Rohit Bhargava's Blog

Math Skills Are Plummeting. Can Testing Reverse the Trend?

Across the US, there are students bound for college who are below a middle school level with basic math skills. For years, the criticism of advanced math was its lack of practical application. When would any normal person ever actually use calculus? The combination of increasingly lax school standards and a criticism of standardized tests may have created a void where basic math proficiency is rapidly disappeared. Add to this the growing ubiquity of AI tools offering the chance for students to e...

Why Young People Have Nostalgia for a Time Before They Were Born

Here’s an oxymoron for you: people are using AI generated images to evoke the nostalgia of the 90s—the last human decade without ubiquitous technology. This idea fits into the growing sense that 1997 may have been the year that culture peaked. The growing appreciation for everything retro is driving an aftermarket boom in the value of nostalgic products from the nineties. It’s also leading people to seek out more retro experiences where they can live and interact in a way reminiscent of a “simpl...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook by Martin Raymond

As the end of the year nears, I’m thinking about trends and big picture ideas from the year. Though I no longer produce my annual trend report that I was doing for a decade between 2010 and 2020, the methods of trend curation continue to be highly useful for me as I think about big ideas to share with you through this newsletter. If you have any sort of ambition to do some trend curation or foresight work for yourself, this week’s featured book is probably the best handbook that I’ve seen to tea...

How AI Is Helping Reduce Accents, But Could Do Much More

Thanks to AI there are a number of new services that are designed to help language learners learn a new dialect and reduce their accents too. A platform called Daily Clips uses clips from movies to help users practice their English. Another called Accent No More is an “AI-powered pronunciation coach“ that will listen to you speaking and provide you with instant feedback to improve your pronunciation. It works by “combining audio examples, motivational quotes, and speech pattern recognition.”

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The Truth About Toxic Words and Why Word Policing Doesn’t Work

In closed meetings leading up to the G20 Summit happening in South Africa this weekend, early reports note that in addition to the Trump administration choosing to boycott the event, U.S. officials are stalling talks and obstructing agreements because they “objected to the use of terms like ‘equity’ and ‘universal health care.'” Earlier this year, the NY Times also published a list of “words that are disappearing in the new Trump administration.” This has included many banned words in relation t...

Does the World Still Need Car Keys? I Hope the Answer is Yes.

Writing about innovations that I hope die quickly isn’t usually my style … except for today. A recent piece in WIRED magazine asks whether we should still be carrying around car keys anymore. With many cars offering remote unlock services or pairing with your phone, the car key has become optional and may soon disappear. I hope it doesn’t and apparently, I’m not alone. There is a lot of nostalgia associated with car keys, as well as some intriguing behavioral psychology behind why people like it...

The Sad Shutdown of Teen Vogue

I wasn’t supposed to be a fan of this magazine. Yet for the last decade, I would talk about it on stage, subscribe to their stories and routinely turn to their articles as a chance for me to understand a culture other than my own. Teen Vogue helped keep my thinking non-obvious. Now they are being shut down and folded back into the larger Vogue magazine family, and editor-in-chief Versha Sharma (who led the rise of the media platform) has exited the company:

Sharma’s leadership had helped rede...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu

Tim Wu is exactly the voice that we need right now to help imagine what the positive version of our technological future could be. Known widely for his other groundbreaking books including The Attention Merchants and The Master Switch, this newly released book argues that we need to find more positive ways to prevent platform power from rising unchecked and becoming centralized. Rather than getting frustrated by the lack of progress, Wu lays out a more hopeful future along with a roadmap for how...

Why Kim Kardashian Deserves Something She Never Gets: Respect

Some people are saying that Kim Kardashian just had the “most terrible week ever,” but I don’t agree. The facts probably aren’t on my side. Her new legal drama is currently getting a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. After years of law school, she failed the California bar exam. Her mom’s birthday party was shut down by cops. And apparently she consulted multiple psychics who all told her she would indeed become a lawyer. On the surface, that does seem like a bad week, but here’s another take on it …

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Insights about the Future of Writing from Industry Professionals …

At the annual Gathering of the Ghosts event in NY, AI was a hot topic as sessions focused on the business of writing and the future of the profession. I was lucky to join the conversation to offer my thoughts as both a writer and as a publisher. Here are some of my takeaways from the two-day conference:

Writers Should Be Using AI (But Not for Writing) – This may seem obvious, but the widely held opinion among most was that AI is a great tool for organizing content, doing preliminary research...