most elements a breeze. - [Contact](https://fazalali.com/contact/) - This is an example page. It's different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this: Hi there! I'm a bike messenger ## Galleries - [Art](https://fazalali.com/bwg_gallery/art/) - You have been sent Above us only sky The darkness of each endless fall We move about in the world It is not too late The Inner light of all things Be the ground Begin again and again Make big shadows You are the sun Hardly sense in it Some how we survive the fall ## Albums - [Paintings](https://fazalali.com/bwg_album/paintings/) - No results found. ## Gallery Share - [Image](https://fazalali.com/bwg_share/image/) ## Episode - [EPISODE TWO - PROLEGOMENON](https://fazalali.com/podcast/episode-two-prolegomenon/) - Education for Liberty A Monograph by Fazal Ali EPISODE TWO Prolegomenon - [EPISODE ONE - PREFACE](https://fazalali.com/podcast/episode-one-preface/) - Education for Liberty A Monograph by Fazal Ali EPISODE ONE Preface ## Categories - [Uncategorized](https://fazalali.com/category/uncategorized/) - [Lifestyle](https://fazalali.com/category/lifestyle/) - [Education](https://fazalali.com/category/education/) - 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