The acclaimed new movie The Imitation Game is based on the too-short life of Alan Turing, the British mathematician and “father” of computer science. But how true-to-life is it and what can we learn from it? The movie concentrates on the code breaking
Author: The Conversation
Your home Internet connection works in one of two ways. One involves using a copper wire, probably your telephone line to send electrical signals from the Internet provider to your home and back. This technology hasn’t changed much since the days of the telegraph
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has arrived again. It’s the world’s largest consumer electronics and technology exhibition in Las Vegas, where manufacturers will show off the new technologies available in 2015. Wearables, 3D printers, curved displays and other technologies
Facebook’s recent apology for its Year in Review feature, which had displayed to a grieving father images of his dead daughter, highlights again the tricky relationship between the social media behemoth and its users’ data. The free service Facebook offers to its
It’s a sobering thought that in 10 years, around 65% of the jobs that people will be doing have not even been thought of yet, according to the US department of labour. In some markets like Australia, there are reports that up to half a million existing jobs could be taken over
Looking back, 2014 was not a good year for keeping things safe under digital lock and key. If a score was being kept, it might seem that the cybercriminals are in the lead, despite the valiant efforts — and own goals — from the cybersecurity profession worldwide. Cast your mind back
In South Africa, as in many countries, the release of senior secondary school exam results, referred to locally as “the matric”, causes a media furore every year. At 18 years old, students either pass or fail and their results are published in
People of the western world have been making resolutions for the new year for over 4 000 years. The Babylonians, along with the Romans who later developed the idea further, made resolutions in the hope of favourable returns from the gods. In the current day, self-interest has
Additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – is 30 years old this year. Today, it’s found not just in industry but in households, as the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1 000. Knowing you can print almost anything, not just marks on paper, opens up unlimited opportunities for us to
UK videogames industry body Tiga has called for the products to be treated like other creative industries such as television or film, rather than mere “software”. There is a good argument for this. Games have been part of human civilisation for thousands of years. Egyptians played the board game