The Future Happens Very Slowly Then All At Once And Other Stories From The Digital Edge on CHOM FM
Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This week we discussed:
My new favorite line from futurist and technology media pioneer Kevin Kelly: “The future happens very slowly and then all at once.”Autonomous vehicles are here… and will only increase as we move toward 2020. It’s going to change everything, and affect our infrastructure and businesses in a very dramatic way. We are not prepared.
If you own an AppleiPhone or iPad, please do a software update immediately. What may seem like an innocuous update actually reads like a spy novel, when you start to read about why this update is here. Apparently, a bug was found by a human rights activist on his phone, who forwarded the issue to researchers at the University of Toronto‘s Citizen Lab. The hack can turn a phone into a veritable digital spy. It’s capable of using the camera and microphone to track activity in the vicinity of the device, recording all messages and call calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps, and tracking movements. Making this crazier: “The Citizen Lab team attributed the attack software to a private seller of monitoring systems, NSO Group, an Israeli company that makes software for governments which can secretly target mobile phones and gather information. Tools such as that used in this case, a remote exploit for a current iPhone, cost as much as $1 million.” Bond. James Bond.
Back in 2014, Facebook acquired messaging app WhatsApp for around $20 billion. The two have been fairly separated since, and Facebook has continued to push their own Messenger app, which has grown significantly. Last week, WhatsApp announced some updates to its privacy policy, which begins to encourage users to share their account information with Facebook. WhatsApp will also begin rolling out ads to users and more. And, while none of your WhatsApp information will be shared on Facebook and the messages are end-to-end encrypted, do you think this will loosen over time as well?