Uber Australia has struck a historic agreement with the Transport Workers’ Union – a statement of principles that re-regulate work in the Australian rideshare and food delivery industry. This is a major shift to industrial relations in the gig economy. Uber and its rival platforms have largely treated their workforce as independent contractors, not employees… Read more »
What if your insurer was tracking your online data to price your car insurance? Seems far-fetched, right? Yet there is predictive value in the digital traces we leave online. And insurers may use data collection and analytics tools to find our data and use it to price insurance services. For instance, some studies have found… Read more »
Schools’ use of educational technologies (edtech) grew exponentially at the height of COVID lockdowns. A recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has exposed children’s rights violations by providers of edtech endorsed by governments in Australia and overseas. The lockdowns have ended but edtech remains embedded in education. Children will have to navigate issues of data… Read more »
When a new coronavirus emerged from nature in 2019, it changed the world. But COVID-19 won’t be the last disease to jump across from the shrinking wild. A few weeks ago, it was announced that Australia, is no longer an onlooker, as Canada, the US and European countries scramble to contain monkeypox, a less dangerous… Read more »
The first serious accident involving a self-driving car in Australia occurred in March this year. A pedestrian suffered life-threatening injuries when hit by a Tesla Model 3 in “autopilot” mode. In the US, the highway safety regulator is investigating a series of accidents where Teslas on autopilot crashed into first-responder vehicles with flashing lights… Read more »
Australia has no clear strategy to decarbonise transport. That’s a problem, because without a plan, our take-up of clean technologies like electric cars, trucks and buses is slow. It’s stopping us from meeting our climate commitments. And it leaves us paying exorbitant prices for imported oil at the fuel pump, as well as in the… Read more »
Since the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 the global cryptocurrency market has grown from nothing to a value of around US$2 trillion. From a price of US$1 in 2011, Bitcoin rose to an all-time high of more than US$63,000 in April 2021, and now hovers around the US$42,000 mark. Large fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices are… Read more »
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which one of us (Arunima) contributed to — has emphasised the need for enormous change if we are to keep within the 1.5℃ warming limit. This Paris Agreement goal is currently beyond our reach. Achieving it would require drastic emissions reductions across all… Read more »
Quantum technology, which makes use of the surprising and often counterintuitive properties of the subatomic universe, is revolutionising the way information is gathered, stored, shared and analysed. The commercial and scientific potential of the quantum revolution is vast, but it is in national security that quantum technology is making the biggest waves. National governments are… Read more »
With rising inflation, a war in Europe affecting global fuel costs, and ongoing supply strain issues, this year’s budget is shaped not just by the upcoming election but a growing cry in the community about the cost of living. But despite some significant multi-billion dollar spends within the next six months, the deficit is predicted… Read more »
Petrol prices are hitting eye-watering highs. As global affairs put pressure on the availability of commodities, we’re likely to continue seeing volatile petrol prices in the future. So there’s never been a better time to embrace alternative modes of transport such as e-bikes and e-scooters (also called “micromobility” devices). In Australia’s major cities, the average… Read more »
Early in the pandemic, the COVIDSafe app was designed as a tool to improve contact tracing. And a multimedia campaign promoted it as helping to find more COVID contacts faster. Now, almost two years after its launch in April 2020, we publish in The Lancet Public Health our evaluation of the app’s effectiveness and usefulness… Read more »
The Morrison government will announced its long-awaited electric vehicle strategy, coinciding with COP26 climate change talks underway in Glasgow. The new policy contains some welcome new funding, but is largely notable for what it omits. In a welcome move, the government has allocated an additional A$250 million for electric vehicles, primarily aimed at charging infrastructure.… Read more »
Drone delivery company Wing recently celebrated 100,000 deliveries with an unusual burst of media fanfare. Australia is at the forefront of Wing’s plans, with the company’s two biggest trial sites running in Canberra and Logan in Queensland. Wing tells a simple story of barista coffee and roast chooks dropped on your driveway at a… Read more »
Social media platforms are transforming how online advertising works and, in turn, raising concerns about new forms of discrimination and predatory marketing. So the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S) — a multi-university entity led by RMIT — launched the Australian Ad Observatory. This research project will explore how platforms… Read more »
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