What Elon Musk gets right about ESG—and what he gets very, very wrong

Last week, Musk railed on Twitter against ESG (“Environmental, Social, and Governance”: non-financial factors increasingly being considered by socially conscious investors) for Tesla being dropped from the popular S&P Global ESG index—while ExxonMobil remained. On its surface, understandable how many would be confused by that turn of events, including the increasingly un-nuanced billionaire troll.

Read More
Caleb Gardner
Data and the certainty deception

The problem with data is that it often gets interpreted as infallible, providing a false sense of comfort about our decision making. It’s why so many companies have made increasing investments in data analytics in the past decade.

But data is not insight—at least, not by itself.

Read More
Caleb Gardner
Digital war and moral imagination

The war in Ukraine is providing us with a myriad of case studies about the application of digital tools in ways they weren’t necessarily designed for: from Google Maps providing real-time information about Russian troop movement, to passionate pleas on Twitter by the Ukrainian president, to Facebook blocking Russian state media. It’s been surreal watching a 20th-century style war play out on 21st-century media.

Read More