Broadband won't make businesses more productive if they lack software savvy

The missing piece of the puzzle. erp by Mathias Rosenthal/shutterstock.com

One of the great promises of technology ever since the invention of the spinning wheel is that it can increase productivity. The use of business computing has grown exponentially in the last 20 years and exploded into the colossal consumer business it is today, with many people having not just one but several computers or similar devices such as smartphones at their disposal.

With this amount of technology in use and the rate of innovation you might expect that this would improve productivity. But this appears not to be the case, according to latest figures from the OECD.

As far back as 1987, economist Robert Solow said: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” It appears to be a long-standing problem. More recently a study by John Fernald of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco noted that although technology had led to substantial increases in productivity, its impact was felt primarily in those industries that were information technology-intensive, and much more limited across the rest of the economy.

Herein lies the true challenge of the growing digital economy: how do we spread the growth and productivity gains experienced by the IT sector to other economic fields? This year’s OECD Digital Economy Outlook provides some interesting statistics that illuminate the issue.

One aspect of the problem was noted by novelist William Gibson when he said: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”. With that in mind the recently published UK government productivity plan reiterated the need for a world-class digital infrastructure in the UK, with a broadband strategy that seeks to achieve, among other goals, basic broadband (2Mbps) for all, and superfast broadband coverage to 95% of UK households by 2017. While this is laudable, the OECD report notes that 95% of all UK enterprises already have broadband, albeit with a voracious appetite for more bandwidth. Clearly, fast internet connectivity may be necessary but it’s not sufficient for improved productivity and competitiveness. We need to understand what, once businesses have broadband, they use it for.

Subhead? All about the software

The OECD report considered the uses of certain software including websites, online purchasing, social networking, enterprise resource planning (a suite of applications that help manage a business)if we come to it later can we briefly explain like this here?, online sales, supply chain management and radio frequency ID tags (RFID) for purposes such as stock control.

Use of software in the enterprise is surprisingly low. OECD

Corporate websites are popular; across OECD countries 76% of businesses have a website. The UK is slightly ahead of the average at 80%, but far behind Switzerland and Finland with 95% of all business having a web presence.

One telling statistic for the UK is the low adoption of enterprise resource planning software. Enterprise resource planning software emerged in the 1990s from its background in manufacturing to become more widely applicable across all business sectors. It provides a suite of software applications to manage a business and integrates all aspects of the operation, including planning, accounting, supply chain, sales and marketing. Estimates vary but best-in-class companies find they can reduce operational and administrative costs by between 10-20% within three years of implementation.

Use of enterprise software is not evenly spread, and the UK doesn’t figure highly. OECD

The UK trails far behind most of the EU with only 11% of firms using this type of software and the problem is particularly prevalent in small (10-49 employees) and medium-sized (50-249 employees) UK businesses. This ranks the UK alongside Latvia and Turkey, while most other EU countries are well above 30%, led by Belgium (47%) and Austria (45%). The low adoption rates in the UK would go some way to explaining the UK’s lagging productivity figures.

As long ago as 1999, research showed that preparation for the introduction of the euro currency across the eurozone would require significant changes to IT used in businesses. One solution adopted by many companies affected was wholesale replacement of older legacy systems with new enterprise resource planning software.

The UK government might like to reflect on the policies and incentives it might put in place that would encourage British businesses to catch up with our eurozone partners who have benefited from this investment in productivity for the last ten years as an unexpected side effect of European monetary union.

Discovering a new dinosaur helped us prove Velociraptors had feathers

Zhao Chuang, Author provided

Tens of millions of people have flocked to theatres this summer to see Jurassic World, an action flick “starring” a team of trained Velociraptors that hunt genetically modified dinosaurs on command of their human master.

It’s a preposterous storyline of course, but very entertaining. I study dinosaurs for a living and it didn’t bother me to see Velociraptors being used as hunting dogs for the sake of good cinema. What I didn’t like, however, was that the Velociraptors were depicted as big, drab-coloured, scaly brutes.

That’s because the real Velociraptor was a lapdog-sized predator covered in feathers. Palaeontologists have known this for a while. If you look at the arm bones of Velociraptor you can see a row of bumps, identical in size and shape to the quill knobs of living birds: the anchor points for big wing feathers. But because Velociraptor hasn’t been found in the perfect geological settings that fossilise soft tissues, we don’t know exactly what its feathers would have looked like.

