Is technology making your attention span shorter than a goldfish's?

Now then, where was I? Shutterstock

If you’ve ever found it hard to concentrate on one thing without stopping to check your emails or post to social media, you’re not alone. The average human attention span – how long we can concentrate effectively on a single task – wasrecently reported by Microsoft to have dropped below the level attributed to goldfish.

This certainly plays to our fears about what the daily flood of social media and emails is doing to us, and to younger generations in particular. However, these figures may be misleading. For one thing, the report contains no real detail for either the goldfish or human attention span beyond the numbers on the web page Microsoft pulled them from.

More importantly, our minds are adaptive systems, constantly reorganising and refocusing our mental faculties to suit the environment. So the idea that our ability to pay attention may be changing in response to the modern, online world is neither surprising nor anything to necessarily worry about. However, there is an argument that we must take care to keep control of our attention in a world increasingly filled with distractions.

Attention is a phenomenally awkward thing to study and the manner in which it is tested enormously impacts on the results. This is one of the reasons attention is one of the most enduring and active research areas in psychology: more than 1,200 papers have been published on it just in the past 10 years.

But assuming the numbers in the report reflect some research – no matter what the method behind the data was – it’s still not reasonable to apply them to any situation other than the one in which they were generated. Applying them to all aspects of our lives, as the report implies we should do, is a huge stretch.

Published scientific research looking at the effect of modern technology on our cognitive abilities does show an effect on attention. But contrary to popular opinion, it shows attention spans have actually improved. For example, habitual video gamers have demonstrated better attentional abilities than non-players – and non-players who started playing video-games began to show the same improvements.

Brain training Shutterstock

There’s no reason why the modern world should necessarily diminish our mental faculties and no reason to fear them changing. Our cognitive abilities are constantly changing and even naturally vary across the day.

One of our projects at the Open University is currently collecting data on these daily cycles. We’ve developed a smartphone app that includes a measure of attention alongside four other cognitive tasks. By using the app across the day, you can participate in this research and chart these natural changes in your own performance. This can enable you to better plan your day and finally understand if you actually are a morning or evening person.

However, as interesting as possible variations in cognitive abilities are, a more pertinent question may be what or who is driving the changes in our environment. Happily, this question is much easier to answer. The Microsoft study is aimed at advertisers, not the general public, and calls on companies to use “more creative, and increasingly immersive ways to market themselves”.

The increasing number of distractions in our world is partly due to the new and ever-evolving ways in which advertisers can put their message in front of us – and the “increasingly immersive” techniques they’ll use once the message is there. Realising this helps us understand that our attention is a resource being fought over by advertisers.

The online world is increasingly comprised of spaces where advertisers attempt to tempt us with their products. Similarly, public spaces are increasingly full of adverts that can play sound and video to further capture our attention. Escaping this advertising battleground is becoming one of the luxuries of the modern world. It’s why paid-for executive lounges at airports are free from noisy, garish adverts and why the removal of adverts is a key selling point for paid-for apps.

Our mental abilities are changing, as they always have done in order to best serve our success in changing environments. But now, more than ever, our environment is made by those who either want our attention or want to sell access to it. It will certainly be interesting to see how our cognitive abilities adapt to meet this new challenge. However, as individuals we too must start valuing our attention as much as the advertisers do.

Your smartphone could be good for your mental health

Self-help Shutterstock

When it comes to mental health, technologies such as smartphones and social media networks are almost always discussed in terms of the dangers they pose. Alongside concerns expressed in the media, some experts believe that technology has a role in the rising rates of mental health problems. However, there is also evidence to suggest your smartphone could actually be good for your mental health.

The brain is a sensitive organ that reacts and adapts to stimulation. Researchers have looked into smartphone usage and the effects on the day-to-day plasticity of the human brain. They found that the finger movements used to control smartphones are enough to alter brain activity.

