May 5, 2017
Digital economy bill rushed through Parliament ahead of election 0
The government has rushed the Digital Economy Bill through parliament as part of the legislative wash-up ahead of the general election The Bill will introducing provisions for a Universal Service Obligation (USO) that gives people the legal right to request broadband speed of a certain level. The controversial Bill became law at the last possible moment before the dissolution of parliament, but a House of Lords amendment demanding a minimum legal broadband speed requirement of 30Mbps has not made the final cut due to concerns that not enough people have taken up a superfast service on the open market to justify its introduction. However, the government will ask Ofcom to review the minimum download speed once the take-up of superfast has reached 75 percent.
May 3, 2017
Wiring your brain to the Internet? What could possibly go wrong? 0
by Christopher Markou • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing
Neuralink – which is “developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers” – is probably a bad idea. If you understand the science behind it, and that’s what you wanted to hear, you can stop reading. But this is an absurdly simple narrative to spin about Neuralink and an unhelpful attitude to have when it comes to understanding the role of technology in the world around us, and what we might do about it. It’s easy to be cynical about everything Silicon Valley does, but sometimes it comes up with something so compelling, fascinating and confounding it cannot be dismissed; or embraced uncritically. Putting aside the hyperbole and hand-wringing that usually follows announcements like this, Neuralink is a massive idea. It may fundamentally alter how we conceive of what it means to be human and how we communicate and interact with our fellow humans (and non-humans). It might even represent the next step in human evolution.
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