Writer & Tech Journalist
Richard MacManus For New Zealand, a small country thousands of miles away from nearly everyone else, digital trade is critical to our future growth. Technology is already the third biggest export sector in this country, behind our stalwart industries dairy and tourism. But there’s still a lot that needs to be done to help us compete in … Read more
New Zealand is a proudly GE-free country, meaning it is illegal to produce or sell genetically engineered foods here. There are some exclusions for processed foods that have imported GE ingredients, like soy or corn flour, but they must be approved by a local authority and clearly labelled. However, there is zero tolerance for GE … Read more
2016 was supposed to be the year Virtual Reality (VR) made it big. Three premium VR headsets launched, prompting one analyst to forecast total sales of 12.2 million headsets by the end of the year. In reality, it ended up being 1.5 million. That’s a big miss by anyone’s calculations. The same analyst predicted Facebook … Read more
My weekly tech column has just launched at Newsroom, a New Zealand-based news and current affairs website. My debut column is about how Google is ushering in a new era of “AI first” technologies. This won’t be an era of shiny devices. To paraphrase Doc from Back to the Future, “Where we’re going we don’t need … Read more
When Donald Trump was elected US President in November last year, it ushered in more than just a new era of political turmoil. It also signalled a potentially dangerous new era in social engineering. A big part of the reason why Trump won is the incredible job done by his digital team, who used a … Read more
For many years Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has been hyped as the world’s next big groundbreaking technology. But till recently, the closest we’ve got to seeing A.I. in action was on the big screen. From evil computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, to Scarlett Johansson’s breathless A.I. in Her, there’s been a rich tradition … Read more
I’m pleased to announce my role as Tech Columnist at Newsroom, a soon to be launched news and current affairs website. Full details in the press release below. See also Newsroom’s announcement. *** February 22, 2017 – Newsroom is pleased to announce that Richard MacManus, the founder of ReadWriteWeb, will be Newsroom’s Technology columnist. MacManus launched … Read more
At the end of 2016, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) issued the first draft of a handbook entitled Ethically Aligned Design. The 138-page document provides guidelines for “prioritizing human wellbeing” in the development and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems (AS). I’m sure we all agree that a people-centred approach … Read more
Each December going back to 2004, I’ve done a year in review blog post about technology. This year I’m focusing on technology trends rather than specific products. But I’ll mention many of my favorite tech products as part of the review. In time, we may look back on 2016 as the beginning of the big … Read more
Five weeks after the launch of Presence, I’ve had some nice reviews and sales had an early peak. Since then it’s been a struggle…but a fun one.
The term cyberpunk went out of style in the 1990s…so why is Amazon still using it as a subgenre of science fiction.
In the future, it’ll be as common to go “invirt” as it is to go “online” today.
With social media nowadays, it’s not the true person you’re seeing. Too often, it’s an exaggeration and sometimes even a fake.
My novel speculates on what VR presence will be like in 2051, but there’s a lot of work to be done before it becomes a reality.
