2025 State of the Digital Decade

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The European Commission: “…assessed the EU’s progress along the four target areas for the EU’s digital transformation by 2030, highlighting achievements and gaps in the areas of digital infrastructure, digitalisation of businesses, digital skills, and digitalisation of public service.

Digital Decade logo

The report shows that although there are certain advancements, the rollout of connectivity infrastructure, such as fibre and 5G stand-alone networks, is still lagging. More companies are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud and big data, but adoption needs to accelerate. Just over half of Europeans (55.6%) have a basic level of digital skills, while the availability of ICT specialists with advanced skills remains low and with a stark gender divide, hindering progress in key sectors, such as cybersecurity and AI. In 2024, the EU made steady progress in digitalising key public services, but a substantial portion of governmental digital infrastructure continues to depend on service providers outside the EU.

The data shows persisting challenges, such as fragmented markets, overly complex regulations, security and strategic dependence. Further public and private investment and easier access to venture capital for EU companies would accelerate innovation and scale up…(More)”.

What World Does Bitcoin Want To Build For Itself?

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Article by Patrick Redford: “We often talk about baseball games as a metric for where we are, and we’re literally in the first inning,” one of the Winklevoss twins gloats. “And this game’s going to overtime.”

It’s the first day of Bitcoin 2025, industry day here at the largest cryptocurrency conference in the world. This Winklevoss is sharing the stage with the other one, plus Donald Trump’s newly appointed crypto and AI czar David Sacks. They are in the midst of a victory lap, laughing with the free ease of men who know they have it made. The mangled baseball metaphor neither lands nor elicits laughs, but that’s fine. He’s earned, or at any rate acquired, the right to be wrong.

This year’s Bitcoin Conference takes place amid a boom, the same month the price of a single coin stabilized above $100,000 for the first time. More than 35,000 people have descended on Las Vegas in the final week of May for the conference: bitcoin miners, bitcoin dealers, several retired athletes, three U.S. senators, two Trump children, one U.S. vice president, people who describe themselves as “content creators,” people who describe themselves as “founders,” venture capitalists, ex-IDF bodyguards, tax-dodging experts, crypto heretics, evangelists, paladins, Bryan Johnson, Eric Adams, and me, trying to figure out what they were all doing there together. I’m in Vegas talking to as many people as I can in order to conduct an assay of the orange pill. What is the argument for bitcoin, exactly? Who is making it, and why?

Here is the part of the story where I am supposed to tell you it’s all a fraud. I am supposed to point out that nobody has come up with a use case for blockchain technology in 17 years beyond various forms of money laundering; that half of these people have been prosecuted for one financial crime or another; that the game is rigged in favor of the casino and those who got there before you; that this is an onerous use of energy; that all the mystification around bitcoin is a fog intended to draw in suckers where they can be bled. All that stuff is true, but the trick is that being true isn’t quite the same thing as mattering.

The bitcoin people are winning…(More)”

Europe’s dream to wean off US tech gets reality check

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Pieter Haeck and Mathieu Pollet: “..As the U.S. continues to up the ante in questioning transatlantic ties, calls are growing in Europe to reduce the continent’s reliance on U.S. technology in critical areas such as cloud services, artificial intelligence and microchips, and to opt for European alternatives instead.

But the European Commission is preparing on Thursday to acknowledge publicly what many have said in private: Europe is nowhere near being able to wean itself off U.S. Big Tech.

In a new International Digital Strategy the EU will instead promote collaboration with the U.S., according to a draft seen by POLITICO, as well as with other tech players including China, Japan, India and South Korea. “Decoupling is unrealistic and cooperation will remain significant across the technological value chain,” the draft reads. 

It’s a reality check after a year that has seen calls for a technologically sovereign Europe gain significant traction. In December the Commission appointed Finland’s Henna Virkkunen as the first-ever commissioner in charge of tech sovereignty. After few months in office, European Parliament lawmakers embarked on an effort to draft a blueprint for tech sovereignty. 

Even more consequential has been the rapid rise of the so-called Eurostack movement, which advocates building out a European tech infrastructure and has brought together effective voices including competition economist Cristina Caffarra and Kai Zenner, an assistant to key European lawmaker Axel Voss.

There’s wide agreement on the problem: U.S. cloud giants capture over two-thirds of the European market, the U.S. outpaces the EU in nurturing companies for artificial intelligence, and Europe’s stake in the global microchips market has crumbled to around 10 percent. Thursday’s strategy will acknowledge the U.S.’s “superior ability to innovate” and “Europe’s failure to capitalise on the digital revolution.”

