For the Labour Party, robots are the new class enemy. According to media reports, Jeremy Corbyn has said that he wants companies that profit from replacing humans with robots to pay more tax. Another of his ideas is to put ownership of robots in the hands of employees. Paranoia about robots is nothing new. The […]
Recent revelations about how Russian agents inserted ads on Facebook, in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, present a troubling question: Is Facebook bad for democracy? As a scholar of the social and political implications of technology, I believe that the problem is not about Facebook alone, but much larger: social media is actively […]
What do the companies in these three groups have in common? Group A: American Motors, Brown Shoe, Studebaker, Collins Radio, Detroit Steel, Zenith Electronics and National Sugar Refining. Group B: Boeing, Campbell Soup, Colgate-Palmolive, Deere, General Motors, IBM, Kellogg, Procter and Gamble, and Whirlpool. Group C: Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Home Depot, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Office […]
The UK’s electricity and energy policy is at a critical juncture. EU emissions legislation is leading to the mass closure of coal- and oil-fired power stations; a strategy to replace the loss of reliable electricity generation is urgently needed. Earlier this decade, the plan set out by the Government was eminently sensible. A roll out […]
Global Justice Now wants us all to know that pharmaceutical drugs ought to be public goods and therefore we really should get rid of the patent system which so enriches the Big Companies. This suggestion is a neat and elegant example of the art of not getting it. The reason we have the patent system […]
The banning of Monsanto lobbyists from the European Parliament is the most recent clash in a long history of government resistance to GMOs. The idea behind regulation is that consumers sacrifice a certain level of economic freedom for a greater degree of security. In the case of Monsanto, a US producer of genetically engineered seed […]
The opposition towards contemporary technological advancements is common, but it never had such a powerful ally in mainstream media sources. Commentators in newsrooms should know that the mindset that now opposes Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb would have prevented the commercialisation of the printing press, and would, therefore, have threatened their own existence. Gutenberg’s Invention Caused […]
Jeremy Corbyn said this weekend that automation and the gig economy has released “a more rapacious and exploitative form of capitalism”. He suggests an alternative. Platform firms such as Uber, he says, should be replaced by cooperatives, where gig workers would set their own pay and conditions. Beyond the Marxist connotations of replacing private companies […]
“There’s been a lot of talk about driverless cars at this [artificial intelligence] conference but has anybody thought about what happens when someone puts a weapon on one of these things?…”, said Michael Nova, in June, at the O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference. Nova is Chief Innovation Officer at Pathway Genomics, a DNA testing lab, where his speciality […]
I’m a networks person. Some of you may already know that about me. I never got on well with hierarchical institutions. I detested that aspect of school. I had a brief encounter with the military life in the Glasgow Academy Combined Cadet Force; I was the worst cadet in the school’s history. I lost my […]
Recent research by the Legatum Institute and Populus – featured on the CapX podcast this week – recently showed large public support for Jeremy Corbyn’s nationalisation agenda. Second on the list of things people were keen to see brought under state control was electricity at 77 per cent. The best way to prevent any future Government from […]
Amazon is casting around for a US city to house its second headquarters. Various places are falling over themselves to win Amazon’s business, offering property tax rebates, low cost loans and special breaks on this and that. One city has even announced that it would change its name to Amazon were it to win. But […]
Facebook’s latest UK accounts are out and, naturally, people are losing their minds over the amount of tax not being paid. But why are we worrying about tax, when we should be thinking about value? I may not think the NHS is perfect but I would insist it has value despite not paying any corporation […]
In his conference speech today, Jeremy Corbyn set out plans to “manage” robotics and technology “for the benefit of society as a whole”. To this end he wants companies that profit from replacing humans with robots to to pay more tax as he believes that automation is a “threat” to workers. It would be easy […]
Last week, Transport for London (TfL) announced that after Uber’s current licence expires this coming Saturday, it will not renew it. TfL says that Uber fails to meet safety and security requirements regarding its approach to reporting serious criminal offences, to medical certificates, to Enhanced DBS checks, and to the use of its “Greyball” software. […]
Last week’s terrorist attack at Parsons Green is just the latest reminder that our society and our very way of life are under constant threat. In each jihadist attack on Britain this year, it seems that online radicalisation played some part in driving the perpetrators to violence – whether by providing the instructions for last […]
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