Understanding World Culture and Values:
Who we are, how we got that way and where we are headed.

The promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies -- and what it means to be human.

The promise and peril of enhancing our minds, our bodies -- and what it means to be human.

The world is going through the biggest change in 150 years in how it builds cities.

The world is going through the biggest change in 150 years in how it builds cities.

From the Caribbean to the Arctic, North America behaves like nine distinct civilizations without regard to borders.

From the Caribbean to the Arctic, North America behaves like nine distinct civilizations without regard to borders.

Latest New Stuff

Radical Evolution

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Paranoid Cyborgs

Okay, that's not a very kind thing to say about our former vice president. After all, even paranoids have real enemies. But it turns out that Dick Cheney -- who has had a lot of technology loaded into his chest to keep him alive -- had his implanted defibrillator's wireless capability disabled lest a terrorist hack it and send him a fatal jolt. Joel wrote once in The Washington Post about how cyborg technology may affect the recipient's psychology and personality, and it included some speculation about Cheney.

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Edge City

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Luxury Urban Apartment Bubble About to Burst?

Joel Kotkin argues that all the high-rise luxury apartment growth in downtowns like New York, the Bay Area and Miami are built on a myth -- that retiring American seniors are heading there.

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Nine Nations

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Book of the Week' After All These Years

Canada's national newspaper The National Post ran a four-part series on its "non-fiction book of the week" the first week of July 2017. And -- wait for it -- yup, it was "Nine Nations."

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