Category: Technology

Oil n’ Tech – A naive history

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Some industries are rooted in exploration, discoveries and deceptions. Here is the story of two of them.

Today I want to talk about two industries that seem to have no relation whatsoever. First of all, their birth is one century apart. Oil history emerged at the end of the 19th century, “Technology” at the end of the 20th.

The first one is deeply rooted in exploration, land and hardcore industry. It is physical, heavy, it has a dark n’ dirty product that can only be found deep in secluded grounds or under mountains of ocean water.

The second is made out of thin air, its value relying ultimately in its intellectual property. It is a service industry created in clean, whitewashed, cosy atmospheres of startup open spaces.

I want to talk about oil.

I want to talk about technology.

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Bitcoin, or the inelegance of technology

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Blockchain is a very promising technology. But for now it is young, flawed and still a bit inelegant.

A tech-addict friend of mine recently confessed to me the frustrating pain he felt when he desperately tried, a few weeks ago, to explain the concept of elegance in technology to his smirking colleagues. I padded him he back with compassion, and thought : “OK I will have your back on this. I will write about it”.

Meanwhile I thought about it and realized : “Holly cow ! There is no better example to explain this than to talk about cryptocurrencies !”

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Spring break hot tech quiz

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Summer is coming up. It is about time to check what you really know about the techs that “might” replace you during your vacations.

 

I hear about “technology” all the time. All finance professionals around me seems to be very excited about it, and eager to take full advantage of it, or at the opposite, scared it might eventually make their job irrelevant.

But when I scrape just a little bit under the surface, for both of them, I realize that most of them often don’t really know much about it.

I don’t know much about it either. And this is why I constantly read and watch on various tech subjects in order keep up. This is hard and time consuming but I do think it is unavoidable, and that everyone should do it.

So here is a quick and modest ( I do not pretend to be an expert in those subjects ) little quiz that will check your “basic” knowledge about the 3 main “hot techs” of this spring in service driven industries : crypto & blockchain, artificial intelligence and quantum computers.

It won’t cover much, it won’t give you every information you need. But I do hope you will find it interesting, and that it will help you get interested and further pursue a better understanding of those subjects and the various myths that surround them!

Oh and don’t be scared about the first question ! Every bit of explanation is in the answers…

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