What’s missing are viable solutions to the complex problem of unwinding deep-rooted dependencies….(More)”

Leading, not lagging: Africa’s gen AI opportunity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mayowa Kuyoro, Umar Bagus: “The rapid rise of gen AI has captured the world’s imagination and accelerated the integration of AI into the global economy and the lives of people across the world. Gen AI heralds a step change in productivity. As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of millions.1

Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, a continent that has already demonstrated its ability to use technology to leapfrog traditional development pathways; for example, mobile technology overcoming the fixed-line internet gap, mobile payments in Kenya, and numerous African institutions making the leap to cloud faster than their peers in developed markets.2 Africa has been quick on the uptake with gen AI, too, with many unique and ingenious applications and deployments well underway…(More)”.

Across McKinsey’s client service work in Africa, many institutions have tested and deployed AI solutions. Our research has found that more than 40 percent of institutions have either started to experiment with gen AI or have already implemented significant solutions (see sidebar “About the research inputs”). However, the continent has so far only scratched the surface of what is possible, with both AI and gen AI. If institutions can address barriers and focus on building for scale, our analysis suggests African economies could unlock up to $100 billion in annual economic value across multiple sectors from gen AI alone. That is in addition to the still-untapped potential from traditional AI and ML in many sectors today—the combined traditional AI and gen AI total is more than double what gen AI can unlock on its own, with traditional AI making up at least 60 percent of the value…(More)”

A World of Unintended Consequences

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Essay by Edward Tenner: “One of the great, underappreciated facts about our technology-driven age is that unintended consequences tend to outnumber intended ones. As much as we would like to believe that we are in control, scholars who have studied catastrophic failures have shown that humility is ultimately the only justifiable attitude…

Here’s a story about a revolution that never happened. Nearly 90 years ago, a 26-year-old newly credentialed Harvard sociology PhD and future American Philosophical Society member, Robert K. Merton, published a paper in the American Sociological Review that would become one of the most frequently cited in his discipline: “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.”While the language of the paper was modest, it offered an obvious but revolutionary insight: many or most phenomena in the social world are unintended – for better or worse. Today, even management gurus like Tom Peters acknowledge that, “Unintended consequences outnumber intended consequences. … Strategies rarely unfold as we imagined. Intended consequences are rare.”

Merton had promised a monograph on the history and analysis of the problem, with its “vast scope and manifold implications.” Somewhere along the way, however, he abandoned the project, perhaps because it risked becoming a book about everything. Moreover, his apparent retreat may have discouraged other social scientists from attempting it, revealing one of the paradoxes of the subject’s study: because it is so universal and important, it may be best suited for case studies rather than grand theories.

Ironically, while unintentionality-centered analysis might have produced a Copernican revolution in social science, it is more likely that it would have unleashed adverse unintended consequences for any scholar attempting it – just as Thomas Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms embroiled him in decades of controversies. Besides, there are also ideological barriers to the study of unintended consequences. For every enthusiast there seems to be a hater, and dwelling on the unintended consequences of an opponent’s policies invites retaliation in kind.

This was economist Albert O. Hirschman’s point in his own critique of the theme. Hirschman himself had formidable credentials as a student of unintended consequences. One of his most celebrated and controversial ideas, the “hiding hand,” was a spin-off of Adam Smith’s famous metaphor for the market (the invisible hand). In Development Projects Observed, Hirschman noted that many successful programs might never have been launched had all the difficulties been known; but once a commitment was made, human ingenuity prevailed, and new and unforeseen solutions were found. The Sydney Opera House, for example, exceeded its budget by 1,300%, but it turned out to be a bargain once it became Australia’s unofficial icon…(More)”

2025 Technology and innovation report

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UNCTAD Report: Frontier technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), are profoundly transforming our economies and societies, reshaping production processes, labour markets and the ways in which we live and interact. Will AI accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, or will it exacerbate existing inequalities, leaving the underprivileged further behind? How can developing countries harness AI for sustainable development? AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions and generate ideas on its own. This sets it apart from traditional technologies and challenges the notion of technological neutrality.
The rapid development of AI has also outpaced the ability of Governments to respond effectively. The Technology and Innovation Report 2025 aims to guide policymakers through the complex AI
andscape and support them in designing science, technology and innovation (STI) policies that foster inclusive and equitable technological progress.
The world already has significant digital divides, and with the rise of AI, these could widen even further. In response, the Report argues for AI development based on inclusion and equity, shifting the focus from
technology to people. AI technologies should complement rather than displace human workers and production should be restructured so that the benefits are shared fairly among countries, firms and
workers. It is also important to strengthen international collaboration, to enable countries to co-create inclusive AI governance.


The Report examines five core themes:
A. AI at the technological frontier
B. Leveraging AI for productivity and workers’ empowerment
C. Preparing to seize AI opportunities
D. Designing national policies for AI
E. Global collaboration for inclusive and equitable AI…(More)”

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

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Book by Diane Coyle: “The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. In The Measure of Progress, Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy? Coyle makes the case for a new framework, one that takes into consideration current economic realities.

