Digital Revolution

Globalisation is non-trivial, especially for the computer and digital industry. Ordinary small businesses likely experienced the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing to freelancers through the Internet. For example, decent graphic design can be obtained at very low cost due to intense competition the digital platform offers. On the other hand, Internet freelancers often lack depth of specialized expert agencies and can not accomplish cases like complex marketing integration. However, the big players are oligopolies. Is there a reason why the computer and digital industry often forms global value chains? Consider iPhones. Apple worked with TSMC to build its SoC, and TSMC worked with machine vendors around the world to complete semiconductor manufacturing process. The reason is simple. Technological specialization and expertise are scattered around the world that no nation can compete on its own for excellence. Krugman put the case of globalisation as a race between transportation and ...

Wolfram|Alpha was advertised as a revolutionary knowledge engine designed to eclipse Google. The result is quite mixed. While the power of symbolic computation certainly helped people solve mathematical problems, Wolfram|Alpha still provides highly eccentric answers to queries like iOS. Instead of giving a description of Apple's flagship OS, the query results in a obscure Greek island. The knowledge engine even ignores case sensitivity. The far-from-satisfactory performance begs lots of questions. First is about knowledge model. Wolfram|Alpha works as a interpreter between human queries and knowledge databases. Given the sheer volume of human knowledge, it's natural that pure knowledge databases omit huge areas of public knowledge, and Wolfram|Alpha can only cover a very restricted domain. Compared with search engine's wide indexing of web pages, which of course contains falsehoods, Wolfram|Alpha is cleaner, but also very much less encyclopediac. How about depth? The trag...

Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed disapproval for mindless scrolling. Issues like mental health and addiction are deeply associated with gadget uses. Without doubt, responsible gadget makers should address these issues. However, what it takes is likely beyond the realm of gadgets, but into the world of human nature. For some people, life is simply too boring. Without access to high spirituality like physics or mathematics, they often turn to games, social networks, videos, and of course, politics. Lack of sophistication leads to emotional appeals. Social networks on smartphones created Trump out of people's herd mentality. There is no easy fix. While politicians constantly blame the tech sector for amplifying political opposition, no serious observer can agree that peace would come if tech giants like Facebook were simply broken up. The whole thing is much deeper than shallow politics, and calls for digital civilization to guard against people's negative mentality. On the other ha...

Smart telephones have been released. The device replaces buttons on traditional telephones with a touch screen loaded with apps. Although it's certainly a improvement, one can not but notice the shortcomings of these smart telephones. Touch screen allows contacts and notes to be easily accessed on the telephone, just as mobile phones did. The problem is, just as mobile phones did. Why not use a mobile phone to look up information and a traditional telephone to communicate, when it's almost equally convenient? Contemporary smart telephones add little value to existing configurations. As noted earlier, the iPhone revolution was not only a UI revolution, but more importantly a personal computing revolution. People do social networking, take photographs with enhancements, and listen to music on the iPhone like never before, in addition to a full-functioning mobile phone. Contemporary smart telephones copied some elements from smartphones without also introducing a platform for ho...