But we have a better idea now, thanks to the discovery of a spectacular new dinosaur from northeastern China that I studied with my colleague, Junchang Lü of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.

Our new dinosaur, Zhenyuanlong, is one of the closest cousins of Velociraptor. Its gorgeous chocolate-coloured skeleton was found by a farmer in 125-million-year-old rocks that were laid down in a quiet lake buried by volcanic ash. It’s just the right environment for preserving the soft bits that usually decay before a fossil is formed.

Fluffy, feathered poodle from hell Junchang Lu, Author provided

Look at Zhenyuanlong and you see what the real Velociraptor would have been like. Far from being a scaly-skinned reptilian monster, Velociraptor would have been a fluffy, feathered poodle from hell.

Dinosaurs such as Zhenyuanlong and Velociraptor are some of my favourite fossils to study. They fascinate me because they capture evolution in action. These small, fast-running, brainy predators are some of the closest relatives of birds. They are chapters in one of the greatest stories in the history of life: the evolutionary transition between fearsome carnivorous dinosaurs and their 10,000 feathered descendants that live on today, all over the world.

And this is why the discovery of Zhenyuanlong is really important. It gives us new insight into this incredible moment in evolution. Zhenyuanlong is fairly large for a close relative of birds, two metres long from snout to tail. It also has much shorter arms than Velociraptor or birds. A big, short-armed animal probably wasn’t flying, so what was it doing with its wings? We don’t know for sure.

This opens up a whole new mystery for us to solve: why did wings evolve? Did they evolve for flight, or did they first develop for something else, and were later co-opted to be used as an airfoil? We don’t know the answer yet, but since new fossils of bird-like dinosaurs are being found at an incredible rate, maybe we’ll have it solved by the time the next Jurassic Park comes out.

Tackling the trolls: How New Zealand raised the bar with its new laws

New Zealand's parliament: no trolls allowed. Nick-D/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

In what is said to be a world first, New Zealand has adopted a new package of measures to tackle harmful material on the internet. It is called the Harmful Digital Communications Act. Although many similar laws exist elsewhere, New Zealand’s approach differs from the typical practice of tweaking an existing system, or hurriedly putting in place a new criminal offence.

What constitutes the “right” legal response to phenomena such as trolling is not a straightforward matter. In New Zealand itself, the law was debated alongside an ongoing investigation into sexual assault, after a group of young men used Facebook to brag about having sex with underage girls, in what became known as the Roast Busters scandal. The role of social media in legal proceedings has gained more and more attention, especially in light of recent high profile cases around the publication of intimate images without consent (sometimes termed “revenge pornography”).

New Zealand’s new law

The law aims to deter, prevent and mitigate serious emotional distress resulting from digital communications, and to provide victims with “quick and efficient” redress. What’s particularly interesting about this work is how the parliament has tried to tackle these issues with a combination of different legal “tools”; by introducing new laws, establishing an agency to oversee complaints and amending existing legislation.

The package includes both civil remedies and criminal offences. Where there are serious or repeated issues, applications can be made to a court for various orders, such as corrections, apologies, and removing material from the web. Furthermore, posting information – whether true or untrue – or intimate recordings with the intention to cause someone harm can be punished with a prison sentence of up to two years, or a fine of up to £21,000. Companies involved can also be fined up to £85,000.

It also provides for an “approved” body to receive, investigate and attempt to resolve complaints about harmful communications, and – among other things – provide “education and advice” regarding online safety. This agency will be guided by a set of ten principles, which have been written into the law in an effort to set out what digital communications should not do: for example, they should not “disclose sensitive personal facts about an individual” or “be used to harass an individual”.

Which body will carry out this role is yet to be confirmed, although New Zealand’s Law Commission has recommended that NetSafe – a not-for-profit organisation that provides education and support in relation to cybersafety – should do it.

The act also amends existing laws about harassment. Now, uploading something and leaving it there could constitute harassment. This deals with a potential problem of the old law, where a one-off upload would probably not constitute an offence, since harassment is often defined as being a course of conduct.

Who is responsible?

One of the more controversial parts of the new act (as is often the case with laws relating to the internet) is the position of intermediaries – that is, companies that provide access to the internet or host content, without necessarily producing it themselves. Web hosts, such as social networking sites, are subject to the law, but can protect themselves against action through a “notice and takedown” system for allegedly harmful material.

