I respect the right of anyone to choose when and how they reply to an email. The person receiving an email has the power to delete, ignore, read, respond immediately or respond whenever they choose. They can even have an automatic response, say over their holiday or weekend, that they are away from work and … Continue reading The Right to Send Anytime, Anywhere, All at Once
Socio-technical Systems
AI Hype
AI HYPE: A Commentary by A. Michael Noll March 29, 2023 Copyright © 2023 A. Michael Noll The 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick frighten us with the computer “HAL” that reads lips, makes decisions, kills, and ultimately goes berserk. Decades later around 2011, IBM introduced its “Watson” … Continue reading AI Hype
The Myth of an AI Leisure Class?
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is real and significant. But AI is not new albeit in 2023 it is more focused on machine learning than programming. On a recent trip to Singapore, the rise of robots was clear, cleaning the floors of the airport and moving trays around restaurants, for instance. That said, the … Continue reading The Myth of an AI Leisure Class?
Digital Kaleidoscope: A Commentary by A. Michael Noll
DIGITAL KALEIDOSCOPE A. Michael Noll February 2, 2023 © A. M. Noll 2023 [The following commentary is authored by A. Michael Noll, and posted with the permission of the author. Michael experimented with many of the technologies of 3D, computational art, and tactile telecommunication in the 1960s and 1970s at Bell Labs. I always find … Continue reading Digital Kaleidoscope: A Commentary by A. Michael Noll
Information Policy: An Unsettled Issue of the Digital Age
Information Policy: Broadening our Perspective on the Issue for the Digital Age There is widespread awareness that we are living in a post-industrial, information society, as we have learned from such seminal thinkers as Daniel Bell (1973). Given such an awareness, it is surprising to that the study of “information policy” is not more prominent. … Continue reading Information Policy: An Unsettled Issue of the Digital Age
Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
Should Elitists Get Off Twitter? An opinion piece in the Financial Times by Janan Ganesh (2022) argued that the real reason to get off Twitter was that it “reeks of low status”. Stay on it long enough and you can “catch” its tone of “domestic mediocrity”. Even elites who use this micro-blogging site should beware … Continue reading Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
Working from Home and Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Problems: Before, During, and Post-Pandemic William H. Dutton and Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez Global Cybersecurity Capacity Centre (GCSCC), Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Has the shift in working patterns in response to the pandemic caused more problems with cybersecurity? Along with colleagues at the GCSCC, we interviewed a set of experts on cybersecurity to get … Continue reading Working from Home and Cybersecurity
Levelling Up the UK with Information
The UK government has committed to a strategy for levelling up economic activity across the UK.[1] While I am not a geographer or an economist, one need not be to see ways forward on this strategy. The Internet has been seen as a force that might reconfigure the geography of work – what jobs go … Continue reading Levelling Up the UK with Information
Linking Cybersecurity Capacity Research to Development in Africa and Worldwide
The value of having a global constellation of cybersecurity capacity centres was brought home today. I viewed the many sessions of the hybrid annual conference of the network of cybersecurity research centres focused on cybersecurity, which was organised by C3SA in Cape Town, South Africa. Conferences held at other centres, including Oxford’s Global Cybersecurity Capacity … Continue reading Linking Cybersecurity Capacity Research to Development in Africa and Worldwide
The Attraction of Working from Home
William H. Dutton and Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez Global Cybersecurity Capacity Centre, University of Oxford A growing number of studies are documenting the shift to working from home (WFH) in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. McKinsey & Company’s American Opportunity Survey supports the importance of this shift and claims that “Americans are embracing flexible work”.[1] Our … Continue reading The Attraction of Working from Home