Des Lynch

The News Event that had the

biggest impact on me was
definitely Brexit.

Like most people I presumed

that the Remain campaign
would win the referendum.

At the time I wasn’t very knowledgeable about

Politics, but I had many friends who campaigned for
Remain and the entire experience was a massive
wake up call to me.
On Thursday the 23rd June 2016 the UK
voted to leave the UK. The then Prime
Minister David Cameron resigned
(despite saying he wouldn’t) and
Theresa May was sworn into office.

Theresa May triggered Article 50 on the 29th March 2017 marking the start of
two years of negotiations to thrash out a deal for Britain's exit from the
European Union. The legislators at the EU presumed that the UK government
would hold off triggering article 50 for a lot longer, since the UK has forty plus
years of trade agreements with the EU- most of which will take far longer than
two years to settle.

It’s worth remembering that Theresa May and the majority of her cabinet
campaigned to remain in the EU. Most Leave voters seemed to have a poor
understanding of what the EU actually entailed. In fact the day the Referendum
result was announced the most Googled question was “What is the EU?”
There’s a lot of issues the referendum Vote
has concocted. For starters the status of EU
citizens living in the UK has been jeopardised,
as has the status of UK citizens living in EU
states.

The UK Government has failed to prepare

Any kind of plan regarding exiting the EU.
Despite having almost a year after triggering article 50, the UK government have
yet to create any economic models in order to see what life would be like for the
UK after leaving the EU.

The worst outcome of the referendum (as far as we’re concerned) is the appalling
dialogue around the Irish border. The Irish government were forced to Veto Brexit
talks in order to grab the attention of the UK government so that they could sort out
the issue with the border. The UK have refused to guard the border (despite the leave
campaigns insistence on taking back controls of their border) and have shown a
limited understanding of the Customs Union, European Single Market, European
Union Membership and the Good Friday Agreement- all of which are intertwined.
One of the Innovative Technologies I find
most interesting is that of the Automated
Vehicles.

Like many people, I can’t drive s being

able to own a vehicle without requiring a
license would be very helpful- especially
if my job involves travelling a lot.

At the current rate of innovation it’s unlikely that anyone will own a fully
automated Vehicle within the next forty years. What will probably happen
is that we’ll see Taxi companies like Uber and Lyft dominate the market by
producing and operating millions of automated vehicles that can be
deployed almost anywhere. We may live in a world where a person owning
their own car instead of getting a taxi is very rare.
Automated Vehicles are vehicles that are capable of sensing their environment and navigating
without human input. They’re more commonly referred to as “Driverless Cars” however the
technology also refers to Trucks, Vans and Buses- so the name appears infantile, it’s like how
people used to refer to “cars” as “Horseless Carriages”

There are dozens of Companies in the US and in China that are producing and testing. Their own
automated vehicles- a practice that has gone on for well over two decades. At the moment self
driving cars are efficient enough to operate in the busiest streets of San Francisco, but Driverless
Trucks on the other hand are having a lot of issues operating on highways. The first automated
bus had a crash two hours into its first day. This was due to its inability to interpret the actions of
vehicles and people, at the present moment an automated vehicle cannot differentiate the meaning
between a hitchhiker waving and a police officer gesturing you to stop.

This problem will most likely be resolved with

the vehicle having an input artificial
intelligence. Until then each vehicle will have
to require a person to watch over it in case
anything goes wrong. Automated vehicles are
quite expensive due to their excessive cost
required to produce it, so it’s very unlikely
you’ll be able to buy a driverless car for an
affordable rate for a few more decades.
The technology has yet to be perfected, in fact due to the software's difficulty with
operating in heavy rain its very unlikely that we’ll be using fully Automated Vehicles in
Northern Ireland anytime soon.

However once the technology is perfected and vehicles no longer require drivers to
Operate them then there will be mast unemployment of Drivers- a large portion of
the population will now be unemployed.

However its worth remembering that new jobs will emerge such as computer
technicians needed to code the vehicles and people to map out precise co-
ordinates and destinations for the vehicles to operate.

