The Download: AI in Africa, and reporting in the age of Trump

It’s straightforward to persuade ourselves that we now stay in a dematerialized ethereal world, dominated by digital startups, synthetic intelligence, and monetary companies.

But there’s little proof that we’ve decoupled our economic system from its churning starvation for sources. We’re nonetheless reliant on the merchandise of geological processes like coal and quartz, a mineral that’s a wealthy supply of the silicon used to construct laptop chips, to energy our world.

Three latest books goal to reconnect readers with the bodily actuality that underpins the worldwide economic system. Each fills in darkish secrets and techniques concerning the locations, processes, and lived realities that make the economic system tick, and divulges simply how tragic a toll the supplies we depend on take for people and the surroundings. Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford

We are able to nonetheless have good issues

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