Author: Toby Shapshak

You’ve probably never heard of Larry Tesler, but every time you cut-n-paste on your computer it’s because of him.

Public health fear over spreading coronavirus prompted MWC Barcelona to be cancelled, but the signs for globalisation is much more onerous.

Swiping right has become a phrase that is synonymous with online dating, after the gesture in that hook-up app Tinder to confirm your interest in another person. To the uninitiated, Tinder shows you images of people with similar interest or in your vicinity (you can specify the radius in metres or kilometres) and if you’re interested in them, you swipe right. If the other person also swipes right, then the app gives both parties the other’s details. But that phrase “swipe right” is now as much a part of the popular lexicon as “hashtag” or “like” and Tinder is arguably…

While much of the fear and scorn around personal privacy and how Big Tech uses the data of its users are directed against Facebook, it tends to overlook what a central role in our lives is played by Google.

Ray Donovan is the new Tony Soprano. A more respectable gangster, but still a gangster. He wears his crisp white shirts and immaculate suits with the style that befits his Hollywood fixer character. But his favourite weapon is a baseball bat, and he uses it when his persuasive talking doesn’t get the results he wants. Liev Schreiber plays the stoic character with a strong screen presence. Ray isn’t a big talker but he’s a real doer. He’s the guy that the Hollywood celebrities call to fix their messes. And fix them he does. Most of the reason Ray Donovan is such a…

It’s like a tale from a Hollywood movie. The crown prince and future ruler of the wealthiest oil-rich Middle East country uses the most popular messaging service in the world to send malware to the phone of the CEO of the largest retailer on the planet.

Like 1,5bn other people last week, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. A sense of relief that’s arguably as deep as when Eskom doesn’t load-shit the country for a week.

In South Africa, the biggest threats to democracy are pretty obvious: the stuttering economy, never-ending rolling blackouts (let’s call them what they are), the rampant unemployment (nearly 30% in total, over 50% for youth) and a delusional political elite that doesn’t know it’s out of touch, out of money (due to said economic woes and therefore the inability of Sars to collect revenue) and generalised arrogance.

The traditional first column of the year is usually a prediction of the events and trends to expect this year. I’ll give it to you in a sentence, then focus on the unfortunate reality in South Africa where the tech we need to focus on is somewhat more prosaic but infinitely necessary: solar.

You will laugh when I write this, but arguably the most innovative phone on the market is a clever little Alcatel 2019G. It is specifically designed for a market that is frequently overlooked: older people. It caters for those who are hard of hearing and need a phone with big numbers. And the older one gets, the harder of hearing one tends to be and the more one’s eyesight may diminish. Anyone in their late 40s can confirm the impending need for reading glasses or bifocals for those of us already wearing glasses for short-sightedness. But there’s a whole category…