They Say / I Blog

“The people we want to become”: Jorge Salles Diaz on elite universities

Many of the students at top-ranked universities have worked enormously hard to get there. They know that a degree from such an institution will pay off in “the market.” Such an emphasis, however, has its own costs and consequences. Vanderbilt University student Jorge Salles Diaz takes a step back and poses some larger questions in this November 2017 essay in the student newspaper Vanderbilt Hustler.

Read it here: Salles Diaz, “Let’s be honest about why we’re here”

 

“Mistrust and friction”: Nicholas Carr on today’s global village

You’ve probably been hearing the phrase “global village” for your whole life, and the phrase is usually associated with warm and fuzzy feelings about the interconnectedness of all people and the universality of the human condition. The reality, however, as we’ve been seeing recently, is not especially warm and very far from fuzzy. What’s gone wrong here? Technology observer and popular author Nicholas Carr addresses the topic in this April 2017 Boston Globe essay. (If you are using the Readings version of the book, you may also want to read another of Carr’s essays in Chapter 17 of your text.)

Read it here: Carr, “How tech created a global village—and put us at each other’s throats”