The future of IT & AI

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 In the not-so-distant future, the world of IT will have undergone a seismic shift. Gone were the days of traditional employment, where companies hires full-time employees to fill specific roles. Instead, the gig economy had taken over, and IT professionals will be embracing the freedom and flexibility that cames with freelancing. Companies had caught on to the benefits of project-based hiring, where they could tap into a global talent pool and scale up or down as needed. Job postings  floated online, and skilled freelancers would bid on projects that matches their expertise. Seasoned IT professionals, making the transition to freelancing in these  years, builds reputations on these  platforms like Toptal and Upwork, and their calendars will always be filled with exciting projects. Skilled  IT engineers helps big compernies to launch their new products. Their projects, some  complex, with tight deadlines, and the clients willing to pay top dollar for the ri...

Africa is blasting its way into the space race Disruptions to the space industry offer a rare opportunity to new entrants

 

Disruptions to the space industry offer a rare opportunity to new entrants


In the hours after Hurricane Katrina slammed into America in 2005, destroying large parts of New Orleans, the people co-ordinating the disaster response urgently needed satellite pictures to show them what they were facing. The first images to come in were not from the constellations launched by nasa or the space agencies of other rich countries. They were beamed to Earth by a small Nigerian spacecraft that had been launched from Russia just two years earlier.

The small cube—Nigeria’s first satellite and only the second launched by a sub-Saharan African country—did not just watch a storm, it provoked one, too. British politicians and a taxpayers’ pressure group called for a halt in development aid, saying Nigeria did not need help if it could afford a space programme. Still, the sums being spent on space by African countries back then were tiny. South Africa’s sunsat, the region’s first satellite, was built by students at Stellenbosch University and hitched a free ride on a nasa rocket. Nigeria’s spacecraft cost just $13m.

THE ECONOMIST TODAY

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