Systems like this are most commonly found in copyright law, where the duties of intermediaries are substantial. Internet service providers can be required to block access to sites like The Pirate Bay, and hosts like YouTube have detailed systems for notifying and dealing with complaints. Intermediary liability laws are in place around the world, although reforms to libel law in England and Wales in 2013 have included a new, more host-friendly approach specifically for allegations of libel.

Seizure notice, based on copyright infringement. screenshot

As with the English reforms, the goal in New Zealand is to encourage hosts to pass on the complaint to whoever uploaded the material, and give them a chance to take it down or justify it. Some hosts, including Twitter and Reddit, are already taking a more proactive approach to dealing with complaints and problematic material.

But takedown systems continue to provoke criticism, on the grounds that they encourage risk-averse hosts to take down too much, which is claimed to hinder freedom of expression. Many tech companies made submissions to the NZ parliament, questioning whether new laws were really necessary.

Global perspectives

It’s hard to say whether New Zealand’s parliament has struck the right balance between ensuring freedom of speech and protecting citizens from harm. A small number of MPs voted against the law, and others gave reluctant support, questioning whether the bill was properly targeted.

But a key point is that these measures were introduced only after a good deal of discussion. Law Commission projects on regulatory gaps, privacy and the specific issue of harmful communications all reviewed practices and evidence from around the world. The vibrant debate on the proposal, and the resulting innovative measures, should encourage other nations to give ideas for “anti-trolling laws” proper and careful attention.

For instance, a comprehensive look at internet communications is long overdue in England and Wales. A House of Lords committee did some of this work last year in a report on social media and the criminal law. The committee responded to calls for action on revenge pornography, by suggesting that existing laws were up to the job. But the UK parliament nonetheless opted to implement a new and more specific criminal offence, after limited scrutiny.

Over in Ireland, the Law Reform Commission is investigating the potential of a bill against cyberbullying. Already, members of the Irish Senate have started to discuss related issues such as abusive Tweets and freedom of speech. And various states in the USA are already adopting new laws, while discussions about the online harassment of women rage on.

Whether or not New Zealand has got it right, there’s a lot that each of these countries can learn from the ideas that have been floated there. And how the different tools in New Zealand’s trolling toolbox work together will be of particular interest over the coming years.

New Horizons brings Pluto's mysterious moons into sharper focus

Pluto's enigmatic companion Charon. NASA

Drifting along at what for decades was regarded as the outer boundary of our solar system, icy Pluto is far from alone. The dwarf planet has moons – at least five of them – which are all fascinating little worlds in their own right. Detailed views of these icy bodies, captured by the New Horizons spacecraft, have now begun to stream back to Earth as data and will reveal much about the chemistry and physics of the outer solar system.

Decades passed after Pluto’s discovery in 1930 before it was realised that the body had a companion. It was in 1978 that American astronomer James Christy noted that many photographic plates of Pluto were marked as being defective. A close look at these plates showed that despite background stars appearing perfectly sharp, images of Pluto almost always had a little bump on one side. Within a few hours of study, Christy came to realise that this bump was actually a moon, which he named Charon.

Compared to Pluto, which has a diameter of 2,370km), Charon is relatively large, measuring about 1,208 km across. Indeed the size difference between the two is so small that they could be regarded as a double planet. The large size of Charon has had a big effect on Pluto: both worlds are tidally locked, meaning that the same hemispheres of the two worlds continually face each other. Charon is never visible from half of Pluto’s surface, and Pluto never rises above the horizon on half of Charon.

Pluto and its moons. NASA/ESA/A. Field (STScI)

The similarity in size between the worlds also has a big influence on the dwarf planet’s motion. An adult twirling a baby around stays in the same spot, but wobbles about a small circle when trying to do the same with a teenager. The same is true of Pluto: it actually moves in a circle every six days as Charon orbits it, around a point in space well outside Pluto known as the barycentre, which is the pivot point for Pluto and Charon’s motion.

Two further moons – Nix and Hydra – were discovered in 2005, using the Hubble Space Telescope, and the final two known moons, Kerberos and Styx, were found with the same telescope in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Unlike Charon, these four small bodies measure only a few tens of kilometres across at most, but their orbital paths have recently turned out to be fascinating. The moons’ orbits have resonances, so their paths around Pluto follow a fixed pattern.

Complex dance

Guided by their mutual gravitational pull, the moons follow a dance: for every six orbits of Hydra about Pluto, Nix orbits nine times, and Styx 11 times. Rather than being tidally locked like Charon, these moons are almost certainly tumbling erratically due to the complex gravitational effects of the other moons.

