Technology, Connected

In Chapter 3 of Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari examines how stories, documents and bureaucratic systems allow large societies to organise information and exercise power. Mark and Jeremy discuss the shift from oral storytelling to written records, lists and administrative systems. Stories help people create shared beliefs, while documents turn those beliefs into laws, institutions, identities and systems...

In Chapter 2 of Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari examines how stories allow humans to build trust, organise large societies and create shared realities. Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson discuss why religions, nations, corporations, currencies and political systems depend on collective belief. These institutions aren’t imaginary in the sense of being unimportant. They become powerful because enough peop...

In the opening episode of the Thinking on Paper Book Club, Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson begin reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus and examine its central question: what is information, and how has it shaped human history? The discussion moves from ancient myths and religious stories to political institutions, mass media and artificial intelligence. Harari argues that human societies are built...

Leonard Tang, founder and CEO of Haize Labs, joins Thinking on Paper to explain how AI models are tested for safety, reliability and predictable behaviour. Systems such as ChatGPT and Claude can perform well under standard evaluations while still failing in unexpected ways when deployed in healthcare, finance, education or other high-stakes environments. Haize Labs develops testing and evaluation...

John Attanasio and Luisa Huang, founders of Toonstar, join Thinking on Paper to explain how artificial intelligence is changing animation production, audience development and storytelling. Traditional animation is expensive and slow to produce. Toonstar uses AI-assisted tools to reduce production time and costs while keeping writers, animators and performers involved in the creative process. The c...