It’s only a vision at this point, but technology companies like Facebook are aiming to make the metaverse the setting for many online activities, including work, play, studying and shopping. How do we ensure everyone has a say in how it develops? It’s a question Shel and I considered in the primary discussion in the August episode of The Hobson & Holtz Report aka episode 210 of the For Immediate Release podcast published on August 23. We started with a…
Most people would agree that what we have experienced over the past 12 months has changed – in a lasting manner – the ways in which we share information and communicate with each other, whether for business or for pleasure. Indeed, the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated far-reaching change in ways that no one could accurately have predicted in 2019. Communications technology and the Internet are central to all of this and are at the heart of discussion I had in…
Releasing his creation for free 30 years ago, the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, famously declared: “this is for everyone”. Today, his invention is used by billions – but it also hosts the authoritarian crackdowns of antidemocratic governments, and supports the infrastructure of the most wealthy and powerful companies on Earth. Now, in an effort to return the internet to the golden age that existed before its current incarnation as Web 2.0 – characterised by invasive data…
In the midst of coronavirus lockdowns just about everywhere, I suppose it’s natural for some people to wonder if the Internet can hold up and not collapse under the strain of millions of people suddenly working at home, schooling at home and playing at home, all during the so-called working day and beyond, for an extended period of continuous months. As someone who works for an organisation that’s all about the resilience of the Internet, I also suppose it’s inevitable…
For the December edition of The Hobson & Holtz Report – aka episode 190 of the For Immediate Release podcast – Shel and I picked an eclectic list of topics to talk about. As a European and, specifically, a Brit, my hot one was about the result of the General Election that took place here in the UK on December 12 – the result was a landslide win for Boris Johnson and the Conservative party – and the role social…
