In a time of polycrisis, how do we solve for stability? From reallocating IMF special drawing rights to managing domestic balance sheets, one thing is for certain: “Finance is largely the biggest problem.” Writes Barbadian Climate Finance Policy Avinash Persaud. What is the way out?
Despite my vehement objection to this provocative question, asking whether terrorism is art may peel back the layers for us and illuminate the deeply troubling phenomenon. By understanding it as a media phenomenon, we may find a way to stamp it out.
Continuing on his exploration of surveillance technologies and their implications, Lim Ghee Yang presents a breakdown of the insidious link between plastic surgery and the devices and applications we use in our everyday lives. Should we be wary of how the media can affect the perception of the self? Technology maverick Balaji S. Srinivasan put it best: “If code scripts machines, media scripts human beings”.
What good may more surveillance do? Is data useful? The lack of privacy and build-up of the planetary epidermis could be a worthwhile trade-off to stave off an existential threat—the climate crisis.
Morphing into and from different forms, legibility is a force of nature that has flown under the radar for most of human history. What is legibility? Has its consequences brought out more bad than good? From the Enlightenment to High Modernism to Dataism, I explore the harm that this decoding and recoding force inflicts on the human condition.
Is it bad to forget culture? Is there a point to endlessly accumulate or remember cultural information? Is there more to forgetting that we are missing out on? The implications for cultural erasure and forgetting are damning. On an international stage, however, perhaps there could be generative and restorative value in forgetting.
Alexey Navalny has drummed up support from a sizable amount of Russians and has recently been crowned a media darling of the Global North. Some of his actions have, however, been the subject of scrutiny and controversy. Do such claims hold water? Is such adoration and support justified?
As China and the United States grapple for hegemony and duke it out on the world stage by means of economic might and soft power, who will eventually emerge as the winner? What then, is the way forward?
Are protest-resignations meaningful? From Mahathir to Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom, across the globe, this political move has seen widespread usage with mostly dismal results. Why do politicians continue to do this? Are there instances where this can work? How so?
The IAS Gazette is a news site run by undergraduates from the Singapore Institute of Management’s International Affairs Society (IAS). Founded in 2018, it traces its roots to The Capital, a now defunct bimonthly magazine previously under the IAS.
