Author: The Conversation
Around the world, countries are having to strike a balance between COVID-19 cases and restrictions. In the UK and the US, daily new cases number in the thousands, but restrictions and limitations are being lifted. In contrast, New Zealand has started a short national lockdown to contain just a handful of cases. For the past 20 months, New Zealand, Australia and several other east Asian countries have pursued tough policies aiming to completely eradicate COVID-19. The hallmarks of these “zero COVID” approaches are strict border controls and quarantine arrangements as well as the early introduction of lockdowns when discovering cases.…
South Africa has among the highest recorded levels of social protest of any country in the world. The reasons behind this are more complex than often assumed. The scale and severity of the looting and sabotage in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng in July, following the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, has brought social protest and civil unrest into the popular discourse. But much of the commentary on the July riot – which cost over 300 lives and billions of rands in damage to the economy – has neglected the long history of violent protest in the country. The…
Imagine you’re having friends over for lunch and plan to order a pepperoni pizza. You recall Amy mentioning that Susie had stopped eating meat. You try calling Susie, but when she doesn’t pick up, you decide to play it safe and just order a margherita pizza instead. People take for granted the ability to deal with situations like these on a regular basis. In reality, in accomplishing these feats, humans are relying on not one but a powerful set of universal abilities known as common sense. As an artificial intelligence researcher, my work is part of a broad effort to…
Warren Buffett, who turns 91 on Aug. 30, 2021, is a billionaire at a time when outrage over the excesses of extreme wealth is growing in tandem with billionaires’ fortunes. But based on what I learned about him while becoming a scholar of finance and a portfolio manager, I see Buffett as a model for his ultrarich peers. He has given half of his vast fortune to charity and plans to unload the most of the rest during his lifetime or upon his death. Buffett also largely lives a modest lifestyle by billionaire standards; he still resides in the spacious…
In recent months, the question of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination or limitations on those who choose not to be vaccinated has become a hot topic. In many countries, healthcare professionals and care home workers in facilities for the aged or disabled must be vaccinated as an occupational requirement. They are duty bound to accept a vaccine because of their non-negotiable pledge to avoid harm to patients, colleagues and their own families. Other occupational groups who work in proximity to the public or in large indoor venues also have a responsibility to adhere to a mandatory vaccine policy. Likewise, barring medical contra-indications,…
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the tech giant will shift from being a social media company to becoming “a metaverse company”, functioning in an “embodied internet” that blends real and virtual worlds more than ever before. So what is “the metaverse”? It sounds like the kind of thing billionaires talk about to earn headlines, like Tesla chief Elon Musk spruiking “pizza joints” on Mars. Yet given almost three billion people use Facebook each month, Zuckerberg’s suggestion of a change of direction is worth some attention. Read more: Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn Facebook into a ‘metaverse company’ – what…
End-to-end encryption is technology that scrambles messages on your phone and unscrambles them only on the recipients’ phones, which means anyone who intercepts the messages in between can’t read them. Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo are among the companies whose apps and services use end-to-end encryption. This kind of encryption is good for protecting your privacy, but governments don’t like it because it makes it difficult for them to spy on people, whether tracking criminals and terrorists or, as some governments have been known to do, snooping on dissidents, protesters and journalists. Enter an Israeli technology firm, NSO…
At first glance, a recently granted South African patent relating to a “food container based on fractal geometry” seems fairly mundane. The innovation in question involves interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and stack. On closer inspection, the patent is anything but mundane. That’s because the inventor is not a human being – it is an artificial intelligence (AI) system called DABUS. DABUS (which stands for “device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience”) is an AI system created by Stephen Thaler, a pioneer in the field of AI and programming. The system simulates human brainstorming…
In the preface to his great book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, written in the 1930s at the height of the Great Depression, the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes suggested that the obstacle to decisive change lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. In this moment of crisis, South Africa urgently needs decisive action. But all too often South Africans of all political stripes seem trapped in stale discourses. These are not anchored in South Africa’s political, economic and social realities. Nor do they offer any practical, timely strategy for…
The typical Australian will change careers five to seven times during their professional lifetime, by some estimates. And this is likely to increase as new technologies automate labour, production is moved abroad, and economic crises unfold. Jobs disappearing is not a new phenomenon – have you seen an elevator operator recently? – but the pace of change is picking up, threatening to leave large numbers of workers unemployed and unemployable. New technologies also create new jobs, but the skills they require do not always match the old jobs. Successfully moving between jobs requires making the most of your current skills…
South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout programme, outlined by the Ministry of Health, had three phases, starting with the most vulnerable population. Phase one included all the frontline healthcare workers. They received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Phase 2 vaccinated people over 60 years old and those in congregate settings. The third and final phase, now under way, covers the remaining South African population. The programme got off to a shaky start in February 2021. It encountered a number of setbacks such as supply, logistics and governance issues, but has gained momentum in recent weeks. As many as 200,000 doses are…
You try to use your credit card, but it doesn’t work. In fact, no one’s credit card works. You try to go to some news sites to find out why, but you can’t access any of those, either. Neither can anyone else. Panic-buying ensues. People empty ATMs of cash. This kind of catastrophic pan-internet meltdown is more likely than most people realize. I direct the Internet Atlas Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Our goal is to shine a light on long-term risks to the internet. We produce indicators of weak points and bottlenecks that threaten the internet’s stability.…
