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Technology
Posted by: Philippa Nicole Barr | Friday, May 31, 2013 - 08:53
The ease of sharing information on the internet challenges 20th century law such as the 2011 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement signed by more than 32 countries including the US. Many internet users across the world defy these regulations with the sharing and exploitation of unpaid content. They oppose product developers, artists and publishing houses interested in controlling the distribution of content through legal or technical mechanisms. To enforce a balance between regulation and use, Digital Rights Management (DRM) attempts to make digital copying illegal, technically impossible, or...
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Posted by: Sara Mosavi | Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 15:51
In the days when a functional phone was all we had, getting from A to B could be quite a burdensome task. It might have involved printing a map, checking transport routes before leaving the house, and having to rely on the kindness of strangers for directions. Now my Android smartphone has figured out where I live, where I work and where my friends live. Depending on the time of day and my location, it will give me an ETA to where I'm likely to travel. A simple search for a new drinking hole on my laptop will tell my phone to have travel instructions at the ready. In practice this means...
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Posted by: Emily Evans | Monday, March 4, 2013 - 11:27
When the Grimm brothers collected fairy tales to publish in their Children’s and Household Tales, they recorded stories that had evolved over generations of tweaks, improvements and polishing by skilled story-tellers. Tales improve when tellers learn what causes a desired reaction in their audience. By re-telling the same story in slightly different ways and observing listeners’ body language, narrators learn which details create suspense or which additions get a laugh.As neuroscience improves it may help turn the art of improving a story into a science. Functional magnetic resonance imaging...
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Posted by: Denis McCauley | Friday, January 18, 2013 - 12:04
When a computer diagnoses a patient or prescribes a treatment, who’s to blame if the diagnosis or treatment proves incorrect? The scenario of computer-generated diagnosis in health care is not the distant future. IBM Watson, the supercomputer which famously defeated the all-time champions of the American quiz show Jeopardy a couple of years back, is part of pilot programmes under way at a handful of hospitals, including the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The computer’s ability to quickly search reams of medical journal articles and related, voluminous literature and other data,...
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Posted by: Tom Standage | Friday, January 11, 2013 - 14:32
As the editor of Technology Quarterly it’s my job to keep up with promising new technologies, and to help me do that I maintain a list of emerging technologies that are worth watching. Items are added to the list if I think they are worth keeping an eye on, and removed if they either become widely accepted, or fail to deliver on their promise. Enterprise social networking was on my list for some time, for example, but I removed it last year because I felt it no longer counted as an emerging technology. At last year’s Technology Frontiers Summit I shared my list with the audience.In my top 10...
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Posted by: Denis McCauley | Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 11:15
When it comes to technology drivers of competitiveness, all things mobile are the centre of gravity in businesses today. Rank and file employees, rather than senior management, are the reason for this. The more that we use our smartphones and tablets for everyday work activities, and the more untethered we become from our desktops, the more interested we are becoming in enabling truly efficient mobile working. And because we are also someone else's customers, we understand the need for companies to make it easier to engage with us. In many organisations, employees from across all functions –...
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Posted by: Peter Cochrane | Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - 15:11
The highly interconnected world of the internet has brought an abundance of data at our fingertips, and yet managers still engage in practices that originated in a Victorian age. Business acumen, experience, intuition, and knee-jerk reactions remain the premier decision making tools in most companies despite the digital wisdom and computing power readily to hand. Such crudity may have worked in a far slower and relatively disconnected world, but it is now dangerous.The simple linear models of the past presented us with two, three or four significant variables but making decisions based on a...
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Posted by: Denis McCauley | Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - 16:02
Yesterday's launch of the UK's first 4G mobile service (by Everything Everywhere, the venture formed by T-Mobile and Orange) marks a milestone on Britain's road to its broadband future. High-speed fibre networks are already being rolled out, with 8% of households having superfast (30Mbps or above) connections as of May 2012. This shift from the broadband we know to speeds that are three or more times higher is being heavily pushed by the British government. Expectations in government and industry circles indeed run high that this upgrade will help to kick-start economic growth, bolster...
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Posted by: The Big Ideas P... | Friday, October 26, 2012 - 16:15
In this Big Ideas Project for the Technology community, Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Digital and Consumer Engagement at Kraft Foods explains the importance of adapting as a business.
Filmed at Technology Frontiers which took place on March 22nd - 23rd 2012 in London.
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Bonin Bough oversees all of Kraft Foods' digital and consumer engagement activities. Prior to joining Kraft, Bonin spent three and a half years at PepsiCo where he...
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Posted by: Emily Evans | Friday, October 19, 2012 - 14:53
Earlier this week I posted a video of Hugh Herr at this year’s Technology Frontiers Summit. This is another great talk from the event, from Aleks Krotoski. She is a social psychologist so she is interested in how individuals are affected by their social environment. She talks about the difficulties of understanding how people influence each other, reminding the audience that while social media help map the connections between us, they can't tell us much about the rich complexity of these connections. A map of who you are 'friends' with on facebook just shows who you know. Not all friendships...
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All Technology posts
Innovation, copyright and profitability online
Posted by: Philippa Nicole Barr | Friday, May 31, 2013 - 08:53
Is giving up privacy a fair price to pay for online services?
Posted by: Sara Mosavi | Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 15:51
The impact of technological innovation on stories
Posted by: Emily Evans | Monday, March 4, 2013 - 11:27
When technology is only as good as the humans operating it
Posted by: Denis McCauley | Friday, January 18, 2013 - 12:04
Posted by: Tom Standage | Friday, January 11, 2013 - 14:32
Perceptions of IT's openness to new ideas are changing
Posted by: Denis McCauley | Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 11:15
Companies’ decision making tools need to embrace the digital era, argues Peter Cochrane, chairman and chief executive at Cochrane Associates.
Posted by: Peter Cochrane | Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - 15:11
Some caution is in order about the medium-term economic impact
Posted by: Denis McCauley | Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - 16:02