Although the New Horizons images of these tiny moons will revolutionise our understanding of them, the amount of detail we will be able to see in the first images to be sent back will be limited. Each moon will occupy no more than two dozen pixels across at best in each picture, surrounded by the blackness of space. We’ll however be able to tell their general shapes and we’ll see whether there are large impact craters, dark or bright patches present on their surfaces. First images of irregularly-shaped Hydra have revealed that it measures roughly 45km by 30km.

As well as sharp images, New Horizons’s cameras will have caught colour views of the moons. Images of Charon already show it to be a colourful in places, likely influenced greatly by the presence of gases escaping from Pluto’s tenuous but extensive atmosphere. New Horizons has revealed already that Charon has a dark, reddish north pole, which may be formed of organic molecules that have escaped from Pluto and are trapped at the extra-frigid poles of the moon. Some areas of Charon are remarkably smooth with few craters, indicating regions that are relatively young, whilst other areas are cut by canyons up to 10 km deep.

Colour images of the smaller moons are also on their way. Will the moons also be colourful, exhibiting thin layers of ice captured from Pluto, or are they too small to keep hold of such material? All of Pluto’s moons may have been formed in a gargantuan collision in Pluto’s distant past; the moons’ colours will also help us test that scenario.

In the next few days, we’ll have big hints as to the nature of these fascinating worlds: more detailed views of Charon, measuring the same distance across as from London to Madrid, and four tiny new worlds. New Horizons is also searching for other moons, and may find some backlit by the Sun as it drifts into the cold depths of space beyond the fascinating Pluto system.

Historic close-ups of Pluto and its moon Charon present puzzle for scientists

High resolution view of a 300 km wide region of Pluto. But where are the impact craters? NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

After a decade-long journey by the New Horizons spacecraft through our solar system, we can finally add Pluto and its main moon Charon to the roster of large icy bodies whose landscapes we have seen. And it was worth the wait. The first detailed images are surprising, showing a remarkable lack of impact craters on both Pluto and Charon.

NASA’s probe passed within 14,000 km of Pluto on July 14, and – after a nervous 12-hour wait for its call home – has begun to send back its trove of data, which includes images revealing details as small as 100 metres across.

The most detailed image of part of Pluto (see lead image) is truly staggering. Not a single impact crater is to be seen in this regiopn, so the surface must be very young – reshaped by some sort of geological activity such as faulting or icy volcanism.

It is rather early to speculate, but maybe Pluto captured Charon only a few hundred million years ago (rather than billions), and we are seeing the effect of the very strong tidal interactions that would have ensued. Pluto could, in fact, even be geologically active today. I watched this image come in via a NASA press conference with a group of colleagues, and we were both amazed and mystified.

Pluto – which has a diameter of 2,370km – shares its orbital space with many comparable-sized bodies and crosses the orbit of the giant planet Neptune, which is why it does not qualify as a planet. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating world, as indeed is Charon (1,208km diameter).

Both are bodies whose rocky interiors are deeply buried by ice of various kinds. There is probably water-ice at depth on Pluto, but the surface ice is a mixture of frozen methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen.

Latest image of Charon with its enigmatic dark polar cap, and a stupendous fracture system running near to its equator. NASA

Charon, with its weaker gravity, has lost the substances that can turn to vapour and escape more easily, and is mostly water-ice tainted by ammonia. That much we already knew. But New Horizons has been gathering data that will show us how these ices are arranged across each surface – and may find traces of other constituents.

Pluto (left) and Charon (right) in slightly exaggerated colour. adapted from multiple datasets via http://ift.tt/N0ibSe, Author provided

Already the images are throwing up new questions. The composite image above, compiled from various images during New Horizons' approach, shows slightly enhanced colour views of Pluto and Charon. Pluto is notable for patches of both bright and dark material in a belt straddling its equator. What are these? Is the bright, heart-shaped patch some kind of nitrogen frost or snow deposit? Is the dark stuff carbon or tar of some kind? (We know that solar ultraviolet radiation turn methane into tar). Charon, unique among known worlds, has a dark polar cap. Is that old, radiation-damaged methane, whereas the greyer equatorial region is cleaner water-ice?

The fact that Pluto has a red tint seems to have been surprising to some, but it has actually been well-known for decades.

