Author: Taster

As cOAlition S consults on the future of community based scholarly publishing – it is time for social sciences and humanities to have their say

Reflecting on the open consultation into the future of community based scholarly publishing being run by cOAlition S, Niamh Tumelty outlines issues for the social sciences and humanities and invites readers to make their own contribution to the consult…

Who is the better forecaster: humans or generative AI?

The ability to forecast and predict future events with a degree of accuracy is central to many professional occupations. Utilising a prediction competition between human and AI forecasters, Philipp Schoenegger and Peter S. Park, assess their relative a…

Get Happier – podcasting made simple

Discussing the launch of his new podcast series ‘Get Happier’, Paul Dolan argues for the underrated power of checklists and mnemonics and shows how they can be applied through the medium of podcasting. I’ve just launched a new podcast mini-series calle…

Can McDonalds tell us anything about the value of the social sciences?

Taking a sideways look at George Ritzer’s famous McDonaldization thesis, Titus Alexander argues that rather than being an iron cage, social scientists have much to gain from treating such institutions as real time experiments and social models. In his …

Using AI for social benefit – WeNet and community focused social media

The internet has proven to be a successful mechanism at finding social and cultural commonalities across space and time, but what would an internet based on highlighting diversity look like and what social dynamics would this create? Reporting findings…

The Political Lives of Information – review

In The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India, Janaki Srinivasan analyses the history of the idea of “information” and its political implications for poverty alleviation through three case studies in Indi…

Social simulations can teach the tacit dimensions of effective policy advice

Drawing on his ethnographic study of government science advisers, Noam Obermeister argues that much of their work involves learning by doing and that by creating realistic social simulations this expertise can be developed in the classroom. Transformat…