Author: The Conversation
The metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects while operating virtual representations – or avatars – of themselves. Think of a combination of immersive virtual reality, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and the web. The metaverse is a concept from science fiction that many people in the technology industry envision as the successor to today’s internet. It’s only a vision at this point, but technology companies like Facebook are aiming to make it the setting for many online activities, including work, play, studying and shopping. Facebook…
In conversation with my teenage daughter last week, I pointed out a news report which flagged concerns over the use of facial recognition technologies in several school canteens in North Ayrshire, Scotland. Nine schools in the area recently launched this practice as a means to take payment for lunches more quickly and minimise COVID risk, though they’ve since paused rolling out the technology. When I asked my daughter if she would have any concerns about the use of facial recognition technology in her school canteen, she casually replied: “Not really. It would make things a lot faster at checkout though.”…
Facebook’s smart glasses ambitions are in the news again. The company has launched a worldwide project dubbed Ego4D to research new uses for smart glasses. In September, Facebook unveiled its Ray-Ban Stories glasses, which have two cameras and three microphones built in. The glasses capture audio and video so wearers can record their experiences and interactions. The research project aims to add augmented reality features to smart glasses using artificial intelligence technologies that could provide wearers with a wealth of information, including the ability to get answers to questions like “Where did I leave my keys?” Facebook’s vision also includes…
On paper, privacy rights for citizens of countries throughout Africa are well protected. Privacy rights are written into constitutions, international human rights conventions and domestic law. But, in the first comparative review of privacy protections across Africa, the evidence is clear: governments are purposefully using laws that lack clarity. Or they ignore laws completely in order to carry out illegal digital surveillance of their citizens. What’s more, they are doing so with impunity. This matters because people’s lives are increasingly being lived online, through conversations on social media, online banking and the like. We’ve just published research on privacy protections…
Some have called NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope the “telescope that ate astronomy.” It is the most powerful space telescope ever built and a complex piece of mechanical origami that has pushed the limits of human engineering. On Dec. 18, 2021, after years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, the telescope is scheduled to launch into orbit and usher in the next era of astronomy. I’m an astronomer with a specialty in observational cosmology – I’ve been studying distant galaxies for 30 years. Some of the biggest unanswered questions about the universe relate to its early years…
South Africa has a large, and growing, wage gap. The pay gap between executives and employees at the lowest end of the pay scale is increasing. This has seen an increase in shareholder interest in director pay. South Africa has the highest wage inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 0.639. It is, therefore, not surprising that there has been a concerted effort to put more focus on director remuneration guidelines in the country’s latest set of published corporate governance rules. Governance guidelines for companies are set out in a series of reports, known as the King Reports.…
Suddenly and inexplicably, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus services were gone. And it was no local disturbance. In a blog post, Downdetector.com, a major monitoring service for online outages, called it the largest global outage it had ever recorded — with 10.6 million reports from around the world. The outage had an especially massive knock-on effect on individuals and businesses around the world that rely on Whatsapp to communicate with friends, family, colleagues and customers. It took Facebook nearly six hours to get services back online, albeit slowly at first. Ironically, the outage was so pervasive Facebook had to…
The financial gap between men and women is a global problem. It’s a problem because excluding women financially prevents them from participating and contributing to society’s social and economic activities. This is bad for women, and for society. In South Africa, the government has put in place different measures to address gender equality. But policies on financial inclusion have always been generalised and not gender specific. Financial exclusion is when people don’t have access to – or can’t afford – financial services. Financial inclusion means being able to access credit and manage or mitigate risks with products that satisfy an…
There has been a lot of focus on COVID-19 vaccine inequalities between high-income and low- and middle-income countries. For instance, it is estimated that up to 70% of all vaccines to be produced in 2021 were pre-booked by a handful of countries. This has caused severe bottlenecks in vaccine supply to low- and middle-income countries, leading to huge differences in vaccination rates. On average, out of 100 people in a high-income country, 61 have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. In the 29 low-income countries, only 3 out of 100 people have received one dose of the…
In little more than a year from the onset of COVID-19, scientists successfully developed vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus for world-wide use. Three main factors contributed to this extraordinary feat. One, unprecedented collaboration between international scientists. Two, scientists were able to obtain exquisitely detailed images of the virus proteins and the human proteins that they interact with – right down to the positions of the atoms. Three, expertise and infrastructure, developed over many years, involving tens of thousands of scientists supported by national governments and substantial private investment. Developing this skilled workforce was only possible because societies agreed to sponsor…