The main Concern I have is with the market

resembling an oligopoly, in which the market is
shared between a small number of producers
or sellers. Without the threat of competition
the quality of products will drop since profit is
guaranteed. This means consumers will suffer
the consequences of greed.
One of the Social Media platforms that I use
daily is Twitter. I use the App to keep up to date
with news and current affairs. I mostly follow
Journalists, Economists, my local MLA’s and a
few Satire or Parody Accounts like “LAD” which
mainly talks about Northern Irish politics and
“The Milliverse” which is an account dedicated to
reporting on the news of an Alternate universe
in which Ed Miliband is Prime Minister.

I try to check it only two

times a day to avoid an
addiction and to help
prevent procrastination.
Twitter is an online news and social networking app where users post
and interact with messages, which are called "tweets”.

Twitter users can post public tweets that can consist of a 140 characters
(although it’s recently been updated to 280 characters per tweet) a
collection of Tweets by an individual discussing the same topic is known
as a “Thread”. Twitter is a valuable tool for Journalists, especially
reporters that are operating in war ton countries.

The organisation was founded in March 2006

by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone,
and Evan Williams and the website launched in
July of that year. It became a huge success,
currently servicing an averaged at 330 million
monthly active users, ranging from ordinary
citizens to Celebrities and even World Leaders.
As time passes, so does taste and markets. Some people believe that Twitter is doomed for
bankruptcy by citing their declining growth in membership and their loss of profits in the last
few years. Some users cite their displeasure that the site has become more of a microphone
focussed on Celebrities than it is about a community of people.

However it does allow Businesses and Consumers to be in direct contact with each other,
meaning the modern consumer can get feedback on a product faster than at any point in
Human history.

As other media organisations such as CNN and the BBC allow users to receive notifications
about breaking News that means Twitter has lost its unique stature in breaking news.
Consumers will feel better suited to use notifications from News Organisations instead of
Twitter, a platform that acted as essentially a middleman.

Twitter, like many other social media platforms,

has a major issue with creating echo chambers
and spreading fake news- which in turn creates a
Toxic Environment that alienates a lot of its
users.

It’s worth noting however that Twitter is dealing

with Fake News far better than Facebook and its
very unlikely it will go bankrupt any time soon.
EU Referendum result:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results
David Cameron Resigns:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/david-
cameron-resigns-after-uk-votes-to-leave-european-union
Theresa May become PM:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-officially-
becomes-uk-prime-minister-a7135126.html
Article 50:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39143978
EU Google Search report:
http://fortune.com/2016/06/24/brexit-google-trends/
Irish Border Brexit:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/21/how-does-the-irish-
border-affect-the-brexit-talks
Self Driving Trucks:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603493/10-breakthrough-technologies-
2017-self-driving-trucks/

Self Driving Cars

https://www.wired.com/story/guide-self-driving-cars/
Self Driving Buses
https://www.wired.com/story/las-vegas-shuttle-crash-self-driving-autonomous/
Northern Ireland Transport Statistics:
https://www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk/articles/northern-ireland-transport-statistics
Trucking Industry in Europe:
http://www.dynello.com/5-interesting-facts-about-the-trucking-industry-in-europe/
Trucking Profits Europe:
https://www.joc.com/trucking-logistics/market-share-european-trucking-and-its-
problems-grow_20171114.html

Trucking Economics:
https://inconvenienttruck.eu/the-economics-of-trucks-industry/
Number of Twitter Users:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-
twitter-users/
Twitter Increases Characters:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41900880

Future of Twitter-PR:
https://www.meltwater.com/blog/the-future-of-twitter/
Future of Twitter- Market:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/11/03/why-twitter-
is-not-the-future-of-marketing/

Twitter Fake News:

https://qz.com/1195872/google-facebook-twitter-fake-news-chrome/

Facebook Fake News:

https://theoutline.com/post/2997/twitter-and-facebook-have-very-
different-ideas-about-how-to-handle-fake-news-and-one-of-them-is-
terribly-wrong?zd=1&zi=dw4b45sn