From the report: "Fast-growing South–South trade and investment is an
opportunity to ramp up developing countries’ abilities to master market-useful
technologies and to bolster their abilities to innovate new products and
services, an UNCTAD
report says. The Technology and
Innovation Report 2012, subtitled Innovation, Technology and
South–South Collaboration, was released today. South–South economic cooperation
is one of the major global economic developments of the past two decades.
Exchanges between developing countries accounted for 55 per cent of global
trade in 2010, as compared to 41 per cent in 1995, and this trend is already
leading to useful diffusions of technology and innovative capacity, the Report
says. Increased South–South exchange can lead to greater technological sharing,
in a variety of ways. A first important channel is the import of goods, the
Report says, which are used by importing countries to improve their production
processes through copying and reverse engineering. Global production networks
and foreign direct investment (FDI) are other factors that could promote
transfers of technology and technological development in countries." Read more
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Mapping Creates Jobs and Drives Global Economic Growth
In summary, the global geo services industry is valued at up to $270 billion per year and pays out $90 billion in wages. In the U.S., it employs more than 500,000 people and is worth $73 billion. The infographic below illustrates some examples of the many benefits of maps, whether it’s improving agriculture irrigation systems or helping emergency response teams save lives." Read more
Power and the Internet
From the article: "All disruptive technologies upset traditional power
balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it
empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. The Internet empowers
everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power,
but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and
corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet,
they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating
the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that
world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures
and not society in general." Read more
U.S. Kids Need Computer-Science Education
By 2018, there will be nearly three times as many job openings requiring computer science knowledge than qualified applicants. This goes well beyond just becoming a professional programmer -- learning computer science can teach problem solving skills, new ways of breaking down complex scenarios, and a means to build something tangible in our software-driven age." Read more
Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months
….The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for
a Times investigation,
published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune
worth several billion dollars through business dealings." Read more
Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy
Samson, Ted. "Consumers Now Trust Microsoft More than Apple with Their Privacy." InfoWorld, January 29, 2013.
From the article: "Big-name tech companies including Hewlett-Packard, Amazon,
IBM, eBay, Intuit, Microsoft, and Mozilla are among the 20 most-trusted
organizations among American consumers, according to Ponemon Institute's "2012 Most Trusted Companiesfor Privacy." Meanwhile, companies who've made the list
in years past -- such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Dell -- didn't
make the cut this time around." Read more
Smartphone Users' Privacy Betrayed By Their Gadget Sensors, Says Study
From the article: "Research into smartphone security has revealed that your
phone's sensors could help criminals unlock your stolen gadget.
And, given that these elements all come as standard on most smartphonemodels, and are not subject to the same controls as other phone functions, they
are a bigger security risk. The study was carried out by a visiting professor
at Swarthmore College,
who analyzed data captured from a smartphone's accelerometer--that's
the gadget that analyzes the direction your phone is tilting or moving and
turns the screen accordingly, and used for games like Doodle Jump--and
found it could be used to work out where someone tapped the screen." Read more
Who Owns, Controls Social Media Activity?
From the article: "Now that the use
of social media is part of the TV newsroom norm, the industry is wrestling with
the next wave of issues associated with the medium — hashing out matters ranging
from who owns on-air personalities’ Facebook accounts to delineating between
professional and personal tweets.
Individuals on
all sides of the equation, from station group owners to newsroom staffers, are
pushing to add more structure to the use of social media both on and off the
job, primarily so the practice doesn’t come back to bite them, industry
watchers say.
The lack of
industry wide standards regulating social media practices also is starting to
create unexpected problems, particularly for anchors and reporters who, to some
degree, are winging it." Read more
EU Data Supervisor Wants Greater Powers
From the article: "The European
Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, has unveiled a two-year
strategy aiming to promote a “data protection culture,” increase oversight of
EU institutions, and cut red tape.
Speaking at an
event in Brussels alongside EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding and EU home
affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Hustinx on Tuesday (22 January) said
the strategy is designed to make the EDPS more efficient and effective." Read more
Open Data Economy: Eight Business Models for Open Data and Insight from Deloitte UK
From the article: "The first response concerned Deloitte’s ongoing research into open data in the United Kingdom [PDF], conducted in
collaboration with the Open Data Institute.
Harvey Lewis, one of the primary investigators for the research project,
recently wrote about some of Deloitte’s preliminary findings at the Open
Government Partnership’s blog in a post on “open growth.” To date,
Deloitte has not found the quantitative evidence the team needs to definitely
demonstrate the economic value of open data. That said, the team found much of
interest in the space." Read more
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Gartner: Social Business Efforts Largely Unsuccessful So Far
From the article: "Many large companies are embracing internal social networks, but for the
most part, they're not getting much from them, according to analyst firm
Gartner.
By 2016, some 50% of enterprises "will have internal Facebook-like
social networks," and 30% of these will be considered to be as crucial as
email and telephones, a Gartner study announced on Tuesday states.
However, through 2015, 80% "of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology," according to the report." Read more
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Protecting Online Freedom as the Internet Turns 30
It’s during anniversaries like these that we have a chance to take stock of this remarkable network and the people who make it what it is.
As the Internet enters its middle years, we users can no longer take it for granted. It’s more than a cloud. It’s people, technology and physical infrastructure. As with any infrastructure, the Internet needs protection and maintenance to survive; otherwise the wires and signals that send digital communications will cease to function. The online community also needs protections — to prevent our ideas from being blocked, our identities from being hijacked and our wallets from being picked." Read more
Twitter Gives Up User Data to Feds 69% of the Time
The total number of information requests increased to 1,009 during the second half of 2012, up from 849 during the first half of the year, according to Twitter's transparency report. Government requests for content removal also increased to 42 from just six." Read more
Digitization, Innovation, and Copyright: What is the Agenda?
