Blockchain essentially is in the form of spreadsheet that is accessible to all, but not editable for everyone. Each piece of information is protected by a code. Blockchain can be used to protect Internet-of-Things (IoT). In these days of hacking, there are concerns about IoT. The systems are so vulnerable that if a hacker is to get access to even one of the devices, the whole net-work could be brought down . Blockchain can eliminate this uncertainty about IoT devices. As each block is protected by a separate code, even if the hacker has access to one block, the other mechanisms remain secure. Thus the chain is protected. This is useful in healthcare industry too. Blockchain can limit the extent of hacking. It is useful in managing public utilities.

Indian start-ups, BFSI and public sector have adopted blockchain technology. Blockchain has been used for maintaining citizen health record and land registry. Blockchain technology is at its nascent stage in India. It is expected to grow in coming years. ICICI has used it in trade finance process. It could be used in insurance claims and settlement. Health care sector uses it to monitor patient records and drug supply chain to fight counterfeits. AP, Telangana and Karnataka have been the three leading states in implementing blockchain for maintaining land registry, farm insurance and digital certificates through partnerships with leading service providers, start ups and academic institutions.

IBM has entered the world of blockchain, with World Wire — a new global payments network to support payments and foreign exchange for banks and NBFCs. It revolutionizes the way money moves. It is re-invention of the payment systems. The current payment systems do not communicate with each other and are not inter-operable. The new blockchain based IBM network is open and does not differentiate between the currencies. It provides real time settlements. It integrates payments messaging, clearing and settlement on a single unified network. It is a blockchain network. Participants can choose dynamically from a variety of digital assets.

World Wire optimises and accelerates —

o foreign exchange

o cross-border payments and

o remittances

It enables payments locations in 72 countries with 47 currencies and 44 banking endpoints.

The global financial infrastructure is status quo for the last 50 years. There is fear of change. Change is slowly creeping in. IBM is working with regulators.

Some banks have signed letters of intent to issue their own stable coins on World Wire. The network supports settlements using Stellar Lumens and a US dollar stable coin. Several banks and World Wire itself use Stellar protocol that makes money transfer point-to-point. As against this, there are complexities in the conventional correspondent banking.

World Wire reduces intermediaries. It reduces settlement time. It is in seconds since monetary value is transmitted in the form of digital assets (commonly known as cryptocurrencies or stable coins). Efficiency is improved. There is better liquidity management. It steamlines payment reconciliation. Overall transactional costs are reduced.

In pharma, a license to manufacture can be given to one or two firms but this is exclusionary, in the sense they alone can manufacture.

In telecom, licenses are given to any manufacturer, as long as it agrees to pay a reasonable royalty. A handset uses hundreds of patents at the same time, and this model suits. An industry standards body examines all patent applications for innovation etc. It declares some of them to be Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). These SEPs are available to anyone on a Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) basis.

The issue is whether royalty should be based on the value of the component being sold or the whole handset’s price. The patent does not always reside at the chipset level. It can be anywhere in the network. Who should pay the royalty? Whether a chipset maker, or the telco or the handset maker? If charged to the device, the system becomes simpler.

It is also to be considered whether an absolute value is to be charged instead of pegging the royalty to the handset price.

With FRAND terms, technology suppliers are offering more and more capabilities to more and more device manufacturers. Consequently, the customer benefits. Device prices continue to crash even while these are becoming more powerful.

Previously, computing was confined to data organisation and processing. In this age of digitisation, data can be converted into vision, hearing, text, speech, movement, patterns and decisions. Computers have acquired cognition, thus leading to autonomous learning and action by machines. Thus AI is fast evolving.

AI has worked wonders in e-commerce, digital promotion, transport, ticketing and social media. AI has to be tailored to business strategy and organisational competence. While using AI, organisations must have a comprehensive measurement system. There should be manpower to curate, label and rank data for algorithms to make correlations and predictions.

AI has its limitations and risk. The biggest limiting factor is data availability and quality. There are issues of privacy in data collection. It is challenging to attribute decisions to specific criteria. Partial facts and biases are the limitations.

