Pre-Christmas skiing in Kitzbuhel

It is always a risk going skiing before Christmas, but Kitzbuhel usually has snow when many other places do not. That was certainly the case last week! As the pictures below illustrate, although the valley was snow free for most of the week, there were enough runs open with good snow to enable us to have some great skiing. Skiing in bright sunlight above the clouds down in the valley was amazing, and we only lost one day due to the cloud and rain! It was also just so relaxing walking through the beautiful town in the evenings. Thanks to Jonathan for making all the arrangements, and to everyone else on the trip who made it such a good week!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

An evening walk through Doha’s Souq Waqif

One of the many challenges of attending conferences is that one usually has to spend around 12 hours a day deep underground in cavernous halls, or in dim windowless rooms watching images and words on large screens! Not only is one left bereft of natural light, but air conditioning is no replacement for the oxygen of fresh air! So after the main activities of ITU’s Telecom World were over today, I took myself back to Doha’s Souq Waqif just to immerse myself in the smells of spices, shisha and the wonderfully rich oud perfumes, to glimpse the rich colours of the textiles and jewels, to hear the laughter of small children and the squaks of parrots, and just to walk among ‘real’ people far from the robots and aggressive capitalism of many in the ICT and telecommunications sector who were expounding the virtues of the latest technologies at the conference! Although this souq is a relative modern re-interpretation of the souq that used to be here, it continues in that rich tradition of sounds, smells, tastes and textures that have always dominated markets in the region. I hope that the pictures below capture something of the reality of this world beyond the virtual!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The future of communication

In recent years, I have become increasingly interested in the interface between humans and machines, and thus the world of cyborgs. This was first formally articulated in my presentation entitled “How will the world communicate in 2113?” given at the Commonwealth Summer School held in Cumberland Lodge on 9^th August 2013. However, as part of the ITU’s ongoing discussion on ICTs in the future, associated with the Leadership Summit on the Future currently being held during its Telecom World (#ituworld) event in Doha , I was asked to put together a prediction and a single slide summarising some of my thoughts on the future of communication. So, to give this a little more visibility, I thought I would also post it here:

My actual short quotation was “The future is not so much about the Internet, but rather about the human-machine interface. Cyborgs are already with us. If we do not want humans to be mere appendages of machines, we must act now!””

I have to admit that I found the actual ITU session to be much less inspirational than I had expected/hoped it might be – there was very little new in what was discussed! I was therefore actually rather sad that the presentation that I sent to the ITU for possible inclusion amongst its predictions was seen as being rather too provocative for inclusion!