Posts Tagged Under: technology

Girls Today Are More Interested in STEM Careers Than Boys Are

What did you want to become when you were a child? A doctor? A ballerina? An engineer? An astronaut? As we reach adulthood, few of us land a dream job. But if a recent survey is any indication, the next generation will be filled with scientists and engineers. And we have girls to thank for that.

STEM (previously SMET) is an acronym that refers to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It’s a pool of careers where you’re likely to find more men than women, but according to data unearthed by Fatherly, things are about to change really soon

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3 Ways Technology Made Communication Possible Where It Wasn’t

Photo by Aler Kiv on Unsplash

They say technology dehumanizes us. But not everyone buys it. It changes us, granted, but does it strip us of what makes us human – that is, exercise our intellect? As onlookers of the food chain, humans have the luxurious ability to imagine and then create a tool for just about anything. So it would appear that technology not only doesn’t dehumanize us, it defines us.

Having more options never hurt anyone. Professor Stephen Hawking surely agrees. He’d find it very hard (harder than it already is) to bless the scientific community with his ideas without the assistive technology that enables him to speak. A stranded person would give an arm and a leg for a radio. A long-distance relationship would be hard to bear without instant messaging. And so on, and so forth. Communication has benefited immensely from technological feats like the telephone, the radio, and the Internet. Below, we will focus on three often-overlooked scenarios where communication, in the absence of technology, can be a serious burden

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The Smartest Investments in 2016 Will Be in Disruptive Tech

The fourth annual Global Technology Innovation Survey by KPMG predicts a number of technologies that will enable the next revolution in the consumer world. These include including cloud computing (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), mobility, the Internet of Things (IoT), data & analytics, biotech, 3D printing, cyber security, artificial intelligence/cognitive computing, and digital currency platforms.

Different countries are banking on different things. Everyone agrees that the Cloud is going places, and the easiest to convince is China. Because of their faith in cloud computing, the Chinese are also vying with great enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence (AI). But this is more common sense than it is insight.

Cloud, IoT, and Data (in short, Cloud)

A more important takeaway from the lofty report is the part about

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UK Teachers Feeling Obsolete

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Almost three quarters of teachers responding in a poll admitted feeling left behind by new technology. In the case of some tutors, however, the problem was not that they couldn’t understand it or wield it.

Over 50% of the teachers agreed that interactive technology makes for a richer teaching/learning experience, and 57% touted engagement with students as the primary perk of interactive technology in the classroom. 81.5% reported using interactive whiteboards and 63.9% said they use laptops. Around half said they brought a tablet to the classroom on a regular basis

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BYOD Programs Responsible for 53% Higher Revenues in 2015

Tech juggernaut Dell has published the results from its annual Global Technology Adoption Index for the year 2015. According to the study, mobility is currently responsible for a 50% difference in performance between the companies that have a BYOD policy set in place and those that don’t.

The Dell Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI) 2015 report shows how IT and business decision makers of mid-market organizations around the world perceive and use four key technologies: the cloud, mobility (BYOD), security and big data

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IoT – How The World Will React to the Sensors of Tomorrow

In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations.” – Neil Gross 1999

Did you know that society undergoes a “privacy panic cycle” every time new technologies come out? It’s true. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has documented this well. The non-partisan think tank has put together a diagram that shows exactly how the process takes place, and if research by Deloitte is any indication, we’re in for a new wave of panic. A tsunami even

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Technology Is Evolving Faster Than We Can Handle It

Photo by Alessio Ferretti on Unsplash

Not too long ago, we discussed how a number of African countries were going mobile before they could even be fitted with landlines. Cell phones are dirt cheap today and ‘wireless’ is the norm, so it’s no surprise that copper-wire infrastructures are becoming irrelevant.

The same thing is happening across other industries and applications. According to a survey commissioned by Deloitte,

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Quote of the day by Kurt Vonnegut

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Humanity is technological by definition. From flint-made tools to the smartphone, humans have always been drawn to invent and discover. But you never hear about technology in old writings.

This rubbed Kurt Vonnegut the wrong way. The American writer and humorist believed that literature, especially novels, should include all aspects of life as we know it, not just events unfolding page by page.

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How Wireless Charging Will Change Communications Forever

Photo by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash

Ask yourself this: “am I using my phone too much?” If you’re like most people, chances are you’ll say “yes.” And it’s difficult not to, with so much connectivity at our fingertips and everyone doing it. But the reality is our cell phone usage today is moderate compared to what’s coming.

One big limitation that keeps us from constantly fiddling with our phones is battery life. On a full tank, we have no problem watching videos, playing games and browsing Facebook, sometimes for hours at a time. But the minute that battery meter drops below 20% we enter power-save mode. And I’m not talking about dimming the screen or switching from 4G to 3G either. No. I’m talking about literally going into power-save mode ourselves, by limiting actual usage of the phone. However, all that is about to change really soon.

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Facebook M – Possibly The Next Big Step Towards True AI

Photo by Rock’n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

AI is the talk of the town these days. Every major tech juggernaut is trying to grasp machine intelligence and Facebook seems to be on a very promising track with an all-new personal assistant called ‘M.’ Unlike Google Now, Cortana, or Siri, Facebook M doesn’t ask you to repeat what you said, nor does it dump a bunch of Internet links on you when the query is too difficult for the algorithms to handle. When it hits a search roadblock, it starts to ask around.

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