By Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo Sometimes in life we become so accustomed to the absurd nature of certain things that we fail to recognize them as absurd. Nowhere are these absurdities more prevalent than in how we manage to govern ourselves with a system designed for a very different reality some 200 years ago. In my own […]
Continue readingDigital Democracy Series: Can ubiquitous connectivity make political parties obsolete?
If I think ahead into what I want the world to look like in 30 years, one of my hopes is that connectivity will be so ubiquitous that we no longer need political parties to act as the primary means through which we practice democracy. I say ‘practice’ democracy because democracy is, like the act of […]
Continue readingEnabling Economies of Sharing Through Social Media
One of the reasons why I get excited about social media and ubiquitous connectivity is because of the potential to develop economies of sharing. Whether you realize it or not you already contribute to economies of sharing: for example, what finances many of the websites you visit is your ability to share information about yourself with advertisers […]
Continue readingTaking Steps Towards Digital Democracy
The single most difficult concept for many people to grasp when discussing the possibilities of the future is the idea that as our innovations evolve so too does the context that enables those innovations. For example, when Google made public its self-driving car a lot of people scoffed at the idea that such a machine-driven […]
Continue readingRe-thinking Public Post-Secondary Education Funding in Quebec and Canada
The recent students’ movement in Quebec formed in response to the provincial government’s plan to raise tuition fees has sparked a much needed debate on how we should fund post-secondary education. Given that my own opinion on the matter has shifted substantially since I graduated almost ten years ago, I’d like to add my voice […]
Continue readingDefining the next generation of Latin American Leadership
Hi Everyone, I wrote a blog-post for the World Economic Forum Blog discussing new definitions of leadership in the digital age. Please check it out here: http://forumblog.org/2012/04/defining-the-next-generation-of-latin-american-leadership/
Continue readingA Letter from Capitalist Me to Socialist Me
Dear Me from Ten Years Ago, Hey Me, it’s Matthew, from the future. 10 years in fact. Listen: in the event that the space time continuum allows for us to live in parallel, I wanted to drop you a line in the hope that I might be able to help you deal with the anxiety […]
Continue readingThe Internet/Globalization is Spreading Western Values
I should start by saying that this blog post represents the initial stages of a thought process that is far from complete and I’m not quite happy with my ability to clearly explain myself yet. My hope therefore is that the reader will consider the ideas contained herein as a proposal for a discussion as […]
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