An Open University PhD student has already made a preliminary photogeologic map of the half of Pluto seen during approach (see below). It shows the “heart”, the dark patches and other units in different colours – representing different terrains. Several impact craters have also been marked in green, and a few wrinkles on the surface.

A preliminary map of terrain units on Pluto (right), based on the image on the left. Peter Fawden, Open University, Author provided

Then there are the tectonic features, the faulting or other deformation of the outer layer of a planet, to consider. These are better seen in black-and-white images. For example in the next image, just inside the eastern (right-hand) edge of the disk, the surface is cut by a fracture deep enough to cast shadows.

Pluto seen about a quarter of a rotation before the top image. The fractures at the lower right had rotated out of view by the time of closest approach. The ‘heart’ was just beginning to rotate into view on the left. NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Charon has similar fractures too. These are also known on several icy moons, such as Ariel and Titania at Uranus, and Tethys at Saturn, where they are described as chasmata (Latin for chasms). The image below shows Charon and Uranus’s moon Titania at the correct relative scale. They both have fractures visible near their right-hand edges, which could be a remnant of a time when the surface became broken, perhaps by tidal forces.

Fractures can be seen both on Charon (left) and Titania (a moon of Uranus). NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI and NASA/JPL

Scientists are eagerly awaiting more data from New Horizons' onboard memory, which is now nearly full, that will take a total of 16 months to transmit to Earth. This is because at a range of more than 4.6 billion km from Earth the signal is so weak that it has to be transmitted at a slow rate of about 1 kilobit per second (you may be reading this via wi-fi operating at tens or hundreds of megabits per second). Although we may have to wait a while before we see the best of the pictures, what we already have already seen is enough to greatly intrigue planetary scientists such as myself.

Here's what you need to know about the Large Hadron Collider's latest discovery: pentaquarks

CERN

The Large Hadron Collider, famous for finding the Higgs boson, has now revealed another new and rather unusual particle. Teams at the LHC, the world’s largest particle accelerator, recently began a second run of experiments using far more energy than the ones that found the Higgs particle back in 2012. But another of the groups, LHCb, have also been sifting through its data from the billions of particle collisions of the first run of the LHC, and now think they’ve spotted something new: pentaquarks.

Pentaquarks are an exotic form of matter first predicted back in 1979. Everything around us is made of atoms, which are mode of a cloud of electrons orbiting a heavy nucleus made of protons and neutrons. But since the 1960s, we’ve also known that protons and neutrons are made up of even smaller particles named “quarks”, held together by something called the “strong force”, the strongest known force in nature in fact.

Experiments in 1968 provided the evidence for the quark model. If protons are hit hard enough, the strong force can be overcome and the proton smashed apart. The quark model actually explains the existence of more than 100 particles, all known as “hadrons” (as in Large Hadron Collider) and made up of different combinations of quarks. For example the proton is made of three quarks.

All hadrons seem to be made up of combinations of either two or three quarks, but there is no obvious reason more quarks could not stick together to form other types of hadron. Enter the pentaquark: five quarks bound together to form a new type of particle. But until now, nobody knew for sure if pentaquarks actually existed – and, although there have been several discoveries claimed in the last 20 years, none has stood the test of time.

The intricate dance of the J/psi and the proton CERN

Pentaquarks are incredibly difficult to see; they are very rare and very unstable. This means that if it is possible to stick five quarks together, they won’t stay together for very long. The team on the LHCb experiment made their discovery by looking in detail at other exotic hadrons produced in the collisions and they way these break apart. In particular, they looked for the Lambda-b particle, which can decay into thee other hadrons: a Kaon, a J/psi, and a proton.

The J/psi is made of two quarks and the proton is made of three. The scientists discovered that for a short period of time these five quarks were bound together in a single particle: a pentaquark. In fact, through detailed analysis of the data, they actually discovered two pentaquarks and have given them the catchy names Pc(4450)+ and Pc(4380)+.

Why is this important?

The discovery answers a decades-old question in particle physics and highlights another part of the mission of the LHC. Discoveries of new fundamental particles such as the Higgs boson tell us something completely new about the universe. But discoveries like pentaquarks give us a more complete understanding of the rich possibilities that lie in the universe we already know.

By developing this understanding, we may get some hints about how the universe developed after the Big Bang and how we’ve ended up with protons and neutrons instead of pentaquarks making up everyday matter.

