Not only is the internet making you smarter - in fact, it is the only thing capable of saving our society. Thus argues David Eagleman in a speech given to the Long Now foundation in April (thanks to Sandboxer Eddie Harran for the link!). The internet can help the spread of diseases by enabling telepresence and telemedicine, prevent the loss of knowledge by digitizing everything, and allow more people to collectively work on a problem. I don't agree with all of Eagleman's ideas on how the internet is saving us - his case that the internet can prevent tyranny is especially weak - but the speech is very good food for thought, and I recommend reading through the whole PDF transcript, not just the short summary.

In a brilliant article that was published already 5 years ago, but that I have just discovered* and read, Malcolm Gladwell explores the logic of the admission processes at Ivy League universities. Contrary to other elite universities, Ivy League schools don't just select the best students from High Schools, but instead have a heavy emphasis on the "character" of applicants. Gladwell compares the Ivies - who had started to change their admissions policy in the 1920ies in order to prevent too many jews from entering - as smart managers of what essentially are luxury brands:

"The endless battle over admissions in the United States proceeds on the assumption that some great moral principle is at stake in the matter of whom schools like Harvard choose to let in—that those who are denied admission by the whims of the admissions office have somehow been harmed. [...] Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite —and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience."