Bassam Salem
The human mind, and its nervous system, are staggeringly impressive. For those of us with typical sensory access, this framework is familiar: 1. Sight 2. Smell 3. Hearing 4. Touch 5. Taste But I only recently came to appreciate that neuroscience recognizes at least five more: 1. Proprioception – the awareness of body position and […]
Immigration has a curious history. For the vast majority of human history over hundreds of thousands of years, our identity was “hyper-local”, defined by our family units and thus our tribes. Geographic location was much less relevant as we roamed and migrated in search of natural resources and protection from seasonal weather and predators. But […]
In the past year, many of us have come to realize the profound impact that advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) may have on technology and likely on society as a whole. Yet, what might still be underappreciated is the significant influence such breakthroughs could have on our comprehension of the fundamental nature of humanity, articulated […]
It’s our first winter in rural Summit County, Utah. I’m certainly used to the scenes of snow after spending the last quarter of a century living in Park City. But I’m not used to the serene but rustic sights, sounds, and scents unique to the mountain-valley countrysides of Summit County. The setting was was so […]
While I’m not an economist by training, I’ve grown fond of contemplating and simplifying complex economic concepts so as they make sense to me. As I consider how to understand the scale of our economy (or of any economy, for that matter), I’ve realized that the answer is the product of three simple variables: working-age […]
I’m nearly 50 years old. Some people live 100 years or more. With that in mind, I contend that so-called “history” is a lot more recent than we may have realized as students, especially for a very young country such as the United States. • Only 244 years ago, until Congress voted to declare independence […]
In order to begin formulating plans for a hopeful return to normalcy, I realized it was important for me to understand how all of the measures we’ve all become accustomed to discussing related to one another: physical distancing, PPE, antibody testing, herd immunity, and so on. This short video is my attempt at explaining all of these concepts to myself as a layperson. Think of it as Epidemiology for Dummies :-).
How often has the majority been wrong? Let’s look at what the majority of people accepted ~50, ~100, and ~150 years ago that now sound staggeringly shameful. It wasn’t much beyond 50 years ago that a majority still believed it was OK to discriminate against people based on their race, religion, or country of origin […]
The world has changed dramatically over the past decade: consumer-to-consumer engagement has gone from voice phone calls to text and instant messaging. However, business have lagged behind rather embarrassingly: business-to-business and business-to-consumer engagement are still primarily based on voice and e-mail. It’s time for businesses to adopt real-time experience (RTX) as a philosophy when engaging their […]
It strikes me that, when looking at your social network, a surprising reality emerges: a very small minority of people in the network are responsible for the network’s overall success and value. This is clearly a case of “more is not necessarily better.” Below are five (four of which are actually part of your social network) segments […]