Every time discussion goes into automation and how it will destroy all jobs and destroy economics as we know it, people tend to take opposing sides. Some look back at the previous times that such outrageous claims have been made and point how such worries have always turned out to be wrong. Others look at the very specific technologies and tell a story on how it will be different this time. Both sides are represented by brilliant people who make good points. …
It is incredible to see new technologies and social trends emerge and slowly become part of the ‘normal’ and ‘real.’ The latest such trend that has become part of the fabric of society is that of “influencers.” Not so many years ago, having a large following on social media did not amount to anything. And couple more years back, social media itself had just born. Yet now we see that being an influencer is a thing of a real-life, not just somewhere deep in the geeky corners of the internet. It has become a new route to becoming a D-list…
There are three types of software that I would like to talk about. Programs you install in your computer, sites you open in the web and apps you download on your device. Usually, even they are called the same — ‘applications’, in this article, however, for clarity I have added some distinction in terms.
All three types often perform the same tasks, but somehow there are still major differences that are always present, always in the back of your mind, always kind of getting in the way. Even if it is 3 versions of the same enterprise software. Something is…
While toying in my mind with ideas about possible new social networks, I again came back to social networks for businesses. Creating such service has been tried before, and as far as I know, has not succeeded much beyond creating weak sales leads generation platform, that nobody really uses.
But today I thought — what if you are a government and you could force companies to participate in such public social networks? What would happen?
At first, what does it mean, a social network between enterprises? We can identify multiple layers of interconnectedness between companies.
- Ownership network. One firm can…
Field of virtual reality has been maturing steadily over the last couple of years. We are probably over the hype peak, but we are not yet in the plato of good practical applications. Let me make some predictions of how the interfaces will look like when we finally get there. What tools we will use to interact with the computers and other people when the full VR world arrives? Keyboards? Haptic gloves? Voice recognition? Let’s explore!
First, a couple of words about terminology:
Virtual Reality (VR) — this is an experience where you as a user are transported entirely. You…
Basic income is one of those grand ideas that is constantly present in my mind. Somewhere in the back, slowly burning, without consuming too much mental energy, but sometimes reminding about itself. Basic Income, often called UBI — Universal Basic Income.
Universal Basic Income
To quickly remind everybody what it is — every person in a given country would receive a set amount of money, no questions asked, every month. No matter if person is poor, rich, educated, employed, unemployed — there would be money transferred every month. Same amount for everybody. It would replace every possible payout that government is doing right…
Looking at the upcoming crop of unicorn IPOs I can't help but participate with my take as well. With the usual twist — suggestion of some product ideas.
Lyft, Uber, Pinterest, Zoom, Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest — tons of tech IPOs coming up this year. I have used most of them, and most of them have had thousands of articles written. Everybody has an opinion on Uber IPO (including me — I think it is The Uber Bubble), but I have not heard much about Zoom. …
Sometimes it feels that there is too much separation between ‘investors’ and ‘others’ in general consciousness. I would like to argue that there should be no line drawn between investors and everyone else — we are all behaving like investors very often.
When I decide what to do when making any longer term decision, I always spend at least some time thinking about that decision as an investment — will it pay off, will it increase my long term quality of life, or security, or future happiness. …
So, startup meta programming, or meta startup programming. This is idea that came to my mind, when I was thinking of how could I try out some of my startup ideas, without actually writing all the code myself. And without doing all the market research myself. And without much else — just playing with startup idea itself. And exactly the same question, but applied for product development in established companies.
Full disclosure — this post does not answer this question. It answers another.
Startup game has had a certain set of rules that are widely recognized as applicable and it…
People tend to look at machine learning in rather narrow way. Sometimes it feels like something magical, almost like an artificial intelligence. Often it is not even mentioned by name, but by tasks performed.
Like face recognition, pattern matching, clustering, classification or natural language processing, recommending. But very often it is still thought of very narrowly — you teach machines to do something and then they do it as good, or even better than humans. And probably faster and cheaper. But I want to show you the way how to look at that from another angle.
But first let me…
Martins Untals
Technology enthusiast, IT executive, and consultant, working in UAE, Abu Dhabi