This ability of technology to change our brains has led to questions over whether screen-based activity is related to rising incidence of such conditions as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or an increased risk of depression and insomnia. Technology has also been blamed for cyber-bullying, isolation, communication issues and reduced self-esteem, all of which can potentially lead to mental ill health.

Positive potential

However, focusing only on the negative experiences of some people ignores technology’s potential as both a tool for treating mental health issues and for improving the quality of people’s lives and promoting emotional well-being. For example, there are programmes for depression and phobias, designed to help lift people’s moods, get them active and help them to overcome their difficulties. The programmes use guided self help-based cognitive behavioural principles and have proven to be very effective.

Computer games have been used to provide therapy for adolescents. Because computer games are fun and can be used anonymously, they offer an alternative to traditional therapy. For example, a fantasy-themed role-playing game called SPARX has been found to be as effective as face-to-face therapy in clinical trials.

Researcher David Haniff has created apps aimed at lifting the mood of people suffering from depression by showing them pleasing pictures, video and audio, for example of their families. He has also developed a computer game that helps a person examine the triggers of their depression. Meanwhile, smartphone apps that play subliminal relaxing music in order to distract from the noise and worries of everyday living have been proven to be beneficial in reducing stress and anxiety.

Doctor on call Shutterstock

Technology can also provide greater access to mental health professionals through email, online chats or video calls. This enables individuals to work remotely and at their own pace, which can be particularly useful for those who are unable to regularly meet with a healthcare professional. Such an experience can be both empowering and enabling, encouraging the individual to take responsibility for their own mental well-being.

This kind of “telemedicine” has already found a role in child and adolescent mental health services in the form of online chats in family therapy, that can help to ensure each person has a chance to have their turn in the session. From our own practice experience, we have found young people who struggle to communicate during face-to-face sessions can be encouraged to text their therapist as an alternative way of expressing themselves, without the pressure of sitting opposite someone and making eye contact.

Conditions such as social anxiety can stop people seeking treatment in the first place. The use of telemedicine in this instance means people can begin combating their illness from the safety of their own home. It is also a good way to remind people about their appointments, thus improving attendance and reducing drop-out rates.

New routes to treatment

The internet in general can provide a gateway to asking for help, particularly for those who feel that stigma is attached to mental illness. Accessing information and watching videos about people with mental health issues, including high-profile personalities, helps to normalise conditions that are not otherwise talked about.

People can use technology to self-educate and improve access to low-intensity mental health services by providing chat rooms, blogs and information about mental health conditions. This can help to combat long waiting times by providing support earlier and improving the effectiveness of treatment.

More generally, access to the internet and use of media devices can also be a lifeline to the outside world. They allow people to connect in ways that were not previously possible, encouraging communication. With improved social networks, people may be less likely to need professional help, thus reducing the burden on over stretched services.

Research into the potential dangers of technology and its affect on the brain is important for understanding the causes of modern mental health issues. But technology also creates an opportunity for innovative ways to promote engagement and well-being for those with mental health problems. Let’s embrace that.

Found: our 3m-year-old forebear who lived alongside 'Lucy'

Scientists get their teeth into A. deyiremeda fossils. Credit: Laura Dempsey

They call it Australopithecus deyiremeda. The name comes from a language spoken in the Afar region of Ethiopia and means “close relative”. This is a brand new and previously unsuspected species – discovered in Ethiopia – that lived at the same time as one of our potential ancestors: “Lucy” (A. afarensis).

There are few things more exciting to a palaeontologist than the discovery of a new species. Work will now begin to try to figure out exactly how this hominin relates to our own species. The discovery was made from a number of fossils, dating back to 3.5m-3.3m years ago. They comprise part of an upper jaw bone with some of the teeth as well as most of a lower jaw bone with a few of its teeth. There are also a couple of other fragments of jaws and teeth.

Walking or crawling?

The fossils raise many questions that are hard to answer. For instance we can’t know whether the hominin actually walked upright, as there are no bones apart from the skull bones available. The researchers, who report their findings in the journal Nature, have previously found fragments of a foot bone in the same area which dated to 3.4m years ago. The owner of this foot may not yet have completely left the trees.

