Sub-Saharan Africa has, on average, the worst healthcare in the world, according to the World Bank. It accounts for nearly a quarter of all disability and death caused by disease worldwide, yet has only 1% of global health expenditure and 3% of the world’s health workers.Infrastructure is poor, making access to even the most basic medical… Read more »
Monthly Archives: October 2019
And ‘Lo!’ – How the internet was born
Source: BBC Business Date: October 17th, 2019 Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49842681 Discussion “Adam Smith, the father of economics, would have been proud of the way Clark was taking advantage of specialisation and the division of labour – perhaps his defining idea. The existing mainframes would keep on doing what they already did well. The new minicomputers would… Read more »
Canada is bad at thinking big. Here’s how we can change that
As our economy becomes increasingly global, competitive, and innovation-based, it follows that knowledge, expertise and 21st century skills will be what Canadians – and Canada – need to achieve the kind of career success and economic prosperity we want. And it was the knowledge and skills I gained at university that have been such important… Read more »
Food waste: There’s an app for that (a few, actually)
This weekend in Canada, as many people stuff themselves with Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie, it might be worth taking a moment to think about food waste. When food gets thrown out and ends up in a landfill, it releases greenhouse gases as it decays. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that… Read more »
Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Governments?
Source: BBC Future Date: October 11th, 2019 Link to 4 minute animated video: https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/could-artificial-intelligence-replace-governments/p07px5jb?playlist=algorithms-and-ai-what-kind-of-world-do-we-want Discussion This 4 minute video does a good job of putting AI in perspective and making it clear that whilst AI is good for analyzing data, it can’t know the difference between right and wrong, and it has no accountability either… Read more »
Holy tech! Churches try new ways to connect
Geraint Harries, a technology specialist, for St John the Evangelist in Lancashire, admits that when his parish first started using social media, it didn’t get it quite right. “At first we didn’t really know what social media meant for the church and fell into the trap of simply chasing the number of likes and followers… Read more »
The internet threatened to speed up the death of endangered languages. Could it save them instead?
Today, almost 40% of the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide are endangered, according to the United Nations. More are going extinct every year.It was once widely feared that the internet revolution would speed up this decline. If developers and smartphone manufacturers aren’t willing to invest in supporting minority languages, that would cut off people who speak them… Read more »
Microsoft launches $25M program to use AI for disabilities
Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities. CEO Satya Nadella announced the new “AI for Accessibility” effort as he kicked off Microsoft’s annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle is meant to foster enthusiasm for the company’s latest ventures in… Read more »
China and Taiwan clash over Wikipedia edits
Ask Google or Siri: “What is Taiwan?” “A state”, they will answer, “in East Asia”. But earlier in September, it would have been a “province in the People’s Republic of China”. For questions of fact, many search engines, digital assistants and phones all point to one place: Wikipedia. And Wikipedia had suddenly changed. The edit… Read more »
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