Judging by the political winds, Silicon Valley seems headed for a showdown with antitrust regulators.
For the first time since 1988, the Democratic Party’s platform includes stronger antitrust enforcement, while leading liberals have singled out Google, Apple and Facebook for holding too much market power.
A complacent government could easily adopt a wait-and-see approach when it comes to the effects of technology on our economy, but a report from the Productivity Commission advocates what governments need to do to confront digital disruption – get out of its way.
3D printing, sometimes called additive manufacturing, is the process by which three-dimensional objects are made from a single digital file created by 3D design software. What few people know is that 3D printing is about to transform the world as we know it.
Apple has been ordered to help FBI investigators access data on the phone belonging to San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook. The technical solution proposed by the FBI appears to undermine Apple’s earlier claim that they would be unable to help.
However, in a strongly worded reply, Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple is unwilling to comply with this order, as it would do irreparable damage to all iPhone owners’ security and privacy.
For many cities, tech hubs have been a key to jump starting economic growth in the wake of the global financial crisis. In an era of uncertainty, tech-sector growth is proving to be a driving force for nations attempting to reach into the “next economy”.
In the UK, for instance, the sector is – optimistically – predicted to grow four times faster than GDP, while tech job growth is expected to outperform all other occupation categories by 2020.
The ubiquitous barcode has revolutionised the retail industry since its arrival on a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum in 1974. The black and white striped sticker encodes information about the product that can be easily scanned, speeding up checkout and making logistics easier. However, businesses, regulators and shoppers themselves are demanding more information about their products – and this may mean the reign of the barcode is ending.
We have got used to Google as a massive global success story. However, sometimes the detail is more interesting than the top line. On February 1 an announcement by the firm’s holding company Alphabet gave investors their first real insight into the relative performances of its different parts. In addition, it revealed a lot about a section of the operation of which we previously knew very little – the large number of investments into technologies that are some distance from the core businesses.
The World Economic Forum Meeting at Davos, Switzerland this year is all about navigating a path through the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Preceding industrial revolutions centred on machinery, electrified mass production, and computers. The fourth premise is on emerging breakthrough technologies based on artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, brain research, robots, the internet of things, and much else.
Cybersecurity software has been a major focus in pop culture since the release of the 1995 film, Hackers starring Angelina Jolie. Computer break-ins have since been a significant theme in countless movies and television programs. The entertainment industry has provided cybersecurity firms with the best promotion imaginable; film and program content that induces widespread fear of hackers.
