Real & Digital

Money Revolution Aside being a digital currency, whats the big deal with Bitcoin? Well there's two big deals Bitcoin actually - its peer to peer so under the control of no single entity and second its anonymous .  Peer-to-peer money:  All currencies, like the one used where you live are controlled primarily by a Central Bank or government agency. A bank authorized by the laws of your country to regulate the supply of money and ensure fiscal stability. At least thats the official line. Now in a monetary economy like we live in, the control of money supply comes with great power -  power to decide who has access to money, power to control how much money exists, how much money people can share with each other etc. Worse still in a globalised world, more powerful countries can dictate the currency of global trade then use access to that currency as a political weapon. To peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies allow private citizens to escape Central Bank/government dictated con

Bitcoin? Unless you live on Mars, you've definitely heard of Bitcoin . Its value against other major currencies has exploded this year. It started out trading at $1000-1 Bitcoin and has peaked at $20,000-1 Bitcoin as at the time of writing this Blog post. So what is Bitcoin and why is everyone losing there minds over it? Bitcoin is simply a currency like US Dollars, Chinese Yuan, Zambian Kwacha or Mexican Peso's. Its a medium of exchange for goods and services. Like any currency its value lies in the belief by its users that it has value. It is however different from regular currencies in several ways.  Lets break it down, shall we? A Bitcoin  (abbreviated BTC ) is a digital currency, meaning it exists as 'data' on a computer[computers] and not in paper or coin form like other currencies. All aspects of the Bitcoin ecosystem are protected/guaranteed by mathematical encryption - hence it is referred to as a crypto-currency .  The Bitcoin ecosys

Money on the Go: The rise of mobile money Mobile telecommunications grew at an astronomical rate in sub-Saharan African and most of the third world in the late 1990's and early-mid 2000's. Tens of millions of rural and urban poor (along with the urban middle class) were empowered with the ability to reach each other faster than ever in human history. It was quiet literally a revolution . Like any truly disruptive technology Mobile telecoms brought on a wave of innovation with it. Researchers examining the usage patterns of prepaid subscribers (~90% of mobile users) in Southern Africa noticed that they would often send money to each other - 'Airtime' (prepaid mobile talk time) - as payments for goods or services or to be traded for goods and services. This data passed on to the obvious players - the Mobile Telco's, led to the creation of a few mobile based cash transfer services. But the first true mobile banking service was launched by Kenya's Mobile telec

                                               Artificially intelligent computers and robots are here to stay. They will get better and better at doing everyday tasks at a faster and faster rate. They will be able to do the jobs we do now better than we do, faster than we do, more precisely than we do and without rest. Why do we need work? Work forms a significant part of lives -without labour we cannot earn money and support ourselves and our families. Work gives us a sense of purpose, self worth and is often a measure of our contribution to society. Further without enough people earning money to buy goods and services why would we need the increased productivity of these robots? How do we beat automation? I want to keep my job and I'm sure you do too. What can we do to beat this tsunami of change headed our way? Some experts say we won't need to - there will always be work for humans and enough of it. Most however agree that human work is no longer guaranteed.

No More 'White Collar' Popping??? I remember watching a video of Jacques Fresco, founder of the Venus Project discussing how computer technology would free humans to pursue 'the higher things'. I assume he meant we would focus on intellectually stimulating and challenging forms of work like scientific research, re-organization of a Utopian society, fine arts and advanced engineering.  Sadly Jacques was wrong. With advances in AI that were once on the bleeding edge of technology having gone mainstream - computers will do and have started doing 'the higher things'. This means careers that were once lucrative for highly trained humans can now be done by computers. First through complex software applications that augmented white collar work but now with advanced AI engines that have learned from human experts and experience and can now autonomously perform the same work much faster, more accurately. No where has this been more true than in the insane

Before we go any further, I hope you read Rise of The Machines: Robots are after our jobs - Part 1 , it sets out the introduction to this series. Low Hanging Fruit There are some jobs that, due to there nature are more vulnerable to automation. The level of sophistication of the replacing technology is not significant, generally they fall in the industrial/manufacturing sector that are mature in terms of automation tech and they are repetitive in nature.  I call such jobs Low Hanging Fruit - easy targets for automation.  The workers to be replaced are semi skilled. Their jobs involve doing simple tasks over and over again. The jobs require consistency in the quality and quantity of work and ceaseless productivity is preferred.  Human workers are less preferred for such jobs because unlike computers and robots they are inconsistent in their quality of work, they cannot work for long periods without ceasing (in fact even their attendance at work is not consistent) a

I was getting my drivers license renewed a few weeks back and the process was such a pain. I had to go to five different counters and deal with rude, arrogant and disinterested officers. I couldn't understand their arrogance. They are not particularly highly paid workers doing complex tasks.  Oh no, they are middle income workers at best doing mundane, mind numbingly simple tasks like collecting cash and giving a receipt, checking that a form was filled in correctly, taking an applicants portrait etc. In fact a computer could do absolutely everything that those of officers were doing and do them faster, more efficiently and at a lower cost. This got me thinking - how long before a computer system takes over their jobs completely (they already use computers to aid their work). In fact in my opinion these workers were 'dead men walking' -  in other countries the process of drivers license renewal is almost completely automated. Here their jobs could be gone in a couple of

Real & Digital is a blog about the intense interaction between our digital and real lives. I want to take a journey through this confluence of universes. How is the physical changing the digital? How do we cross back and forth between those two worlds every day? What does the future hold for our digital and physical lives? Will they merge into one? I have so many questions (I'm sure you do too) and to be honest I'm not even going to try and answer them all, but rather I'll try and explore different aspects of our Real/Digital lives and see if together we can better understand them. So this will be a series of blog posts on real and digital life and here's how it will go; Rise of the Machines: Robots are after our jobs!! Digital Love: love, intimacy and sex in a digital age. As a man thinketh 'posteth': self image and identity in the real world and on-line. The Online constituency: politics in the age of social media. Crime & Punishme

In my last blog post I rambled on about how a tech engineer must leave College or University with skills and not just knowledge. This of course begs the question - what skills should a young graduate engineer have as they step out into the world. Computer Science has many sub-disciplines and it is not feasible to point out the skills young graduates should have in each case. Instead I picked a few sub-disciplines and asked friends and colleagues with experience in them a simple question. ' If you were hiring a graduate engineer, what skills would you want them to poses "out of the box"? ' IT is a fast changing profession and having the skills relevant for todays technology needs may not be enough to stay competitive next year. So I further classified skills into two categories - Right Now skills, that the tech industry needs from you immediately and Around the Corner  skills that the tech industry will likely need from you in a year or so. Without making t

Entrepreneurship is great. The idea of brave men and women striking out on a new path, armed only with an idea, passion in their hearts and fire in their bellies is the foundation of free market economy. I grew up reading stories of Henry Ford, JP Morgan and other American 'Captains of Industry' who seemingly by sheer force of will built vast business empires. In my teens and early years of university I was inspired by articles on Gary Kildal, Bill Gates, the two Steve's and Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Control Data, Microsoft, Apple and Google were their 'empires'. The Stories around them were of an idea that mushroomed into Blue Chip titans almost over night. Such stories are loaded with inspirational value, but the tell only a tiny part of the story. Those great ideas often had to find funding to be turned into reality and that money went to pay for office space, support staff, equipment and lots of other things. But above all it went to hiring educated, highl