Coyle explains why economic statistics matter. They are essential for guiding better economic policies; they involve questions of freedom, justice, life, and death. Governments use statistics that affect people’s lives in ways large and small. The metrics for economic growth were developed when a lack of physical rather than natural capital was the binding constraint on growth, intangible value was less important, and the pressing economic policy challenge was managing demand rather than supply. Today’s challenges are different. Growth in living standards in rich economies has slowed, despite remarkable innovation, particularly in digital technologies. As a result, politics is contentious and democracy strained.

Coyle argues that to understand the current economy, we need different data collected in a different framework of categories and definitions, and she offers some suggestions about what this would entail. Only with a new approach to measurement will we be able to achieve the right kind of growth for the benefit of all…(More)”.

Bubble Trouble

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Article by Bryan McMahon: “…Venture capital (VC) funds, drunk on a decade of “growth at all costs,” have poured about $200 billion into generative AI. Making matters worse, the stock market’s bull run is deeply dependent on the growth of the Big Tech companies fueling the AI bubble. In 2023, 71 percent of the total gains in the S&P 500 were attributable to the “Magnificent Seven”—Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft—all of which are among the biggest spenders on AI. Just four—Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta—combined for $246 billion of capital expenditure in 2024 to support the AI build-out. Goldman Sachs expects Big Tech to spend over $1 trillion on chips and data centers to power AI over the next five years. Yet OpenAI, the current market leader, expects to lose $5 billion this year, and its annual losses to swell to $11 billion by 2026. If the AI bubble bursts, it not only threatens to wipe out VC firms in the Valley but also blow a gaping hole in the public markets and cause an economy-wide meltdown…(More)”.

Commerce Secretary’s Comments Raise Fears of Interference in Federal Data

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Article by Ben Casselman and Colby Smith: “Comments from a member of President Trump’s cabinet over the weekend have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics — especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession.

In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, suggested that he planned to change the way the government reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending.

“You know that governments historically have messed with G.D.P.,” he said. “They count government spending as part of G.D.P. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what Mr. Lutnick meant. The basic definition of gross domestic product is widely accepted internationally and has been unchanged for decades. It tallies consumer spending, private-sector investment, net exports, and government investment and spending to arrive at a broad measure of all goods and services produced in a country.The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of Mr. Lutnick’s department, already produces a detailed breakdown of G.D.P. into its component parts. Many economists focus on a measure — known as “final sales to private domestic purchasers” — that excludes government spending and is often seen as a better indicator of underlying demand in the economy. That measure has generally shown stronger growth in recent quarters than overall G.D.P. figures.

In recent weeks, however, there have been mounting signs elsewhere that the economy could be losing momentum. Consumer spending fell unexpectedly in January, applications for unemployment insurance have been creeping upward, and measures of housing construction and home sales have turned down. A forecasting model from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta predicts that G.D.P. could contract sharply in the first quarter of the year, although most private forecasters still expect modest growth.

Cuts to federal spending and the federal work force could act as a further drag on economic growth in coming months. Removing federal spending from G.D.P. calculations, therefore, could obscure the impact of the administration’s policies…(More)”.

China wants tech companies to monetize data, but few are buying in

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Article by Lizzi C. Lee: “Chinese firms generate staggering amounts of data daily, from ride-hailing trips to online shopping transactions. A recent policy allowed Chinese companies to record data as assets on their balance sheets, the first such regulation in the world, paving the way for data to be traded in a marketplace and boost company valuations. 

But uptake has been slow. When China Unicom, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, reported its earnings recently, eagle-eyed accountants spotted that the company had listed 204 million yuan ($28 million) in data assets on its balance sheet. The state-owned operator was the first Chinese tech giant to take advantage of the Ministry of Finance’s new corporate data policy, which permits companies to classify data as inventory or intangible assets. 

“No other country is trying to do this on a national level. It could drive global standards of data management and accounting,” Ran Guo, an affiliated researcher at the Asia Society Policy Institute specializing in data governance in China, told Rest of World. 

In 2023 alone, China generated 32.85 zettabytes — more than 27% of the global total, according to a government survey. To put that in perspective, storing this volume on standard 1-terabyte hard drives would require more than 32 billion units….Tech companies that are data-rich are well-positioned tobenefit from logging data as assets to turn the formalized assets into tradable commodities, said Guo. But companies must first invest in secure storage and show that the data is legally obtained in order to meet strict government rules on data security. 

“This can be costly and complex,” he said. “Not all data qualifies as an asset, and companies must meet stringent requirements.” 

Even China Unicom, a state-owned enterprise, is likely complying with the new policy due to political pressure rather than economic incentive, said Guo, who conducted field research in China last year on the government push for data resource development. The telecom operator did not respond to a request for comment. 

Private technology companies in China, meanwhile, tend to be protective of their data. A Chinese government statement in 2022 pushed private enterprises to “open up their data.” But smaller firms could lack the resources to meet the stringent data storage and consumer protection standards, experts and Chinese tech company employees told Rest of World...(More)”.