As there are specimens of Lucy’s species A. afarensis not far away, it is likely that the two were contemporary. We know that Lucy and her kind were bipeds as we have their foot bones. There is also an amazingly preserved footprint trail in Laetoli, Tanzania.

Lucy stood tall at 1.1m. Matt Celeskey/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The foot of A deyiremeda – if that earlier discovery of a partial foot does turn out to belong to this species – is quite different from Lucy’s.

There are other Australopiths around at the same time too. In Chad there is the enigmatic A. bahrelghazali, only a little older. In South Africa, there’s the Littlefoot skeleton from Sterkfontein, recently re-dated to 3.7m years ago. Some palaeoanthropologists want to interpret Littlefoot as a new species of Australopith A. prometheus, but others are reluctant to identify it as a new species yet.

But the case the discoverers of A. deyiremeda have put forward supports their fossils being a new species. There are numerous differences in the jaws and teeth between these remains and those of other species of Australopith. Further south in Kenya there is another hominin around at the same time, not only a different species, but one belonging to a wholly different genus – Kenyanthropus platyops. However A. deyiremeda is not like this either.

A palaeontologist’s puzzle

Exactly where A. deyiremeda fits in among our ancestors is, however, hard to know. We are Homo sapiens sapiens. Our genus, Homo, is the family we belong to along with our extinct cousins like Homo neanderthalensis and possible ancestors like Homo erectus. Our species is sapiens, meaning wise, and we add another sapiens on to our name to distinguish ourselves from the very earliest members of our species. But here is the thing: we are the only species in our genus – and, from an evolutionary perspective, that is not a healthy sign.

Up until today, genus Australopithecus had six, maybe seven species in it depending on who you believe. Now that is an astonishingly successful genus as far as evolution goes. The oldest yet found is A. anamensis, which is more than 4m years old. The youngest is A. sediba which is about 1.9m years old. That’s a life span of nearly two million years between these species. The reason so many species can emerge is because natural selection experiments with different adaptations and different ecological niches.

Upper jaw of A. deyiremeda Yohannes Haile-Selassie

The newly discovered A. deyiremeda comes from the earlier phase in Australopith evolution. Exactly how it relates to our own species is hard to know. However, many of the features of its jaws and teeth are seen in later hominins, particularly a group of flat-faced ape men called Paranthropus. These are not on our evolutionary line. The researchers also describe some similarities between A. deyiremeda and early Homo, but in the paper they also point out some important differences between the new discoveries and the earliest known member of our own genus, currently dated to 2.8m years old. So for the moment this is an open question.

But there is a last twist to the tale here. For a long time we believed that members of our own genus were the only tool makers in the hominin record. Now we know that’s not true. Recent reports have established the oldest yet discovered stone tools date to 3.3m years ago, that’s half a million years older than the earliest member of genus Homo.

Tool making may even go back a little bit further. There are contested cut marks from stone tools on bones dated at 3.4m years ago at Dikika in Ethiopia. Guess which species are around at that time in East Africa? You guessed it: A. afarensis, K. platyops and A. deyiremeda. Up until today it was K. platyops that was the favoured candidate for this early tool maker, but today’s announcement of A. deyiremeda puts a new player in the game.

Thriving resale of dwindling IP addresses at last provides commercial reason to adopt IPv6

You can hold off for now, but IPv6, like change, is inevitable. IP by Grasko/shutterstock.com

The Internet Protocol (IP) has been phenomenally successful. From an experiment in the 1970s, it has evolved to an internet spanning the globe, connecting billions of users. IP underpins the enormous success that is the World Wide Web – and its ubiquity has led to the convergence a wide range of technologies upon it, including digital phone calls made using Voice-over-IP (VoIP).

But IP isn’t just successful, it’s valuable too. IP requires computers attached to the network to have an IP address. The current version (IPv4) has a 32-bit addressing scheme, which provides a total of 2³² or 4.3 billion globally unique addresses. While that may seem like a lot, historically IP address space was given out in large blocks – in the early days up to 16m addresses at a time.

As available addresses disappear, their value grows, and a thriving market is developing around the resale of unused IP addresses. Recently the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions sold unused addresses within the enormous space allocated to it to a Norwegian company, Altibox, for £600,000.

IPv4 addressing, a hierarchical address where each element is assigned as network or host bits. Indeterminate

Conserving a dwindling resource

The need to conserve IP addresses was realised as early as the 1990s. This led to the creation of a system of five regional internet registries (RIRs) under the global Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The five RIRs requested blocks of 16m addresses at a time from IANA as needed, from which they would assign addresses for use by others. In February 2011 IANA allocated the last of its largest blocks, one to each RIR, and declared the IPv4 address space exhausted.

Allocated IPv4 address space over time, by RIR from http://ift.tt/196wgDb

Yet, reading this online as you are, clearly this has not brought about the end of the internet. But RIRs have become much more strict about assigning addresses. For example RIPE NCC, the European RIR, now provides at most only a block of around 1,000 addresses at a time. The development of network address translation (NAT) has hugely slowed the consumption of globally unique IP addresses, allowing an entire network of client computers, such as in your own home network, to connect to the internet while sharing a single globally unique IP. However, it’s clear a new approach is needed – and in the meantime a growing open market for IPv4 addresses is emerging.

Putting a value on IP

Microsoft made the first big purchase of IP addresses in March 2011, buying around 660,000 addresses from bankrupt Nortel for US$7.5m, or around US$11 each. This figure has remained fairly stable since, with one broker recently indicating variance from US$7 to US$13. These transfers are publicly viewable, at least under RIPE’s transfer policies in Europe.

We’re likely to see much more trading activity as the RIRs edge closer to exhausting their allocations – which could happen within weeks for the North American RIR, ARIN. Price fluctuations will depend on IPv4 demand, which in turn will depend on how quickly and painlessly its successor, IPv6, is deployed.

With 128-bit addressing, IPv6 can supply enough addresses for every networked device on the planet for the foreseeable future (around 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – or hundreds of times more than required to assign an address to every atom on Earth).

IPv6 addressing, an enormous address space. Indeterminate

The IPv6 waiting game

The core IPv6 specification was published around 20 years ago, and today all major operating systems and routing platforms support it, yet without any urgency to move from IPv4, few have done so.

So what’s the hold-up? One problem is its incompatibility with IPv4: an IPv6-only device cannot communicate directly with an IPv4-only device, instead a translation mechanism is required. Nor is there a deadline to drive the switch, as there was to fix the Y2K bug or with the UK’s phased analogue-to-digital television switch-over.

The initial plan for global IPv6 deployment, as much as any plan existed, was to transition before IPv4 address space ran out. Instead, we’re now in the position of individual ISPs and organisations trying to work out how to implement IPv6 while sustaining their IPv4 operations.

Some larger content providers offer their services over both IPv4 or IPv6 – Google and Facebook, for example, have done so since World IPv6 Launch day in June 2012. Google’s public IPv6 stats show that around 6% of all its customer traffic is now IPv6, heading towards 10% within a year. Content delivery networks such as Akamai also offer IPv6, allowing their customers an easy way to enable IPv6 for their own services. Akamai’s own stats show it recently topped 1m hits per second via IPv6 worldwide. ISPs have also begun IPv6 roll-out, perhaps the biggest example being Comcast in the US.

Projected IPv4 address space run-out, by RIR from http://ift.tt/196wgDb

Inevitably, there will be a (perhaps very protracted) period of “dual stack” deployment, where both protocols are offered to cater for older devices. But this adds complexity and isn’t a long-term solution. Running IPv6-only networks, translating to an increasingly “legacy” IPv4 where necessary at the edge, is the most viable future model. And with providers such as Google, Facebook and Netflix already IPv6-enabled, a typical home network may already see as much as 50% of its traffic being natively IPv6-capable.

What difference will IPv6 make?

Simply put, IPv6 allows internet growth. It’s unfortunate that the general public will be blissfully unaware of it, despite standing to benefit from the new internet technologies and devices it will enable. No one should need to ever see or, heaven forbid, have to type in a IPv6 address. In that sense, IPv6 is set to become the unsung hero of the internet. With its vast globally unique address space, IPv6 allows every device on the internet to be directly addressable – no need for complexities such as NAT or limitations on running services from home computers.

For those in charge of networks or developing applications, IPv6 simplifies operation and design – reported to be a major driver for Comcast’s IPv6 deployment. Facebook has recently announced that its internal network traffic will soon be IPv6-only. These are big indicators of an IPv6 future. For application developers, the benefits are less readily realised until a significant portion of their customers can use IPv6, but the potential is there.

For the internet to meet the increasing demands of its connected users, and certainly for the much-touted “Internet of Things” of a multitude of internet-connected devices to be made possible, the move to IPv6 is essential.

How DNA is helping us fight back against pest invasions

Perfect swarm Juan Medina/EPA

They are the original globe trekkers. From spiders bunking along with humanity’s spread into south-eastern Asia, to sea squirts hopping on military craft returning after the Korean War, invasive species have enveloped the globe.

These species outcompete native ones for resources and also cause immense environmental damage, for example by eating native species and their young, or by introducing parasites and diseases.

Their largest impact, however, is economic. The estimated annual cost of invasive species to the UK and Ireland is £2 billion. This includes the cost of damage from all invasive animal and plant species to sectors such as tourism, business, human health and agriculture.

The cost of controlling invasive species is also huge. Eradication, if possible, may cost millions of pounds. This cost increases as the population becomes bigger, and a late-caught invasion can cost thousands of times more to control than one that was caught early on. Aside from some small technical differences, this model can be applied across all invasive species.

Environmentally, they pose a significant threat to global biodiversity by competing with other species and altering the environment, for example by blocking waterways or accelerating erosion.

Conventional monitoring techniques, such as checking and photographing the bottom of recreational boats for potential invaders, are not robust enough to handle this threat. Many invasive species also look similar to natives and can also confuse detection. Fortunately, a potent tool is available that lends well to management of invasive species: analysis of their DNA.

Spot the difference? Anders Sandberg/flickr, CC BY-NC

Decoding genetics

In the 1970s Frederick Sanger devised a method of automatically reading and sequencing DNA. Sanger sequencing allowed biologists to study the genes (the stretch of DNA coding for a specific trait that is passed down through generations) of invasive species and piece together much information about their genomes (the complete sets of all their genes and DNA) and evolution.

Genetic techniques also enhance management of invasive species. They are essential for informed sustainable policy decisions.

For example, comparing genetic variation within and between populations allows biologists to understand how invading species spread, mix and compete with native species. This has given researchers a better understanding of the routes that invasive animals such as sea squirts, ladybirds and invertebrate pests took when colonising new areas.

Biologists can also use genetic techniques to catch invasions earlier by detecting animals' DNA in the environment from shed material such as skin or urine. This was demonstrated by detecting the DNA of an invasive bullfrog in French ponds much earlier than the invasion would otherwise have been noticed.

Foreign invaders John Flesher/AP/Press Association Images

Genomic leap forward

Over the past decade, genetics has slowly been caught by the study of genomics, which offers a much more comprehensive view of DNA because it involves sequencing the entire genome rather than just a number of genes. Studying the genome enables us to analyse variability between invasive populations in greater detail and sensitivity.

Since next-generation sequencing technology drastically reduced the price of DNA sequencing in the mid-2000s, scientists have been able to explore hundreds of thousands of regions of DNA, rather than the tens used in genetic studies. Genomics has also helped to create new tools to assist our study of invasive species.

