RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Digital transformation has long been a boardroom buzzword—shorthand for ambitious, often abstract visions of modernization. But today, digital technologies are no longer simply concepts in glossy consultancy decks and on corporate campuses; they’re also being embedded directly into factory floors, logistics hubs, and other mission-critical, frontline environments.

This evolution is playing out across sectors: Field technicians on industrial sites are diagnosing machinery remotely with help from a slew of connected devices and data feeds, hospital teams are collaborating across geographies on complex patient care via telehealth technologies, and warehouse staff are relying on connected ecosystems to streamline inventory and fulfillment far faster than manual processes would allow.

Across all these scenarios, IT fundamentals—like remote access, unified login systems, and interoperability across platforms—are being handled behind the scenes and consolidated into streamlined, user-friendly solutions. The way employees experience these tools, collectively known as the

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RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Privacy only matters to those with something to hide. So goes one of the more inane and disingenuous justifications for mass government and corporate surveillance. There are others, of course, but the “nothing to hide” argument remains a popular way to rationalize or excuse what’s become standard practice in our digital age: the widespread and invasive collection of vast amounts of personal data.

One common response to this line of reasoning is that everyone, in fact, has something to hide, whether they realize it or not. If you’re unsure of whether this holds true for you, I encourage you to read Means of Control by Byron Tau. 

Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
Byron TauCROWN, 2024

Midway through his book, Tau, an investigative journalist, recalls meeting with a disgruntled former

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RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

IBM announced detailed plans today to build an error-corrected quantum computer with significantly more computational capability than existing machines by 2028. It hopes to make the computer available to users via the cloud by 2029. 

The proposed machine, named Starling, will consist of a network of modules, each of which contains a set of chips, housed within a new data center in Poughkeepsie, New York. “We’ve already started building the space,” says Jay Gambetta, vice president of IBM’s quantum initiative.

IBM claims Starling will be a leap forward in quantum computing. In particular, the company aims for it to be the first large-scale machine to implement error correction. If Starling achieves this, IBM will have solved arguably the biggest technical hurdle facing the industry today to beat competitors including Google, Amazon Web Services, and smaller startups such as Boston-based QuEra and PsiQuantum of Palo

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RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Organizations are deepening their cloud investments at an unprecedented pace, recognizing its fundamental role in driving business agility and innovation. Synergy Research Group reports that companies spent $84 billion worldwide on cloud infrastructure services in the third quarter of 2024, a 23% rise over the third quarter of 2023 and the fourth consecutive quarter in which the year-on-year growth rate has increased.

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Allowing users to access IT systems from anywhere in the world, cloud services also ensure solutions remain highly configurable and automated.

At the same time, hosted services like generative AI and tailored industry solutions can help companies quickly launch applications and grow the business. To get the most out of these services, companies are turning to cloud optimization—the process of selecting and allocating cloud resources to reduce costs while maximizing performance.

But despite all the interest

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