BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY A Company In The Clouds The influential US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a16z, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has just announced in a post on its corporate blog written by one of its founders, Ben Horowitz, that it is “moving to the cloud”. Big deal, you might say, thousands of companies “are in the cloud”, in the sense […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK MONEY & FINANCE TECHNOLOGY The Pros & Cons Of Cryptocurrencies For Developing Countries Isabella Roiz of The Washington Post contacted me by email to discuss the consequences of El Salvador’s decision to adoption bitcoin as its official currency, despite its volatility. Here’s her article, “Central America hoped bitcoin would attract tourists. It hasn’t worked.” (pdf). The problem with a country adopting a cryptocurrency as its official currency is is […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY How News Drives Economic Change News of a big pay rise might see you booking the nearest fancy restaurant for a slap-up meal to celebrate, or encourage you to go on a shopping spree even before your raise hits your bank account. Recent research shows that this is also essentially what happens on a wider economic scale when news breaks about future […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY TECHNOLOGY Is DALL-E Considered Art? A picture may be worth a thousand words, but thanks to an artificial intelligence program called DALL-E 2, you can have a professional-looking image with far fewer. DALL-E 2 is a new neural network algorithm that creates a picture from a short phrase or sentence that you provide. The program, which was announced by the artificial intelligence research laboratory […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY The Secret Of Tumblr’s Enduring Appeal When tech billionaire Elon Musk made a deal to acquire Twitter in April 2022, many Twitter users threatened to shut down their accounts and migrate elsewhere online. Tumblr – a microblogging platform launched in 2007 long known as a laboratory for social justice causes and burgeoning fan cultures – became one contender. However, many Twitter users proposing a migration to […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY TECHNOLOGY Is Google’s LaMDA Conscious? A Philosopher’s View LaMDA is Google’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Blake Lemoine, a Google AI engineer, has claimed it is sentient. He’s been put on leave after publishing his conversations with LaMDA. If Lemoine’s claims are true, it would be a milestone in the history of humankind and technological development. Google strongly denies LaMDA has any sentient capacity. LaMDA certainly seems to […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Apple’s Vision For Augmented Reality Apple continues putting the pieces in place for what many believe could be its next big product: an augmented or virtual reality viewer, aimed at reinventing a space that is still largely occupied by enthusiasts. Faced with Meta’s $2 billion-plus purchase of Oculus VR in 2014 and its recent name change to reposition itself as the master of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY What Exactly Are Digital Twins? A digital twin is a virtual representation of a real system – a building, the power grid, a city, even a human being – that mimics the characteristics of the system. A digital twin is more than just a computer model, however. It receives data from sensors in the real system to constantly parallel the […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Exploitative Nature Of Crypto Gaming Video games are increasingly incorporating blockchains, the decentralised databases that underpin cryptocurrencies, as well as NFTs and other “digital assets”. New games are emerging expressly to support blockchain technology, while traditional games are being updated to incorporate blockchains. As of October 2021, “crypto gaming” accounted for more than half of the blockchain activity over that quarter. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY What’s The Difference Between A Metaverse And A Virtual World? Preparing a session for the IE University faculty on the metaverse that I delivered on Wednesday, I came across a good article that classified the attributes needed to establish, explain or understand the differences between the metaverse as such, and proposals such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds and the like. As far as I’m concerned, Meta’s idea of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
What Makes People Willing To Risk Their Lives To Save Others? After an 18-year-old shooter murdered 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, distraught parents directed their rage at the multiple police officers who failed to enter the classroom where children were being shot. A teacher who survived his wounds derided the officers as “cowards.” It’s possible that a broken chain of command was more consequential than […] Written by Franck McAndrew July 29, 2022July 29, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A Company In The Clouds The influential US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a16z, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has just announced in a post on its corporate blog written by one of its founders, Ben Horowitz, that it is “moving to the cloud”. Big deal, you might say, thousands of companies “are in the cloud”, in the sense […] Written by Enrique Dans July 28, 2022July 28, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A Company In The Clouds The influential US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a16z, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has just announced in a post on its corporate blog written by one of its founders, Ben Horowitz, that it is “moving to the cloud”. Big deal, you might say, thousands of companies “are in the cloud”, in the sense […] Written by Enrique Dans July 28, 2022July 28, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
What You Need To Know About “Stagflation” “Stagflation” is an ugly word for an ugly situation – the unpleasant combination of economic stagnation and inflation. The last time the world experienced it was the early 1970s, when oil-exporting countries in the Middle East cut supplies to the United States and other supporters of Israel. The “supply shock” of a four-fold increase in […] Written by John Hawkins July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Unseen Universe Has Finally Arrived In an unveiling that involved the president himself, the James Webb Space Telescope’s very first color image — Webb’s First Deep Field — was released yesterday evening at the White House. This image showed a paltry, grain-sized portion of the universe, albeit the picture was a beautifully sharp-resolution look at the faintest objects ever observed […] Written by Ella Alderson July 21, 2022July 21, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. Its prime accomplishment was the expansion of our ability to abstract the world. Until then, pragmatism reigned, limiting most people’s thoughts and interactions primarily because we lacked the tools to extrapolate information, to wield it for things that lay beyond obvious […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022March 2, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked