They have their reasons to hide them; or, at least, not to advertise them. The hard core of the (American) state is a very good customer, and it has its requirements. But a former Google search executive, Jack Poulson (retired in 2018), had the perseverance and patience to look for a stack of 30 million US government contracts, signed from 2015 onwards. There he discovered that microsoft has signed more than 5,000 contracts with the US Department of Defense and various federal public order mechanisms since 2016; amazon over 350, google over 250. He also discovered that signing contracts by …

Some people thought that by wearing surgical masks they become unrecognizable. Maybe even invisible. To their friends maybe. But not to biometric technologies! The well-known Japanese NEC group developed and implemented facial recognition software even if the person is wearing a sanitary face mask. One of the group executives, Shinya Takashima, explained the beneficence of the invention: “Needs grew even more due to the coronavirus situation … and so we’ve now introduced this technology to the market to help revival of economic activities under the New Normal…” It is possible that in the distant and high-tech Japanese capitalism, facial recognition …

The so-called remote work (we have explained that we prefer the term “work from home”, in order to get rid of the propaganda of idyllic descriptions of the type “work at sunset on the beach” or “work from the Bahamas”…) has been set in concrete, sometimes compulsorily and sometimes voluntarily, chalked up to the naughty virus. This “change” has, justifiably, attracted attention. We have already formulated some first thoughts here. However, to avoid the risk of conditioned reflexes (of the kind “when the bosses do A then we try to understand solely the consequences of A”), at the same time, …

In mid-August, thousands of high school students rallied in front of the education ministry of Her Majesty’s government. It deserves be considered the second authentic demonstration against the “brave new world” of the 4th industrial revolution. What was the cause? The ministry decided to make a leap into the future and replaced the final exams with which students are graded for admission to colleges (which, due to hygienist restrictions, were not made), with this algorithm: Pkj = (1-rj) Ckj + rj (Ckj + qkj – Pkj) It certainly seems and is incomprehensible. Understandable were the results of this “algorithmic assessment” …

… the pandemic will accelerate innovation even more, catalysing technological changes already under way (comparable to the exacerbation effect it has had on other underlying global and domestic issues) and “turbocharging” any digital business or the digital dimension of any business. … With the pandemic, the “digital transformation” that so many analysts have been referring to for years, without being exactly sure what it meant, has found its catalyst. One major effect of confinement will be the expansion and progression of the digital world in a decisive and often permanent manner. In April 2020, several tech leaders observed how quickly …