Large companies, governments and other organisations often misuse and mishandle our data. This can make it hard to trust this kind of information. Preventing misuse of your personal data over time will help us regain our freedom to act.
Data is collected by thousands of companies every day, and at some point in our lives, many of us cede control to these businesses, clicking “yes” whenever a request for data pops up when we visit a site. But what if we had the opportunity to defend our data, as the union defends labor rights? One way is through Data Insurance, which makes sure that data remains secure.
Data trusts have been around for a while now. The UK was the first country to propose this in 2017 and as of early 2020, European Commission has used it as well- although they want to make more data available. And in July 2020, the Indian government came up with a plan for the use of blockchain technology that would give communities more control over their data.
A Trust is a legal entity created to hold assets for other people. A Data Trust is used by any individual or group which wishes to share data securely. Normally Data Trusts are operated by an organization of trustees like a company, organisation or collective. Data trustees have a responsibility to always act in the best interest of beneficiaries. Given the recent events, it’s difficult to imagine that Facebook would be keen on dealing with any of these organizations. The good news is that data trusts have other useful applications. You can use them to aggregate your own personal data and make it available for others to use.
It has been difficult to make the transition to electric cars as battery performance limits have hindered its performance.
Although electric cars are the focus of a lot of hype and hope, they only make up 2% of new car sales in the US. Many buyers find them to be too expensive, their range is restricted, and charging can take hours. The limited range of electric vehicles is due to the lithium-ion batteries they use. Batteries become expensive, heavy and wear out quickly. These batteries also have a tendency to catch fire if the vehicle is involved in an accident. In order to make electric vehicles competitive, a breakthrough battery will be needed. That’s the argument by Jagdeep Singh, CEO of QuantumScape, who says they have developed just such an innovation.
The anode in a typical lithium-ion battery is made up mostly of graphite, which is carbon that can easily absorb and release charged lithium ions as it moves between the anode and cathode. Lithium ion batteries produce an electrical current when lithium ions flow out of the battery due to the flow of charged particles. Graphite doesn’t store or produce energy on its own and is just hosting lithium ions in a metal conductive layer. In lithium metal batteries, however, metal replaces graphite so. When used as the anode, each atom in the battery is worth of one electron. Theoretically, lithium metal can store 50% more energy than graphite of the same weight and volume.
A lot of progress has been made over the past few weeks for COVID-19; the tracking and prevention methods are now at a much higher level than before.
The pandemic taught us an important lesson – we’re all interconnected. When we interact with people, it’s not just one-way traffic. Our microbes are going up into their nose, mouth and throat and so are the bugs that they’ve been exposed to. That’s why “infection intelligence” – the use of special technologies and applications to tell you if you’ve crossed paths with an infected person – seemed like such a promising development.
This idea sparked a mobilizing wave of development. Programmers would run the system for weeks and then share the code themselves, so that countries as far apart as Canada & Mongolia could use practically the same systems. Meanwhile, rivals Apple and Google collaborated to develop a system that ran on smartphones and saved health data from exposure. As of January 2021, MIT Technology Review tracked 77 COVID-19 exposure notification apps.
However, like many other tools to slow the pandemic, digital contact tracing hasn’t delivered the lifesaving results we needed. The fact is that many neglected protective measures: they didn’t wash their hands or wear masks and gloves. In some countries, their implementation of patient alert technology has been intermittent, and people have not paid attention to warnings about the virus due to low levels of trust in their government. All this together continued to worsen the epidemic.
The pandemic (name of the pandemic here) has ushered in a global experiment and we’ll continue to see its effects for years to come.
In the pandemic, we’ve seen how much of our jobs can be completed remotely. One example of this is that you can suffer from a lack of humanity without experiencing what it’s like in a virtual way.
Change has reached every area of life and affected people’s quality of life. One most visible effect is how things have changed for education and health. Zoom and other online tools have become more popular recently, but the most significant change was not in what the technology offers but in how we use it.
The flu pandemic peaked last April and led to school closures in over 170 countries, affecting around 1.6 billion children. As traditional education goes digital around the world, so too has demand for services like Snapask’s online tutoring in Asia increased. We reached 3.5 million users in 9 Asian countries since the pandemic and double our number!
Other ed-tech companies in the region have been having similar growth. Byju’s, a learning app and India’s second most valuable startup, saw its user count skyrocket by a third to almost 70 million when it offered its app for free after schools closed across. When Yuanfudao, a leading Chinese online learning platform, did the same in early 2020, their system failed due to the high demand. More than five million users signed up to try it out.
This means that it will be difficult to grow these programs on a large scale and fix problems of inequality. For example, only 56% of people in Indonesia use the internet. In richer countries such as South Korea, where 99.5% of the population has internet access, the government has had to step in and lend laptops to low-income students in order to level the playing field.
10 years before the pandemic, Davis Musingusi had an idea to create a system that would allow people in Uganda to dial toll-free number and ask a doctor to call them back for a consultation. To many, this idea seemed unusual. But Musingusi, a medical student at the time, was convinced it would work.
He chose to invest in medical concierge service because he believed it was the future for his country, however despite taking a gamble on this industry, it turned out to be less than half of people in Uganda had cell phones. Over the years, capabilities have expanded to include video calls, messaging and a fleet of motorcycle-riding medical personnel visiting patients’ homes. Recently, they also expanded into Kenya and Nigeria as well.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of COVID-19 users has increased 10 times. Remote healthcare is great, and many people see it as a necessity these days. This highlights how much we need accessible remote technologies & care providers to help those with pre-existing conditions live pain free lives. Africa has more than 10% of the world’s population, but they are underserved – they have just 3% of the world’s doctors.
The lessons learned from the pandemic have taught us to be more mobile, develop the skills we need for modern life, and have the ability to quickly pick up new technology. This can happen a lot faster than previously thought, but habits and preferences will evolve with time.