From the report: "This essay discusses the need for research on the consequences of
digitization, as well as the impact of alternative policies governing the
creation and use of digital information. This agenda focuses on the development
of research to investigate the economics of digitization, to analyze the
governance of intellectual property in this sector, particularly through
copyright, and to pioneer approaches to analyzing measurement of digitization.
This agenda overlaps with many related open questions in organizational and
strategy research." Read more
What Google's Transparency Report Doesn't Tell Us
The company's latest report, released on Wednesday, shows that the U.S. government again led other nations in submitting the most requests for user data with Google. In the second half of 2012, the U.S. put in 8,438 requests for Internet user data, up 6% from the 7,979 requests it placed in the first six months of the year.
Between 2011 and 2012, U.S. data requests from Google increased by more than 30%....
Google's transparency reports do not include requests for user data made by the government under the U.S. Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAmendment Act or through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs). Most of the requests made via these statutes are tied to national security issues and often compel providers to disclose far more data than ECPA subpoenas and court orders permit." Read more
5 Findings in ONC HIE Research
From the article: "The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has
published research that aims to help providers and professionals better
understand several high-impact services that can sustain health information
exchange organizations.
The research is
meant to help professionals who are putting in place health information
exchange (HIE) with policy, technical and business-related skills related
to query-based exchange, push notification and subscription services, provider
directories, master data management and consumer engagement." Read more
Monday, January 28, 2013
More Using Electronics to Track Their Health
“The explosion of mobile devices means that more Americans have an opportunity to start tracking health data in an organized way,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which was to release the national study on Monday. Many of the people surveyed said the experience had changed their overall approach to health." Read more
See also
Using Twitter to Track the Flu: Researchers Find a Better Way to Screen the Tweets
To address this problem, Johns Hopkins computer scientists and researchers in the School of Medicine have developed a new tweet-screening method that not only delivers real-time data on flu cases, but also filters out online chatter that is not linked to actual flu infections. Comparing their method, which is based on analysis of 5,000 publicly available tweets per minute, to other Twitter-based tracking tools, the Johns Hopkins researchers say their real-time results track more closely with government disease data that takes much longer to compile." Read more
More Than 700 Million Smartphones Shipped in 2012 as Apple, Samsung Dominate
Samsung shipped an estimated 213 million smartphones — roughly 30 percent of the market — according toStrategy Analytics.
Apple, meanwhile, saw its shipments rise 46 percent to 135.8 million, giving the company about the same 19 percent of the market it had a year earlier." Read more
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Big Data Brings Big Privacy Concerns
From the article: "Wary of privacy implications of massive data collection
systems, the Senate Commerce Committee plans to continue a probe of the
industry, coinciding with a separate inquiry underway at the Federal Trade
Commission." Read more
Data Privacy Day 2013: Microsoft Releases Privacy Trends Study and Video Series
"Data Privacy Day 2013: Microsoft Releases Privacy Trends Study and Video Series." Networked World, January 23, 2013.
From the article: "To celebrate Data Privacy Day 2013, Microsoft commissioned a survey
of 1,000 U.S. adults "to better understand people's online privacy
perceptions and expectations." The research study showed that
privacy is becoming more important to people. They want and need more control
of their personal information. Sadly, less than half of all adults ‘mostly’ or
‘totally understand’ how to protect themselves online." Read more
Big Data and Cloud Computing Empower Smart Machines to Do Human Work, Take Human Jobs
From the article: "From giant corporations to university libraries to start-up
businesses, employers are using rapidly improving technology to do tasks that
humans used to do. That means millions of workers are caught in a competition
they can’t win against machines that keep getting more powerful, cheaper and easier
to use." Read more
Airbnb And The Unstoppable Rise Of The Share Economy
From the article: "The “gig economy,” the plethora of microjobs fueled by
online marketplaces offering and filling an array of paid errands and office
chores, has been well-documented, and sites like TaskRabbit, Execand Amazon’s Mechanical Turk continue
to grow apace. What Larson finds himself in, however, is something
lesser-noticed and potentially far more disruptive–a share economy , where
asset owners use digital clearinghouses to capitalize the unused capacity of
things they already have, and consumers rent from their peers rather than rent
or buy from a company." Read more
Preparing for the Worst: Author Martin Ford Imagines a Future when Machines Have All the Jobs
From the article: "Martin Ford saw it everywhere, even in his own business.
Smarter machines and better software were helping companies do more work
with fewer people. His Silicon Valley software firm used to put its programs on
disks and ship them to customers. The disks were made, packaged and delivered
by human beings. Now Ford’s customers can just download the software to their
computers — no disks, no packaging, no delivery workers.
… He suggests imposing massive taxes on companies, which would be paying far
less in wages thanks to automation, and distributing the proceeds to those left
unemployed by technology. That would give them money to spend to keep the
economy spinning.
To prevent the creation of a massive, idle underclass, Ford suggests paying
incentives for people to keep going to school and to behave in ways that benefit
the environment and society.
He admits his ideas are “fairly radical and political untenable ... But I
don’t believe there are any easy conventional solutions.” Read more
How to Get America Online
From the article: "ON Monday, President Obama said that during his second term, Americans would
act together to “build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring
new jobs and businesses to our shores” and that “we cannot cede to other
nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must
claim its promise.”
The president is right that digital communication networks — especially high-capacity
fiber networks reaching American homes and businesses — can be a powerful
economic engine. But we are far away from being able to realize that vision,
even as we cede the advantage such technology offers to other countries." Read more