The mobile apps installed on our smartphones are one of the biggest threats to our digital privacy. They are capable of collecting vast amounts of personal data, often highly sensitive. The consent model on which privacy laws are based doesn’t work. App users remain concerned about privacy, as a recent survey shows, but they still aren’t very good at protecting it. They may lack the technical know-how or the time to review privacy terms, or they may lack the willpower to resist the lure of trending apps and personalised in-app offers. As a result privacy laws have become more detailed,…
Have you ever imagined your smart phone or tablet without a touch screen? This could soon be the case if we run out of indium, one of the rarest minerals on Earth. Indium is used in many high-tech devices such as touch screens, smart phones, solar panels and smart windows, in the form of indium tin oxide. This compound is optically transparent and electrically conductive — the two crucial features required for touch screens to work. But there’s a problem: we have no guaranteed long-term supply of indium. It is naturally found only in tiny traces, and is therefore impractical…
A major journalistic investigation has found evidence of malicious software being used by governments around the world, including allegations of spying on prominent individuals. From a list of more 50,000 phone numbers, journalists identified more than 1,000 people in 50 countries reportedly under surveillance using the Pegasus spyware. The software was developed by the Israeli company NSO Group and sold to government clients. Among the reported targets of the spyware are journalists, politicians, government officials, chief executives and human rights activists. Reports thus far allude to a surveillance effort reminiscent of an Orwellian nightmare, in which the spyware can capture…
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, laments the Rocket Man in Elton John’s timeless classic. In fact, it’s cold as hell. But that doesn’t seem to worry a new generation of space entrepreneurs intent on colonising the “final frontier” as fast as possible. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no sullen technophobe. As lockdown projects go, Nasa’s landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of the red planet earlier this year was a hell of a blast. Watching it reminded me that I once led a high school debate defending the motion: this house believes that…
The mayhem of the last few days is a reminder of the danger that South Africa continues to live with, as well as an indication of the disfigurement of its law enforcement institutions. The danger stems from the deferral of a “better life for all” which the governing African National Congress promised when apartheid ended, while the crisis in law enforcement institutions is born of a sinister motive to evade accountability. The poor will emerge worse off, and the bandits are hoping for state institutions too weakened to dispossess them of their bounty and throw them into prison. Failure to…
Over the next fortnight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will take off into space, because they can, on spaceships designed by their respective companies. It’s a big moment for the private space industry. But the question comes to mind: who has the smarter plan? A billionaire’s space race On May 5 Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced it would fly its first crew of astronauts into space on July 20 — the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s 52nd anniversary. After 15 successful test flights, this will be the first crewed flight…
People have been panicking about COVID-19 in animals since the very start of the pandemic. There’s now plenty of evidence that SARS-CoV-2 – the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – can cross from humans into other animals. This is known as spillback. The virus is capable of infecting a range of species, from hamsters to gorillas. Reassuringly, the vast majority of animals do not get as seriously sick from an infection as humans do. Also, at present there are very few documented cases of animals then transmitting infection back to humans. But a new concern is now being discussed: what if…
Science denial became deadly in 2020. Many political leaders failed to support what scientists knew to be effective prevention measures. Over the course of the pandemic, people died from COVID-19 still believing it did not exist. Science denial is not new, of course. But it is more important than ever to understand why some people deny, doubt or resist scientific explanations – and what can be done to overcome these barriers to accepting science. In our book “Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It,” we offer ways for you to understand and combat the problem. As…
Information and communication technologies can dramatically improve healthcare delivery. They can make communication and exchange of information between healthcare professionals easier. And patients can consult doctors remotely. Some of the most commonly used information and communication technologies in the delivery of healthcare are electronic health records. These digital records are used to manage information such as a patient’s medical history, doctors’ notes and scheduled appointments. This allows healthcare workers to access a patient recorders remotely. Making technology part of routine health service delivery has a downside, however. A number of unintended consequences can come with technology-enabled health services. These include…
Headlines about molecular genetics being used to shed new light on old mysteries or even put criminals behind bars have become increasingly more common. In South Africa DNA is being used to answer important questions about everything from a group of people’s origins to the biological paternity of a child. But paternity tests aren’t just applicable to modern cases. Fellow researcher Christoff Erasmus and I considered DNA evidence to understand a divorce case dating back 321 years. The events before and after the divorce case of Maria Kickers had long-term consequences for a family with a surname that, for decades,…
I have a cellphone built into my watch. People now take this type of technology for granted, but not so long ago it was firmly in the realm of science fiction. The transition from fantasy to reality was far from the flip of a switch. The amount of time, money, talent and effort required to put a telephone on my wrist spanned far beyond any one product development cycle. The people who crossed a wristwatch with a cellphone worked hard for several years to make it happen, but technology development really occurs on a timescale of decades. While the last…
If you use such social media websites as Facebook and Twitter, you may have come across posts flagged with warnings about misinformation. So far, most misinformation – flagged and unflagged – has been aimed at the general public. Imagine the possibility of misinformation – information that is false or misleading – in scientific and technical fields like cybersecurity, public safety and medicine. There is growing concern about misinformation spreading in these critical fields as a result of common biases and practices in publishing scientific literature, even in peer-reviewed research papers. As a graduate student and as faculty members doing research…
A defining characteristic of the way many people live today is persistent online connectedness. Since the introduction of smartphones about 15 years ago, the rapid and broad adoption of these devices has had an impact on people’s behaviour at all hours of the day. Forecasts suggest that the number of smartphone connections in sub-Saharan Africa will reach 678 million by the end of 2025, representing an adoption rate of 65%. Many people check their phones when they wake up, use them while travelling to work and constantly keep an eye on them while at work. A phone screen is the…