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Internet can put your mental health in danger [The Telegraph]
Are you obsessed with checking emails and social media every five minutes? Well you might be suffering from online hoarding. Together with cyberchondria (excessive online searching for health information) and shopping addiction these are growing mental health disorders affecting more and more internet users. A recent study raised concern over the omnipresence of internet that leads to excessive shopping, gaming or gambling and damages social relationships. Even if those disorders already existed, experts say that they have taken on a new form with the internet and warn the authorities against the negative consequences of such obsessive behaviour.
Do open systems call for open politics? [WSJ]
Well, the systems weren’t meant to be open. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google found a bug in the Google+ social network. Our Brussels tech circle will forever remember not having normal spring fever in 2019, but GDPR fever. Still, in the midst of that data protection fervour, the US tech giant chose not to publicly disclose the bug. This comes on the heels of any empty chair at US Senate hearings left vacant by a no-show Alphabet CEO Larry Page. At a time when tech companies on both sides of the Atlantic have been in overdrive trying to repair their image towards policymakers and the public alike, is a little more openness warranted?
Fighting for a forest: environmental startup takes on German energy giant [The Guardian]
Imagine you could save the planet by simply searching the internet. This is the concept behind Ecosia – a non-profit German startup which uses revenue from advertising on their online search engine to plant trees. This week Ecosia put in a €1 million offer to buy back 200 hectares of forest from German energy giant RWE. The reason? The 12,000-year-old Hambach forest is set to be destroyed for coal surface mining. With Germany producing for the first time last year more renewable energy than coal, such initiatives show that the country’s struggling energy transition is also a business opportunity.
Feeling not-so-intelligent about AI? [Forbes]
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks: how does it all work? Forbes has taken up the challenge to explain this in two minutes, and it’s well worth a read. Conclusion: “While neural networks combined with deep learning are seen as the most promising approach to AI today, that could all change in five years.” Agree?
In case you haven’t had enough
A look inside your surgeon’s brain, before the surgeon looks inside you [Bloomberg]
Watch Shimon the marimba-playing robot play along to jazz, reggae, and hip hop [Tech Crunch]
Are you a “cyberhoarder”? Five ways to declutter your digital life – from emails to photos [The Guardian]
#TechAways is brought to you by Cambre’s Technology Practice led by Victoria Main and featuring Fernando Anton, François Barry, Zachery Bishop, Lauren Clark, Nicolas Gyss, Anne-Claude Martin and Simos Piperidis.
Questions, comments or ideas to zbishop@cambre-associates.com.