Author: Toby Shapshak

The government is tracking your cellphone, and it’s happening in many parts of the world. Instead of being horrified at the obvious fears of a surveillance state, many people are happy to participate because – for once – the invasion of our privacy is arguably necessary and potentially lifesaving. The data is being used to track the spread of the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic and hopefully help contain it by “flattening the curve”. But, before you panic, it’s not your own individual data, but so-called aggregated metadata. It’s anonymous aggregated data from the South African cellular operators that will be provided…

Every day for the last three mornings my wife – an M&A lawyer – has logged into that video-calling service Zoom. But instead of the usual conference calls about a deal, it’s an early-morning yoga class. As this period of self-isolating against the novel coronavirus begins in earnest, for those of us who can shut ourselves away to help “flatten the curve,” there are equally novel ways people are using technology to carry on doing the things they normally would. This smart way that yoga teachers have found to innovatively repurpose business conferencing technology to replicate the immediacy and intimacy…

Most South Africans had never heard the phrase “flatten the curve” before last week. Nor “social distancing”. A week ago, the seemingly improbable horror movie script of the global shutdown that has been caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic was farfetched. Now it’s our reality. But it’s a strange reality, isn’t it? The clarion calls to “work from home” and “self-isolate” are all good and well for the middle classes with an office job that involves sitting behind a computer. For the working class, it’s an entirely different story. Suddenly, South Africa’s steep Gini coefficient between rich and poor looks…

If you haven’t heard of it, you soon will. Edge computing, or computing at the edge, is going to be a term you’ll hear more of in this cloud-connected internet age. The computer as we know it has evolved from the beige box on our desk into the vast and powerful thing we now call cloud computing. Much more powerful machines than those desktop pioneers sit in massive data centres with innumerable racks of servers. Our laptops, even though vastly upgraded from the early laptops I used in the mid-1990s, are really on the edge – as are smartphones and…

It seems like a script form a movie, doesn’t it? Filled with fear-mongering Hollywood hyperbole, it’s a global pandemic that kills indiscriminately as it is piggy-backs on intercontinental flights and sews havoc across the globe. But this kind of worst-case scenario that is a stable of Hollywood hyperbole is all too real. And it’s going to hugely influence not just on how we travel and live, will have a destructive impact on the high-tech industry. An estimated 90% of all consumer electronics are made in China and the Shenzhen region. Apple has already warned of a potential US$4bn impairment on…

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…