New Phaistos

 The paper mills are on fire; but not our minds Always, questions about the purpose of social institutions are hard to answer and differ wildly based on the individual's point of view. Specifically for education, the answers one might get usually are a variation of performing cutting edge research and/or educating a new generation of free thinkers. However, evaluating how good a university is at performing research or educating thinkers is notoriously hard. The most used metric by far is the number of publications, especially in prestigious journals, that a university's staff produces. At first glance, this makes absolute sense: submitting papers is all about documenting interesting research.that one has done and the process of getting published is difficult and based on the evaluation of top scientists in the associated field. Furthermore, the metric should also somehow link to the educational aspect of a university, since phd students are typically the ones doing the bulk of ...

 Society is becoming less social It's a fact all over the post-industrialized world: we are facing a loneliness epidemic. People are living more by themselves, having less intimate encounters, marry later if at all, have less friends and stay more at home than they used to. Our societies have simply changed too much. As individualism continues to rise, we’re seeing an undeniable shift in how humans connect—or fail to connect—with each other. A key driver of this isolation is the growing focus on individualism. Younger generations, raised in a world that prizes self-sufficiency and personal achievement, often find themselves prioritizing personal goals over social relationships. In this hyper-individualized culture, where personal success is seen as the ultimate marker of worth, many feel pressured to focus inward, building their careers, managing finances, or cultivating personal brands. As a result, deep relationships and community bonds tend to fall by the wayside, deemed less ur...

Sustainability, but within the same "system" Technology projects involving some kind of sustainability goal are at this point (thankfully) very common. Collectively our society and its elites have somewhat understood the lurking danger and decided to act. So, once again science is called to do one more miracle and help us out of this situation. However, the common denominator of most such projects is a silent agreement that the system to its very core should not change. Yes microplastics are never fully dissolved in nature and end up poisoning our earth and water to the point of declining fertility rates, but plastic is just too good - maybe with a little bit more recycling we would alleviate the problem just fine! Or yes, climate change is real but maybe with some limits to emissions, greener vehicles, filters and some carbon capture we can just limit the temperature rise to (only?!) 1.5 degrees! As my favourite philosopher says, its like we want beer, but no alcohol - hence...

What does it mean to be a leader? Cultural awareness is paramount to effective leadership. One must appreciate and understand where their team members come from. That should include all types of cultures from national and regional cultures, to profession, age, gender, organization etc. Failure to take culture into account means ineffective leadership and often rejection! I find that the importance of knowing who your team is, is perfectly illustrated by a short story we were taught in high school literature in Greece. According to my high school memories, the story takes place in post revolution Greece. The country had just come into existence after overthrowing the Ottoman yoke and desperately needed capable people to fill important state posts.  Capable statesmen where of course hard to find in Greece, but the Greek diaspora was there to answer the call! Our protagonist is such a man: a member of the diaspora that has had a successful career in Europe and comes packaged with all ...