The acronym Stem—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—was coined in the US in 2001. Stem quickly took root and spread beyond the US, not least because of its power as a metaphor: it makes the subjects sound foundational, central, while everything else is edging. Stem is flourishing, but it is a cause for concern that other subjects are in less good shape. Falling numbers of English graduates will soon coincide with baby boomers just hitting secondary schools, which over the next decade will need 50,000 more teachers, especially in core subjects. But besides the practical issue is the larger question of what a good life is. This week, a group led by the British Academy and including the London School of Economics and Arts Council England offered their answer: a parallel acronym, Shape—social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy. These disciplines, including everything from fine art to psychology to economics, help us govern ourselves, understand how we have developed over time and argue for doing it all better. The argument for Shape can, if necessary, be economic: last year the arts and culture sector overtook agriculture in terms of its contribution, at ￡10.8bn a year. The humanities' supposed lack of obvious vocational pathways is in fact a strength in an economy where flexibility and entrepreneurship are prized, while the perception of lower employability is not evidenced by facts—88% of Shape graduates were employed in 2017 (compared with 89% for Stem). Shape subjects will also be central to answering the most urgent questions we face. Science, for instance, is foundational to comprehending the climate emergency, but will not effect the political and behavioural changes needed to achieve net zero, nor will it necessarily predict or mould the future. Eric Hobsbawm may have found it confusing that "brilliant fashion designers ... sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors"; the fact remains they sometimes can. The stem of a plant is, after all, sustained and not just decorated by its leaves. We should not be shy to argue for confidence and curiosity, joy and openness as good in themselves. Along with Stem, Shape subjects have the potential to open up the full extent of our humanity, to help shape a well-rounded, sympathetic and resilient body politic. Fighting for equal weighting for these disciplines is not only good but also necessary.

Amid the Covid-19 crisis, a huge range of human activities have moved online far more smoothly than almost anyone expected. Yet as they migrate to the virtual world, many people are discovering that they do not have the right documents to prove their identity. In countries without a system of secure digital identities, the closure of bricks-and-mortar government offices and the shift of public services online have caused chaos. Divorces and adoptions have run into a virtual brick wall. Italy's system for making emergency payments crashed and then demanded paperwork that applicants could not obtain because government offices were shut. Washington State paid $650m in unemployment insurance to fraudsters who made applications using stolen identities. No such catastrophe occurred in Estonia, a tiny state where every citizen has an electronic identity. More than just an identity card, it links every Estonian's records together. So when the government created a temporary leave system for workers affected by the Covid-19, it already knew where they worked and how to pay them. Nobody in Estonia had to join a queue on a pavement to claim benefits, as people in other places did. Other countries, such as Britain and America, have long resisted introducing a national identity system. Some fear that it would make it too easy for the government to spy on people, or would be too easy to hack, or would simply be spoiled by incompetent bureaucrats. Boris Johnson, Britain's prime minister, once vowed that if he had to carry an id card and a bossy official demanded to see it, he would "physically eat it". However, Coronavirus has strengthened the case for a digital id. It would not only make it quicker and easier to access government services remotely. It would also make track-and-trace systems more effective. If health data were linked to work data, governments could quickly spot when a cluster of Covid patients all happened to work at the same factory. Worries about privacy and security can be alleviated, although imperfectly. Estonians are broadly reassured by a data-protection law and continually updated antihacking safeguards that include two-factor authentication (身份认证). Similarly, laws can be passed to stop police from demanding to see people's id cards. In Estonia, it is a crime for anyone, including officials, to access private information without good cause.

Interruptions have always been a reality of work, as meetings, chat messages, emails, and conversations with coworkers endlessly fragment our time and thus our attention. Research across several surveys suggest that employees are interrupted every 6 to 12 minutes. Earlier research by professor Sophie Leroy has shown that our brains find it difficult to switch attention between tasks. More often than not, part of our attention stays focused on the interrupted task and does not fully switch to the interrupting demand—a term she coined attention residue. This happens because we have a fundamental need for completion that makes switching our attention quite difficult for the brain to execute; we hold on to incomplete work instead of putting it aside even when a switch of focus is necessary. Leroy proposes the "Ready-to-Resume Plan" as a way to manage interruptions, prevent attention residue, and perform at full capacity on interrupting tasks. The premise of the plan is that if we can put the brain at ease about our ability to complete the interrupted task upon return, we would be able to switch our attention more effectively. To test this idea, Leroy and her team ran a series of lab experiments. Participants started working on Task A and were interrupted to switch to another task, Task B. In the control group, participants immediately switched to the interrupting task, Task B, following the interruption. In the treatment group, the researchers asked participants to take a few minutes before switching to create a "Ready-to-Resume" plan; essentially, to take a minute to note where they were on the interrupted task, Task A, and what they wanted to do and focus on upon return. Then they switched to Task B. The researchers have found that those who engaged in the Ready-to-Resume plan were 79% more likely to choose an optimal candidate when Task B asked them to evaluate profiles for a job position, revealing better decision making when dealing with complex information. The Ready-to-Resume plan took participants less than a minute and yet it yielded significant benefits. It's shown that we don't have to passively succumb to the negative effects of inevitable interruptions. The Ready-to-Resume plan provides the brain the cognitive closure it needs to reduce attention residue so that we can be more present and perform at our full capacity. Yes, interruptions at work may be a fact of organizational life; but with the Ready-to-Resume Plan, we can mitigate their effects.

