Recently, technical and operational specifications of the Scorpene class submarine that India is buying from DCNS — a naval shipbuilder two-thirds owned by the French government — were leaked to The Australian newspaper. The incident follows the Modi administration’s launch of an AU$150 billion (US$113 billion) program to modernise the armed forces.
People interact with their family, friends and coworkers on a daily basis, both through online social networks and in real life. The effects of such social interactions on economic and financial decision-making, however, are not well understood.
Do such interactions influence people’s assessment of the attractiveness of investments such as houses or stocks, and is this reflected in actual investment behavior? In addition, can social interactions influence market-level trading volume and asset prices?
Ethereum, a network designed to extend blockchain technology to uses beyond crypto-currencies, has been gaining traction around the world. Billed as “a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts…without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference,” Ethereum has been enthusiastically embraced by organisations like Microsoft, IBM and Azure.
If you have recently signed an online petition – and then observed a result from it – you are far from alone. Once niche, websites such as Change.org, ipetitions.com and Avaaz.org have moved into the mainstream, shifting influence from organisations into the hands of individuals and fundamentally changing the way business and government respond to “people power”.
Recently dubbed “the biggest crowdfunding project ever”, the decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) is essentially an investment fund without humans making the investment decisions.
Most people agree we do not need to know how a television works to enjoy using one. This is true of many existing and emerging technologies. Most of us happily drive cars, use mobile phones and send emails without knowing how they work. With this in mind, here is a tech-free user guide to the blockchain – the technology infrastructure behind bitcoin, and many other emerging platforms.
What does the blockchain do?
The blockchain is software that stores and transfers value or data across the internet.
For the first time this year, the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) ‘National Trade Estimate Report’ took note of China’s Great Firewall. Granted, it was with this tame statement: ‘China’s filtering of cross-border Internet traffic has posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers’.
“Traditional media” has been on its deathbed for what feels like a decade now. Opinions on the severity of the situation differ, but it is generally accepted that in its current form, the media industry will not be able to survive a landscape of internet-only publishing in its current state.
