In central image above: Pantone Color of the Year 2022: Very Peri💜
Money is not the issue anymore, Self-Realization is. Welcome 2022.
Just before this year comes to an end, a round of applause for the last updates regarding tech, design et al., but also interesting facts and figures we saved for last…Enjoy and come back for more next year for sure!
-World Mobile, who recently announced their plans to make low-cost, high-quality internet access available to Zanzibaris, has signed a partnership with the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training in Zanzibar to provide free, unlimited internet to schools across the region. The target is to connect all schools in the region by the end of 2022. In addition to connectivity, World Mobile has installed some laptops for teachers and students. Roll out will be achieved through a close collaboration between World Mobile and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to install solar telco and power equipment efficiently in schools. Providing access at schools will also enable World Mobile to supply connectivity to the local areas around them, boosting the local economies. Revenues generated from this will benefit the schools directly as they become node operators on the World Mobile network.
-Data linkage provides insight, informs policy change, and helps answer society’s most important questions through increasing the utility of data. Within the context of innovation and modernization in public services, Socitm, GeoPlace and Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council utilize Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) as those last can provide a wealth of insight and enablement for local authority decision making and projects. Socitm is supporting the ethical use of data and data insights effectively to make informed decisions and support ethical change as part of wider placebased post Covid recovery. UPRNs can facilitate data linking within a local authority context and this can be used to create a rich picture of intelligence for analytical and project needs.
-Another EU member decides to seriously test crypto: No other than Estonia, Estonian central bank Eesti Pank and Guardtime research project confirms role for digital bill money systems in CBDC deployment KSI Cash per transaction energy use is just 70 µWh (micro-Watt hours) compared to 0.1 Wh for Visa and 1 MWh for Bitcoin.Blockchain technology can play a key role in the development of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) platforms worldwide, a joint research project by Estonian Central Bank Eesti Pank and leading European deep tech company Guardtime has found (please see the attached press release). The study set out to investigate the technological and operational frontiers of blockchain technology and its use in the context of CBDCs using KSI Cash, a digital currency technology based on the KSI Blockchain.
Testing confirmed that digital bill-based money systems are linearly scalable and highly efficient delivering end-to-end payment times of 0.6 seconds based on speeds of up to two million bill transactions per second. Crucially it delivered a much smaller carbon footprint and lower energy use than current instant payments platforms – per transaction energy was just 70 µWh (micro-Watt -hour),compared with 0.1 Wh (Watt hour) for Visa and 1 MWh
(Megawatt hour) for Bitcoin (1 Megawatt hour is one trillion micro-Watt hours). The summary report written by Rainer Olt and Tiit Meidla of Eesti Pank and Luukas Ilves and Jamie Steiner of Guardtime says: “The CBDC platform we deployed proved to perform well. The system was tested at speeds of up to two million bill transactions per second, where it operated with faster transaction times, lower energy use, and a smaller carbon footprint than current instant payment platforms.”
-The CCPC is launching a full investigation into Synch Payments to determine if it lessens competition in Ireland. The launch of a proposed payments app by four major banks in Ireland has hit another stumbling block, with the country’s competition authority launching an in-depth investigation into the joint venture.
In January, AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and KBC Ireland alerted the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) of their intention to create a digital payments service to compete with the likes of Revolut (which has more than 1m Irish customers) and N26. Following a preliminary assessment, the CCPC said that it found the notification to be invalid because it was unable to gauge the scope of the Irish banks’ plans.
Last month, the Irish Times reported that Synch Payments had secured an additional €5m to fund the venture, led by AIB and Bank of Ireland buying up more than €4m in shares. Permanent TSB bought €855,000 in stock while KBC, which will soon exit the Irish market, bought only €8,500. This was on top of an initial capital raise of €5.9m that was reported earlier in the year.
*Growing digital banks such as the UK’s Revolut and Berlin-based N26 pose a significant threat to the market share of traditional banks because of their easy-to-use smartphone applications and popularity with younger users. Earlier today (9 December), UK neobank Monzo was valued at $4.5bn after a fresh funding round that saw the company raise $500m.
-Quant technology provider SigTech has announced that Revelio Labs, an industry leader in workforce intelligence, is the first client for its new Data Showroom service, a platform that revolutionizes the way data owners sell their data reducing the sales cycle from months to weeks.The SigTech Data Showroom, which launched in November this year, allows users to validate the value of alternative data within days rather than months by providing preloaded, mapped, and harmonized data, as well as signal code examples and backtesting building blocks.