It is proposed to have data protection law. In India we generate immense quantities of data. If we secure this data and use it beneficially, it will lead to the well-being of Indians.

Second, powerful algorithms are used to mine the data. Personal data no longer remain individualised. Consumers give data in return of free services. In combination with other data, it becomes a source of strategic insight into the nation’s vulnerabilities and strengths. Thus data use must be appreciated in the overall holistic contact.

Data are stored in context. There is no guarantee against its misuse. The state must have the power to supervise and regulate the contexts and uses to which data are deployed. Abuse and misuse must be penalised.

Data residency is important. Data of Indians must be compliant with Indian law and regulation. Authorities must have access to Indian data. Such data must be stored within India’s territorial jurisdiction.

Finally, in the economy there is asymmetry. There are well-established firms abroad. India’s ordinary citizens cannot stand up to them. The sovereignty is fragmented. Digital giants operate seamlessly . Indian laws must have extra-territorial reach to ensure full compliance of digital players.

Since e-commerce is important, it is necessary to pay attention to cross-border data flows. Such data flows also occur in ads on search engines, on social media, messaging services, online entertainment streaming, credit card transactions and online delivery of services. These business leverage their access to data. New entrants without such access cannot survive for long.

India has huge data output. It could be leveraged for economic development. The draft e-commerce policy recognises this. Due restrictions could be placed on cross-border outflow of data collected by IoT devices and data generated by users. It stimulates data monetisation.

There are criticisms of this policy of restrictions. It is called protectionist. But if such outflow hurts India, this protection is justified. Another point is that other countries like the US could prevent outflow of their data to India as retaliation. It hurts the exports of IT services. But this is exaggerated. This comes under General Agreement on Trade in Services under WTO. Another issue is the access to cloud computing by SMEs and start-ups. But here an exception can be made and data flows restrictions would not apply to cloud computing services. One more criticism is regarding monopolisation due to localisation. But market dynamics do not allow such monopolisation. New firms emerge in India itself. WTO negotiations too focus on restrictions of cross-border data flows. Global players want the free data from other countries and would not want other countries to leverage their own data. G20 is being used to compel India to join the negotiations.

In the initial years, medicine was highly influenced by religious practices and the clergy. The origin of diseases was traced to the anger of a deity. The remedy was to propitiate that deity. Medicine was practised in France by Shaman before 17000 years. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, the religious leaders practised it. In India, the bhagats, guravs, mantrics and clergy were into medicine. In Arabia and China, it was believed that mantras, witchcraft and propitiation of dieties cure the diseases. Even planets, stagnant water, sins committed and spells spread the diseases that lead to holocaust or burning of some people at stake.

In the development of modern medicine, dissection of the dead bodies played a vital role. That gave an idea of the causes of diseases. The religious people looked down upon the dissection.

In ancient times, the nursing of the diseased in monasteries was considered worship of God amongst the Buddhists and Christians. Here the symptoms of the diseases were addressed without the diagnosis of the disease. Such places become hospices that later led to hospital. In the Muslim rule the first hospital was established in 875 AD. Later, 34 hospitals were established across Spain to India. In the struggle between the Church and monarchy, the kings of England reduced the importance of religion from the hospitals. Hospitals were committed to practise modern medicine.

The cause of the diseases are the flaws in the organs. This principle was enunciated by Geovanni Battista Morgagni, an Italian anatomist after 700 postmortems. Rudolf Virchow put forward the principle that there are cells in the human body and the changes in the cellular structure cause diseases. Louis Pasteur, a French biologist, traced diseases to microorganisms and made the vaccine for Anthrax. He also developed the method of pasteurisation of milk. His contemporary was Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, who used carbolic acid as disinfectant and initiated aseptic surgery. Ronald Ross , a British medical doctor, made research for malaria in India. Robert Koch, a German physician and microbiologist, discovered the microbes of TB, cholera and anthrax. He supported the concept of infectious disease. Jonas Salk, American medical researcher and virologist, made polio vaccine. Sabin made oral polio vaccine.

The discovery of sulphas and antibiotics made modern medicine respectable. Organ transplant and DNA studies are the recent advances in medical science.

Tik Tok as a platform allows people to share 15-second videos of themselves. Such sharing was possible on other platforms as well and hence not revolutionary. And 15-second space may not allow full self-expression. However, this constraint itself makes it an attractive platform. It calls for a particular mode of expression. Just as previously Twitter did with its 140-character limit. It almost borders on art from. It could be an artefact of popular culture.

The space is full of playful innocence. People of all age groups and class participate. There are choreographed dances, stunts, miming of songs, enactment of little skits, playing of pranks or doing something weird. The idea is to catch attention of a large number of viewers. It creates popular culture. The songs on it are eclectic.

It showcases talent which is sliced thinly. Flipping through Tik Tok videos is a pleasure. It is addictive. It showcases self-confidence of the performers. It allows them to display what is most marketable about themselves. Some master this format and create high viewership videos. Some are less gifted but still are watchable. There is diversity seen in the videos. Some are silly and trivial.

Though it attracts attention it can render the audience zombie-like. It becomes a national past-time. It is unrefined content. However, this is the very reason to celebrate it.

There are legitimate concerns about paedophilia. This platform is as susceptible to misuse as any other.

Here content is created by the young, and the old have to cede space to them. However, we will have to live with the reality of the digital world.

The dynamic now force is to be harnessed. In fact, it is fostering and encouraging creativity.

5G or fifth generation is ultra-fast wireless broadband technology. It is capable of delivering up to 10-50 Gbps peak data download speeds on a smart phone. It is 1000 times faster than a 4-G connection. A three-hour movie is downloaded under a second. Early 5G networks will offer 1Gbps data speeds, rising to 2-3 Gbps initially.

5G spectrum bands

5G will run on three frequency ranges — sub 1 GHz, 1-6 GHz and above 6 GHz. They are called ultra-high data speeds of 10 Gbps or more.

Airwaves in 3.3-3.8 GHz range (within 1-6 GHz band) are likely to run early 5G networks.

India has earmarked spectrum in the 3.4 and 3.5GHz bands for 5G services. It may identify more later.

Connectivity

A 5G network will connect smart phones and a whole array of products such as cars, homes, machines, robots, home gadgets or even a dog collar.

It will enable M2M or machine-to-machine communication. The devices will talk to each other using sensors. It will be 5G-powered IoT. A home will be connected by wireless.

Latency

5G network will cut down latency to a millisecond vs. 120 milliseconds on 3G, 60 milliseconds on 4G.

Latency is the response time when you click a link or start streaming a video on your smartphone that sends a request to the network, which in turn responds, delivering a website or playing the video requested.

On a 5-G network, request fulfillment will be instantaneous.

5G Network Launches

T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T will launch full — blown 5G services in the US in 2019. China, Japan and South Korea are also targeting 2019 launches.

In India, under 20% mobile towers are fiberized vs. 75-80% in China, Japan and US. It is ideal to support 5G speeds.

The poor financial health of telecom in India can hinder 5G investments.

India expects to auction 5G spectrum only by late 2020. 5G could be rolled out not before 2022.

AI is not free of bias. The above photomatching application uses a decade old data base to train machine learning systems. The uploaded photos are analysed by the AI that is trained on the most widely used image-recognition database.

The parameters used are skin colour, gender and race. Some results are outrageous — wrongdoer, offender for a dark-skinned man and Jihadist for an Asian woman. These are bizzare categories. This is by design to show what happens when technical systems are trained using problematic training data. Such results are not shown to people being classified.

There are 14 million images on the ImageNet database. They are classified into 22,000 categories.

There are other systems from MS and Google. They fail to identify Serena Williams and Obama.

The bias provides unpalatable results.

By perfecting the database, the bias can be removed. However, it is a pious statement. Here, a system ‘trains itself’. How the bias can be addressed?