Studying organisms' full genomes also introduces an extremely powerful method to study the evolutionary history of invasive species. It allows biologists to distinguish the neutral DNA changes that all organisms undergo but that don’t spread through a species, from positive changes that improve an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction and so do spread.

This positively-selected evolution drives the fast adaptation of invasive species. So by understanding the effects of positive evolution, we can predict how species might adapt in the future.

Genomics has yet to realise its potential in invasion biology, but invasion genetics is slowly progressing into invasion genomics. Both disciplines offer a cost-effective solution to the monitoring and management of invasive species. For example, a programme exists in the US for early detection of the invasive Asian Carp in the Great Lakes. This early detection, which involves sampling water to check for shed DNA material, will save significant sums in managing the invasive fish.

If more widely and effectively employed, genetic and genomic techniques have the potential to save both natural environments and the public purse from the environmental side-effects of globalisation.

Rare glimpse: satellites catch the birth of two volcanic islands

An island is being created during a volcanic eruption in 2011. Jamal Sholan/youtube

The birth of a volcanic island is a potent and beautiful reminder of our dynamic planet’s ability to make new land. Given the destruction we’ve seen following natural events like earthquakes and tsunamis in the past few years, stunning images of two islands forming in the southern Red Sea are most welcome.

Birth of an island captured by satellites. Jónsson et al., Nature Communications

The images have been published as part of a study in Nature Communications. It describes how the two new islands formed during volcanic eruptions in 2011 and 2013 respectively, are now being steadily eroded back into the depths. And they erode quickly: one of the islands has lost 30% of its area in just two years. Superb images document the birth and growth of these new islands and also document their changing shape as the Red Sea washes over them.

Ridges and rifts

Magma from an undersea eruption has a difficult journey to travel from the sea floor to the surface to form a new volcanic island, as it becomes continually quenched by an endless supply of water. But that’s what happened when the two volcanic islands, dubbed Sholan and Jadid, formed in the remote Zubair archipelago, part of Yemen.

Video of the 2011 eruption in the Zubair islands, that formed Sholan island. Credit: Jamal Sholan

The southern Red Sea is not a part of the world that many people would recognise as being volcanically active, but it is part of an immense African rift system – a chain of cracks in the Earth’s crust more than 3,000km long. The southern Red Sea is a place where a new ocean is forming as the tectonic plates spread apart at about 6mm per year. Underneath the Red Sea is an embryonic mid-ocean ridge, an undersea range of mountains created by volcanic eruptions.

Mid-ocean ridge spreading is mimicked in the system that feeds the eruptions – long and linear magma-filled cracks called dykes. The researchers used satellite images and knowledge of ground deformation to understand the eruptions and their feeder systems. They discovered that the dykes were at least 10km in length whereas the islands are both less than 1km in diameter.

This is similar to what happens in other volcanic areas where spreading takes place such as Iceland, where a long fissure may be active at the very start of an eruption, but as the eruption progresses the activity becomes focused around just a few vents. These features support the claim by the researchers that active spreading is taking part.

The birth of Sholan island. First image in 2010, last image in 2012. Credit: Jónsson et al., Nature Communications

Growing archipelago?

Another key finding of the research is that the seismic swarms that occurred during the formation of these volcanic islands have been observed in the past, but without eruptions being witnessed (this is a remote area). The authors argue that these older seismic swarms were caused by dyke intrusions or submarine eruptions – either of which would suggest that this area is more volcanically active than previously thought.

This is corroborated by observations that the islands in the Zubair archipelago are all constructed of a type of fragmental volcanic rock that characterises the magma-water interactions which occur when volcanic islands are formed.

Hubris? The Zubair archipelago could grow considerably. Credit: Jónsson et al., Nature Communications

The value of this research is that by combining high-resolution optical imagery, satellite (InSAR) observations, and seismicity, the researchers have characterised the birth and development of two volcanic islands along a mid-ocean ridge system with unprecedented detail.