"Captology" (计算机劝导学), as the field of persuasive tech development is known, uses a variety of psychological techniques such as variable rewards and social pressure to influence behaviour online. Many tools of online persuasion are similar to what might be used in the gaming industry. Critics point out that consumers now carry a "slot machine in their pockets" in the form of their smartphones. Persuasive technologies make users spend more time online than is healthy and give up more personal information than they would otherwise. One example would be the way in which children are lured towards "free" games online and end up spending more and more on "loot boxes" of special, costly features that allow them to win more, and play longer, creating an endlessly profitable feedback loop. Then there are the dark patterns, or digital interfaces designed to push users in certain directions online, often by creating default settings that compromise privacy in ways that are advantageous for companies—and at least somewhat deceptive for users. These techniques are ubiquitous (普遍存在的) on the internet. Nearly every platform tech firm or game or app company uses them. Meanwhile, children spend more time online than ever before. The time US teens spend each day on devices has been linked with depression and abnormal brain development. Studies have found that many people—as many as 66 percent in the UK—are addicted to their devices and grow anxious when they are not connected. Given the addictive power of such technologies, it is right that regulators should begin to think of them as what they are—online nicotine. "A system-wide rethinking of technology policy and design is in order," says Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, a children's advocacy group, which is pushing for restraints on the ability of platform tech companies to use persuasive technologies in marketing to the most vulnerable consumers, namely children. Mr. Harris's group has worked with companies like Apple and Google to develop less intrusive interfaces and to design online applications that give users more control over how they consume media. Given the level of concern, companies would be wise to get ahead of the issue before regulators do.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently launched a "Better Health" campaign to combat obesity. His proposed interventions include banning junk food advertising before 9 P.M. to reduce the likelihood that children would be exposed to such ads, preventing stores from selling unhealthy snacks at entrances and checkouts, barring "buy one get one free" promotions on unhealthy foods. Critics of Johnson's anti-obesity measures rightly charge that they are incomplete because they focus on personal responsibility rather than attacking the root causes of obesity—poverty and inequality. Weight is a delicate issue, and mishandling "wars" on fat or obesity could harm, rather than improve, the physical and mental health of people with obesity. Public health initiatives must learn from the mistakes of previous campaigns that regarded people with obesity as lazy and weak-willed. In a controversial ad campaign, one Georgia poster featured four overweight children, with captions such as, "Big bones didn't make me this way. Big meals did." This type of misguided ads and anti-obesity campaigns will stress the notion that people with obesity are social and medical burden. Overweight children may be subjected to more bullying by peers if there are internet ads, posters and billboards defaming people with obesity and their alleged diet and exercise habits. To those who insist that blunt messaging is necessary to emphasize the seriousness of obesity just as anti-tobacco ads were needed to drive home the dangers of smoking, public health research has shown that not only is defaming ineffective, it can induce people with obesity to gain rather than lose, weights. Studies have found that both children and adults subjected to weight-based bullying or discrimination are more likely to seek comfort in binge-eating, to develop eating disorders and to be discouraged from exercise due to anxieties about their bodies being on display. To avoid these consequences, campaigns to reduce obesity should focus on the positive aspects of maintaining healthy diet and exercise habits. And because lower-income Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods with comparatively fewer supermarkets and green spaces, public policy interventions should also ensure access to affordable healthy foods and spaces that facilitate exercise and recreation. Such interventions side with the consensus among obesity experts that weight is the function of the interaction between genes and the environment. Finally, it is imperative that anti-obesity initiatives also include an educational component in which the public and even health care providers are informed about the effects of weight bias.