Thought Leader

Did you know that mobile is considered to be the seventh mass medium? In an excellent article on Communities-dominate, the argument is made emphatically. Here are some of the points. These are the current mass media:- print, music recordings, movies, radio, TV and computer based internet. The mobile phone, at number seven, has a huge…

Is it only me, or has the media’s leverage of technology allowed its coverage of economic news to stagnate? The technology is now available to plug so many automated feeds into tracking of daily market indicators that the people responsible for economic coverage no longer think about what they are reporting. Usually, a sure sign…

Should you ever wonder what the intellectual capacity of social-networking contributors and participants would be, then consider this. A picture of an anteater garnered 2 345 diggs, or votes, and 172 comments, within a matter of 23 hours and 24 minutes. In other words, the groundswell of opinion towards a picture of an anteater with a…

I certainly enjoy being connected to the Internet and digital world, but as my bills poured in at the end of the month, I started wondering just how much this is costing me. Here is a (very approximate) breakdown: 3G modem, 1 Gig , R350 3G modem, 2 Gig, R550 Cellphone contract, R500 Blackberry subscription,…

I have noticed a life cycle with my enthusiasm for any new piece of technology: At first I love it Then I love it some more, and start hooking up other people with it Then I begin to notice the bugs, which I try to ignore because the technology is so cool Then the bugs…

I just love lotteries. What I especially love about them is that you don’t even have to enter them any more. You just win them! I won four only this morning. I won lotteries in Spain (again!), France (my third), Egypt and Norway. Even if I had won only three since waking up, I would…

I confess that gadgets in sci-fi and ‘spy vs. spy’ movies have always intrigued me. You have to admit that some of these ‘inventions’ are quite novel and innovative, and play quite an important element to the success of the movie. It is difficult not to marvel at the idea of being beamed from one…

In a time when the latest album or movie is available, for free, to anyone, from your desktop, where is the incentive to hand over money for the identical item? Is it a moral imperative? And what is the moral issue? The line that we’re constantly being fed by the copyright folks is simple: piracy…

When a 14-year-old Johannesburg schoolgirl’s Facebook account was “broken into” and abusive messages and material sent to friends and family, she was deeply traumatised. But at least, she imagined, Facebook would assist in tracking down the perpetrators. It was not to be. Facebook is easily able to fend off spurious complaints about wasting productive time,…

Watching what my younger daughter gets up to in geekland is always interesting. She is one of the early adopters of digital technology. Thanks to her, I have been a Twitter member since January 2007, months after she had joined, of course, and had a page on Facebook before most other old-timers. An iPhone made…