Broadband is the most important invention of the Naughties

Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) surveyed 2,000 UK adults aged between 16 and 75 to name the best tech developments of the last decade. (Story from Engineering and Technology Magazine.)

Results: 53% said broadband, ahead of smartphones and satellite navigation. 1% each for on-demand TV and Android smartphone apps.

Trading our privacy for functionality

If consume a free product, then stop and think:

If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product.

From an excellent ReadWrite article:

Lost in the furor over government spying on its citizens is an inconvenient truth: personal data is the new currency of the 21st century, and until we rein in our desire to spend it we can't really stop others' desires to spy on it.

But we are the ones happily selling ourselves for a few more gigabytes of storage, or a way to talk with friends. We used to pay for such things with money. Now we pay with our private details through our personal details.

The public has to ask itself a hard question: Do we care? Or are we happy to sell little pieces of our online selves in the name of ease and convenience?

Virgin Media records its highest ever broadband traffic on 5th Jan

In the UK, Sunday 5th January was the day before back-to-skool Monday after the traditional two week shutdown over Christmas.

SimplifyDigital reports:

At its peak, between the hours of 8pm and 9pm, 1.67Tb of data per second was flowing back and forth between Virgin Media and its customers, with a total of over 11.55 Petabytes being delivered over the 24 hour period.

One can only assume that consumers had finally worked out how to connect their new tablets (that they received on Christmas Day) to their wi-fi and were happily streaming a ton of TV to their new toy.