This week, my coworkers and I had an experience as common as it was disheartening: we tried to navigate Cisco WebEx. We had a meeting upcoming with government officials, who preferred not to use Zoom due to its security vulnerabilities. “WebEx is very minimalist,” my coworker observed wryly. That was an understatement. The platform lacked key features; it wasn’t a good faith alternative to Zoom.
The global rollout of 5G has spawned wild conspiracy theories, and the coronavirus pandemic was the perfect environment for them to spread.
Amid a 5G rollout that has faced its fair share of challenges, it might seem somewhat premature to start looking ahead at 6G, the next generation of mobile communications. But 6G development is happening now, and it’s being pursued in earnest by both industry and academia.
For all its promise, the rollout of 5G has also been fraught with rumors and conspiracy theories — most recently, a narrative spread on social media that the wireless network technology fueled the coronavirus pandemic.
It did not.
Continue reading Why conspiracy theorists think 5G is bad for your health and why experts say not to worry
[International Telecommunication Union] From cutting emissions in cities to natural disaster risk reduction, smart water management and precise climate monitoring, frontier technologies in fields such as artificial intelligence, 5G and robotics demonstrate considerable potential to support the battle against climate change, highlights a new ITU/UN report, “Frontier technologies to protect the environment and tackle climate change”. The report was released to mark the occasion of Earth Day 2020.
Continue reading Frontier technologies are key tools to combat climate change 