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Rather than freeing us, digital technology is enslaving us by collecting personal information and influencing our online behaviour.

With big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced.

The role of technology in influencing public behaviour is reminiscent of the manner in which behaviour was manipulated during the Cold War.

The notion of freedom and privacy is at stake in a world where artificial intelligence is capable of influencing behaviour through data gathered online.

The lack of hierarchical administration in ancient cities can be deduced by the absence of religious and regal structures such as temples and palaces.

Contrary to our assumption that urban settlements have always involved hierarchical political and administrative structures, ancient cities were not organised in this way.

The emergence of a class of administrators and ruling stratum transformed the egalitarian urban life of ancient cities to the hierarchical civic organisations of today.

We now have the evidence in support of the existence of an egalitarian urban life in some ancient cities, where political and civic organisation was far less hierarchical.

Copying an embroidery design or pattern of textile from native communities who own them is tantamount to stealing, and they need to be compensated.

Media has encouraged mass production; images are copied effortlessly without care or concern for the interests of ethnic communities.

Taking fashion ideas from any cultural group without their consent is a form of appropriation without giving due credit, compensation, and respect.

Cultural collaboration is the need of the hour. Beautiful design ideas of indigenous people need to be showcased and shared worldwide.

Unlike the alphabet, once the efficacy of the alphabetic sequence became apparent to scholars and administrators, its use became widespread.

The alphabetic order took several centuries to gain common currency because of religious beliefs and a lack of appreciation of its efficacy in the ordering of things.

The ban on the use by scholars of any form of categorisation - but the divinely ordained one - delayed the adoption of the alphabetic sequence by several centuries.

While adoption of the written alphabet was easily accomplished, it took scholars several centuries to accept the alphabetic sequence as a useful tool in their work.

All jokes target someone and one should be able to joke about anyone in the society, which is inconsistent with cancel culture.

Every joke needs a victim and one needs to include people from lower down the society and not just the upper class.

Victims of jokes must not only be politicians and royalty, but also arrogant people from lower classes should be mentioned by comedians.

Cancel culture does not understand the role and duty of comedians, which is to deride and mock everyone.

Visual speech mismatched with auditory speech can result in the perception of an entirely different message: this illusion is known as the McGurk effect.

When the quality of auditory information is poor, the visual information wins over the auditory information.

The McGurk effect which is a demonstration of multisensory integration has been replicated many times.

When the auditory speech signal does not match the visual speech movements, the acoustic speech signal is confusing and integration of the two is imperfect.

Peacekeeping duties would be more effectively performed by local residents given their better understanding, knowledge and rapport with their own communities.

The environment in poor countries has tended to make foreign peacekeeping forces live in enclaves, but it is time to change this scenario.

Extravagant lifestyles and an aloof attitude among the foreigners working as peacekeepers in poor countries have justifiably made them the target of local anger.

Peacekeeping forces in foreign countries have tended to be aloof for valid reasons but would be more effective if they worked more closely with local communities.

Competition has driven emerging economies, once suppliers of cheap labour, to become innovators of business models that have enabled them to move up the value chain and go global.

Innovations in production and distribution are helping emerging economies compete with countries to which they once supplied cheap labour.

Developing countries are being forced to invent new business models which challenge the old business models, so they can remain competitive domestically.

Production and distribution models are going through rapid innovations worldwide as developed countries are being challenged by their earlier suppliers from the developing world.

One of the advantages of digital preprints of research is they hasten the dissemination process, but these are not accepted by most scientific communities.

Compared to biologists, physicists are less conservative in their acceptance of digital pre-publication of research papers, which allows for faster dissemination of knowledge.

While digital publication of research is gaining popularity in many scientific disciplines, almost all peer-reviewed journals are reluctant to accept papers that have been published before.

Preprints of research are frowned on by some scientific fields as they do not undergo a rigourous reviewing process but are accepted among biologists as a quick way to disseminate information.

The obsession with original thought, how it can be promoted and researched, has made it impossible for people and organizations to define the concept anymore.

The industry that has built up around researching what comprises and encourages creativity has destroyed the creative process itself.

Creativity has proliferated to the extent that is no longer a stable process, and its mutating identity has stifled the creative process.

The value assigned to creativity today has assumed such proportions that the concept itself has lost its real meaning and this is hampering the engendering of real creativity.