Weekend Reading, Watching and Listening Recommendations (February 5, 2021)

Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement; Technology, Patents, and Inequality; Mapping the Uncharted World; Breaking out of the Poverty Trap; Building a global, interconnected GIS network

1. Read: Work-Life Balance Is a Cycle, Not an Achievement [via HBR]

2. Read: Technology, Patents, and Inequality: An Explanation that Even Economists Can Understand: "The basic argument for patents and copyrights is straightforward. In a free market, without protections for intellectual property, there will be under-investment in research and creative activity like writing or recorded music or movies. However, the fact that a free market will under-invest in research and creative work hardly establishes that the feudal institutions of patents and copyrights are the most efficient way to support such work in the 21st century.” [by Dean Baker via CEPR]

3. Listen: My journey mapping the uncharted world: Significant pieces of the globe are literally not on the map: they're missing from the most widely used mapping platforms, like Google Street View, leaving communities neglected of vital services and humanitarian aid. In this globetrotting talk, photographer Tawanda Kanhema takes us along on his journey to map 3,000 miles of uncharted areas in Zimbabwe, Namibia and northern Canada -- and shows how we can all contribute to building a more connected world.

4. Listen: How a geospatial nervous system could help us design a better future: Jack Dangermond, a pioneer in geographic information system (GIS) technology on building a global, interconnected GIS network that reveals patterns, visualizes trends -- and could transform the way we make decisions about nearly everything.

5. Watch: Breaking out of the Poverty Trap l Prof. Abhijit Banerjee

6. Watch: The danger of a single story: Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.