With the LHC now colliding protons at almost twice the energy, scientists are ready to tackle some of the other open questions in particle physics. One of the main targets with the new data is Dark Matter, a strange particle which seems to be all around the universe, but has never been seen. Testing the current understanding of quarks, the strong force and all the known particles at this new energy is an essential step towards making such discoveries.

Too much information: how a data deluge leaves us struggling to make up our minds

Decisions, decisions. decisions by Suphaksorn Thongwongboot/shutterstock.com

We make a huge number of decisions every day. When it comes to eating, for example, we make 200 more decisions than we’re consciously aware of every day. How is this possible? Because, as Daniel Kahneman has explained, while we’d like to think our decisions are rational, in fact many are driven by gut feel and intuition. The ability to reach a decision based on what we know and what we expect is an inherently human characteristic.

The problem we face now is that we have too many decisions to make every day, leading to decision fatigue – we find the act of making our own decisions exhausting. Even more so than simply deliberate different options or being told by others what to do.

Why not allow technology to ease the burden of decision making? The latest smart technologies are designed to monitor and learn from our behaviour, physical performance, work productivity levels and energy use. This is what has been called Era Three of Automation – when machine intelligence becomes faster and more reliable than humans at making decisions.

You, me and my algorithm

Intelligent systems use algorithms (formulas for taking in data and outputting other data) to learn patterns and behaviours from how we use them. One industry that has grown rapidly is online dating – in the UK alone, the market is expected to grow from £165m to £225m by 2019. This enormous growth stems from the perception that finding love is hard, so any technology that can help will be popular.

Online dating sites' matching algorithms create a reliance upon, if not a belief in, a scientific approach to finding love. But instant satisfaction sites such as Tinder also encourage developing many weak ties between partners that often lack commitment, emotional intensity and intimacy.

Should we want to relegate our most important human adventure to an algorithm? Might we find ourselves with a generation of people who are willing to trade the current partner for a better model, or who trust big data-generated matches more than their own instincts?

Making decisions visual

The ability to visualise data has accelerated the move of knowledge from our minds and onto the screen. This, tied with our fear of being wrong, presents new opportunities for business.

Sproutling is one of many companies that have tapped into our need for quantification and visualisation. Their product is a wearable baby monitor that records a baby’s heart rate, skin temperature, motion and position, data it uses to predict about the baby’s mood, comfort, sleep pattern and even when the baby is due to wake up.

Sproutling prides itself on eliminating guesswork, but in fact it feeds a new breed of parents-cum-data-scientists who watch over their children constantly, but once-removed behind the screen. A recent study has shown that technology that conveys or displays emotions makes people uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the Sproutling has already sold out.

Data-driven decision making is becoming the dominant logic, in our private lives and at work. A global study from PwC found executives are comfortable making decisions based on their gut instinct. However, a majority expect the use of data to affect how the company makes decisions in the future.

Data can help an organisation to see the big picture and identify trends and patterns. However there’s a danger that we over-rely on data and so lose sight of the context, more often than not acquired through instinctive understanding and the value of conversations.

Too. much. choice. decisions by wavebreakmedia/shutterstock.com

Subtle manipulation

Many companies such as Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and Tesco use data on our web habits to make recommendations to us. These are small acts where systems' decisions narrow the opportunities we have for natural, organic exploration. The old way of stumbling upon a new artist, film or author is replaced by loops of similarity.

Arizona State University academics Braden R Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz explain how these, and other technologies such like fitness trackers and GPS, create techno-social systems that “impose certain orders of behaviour on our lives about which we have little choice.” When our ability to make independent decisions is taken away, we become easier to manipulate and influence. We will become accustomed to not making our own decisions and simply follow the cues in front of us, whether that’s directions from our GPS or meal suggestions from our fridge.

Accept the world is uncertain

By outsourcing our decisions to intelligent systems and seeking certainty through data, we objectify ourselves. We are left responding to the computer rather than thinking creatively and autonomously. We are in danger of undermining our human instinct, and have already started the process of de-learning decision making by putting our trust in machines. Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Gerd Gigerenzer, suggests gut feelings are the tools for an uncertain world – data creates only an illusion of certainty.

In a complex world with abundant choice, we need good intuitions and smart shortcuts to make decisions. Even so, ultimately we must accept that uncertainty will always be part of what it is to be human. When we deny ourselves the challenge of thinking critically, evaluating situations and making our own decisions, we are heading towards a future where Homo sapiens will lack the cognitive ability to think for itself, and we will have surrendered to the machines we once built.