The Data Showroom provides data owners with more transparency on how customers are using their data, making it easier to engage prospective new clients and to convert trial users into paying customers.
Revelio Labs’ team of data scientists, economists and engineers deliver industry leading workforce analytics and data to support strategic planning for companies looking to compare their own data to competitors. Most workforce data, unlike financial data, lacks the standardization necessary to develop sophisticated trading models.
-Today’s apparent exchange between U.S. congressmen and crypto executives has been surprisingly productive, civil, and open-minded. This is big for web3. At stake in the House of Financial Services Committee hearing during the previous weeks: the future of digital assets, (meaning NFTs, stablecoins, and their availability in the near future. Investment on those values seem to be entirely relevant and not the digital-chimeras-type-of -discussion during previous years, especially with the USA struggling to find an adequate position for its size in digital growth, in the comprehensive list of the big country players in crypto. The intentions are clear from inside the White House and beyond as well, that the U.S Dollar is there to coexist with its crypto-offspring in the near future.
-Next Steps in AI: The Critical Role of Research and Innovation in realizing the full potential of AI, including training the next generation of researchers, supporting talent, and the importance of fundamental AI research in AI innovation became apparent during Covid’s first wave in the UK and it evolves rapidly. At present time UK is ahead in the amount of startups in AI in comparison with the USA: training the public and the work sector in AI remains a challenge, nevertheless responsible, regulated AI in order to be robust, unbiasedundiscriminating and transparent, is tailored to each domain application.
At the core of the educational system, starting from the schools, UK acknowledges the need to get the best people and train them with AI training programs conversion aiming to master AI: not just to pick it from the shelf but make it customizable to the best use of the individual or service domain.
Data analysis and coding are about to get re-diverted not just to how-to-use AI but how to INVENT AI. Academia and industry have a foot in both camps as good AI is getting made always by diverse teams. Trust is another issue since AI tends to be appreciated but not judged as an irreplaceable technology of high importance, a pervasive locomotive in economy across all sectors. Slowed down or hammered by regulation? AI is not scared of regulation in the UK as all startups are very accessible, but all investors need to do is asking or getting ASKED TO INVEST.
Key people in the AI field:
Tim Cook, Deputy Head, The Office for AI
Kathryn Magnay, Deputy Director - Cross-Council Programs, EPSRC
Aldo Faisal, Professor in AI & Neuroscience & Founding Director, Centre in AI for Healthcare, Imperial College London
-Whats new in Tech? Check out some of the industry’s most trailblazing females:
Tugce Bulut, Founder & CEO, Streetbees
Rose Hulse, Founder & CEO, ScreenHits TV
Sam Evans, Head of International, TechNation
-In the search of their (digital) future: young people and employment. Almost two-thirds of those who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic are under the age of 25.There is a risk that, without coordinated action, the negative economic impact of the pandemic will be long-lasting for this generation. Additionally, in a nationwide poll of 1,000 16–18-year-olds by the Institute of Coding, more than half believe the digital workforce lacks diversity. 70% of youth surveyed think the sector is run entirely by those of white, British ethnicity, and over a third think there are unequal opportunities for women. One in ten admitted they are actively discouraged from pursuing digital education and jobs due to the lack of people that represent them. While some of these opinions echo what many people in the industry may already feel, it is shocking that these are the perceptions of young people who have yet to set foot in the industry.
Favourite Quotes of the Year (almost) Gone By:
-“We need less information and more knowledge”.
Elif Shafak
-“Listen to the Quiet people, (especially at countries in turmoil)”
Ellen Ehni
-“New Media take time to shape and that very Form depends upon Us”
“People Need & Deserve to Know: not only to get Informed, (about the surface of things)”
Timothy Snyder
-“#Infodemics is not serving as a Shield of Accurate Reporting”
Audrey Tang
-“Don’t devalue your Brand. Put Quality in it instead of Clickbaiting”
Jesper Doub
A Title 4 All for this Holiday season:
Garden Cities of To-morrow (To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform), by Ebenezer Howard.
All the Best & Bloody More/A VERY un-PERI-lous Year 2022!
A4D-D4A💙💚🙌
