http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/30/tech-world-lessons-learned-2012
LESSON 1 .... Be careful of what you tweet
Lord McAlpine case ...whether it was him or his lawyers who came up with the idea of going after the UK Twitter
users who tweeted – or retweeted – false allegations that he had been involved in child abuse, but, whoever was responsible, the fact is that it has
changed the legal landscape in the UK.
500 or fewer followers could get in touch with McAlpine's lawyers
More substantial tweeters were required to pay damages or face the full force of learned friends in court.
Twitter gives broadcast-type communication power to ordinary citizens and
if a broadcasting network such as the
BBC can be held responsible for what it transmits, surely Twitterers should be too?
BUT....
Obviously, people
should be responsible for their actions,
But it's
absurd to judge the behaviour of a thoughtless individual by the
same standards as we apply to that of a
professional news organisation such as the BBC
LESSON 2 ... Valuing technology companies remains an inexact science
Before Facebook's initial public offering (IPO), the big question was: how much is the company worth?
Facebook shares fell 24% in the first three days of open trading, a fact that has led some disgruntled investors to contemplate legal action.
October 2011, HP bought the Cambridge-based company for $11.7bn. Last month, HP announced that it was taking an $8.8bn write-off because it had realised that Autonomy was not worth anything like its purchase price. HP claimed that $5.5bn of the write-off was explained by the discovery of "accounting irregularities".
HP's criticisms are vigorously denied by Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, who has set up a website to contest them.
LESSON 3 : Rasberry Pi
UK
Education problem = teaches children how to be passive consumers of technology rather than creators ...
Want to tech kids how to make things in the digital age not just use products
Raspberry Pi Computer = to help teach children to programme ... turn a TV into a computer
Fast change with the Digital Revolution ... if you don't teach children the fundamental priciples they wont be the masters of their destiny
Massive
skills shortage in teachers ... 2/3rds of teachers in UK not qualified to teach ICT course
Teachers are not expert programmers but with new ICT Programme study they have to
1000 engineers for degrees or appretiships = a huge impact on industry and on people
Use outside classroom ... Exploring themselves
LESSON 4 ... Ipads isn't magic bullet for publishers after all
Print publishers hate the web, partly because they can't control what people do with the content that they publish on it, but mainly because they can't make the buggers pay for it.
when the Apple iPad arrived they fell upon it like wolves. they had to pay the Apple 30% tax for publishing through the iTunes store, but at least the customer paid
something.
the gorgeous screen and processing power of the
Apple tablet meant that publishers could create "immersive reading experiences" that, coincidentally,
kept the reader from venturing out into the nasty world wild
web.
willing to try something new:
Rupert Murdoch launched The Daily the world's first iPad-native newspaper, in February 2011.
He closed it on 15 December 2012, saying that the product "
could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term".
An expensive mistake?
That's not to say that iPad-native magazines don't have a place in the digital ecosystem, but they're not the magic bullet the publishing industry once hoped they would be.
LESSON 5 ... Why Facebook should not have a seat at the United Nations
With a billion users, Facebook may have as many people as India, but it's a dictatorship.
So maybe
Facebook's CEO would feel quite at home as
just like the best dictators, he always knows what is best for his people.
He knows, for example,
that they want everything to be "social" – ie open to the world.
He also knows that their
petty obsessions with their privacy are just that – petty.
FB announced the
termination of users' ability to hide from Facebook searches.
Sam Lessin, one of Zuck's henchmen , told journalists that the ability to hide from the site's search would be "retired" as only "a single-digit percentage of users" actually hide themselves from Facebook search.
Given that Facebook has a billion users,
a single-digit percentage could mean tens of millions of privacy "retirees".
LESSON 6 ... Anyone can be book publishers
For a long time,
publishers maintained while the internet was certainly destroying the business models of other industries,
book publishing was such a special business that it wouldn't happen to them.
In the end,
every author needs a publisher – doesn't s/he?
Only sad people go in for self-publication.
The arrival and widespread
acceptance of ebooks, with on-demand printing and Amazon's ebook publishing engine have
transformed self-publishing from a dream to a reality.
If you've written something and it's in Microsoft Word format, then upload it to Amazon's publishing engine, upload an image for the cover, choose a price and in about four hours it'll be for sale on the web.
And in case you think that self-publishing is just for wimps, remember that that's the way
Fifty Shades of Grey started.
LESSON 7 ....Just because governance of the internet is too important to be left to the United Nations doesn't mean that it doesn't need governance
, Because of its history, governance of the
net is unduly weighted in favour of US-based or US-dominated institutions.
This was fine when the internet was predominantly a US-European phenomenon.
But now it's a truly global network and
we need a multinational governance structure that a) reflects that reality but b) doesn't break the openness and vitality of the system. The first person to crack that problem gets a Nobel prize.
LESSON 8 ...If you want privacy keep off the net. Or at least encrypt your stuff
In 1999, Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously observed that consumer privacy issues were a "red herring". "You have zero privacy anyway," he said. "Get over it."
We have been sleepwalking into a networked world where
privacy is worshipped like motherhood and apple pie
but is abused.
You may wonder
why particular ads seems to follow you everywhere you go on the web?
Or why brands you "like" mysteriously turn up in your timeline and in those of your "friends".
Google knows every YouTube video you've ever watched (and also what's in your Gmail). Facebook knows all of this stuff plus your real name.
US National Security Agency (and possibly also its overseas franchises) is
hoovering up all your electronic communications.
western countries are still selling electronic surveillance kit to repressive regimes all over the world.
The only real solution is to switch off your mobile phone and never again use the net.
Failing that, you could
try encrypting your email using something such as PGP.
But that's not for the faint-hearted, so
perhaps the rule to live by is this: don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't put on a postcard.
LESSON 9 : The Futures Mobile and that's not necessarily good news
2012 showed the explosion in the smartphones (ie internetmobile handsets)
and tablet computers shows no signs of abating.
(+) 's
we're heading for a world in which most people will access the internet via handheld devices.
it will be easier for
billions of people to integrate the net into their daily lives, with all the benefits that that can bring.
(--)'s
it will be a world in which most people access the net via closed, "tethered" devices that will greatly
enhance the powers of corporations that few of us have any reason to trust.
Technology can therefore
give and take away technology
UK Jewish community, Martin Ivens said that cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, although renowned for being "consistently brutal and bloody" in his work, had "crossed a line" with the illustration published in the Sunday Times on Holocaust Memorial Day.