The IEEE 2018 World Congress on Services held in San Francisco, CA during 2-7 July was a jamboree of sorts. It included the BigData Congress as well as Cloud, Edge, ICCC (Cognitive Computing), ICIOT (Internet of Things), ICWS (Web Services) and SCC (Services Computing) parallel sessions. I was privileged to present a work-in-progress paper related to personalization of travel recommendations using social media analysis in one of the BigData sessions. The basic concept of the recommendation system is to mine a user’s social media content (like twitter feed) and use that data to predict the user’s places of interest categories (like museum, parks, restaurants, buildings, etc. ... Read More

Facebook is in the news for all the wrong reasons these days1. And at the center of their troubles is the often discussed issue of privacy. Digital technology has evolved from being merely computing machines to connected machines. First it was the Intranet that connected computers togethers in a local space. Then came the Internet bringing with it global connectivity. Communication became easier, faster and more convenient. Benefits of this new technology began to flow from the workspace to the personal space of individuals. ... Read More

Technology is directing the evolution of human beings. Digital devices like smartphones have become an extension of the human body. People rely a lot on such tools not just for information but as a supplement to their memory and even intelligence. Could such dependency result in decreased use of the brain and thereby result in lowered brain “capacity” over generations? Of course, there are those involved in making this technology possible? ... Read More