Perhaps the most exciting finding of the new research is that the birth of these islands suggests that the Zubair archipelago is undergoing active spreading and that further submarine and island-building eruptions are to be expected.

Brexit prospects for the UK digital market are none too rosy

Plugged into Europe, or UK unplugged? digital europe by silver tiger/shutterstock.com

There is a real prospect of Britain leaving the European Union following the proposed in-or-out referendum to be held by the end of 2017. This would have various repercussions, one of which might be that the UK would be shut off from operating in the European Single Digital Market, a European Commission priority.

Our recent digital marketing research found major differences in the attitudes of business and students in different European countries toward the use of digital and social media marketing. If the UK leaves the EU, these differences are likely to widen.

Cutting cost and complexity

The EU Digital Agenda for Europe is a strategic initiative for the long-term prosperity of European member states, which attempts to reduce the challenges faced by the digital economy. For example, companies face a VAT compliance cost of €5,000 per country it trades its digital products in. Costs associated with legal compliance across various member states can reach €9,000 according to some estimates.

These are burdens for small companies, so the ambition of the Digital Agenda is to harmonise these differences and simplify cross-border trading. Even if the UK were outside this harmonisation process it would still benefit from a simpler European market with which to trade.

This would come with restrictions: organisations trading within the market would be more likely to trust each other due to common understanding of tax and legal requirements, for example. The tax issue is also a major challenge – as can be seen by governments' efforts to try (and generally) fail to collect tax from global giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook (to be fair, Amazon is now at least trying to regularise its tax payments).

In any case, the UK might find companies are more interested in access to the bigger, European-wide markets and so set up shop in European capitals rather than London.

UK compared to its peers

The performance of EU member states is tracked as part of the Digital Agenda, using five indicators: connectivity, human capital, use of internet, integration of digital technology and digital public services.

UK progress is not bad, but is still a long way from achieving the levels found in Denmark and Sweden, for example. Human capital, or skilled labour, is one of the indicators where the UK is performing well – yet, by leaving the EU, the movement of skilled labour would be reduced. It’s worth noting that Norway – which isn’t part of the EU – manages to maintain close links with European Free Trade Association members. For example, citizens of Norway can work in EU without needing a work permit – but this sort of arrangement would undermine one of the main reasons the UK wants to leave the EU.

In addition to the movement of skilled labour, the increasing reach of the internet means that organisations no longer need to be physically located in one country. New business models and ways of working mean that a flexible workforce can be found at the click of a button through crowdsourcing sites such as Fiver or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Digital economy and society index European Comission

A single digital market would bring benefits: better access to products and services at reduced costs, common data protection laws making cross-border communications easier, and a digital-by-default public sector that could make the use of public funds more efficient and transparent.

This would bring increased acceptance and adoption of digital services and bring European countries closer together. The example of Norway operating outside the EU but in association with it through trade agreements is often used by those who want the UK to exit the union. However, the major difference between the UK and Norway is that the population of Norway is just over 5m; the UK is nearly 13 times the size. There are far more businesses in the UK to trade and engage with Europe that would benefit from staying in the union.

Would London lose its status?

When it comes to innovation, the right environment combining academic research from universities, commercial interests and favourable innovation policies – known as the triple helix of innovation – is of fundamental importance.

The latest EU innovation scoreboard placed the UK among the top, but not a leader. Another report, the Atlas of ICT activities in Europe , suggests that – based on the volume and value of research and development, innovation, and number of businesses – Munich is the place to be followed by London and then Paris.

The Digital Agenda for Europe is a well-financed priority area – some €2.8 billion for research and development – allowing organisations to build knowledge collaboratively by working on joint research and development programmes. As funding is a key element, EU members will be at an advantage compared to the UK in the case of a Brexit. Organisations with access to tech hubs and funding are more likely to grow; if Britain exits the EU it will undoubtedly be a step away from the benefits this digital agenda offers.