What is behind the ‘Semiconductor Shortage’?
Computer chips are more interwoven in todays society than ever before. Despite their prevalence there has been a shortage in them over the past year and a half and this has caused many issues in the tech industry. Shocking stories of scalpers selling computer parts at highly inflated prices have...
The Rise of NFTs: Originality in the Digital Age
In 1935, when Walter Benjamin analysed the theoretical implications of reproducing a work of art in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he would not have believed what the next 85 years would bring. Benjamin’s work is a rumination on the nature of value; a social...
Time for communications warfare
Communications warfare will define international relations over the next decade. Changing our approach to the public/private dimension of communications technology is now the only winning strategy. We increasingly rely on communications, especially the speed, complexity and accessibility of digital media, to make sense of and participate in the world around...
The Cycle of Exploration: A look into the cyclical nature of astrobiology
Life began the moment that information molecules started to reproduce and evolve via natural selection. But how did this actually happen? While we don’t have a time machine, we can look to other worlds in the solar system and beyond to uncover the secrets of life’s beginnings. Consequently, the closer...
The Social Media Decade
In 2010, The Social Network was released, a film based on Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of “Facebook”. Originally branded ‘thefacebook’ it was intended as a platform through which Harvard students could connect. One of its main innovations was the so-called ‘Wall’ upon which you could share your opinions, thoughts and day-to-day...
Broken Trusts: Big Tech’s fight against regulation
In a political landscape that could only be further polarised by the addition of penguins and an iceberg, it’s not a controversial statement to say that there are very few genuinely bi-partisan issues. One of the few that does reach across the aisle is that tech giants are becoming a...
Loot Boxes: How video games are gambling with their future
In their relatively short life as an art form, video games have been the cause of nearly as many moral panics as television and rock and roll. Thanks to lynch mobs of concerned parents and crusading politicians, video games have been in the dock for everything from eroding attention spans...
Level Up: The Metaverse
The 30-year transformation from the original World Wide Web to the first commercial quantum computer or virtual reality headset represents a technological escalation with no signs of slowing down. Computer processing power has increased exponentially, an unbelievable one trillion times since its invention. Yet a dystopia may be right...
Asteroids
Asteroids are rocky worlds revolving around the Sun, also known as planetesimals; they are the remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, that are too small to be called planets. Most of this ancient space rubble can be found orbiting between...