When Sam, Thomas and I recorded the 45th episode of our Small Data Forum podcast two weeks ago, who would have imagined that the major topic for us then – the EU’s COVID vaccination mess – would continue to be a major topic today, one that’s evolved and morphed into something even more alarming than it was then. We were pretty critical of the European Commission, how it is managing the vaccine rollout across the 27 member states, and its…
“We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.“ So the famous US Supreme Court Justice and ‘crusader for social justice’ and breaker-upper of Gilded Age monopolies, Louis D. Brandeis is said to have said, perhaps sometime in the early 1930s. Today, perhaps the best-known neo-Brandeisian anti-trust advocate is Tim Wu, Columbia law professor, ‘father of net neutrality’ and author of a series of books likening today’s commercial excesses –…
Show notes for this episode written by Thomas Stoeckle. “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” A modern version of this 18th century thought experiment by the philosopher and cleric George Berkeley might read: “If the EU fines a big tech firm billions of dollars, and no one has the power to enforce it, has it actually happened?” A recent opinion piece on AdExchanger discussed the connection…
Neville Hobson joined FIR host Shel Holtz for the June edition of “The Hobson & Holtz Report” and conversation about these topics: An employee was mistakenly fired by an AI system and managers stood by powerless to correct the mistake. Was AI really to blame? IBM has introduced an AI designed for debate, which could mean there’s finally an unbiased devil’s advocate to point out the flaws in your business plan. There is no minimizing the threat to the Internet posed…
A few days ago, Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech in London on what he called “the future of Europe,” setting out his stall about the UK, the European Union, Europe itself and how he sees the future for these entities. I watched his live delivery on the TV news. I liked much of what I heard: in essence, a call to action for anyone with a point of view about the UK’s future as a member of the…
