1. We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. The RethinkX report on "the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption of agriculture in history" is here. (via The Guardian, RethinkX.com)
2. We're at the beginning of the end of the open internet era. At some point in the next decade, the Chinese government, with the support of Russia and other authoritarian regimes, will move forward with plans to establish a separate root system for their share of the internet. When the split happens, we will mark it as the end of the global internet era. When the history of that event is written, we will identify a series of seminal events in 2019 that were harbingers of what was to come. Read the whole thing. (via cfr.org)
3. Assets managed by global index funds have smashed through the $10 trillion level, buoyed by rising markets and an investor exodus from pricier, actively managed funds that often struggle to beat their benchmarks. Cheaper, passive investment funds, which merely try to match an underlying index, were invented in the 1970s but took a long time in gaining traction, as asset managers were largely skeptical that anyone would accept the market’s average return. (via Financial Times)
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