| by Matt Klassen on June 30, 2016
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Having recently won a landmark victory in upholding the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over establishing and enforcing Net Neutrality regulations, it really wouldn’t surprise me if FCC chairman Tom Wheeler was hesitant to continue pushing his luck, particularly when it comes to investigating the popular zero-rating trend.
But consumer groups continue to urge the Commission to bring the current regulations to bear on this controversial practice, given that it masks all of the evils Net Neutrality was designed to combat, but in an seemingly consumer-friendly package.
The argument is, of course, that despite the fact that zero-rating offers certain streaming video services at no data cost, that these sorts of practices offer broadband providers a great deal of power of subscribers’ online activity, allowing them to direct users towards certain favoured services, giving carriers leave to throttle or otherwise manage data streams, and ostensibly allowing them to block (or at least render completely irrelevant) services unwilling to participate. So will an investigation finally begin?
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| by Matt Klassen on June 29, 2016
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In the 2004 dystopian action movie “I, Robot,” the main character (played by Will Smith) harboured a great deal of resentment towards advanced robotic assistants because of their inability to make complex moral decisions. In fact, as you find out through the course of the film, a robot had made a choice to save his life, rather than that of a young girl, based on the logical calculations of both their chances of survival during a catastrophic car accident. The point was simple, the decision making power of robots will always be flawed because they lack the emotional capacity to make nuanced moral choices.
While a decade ago considering moral theory as it relates to robotics might have seemed like some futuristic thought experiment, today it has become a reality, as the advent of self-driving cars is presenting unique moral challenges, particularly related to what decisions robotic cars should make in the event of a crash.
The fact of the matter is that while self-driving cars purport to deliver advantages related to more efficient traffic systems, reduced accidents and lower emissions, even robots will get into accidents, and autonomous vehicles will have to decide how to respond to those accidents and make decisions as to who might be injured in them: passengers or pedestrians.
It is a moral dilemma that is currently facing the autonomous vehicle industry, and one that will need to be programmed and resolved in forthcoming self-driving cars.
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| by Matt Klassen on June 28, 2016
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For several years now Google has struggled with its role within the Android ecosystem, always tempted to wade into the waters with its own Google-branded hardware in an effort to compete directly with Apple, while equally always worried such efforts would upset the Android partners it depends on to actually make this crazy open source project financially viable.
Granted Google has unveiled its own Nexus line of devices, but over the years these projects have been done in partnership with a variety of Android vendors, almost like Google throwing a bone to the likes of HTC, Huawei, and LG.
But recent rumours indicate that Google may be poised for a significant switch in its Android strategy, as the company is reportedly planning to release its own non-Nexus, Google smartphone by the end of 2016, the Telegraph reported on Monday, citing “sources familiar with the discussions.” Add this to the recent speculation that Google is planning on creating a proprietary, closed version of Android, and we could be seeing a radical change in Google’s mobile strategy.
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| by Matt Klassen on June 24, 2016
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In today’s world you might think that the last people to be reached by broadband service would be those in remote or rural locations, particularly given the fact that many of us in North American urban centres likely consider broadband access and affordability to an inexorable and ubiquitous part of our very existence. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve long considered city life and broadband access to exist hand-in-hand…but not so.
A new study conducted on behalf of the Wireless Broadband Alliance has found that the digital divide has really nothing to do with urban or rural living, and discovered that shockingly 57 percent of the world’s urban population remains unconnected, lacking either fixed or wireless broadband service.
To put in another way, in a classic tale of haves and have-nots, being part of the so-called unconnected billions—and by the study’s own numbers, it’s about 2.2 billion people unconnected in cities alone—has little to do with where you live within a given country, and everything to do with how much money you have while living there.
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Having recently won a landmark victory in upholding the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over establishing and enforcing Net Neutrality regulations, it really wouldn’t surprise me if FCC chairman Tom Wheeler was hesitant to continue pushing his luck, particularly when it comes to investigating the popular zero-rating trend.
