Electric cars are often seen as one of the great hopes for tackling climate change. With new models arriving in showrooms, major carmakers retooling for an electric future, and a small but growing number of consumers eager to convert from gas guzzlers, EVs appear to offer a way for us to decarbonise with little change to our way of life.
South Africa has not been immune to the hype. The government has shifted its focus and resources to the 4IR. And it’s prioritised over more mundane, but essential, policy interventions aimed at ensuring the more equitable inclusion of the populace into a modern, digital economy.
That’s right, rAge 2019 is here and it’s looking… well, you can see how it’s looking in the image gallery below. It’s looking expensive.
Technology has been blamed for a lot recently. Automation and artificial intelligence have supposedly led to substantial job losses, reduced bargaining power for workers and increased discrimination.
New technologies could enable a fairer distribution of resources to help cattle farmers adapt to these challenges. Virtual fencing is an example of this and could allow a system of land sharing that delivers sustainability and productivity.
Young people are now fully ensconced in the digital age as it whirls around and within them. This is the epoch of the Anthropocene — the age of humans, wherein a technological worldview and human tools hold the central place in re-shaping the earth and its people. It’s also a time when 1.8 billion youth make up the largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history with 50 per cent of the world’s population under 30 years of age.
In many ways, advanced technology is inherently complicated: If users want devices that can do incredible things, they need to deal with the complexity required to deliver those services. But the interfaces designers create often make it difficult to manage that complexity well, which confuses and frustrates users, and may even drive some to give up in despair of ever getting the darn things to work right.
What better way to build smarter computer chips than to mimic nature’s most perfect computer – the human brain? Being able to store, delete and process information is crucial for computing, and the brain does this extremely efficiently.
Digitisation refers to everything from delivering farming advice via text messaging to interactive voice response. It also includes smart phone applications that link farmers to multimedia advisory content, farm inputs, and buyers. And it covers the use of drones and satellite systems to inform farmer activities, such as crops and times to plant; and types and amounts of inputs to use.
People who become heavy users of the apps they download can develop deep relationships with these services, so deep that they take on what we call “psychological ownership” of them. This means they perceive each app as something that belongs just to them and has effectively become an extension of themselves.