There certainly is a lot of interest in the IoT (personal devices) and M2M (industrial applications) market. But what we are seeing is only what is happening on the surface. Most of the IoT and M2M activities are taking place unseen. For example, all new electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes, game consoles) are now IoT devices. Wearable technology has also become a thriving part of the IoT industry, with an ever-broadening range of possible uses and devices, including smart watches, glasses, clothing items, skin patches, and even implants for health monitoring. more
A recent session of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Smart Communities Association (ASCA) masterclass on 5G, featured Dr. Ian Oppenheimer, the NSW Government's Chief Data Scientist and one of the country's most respected experts in radio technology. Ian is also the Chair of the scientific advisory board of the 6G Flagship organization, a global research organization based in Finland. This organization has just published a range of fascinating research papers on 6G. more
Every few years; some self-proclaimed academic imparts an article on the future of work, with conflicting information from various experts leaving many uncertain about its impact on jobs, skills, and wages. In less than a year, these same scholars will be writing about the "future of labor," and given the speed of innovation, by the time these articles are published, they will be made obsolete. more
While Google is as secretive about its internal processes and systems as Apple is about product development, every now and then senior people post articles on the official Google blog and offer their thoughts on the development of the web. In the latest posting, two Google engineers, Alfred Spector and Franz Och, look at how search strategies will benefit from the faster computers, greater volumes of data and better algorithms we are likely to see in the next decade, speculating that "we could train our systems to discern not only the characters or place names in a YouTube video or a book, for example, but also to recognise the plot or the symbolism." more
British economist Colin Clark (1905-1989) explained that the spendable income for the working class varied according to industry levels, i.e., the spendable income increased as they moved from the Primary industry to the Secondary from the Secondary to the Tertiary. These days when we are experiencing loss of jobs due to the cutting-edge ICT (Information and Communications Technology) of the 21st century without creating new jobs to replace them, we need to examine new economic and labor policies as we move from the Tertiary to the Quaternary industry. more
One could think that the authors of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) -- adopted in 1948 -- had the Internet in mind when they declared in Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." All human beings are entitled to certain rights, and it makes no difference if they choose to exercise them in a town square or an Internet chatroom. more
The post reconsiders a cooperative solution to cybersquatting that I proposed in 2007. I also draw on examples of success and failure of legal actions to protect intellectual property (IP) licensing. Cybersquatting has gone unabated with the new gTLDs despite the introduction of new protection instruments such as the Trademark Cleaning House (TMCH) database and the availability of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) services, as well as declarations by registries of their intentions to block unauthorized registrations. more
In the same way monarchs are proclaimed - by powerful stakeholders attending a coronation and not objecting - the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) took a mandate last week to coordinate AI Safety worldwide, with most industry leaders and relevant UN agencies were present when it did so. more
With 2019 coming to a close, we're not just saying goodbye to the past 365 days, we're also saying goodbye to an entire decade. As we bid farewell to the 2010s, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the digital decade as well as consider what the future might have in store for us all. The past ten years were a whirlwind of change, with new advances in technology exploding onto the market at a faster pace than ever before. more
India's recently published Draft National e-Commerce Policy, prepared by the Indian Commerce Ministry think-tank, can be read like the script of a four-act Bollywood drama... They were the dream couple: Princess India and Prince IT. She was full of cultural richness and diversity, with beauty, mystique and natural resources. She also a dark side. She harbored the world's largest number of impoverished people, with little infrastructure, and facing sparse economic prospects. more
Like much of how the Internet is governed, the way we detect and remove child abuse material online began as an ad hoc set of private practices. In 1996, an early online child protection society posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children (yes, such a thing really existed) to try to discourage people from posting such "erotica" on the assumption that the Internet couldn't be censored. more
When Doug Dawson wrote his article in February on Artificial Intelligence, he felt that #ai is saddled with too much hype as is its current counterpart, 5G. Certainly, there is a great deal of technology out there that deserves the hype and others that do not. After receiving a certification (Intro to AI) from IBM (while using Watson), I'm here to share that artificial intelligence, and its subsets of machine learning and deep learning definitely deserve a soundbite. more
Time has come again, another year of general elections in Brazil. Some 30,000 candidates are running for Executive and Legislative seats: 1 President, 27 State Governors, 27 Federal Senators, 513 Federal Deputies, 1059 State Deputies, 24 District Deputies to govern 212+ million people and one of the largest economies in the world. For a few lucky industries, success and failure do not correlate with who is in power; for others, policy and regulation are everyday business. more
Singapore government has waived telecom frequency fees for 5G trials until December 2019 in order to catalyze market growth and discovery of potential use cases. more
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to bring immense opportunities, but it also poses challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) is dominating the R&D agenda of the leading Internet industry. The Silicon Valley and other startup hubs are buzzing about artificial intelligence and the issue has come at the top of policymakers' agenda including the G20, the ITU, and the OECD, where leaders gathered this week in Paris. more