January 14, 2021
New data analysis by web design and development agency Rouge Media, claims the digital divide in the UK is closing considerably slower than official targets. In the Government’s 2014 “Digital Inclusion Strategy”, the target was set to reduce the number of people offline by 25 percent every 2 years. And by the end of 2020, everyone who can be digitally capable, will be. More →
January 5, 2021
The idea of a Global Village comes loaded with a number of idyllic connotations. Most of them derive from the use of the word village itself, which triggers the idea of a community in our minds. Yet even the man who coined and popularised the term in the 1950s and 60s to describe a world contracted by new media understood that there are always complications whenever technology rubs up against human beings. More →
January 4, 2021
In 1909, E M Forster – not exactly known for a body of work including dystopian fiction – published a novella called The Machine Stops. You can read it here but the story describes a future in which people live below ground, in isolation but with all their needs met by an omnipresent Machine (you can see where this is going). More →
December 30, 2020
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. As is now the way of these things, the famous opening words of Anna Karenina have been used to name a principle that is applied across a wide range of fields. It describes how success can only happen in one way, but failure comes in many forms. More →
December 18, 2020
Originally published in March, right at the start of all this. Makes me wonder how far we’ve come in nine months. In Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth, a “biography” of 1984, the author describes how Orwell’s book was the end point of an obsession with utopian (and ultimately dystopian) fiction that characterised the first half of the Twentieth Century, and reflected the competing political, social and economic ideologies of the era. More →
December 11, 2020
Employee monitoring is an emotive topic. Businesses may wish to monitor their staff for a variety of reasons. For instance, they may wish to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of confidential or sensitive information, or detect attempts to steal valuable intellectual property. In the current conditions, dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have opted to use automated means to monitor staff productivity. However, from an employee’s perspective, the use of monitoring software may be intrusive if not distressing. Further, if it has been implemented without regard to data protection law, it is potentially illegal. More →
December 11, 2020
The World Economic Forum has launched a new report which sets out to define how organisational leaders can influence their companies and encourage the responsible use of technology and build ethical capacity. Ethics by Design” – An Organizational Approach to Responsible Use of Technology claims to integrate psychology and behavioural economics findings from interviews and surveys with international business leaders. It aims to shape decisions to prompt better and more ethical behaviours. The report promotes an approach that focuses less on individual “bad apples” and more on the “barrel”, the environments that can lead people to engage in behaviours contrary to their moral compass. The report outlines steps and makes recommendations that have proven more effective than conventional incentives such as compliance training, financial compensation or penalties. More →
December 11, 2020
Nearly seven in 10 business leaders and decision-makers say that investments in digital technologies in 2020 have enabled their organisations to increase revenue, save money and improve productivity, according to a new survey released by Randstad US. More →
December 10, 2020
Unify Square, the services provider for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack platforms, has released survey results around remote collaboration and communication among enterprises. The survey highlights key perspectives of enterprise employees on workplace collaboration and communication in the midst of the global pandemic. More →
December 4, 2020
When Donald Trump was pictured recently sitting uncomfortably at a table that looked like it had been retrieved from a skip, it provoked the sort of sneering commentary about furniture choices last seen when Dominic Cummings popped in to the Downing Street garden to deliver some self-serving blather from behind a rickety trestle table. More →
December 3, 2020
In the face of the revolutionary and long-lasting changes to workplaces across the world resulting from the pandemic, some commentators have suggested that the wide-spread necessity of adopting remote working practices may have made the office obsolete. However, such a dramatic upheaval to the very foundation of the workplace and working dynamic won’t come without a cost, and new data suggests that perhaps the office isn’t the dinosaur many assumed, but still a central pillar to effective businesses as part of a hybrid working strategy. More →
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January 14, 2021
2021 presents the tech sector with once in a generation opportunities
by Uta Dresch • Comment, Flexible working, Technology