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Carrying on is no longer good enough
Chat apps are cutting into the profits of China Mobile, who blamed their first drop in profits in 14 years on competition from the likes of Tencent’s WeChat messenger (FT, March 21). China Mobile is not the first and certainly not the last major company that will see the landscape changing as a result of…
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Which airplane to take?
The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 could have been avoided, that’s what experts say. Of course it could have been avoided, in an era in which intelligence services like the GHCQ and NSA are able to track down each and every smartphone connected to a cell phone network, and Facebook and Google are…
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Self-driving cars: who is to blame is not the question
Who is to blame when a self-driving car crashes? This question is posed by Elmar Degenhart, chief executive of Continental (Companies & Markets, March 7), and it’s easier to answer than he implies. Just as in a “regular” traffic accident, the movements of each car will need to be scrutinised and compared to the relevant traffic…
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Tracking devices and counting cars
What’s the difference between seeing a red car and seeing a mobile device, Peter Beijer asked (NRC, Saturday), in response to Bas Heijne’s reaction to the news that Dixons and other stores track our behaviour using the unique signals of our mobile phones. The answer depends on whether it’s a person or a machine that…
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Facebook is far more powerful than its users realise
Facebook is far more powerful than its hundreds of millions of users realise. „It’s a very scary fact that Facebook has the power to make or break companies or individuals.” That’s a warning from internet expert Danny Mekić on the social network’s tenth anniversary. „Because who decides what information you are shown?” Behind the scenes, Facebook…
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Technology: some jobs will survive
“Some jobs will survive”, that was the recurring theme throughout the articles in The Economist (January 18th-24th) about what today’s technology will do to tomorrow’s jobs. Technology is becoming more and more capable, and will only become more cost-effective in the future as an alternative to human labour, as a result of increasing computational power,…