GEORGE FLOYD, FROM ‘I WANT TO TOUCH THE WORLD’ TO ‘I CAN’T BREATHE’

HOUSTON — It was the last day of 11th grade at Jack Yates High School in Houston, nearly three decades ago. A group of close friends, on their way home, were contemplating what senior year and beyond would bring. They were black teenagers on the precipice of manhood. What, they asked one another, did they want to do with their lives?

“George turned to me and said, ‘I want to touch the world, ’” said Jonathan Veal,45, recalling the aspiration of one of the young men — a tall, gregarious star athlete named George Floyd whom he had met in the school cafeteria on the first day of sixth grade. To their 17-year-old minds, touching the world maybe meant the N.B.A. or the N.F.L.

“It was one of the first moments I remembered after learning what happened to him, ” Mr. Veal said. “He could not have imagined that this is the tragic way people would know his name.”

The world now knows George Perry Floyd Jr. through his final harrowing moments, as he begged for air, his face wedged for nearly nine minutes between a city street and a police officer’s knee.

From: www.tv411org/reading

Which was a more important innovation: indoor plumbing, jet air travel or mobile phones?

We’re in the golden age of innovation, an era in which digital technology is transforming the underpinnings of human existence. Or so a techno-optimist might argue.

We’re in a depressing era in which innovation has slowed and living standards are barely rising. That’s what some skeptical economists believe.

The truth is, this isn’t a debate that can be settled objectively. Which was a more important innovation: indoor plumbing, jet air travel or mobile phones? You could argue for any of them, and data can tell plenty of different stories depending on how you look at it. Productivity statistics or information on inflation-adjusted incomes is helpful, but can’t really tell you whether the advent of air-conditioning or the Internet did more to improve humanity’s quality of life. […]

(Source: Neil Irwin, at “The NY Times”. Retrieved at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/upshot/what-was-the-greatest-era-foramerican-innovation-a-brief-guided-tour.html)