"Should art be unique or infinitely reproducible?" wondered German philosopher Walter Benjamin pictured here in 1928. Image used on a creative commons license from Wikipedia. New technologies are sometimes met with resistance. This is because they change the culture around us. In the early 20th century, the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin argued that mechanical […]
In recent years the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in government, business and greater civil society has grown. As AI use has become widespread it has created some deep ethical oversights. Left unchecked and without proper controls, AI and automated systems can perpetrate racial, gender, and other forms of bias that should concern everyone. To […]
Ecommerce. Picture courtesy of Freepik.com by Snowing, used on a creative commons license. On the occasion of Small Business Month this October, and in the context of a global pandemic, we thought it a good idea to dive deeper into ecommerce. Ecommerce has changed a lot in the past decade, and whether you're a small […]
You may have heard that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. You may also be aware that everything around us requires energy and always exchanges energy with the environment. This implies that energy can’take many forms. Some of these include thermal, motion, nuclear, sound and chemical energy. We harness these different sources […]
Open data has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. In fact, you may have come across other terms with the prefix open, such as open source, open access, open knowledge, open education, and open science, to name a few. Are they all connected? A representation of linked data of different sources. Image by […]
This is the third part of a three-part blog on the Internet of Things (IoT). In the first post, I introduced the Internet of things (IoT) as the expansion of digital devices communicating with each other and discussed the first main factor enabling this: the improvement of standards and protocols that network devices together. In […]
Image by imgix from unsplash.com. This is the second part of a three-part blog on the Internet of Things (IoT). In the last post, I introduced the Internet of things (IoT) as the expansion of digital devices communicating with each other. I discussed the first main factor enabling this: the improvement of standards and protocols […]
Only a decade ago, the number of devices connected to the internet was less than 1/7th of the world's total population. Today, there are three times that many devices connected to the internet or to each other. By and large, the now commonplace buzzphrase "the Internet of Things", IoT for short, points to this phenomenon, […]
Keeping a healthy work-life balance should be obvious, yet we're all guilty of getting so caught up in work that we forget about the balance part. Finding the right balance, after all, is easier said than done. One more thing, we say to ourselves. And another, and another. And so we skip breaks and meals, […]
Market research forms a core component of planning for a small business. Is there demand for my product? Who are the competitors? How can I differentiate myself from them? How can I cater my product to the right audience? Entrepreneurs who are passionate about their industry or sector have strong intuitions about each of these […]