If you are increasingly finding Twitter a confusing platform in the post-Elon Musk era, then you are not alone. Many users have been talking up alternatives to the immensely popular website for a while now.
Earlier this week, online publishing platform Substack introduced a new feature that – according to many – could be a potential alternative to Twitter. Known as Notes, this feature will enable users to recommend things such as posts, quotes, comments, images and links. You can read more about this interesting development here. Let’s take a look at what else made news in the world of science and technology.
Take your eyes off mobiles: Martin Cooper
This week saw the 50th anniversary—on 3 April—of the first cellphone call ever made. Martin Cooper, father of the mobile phone and the man who made that call, says humans tend to be “a little obsessed” with the device. Cooper told AFP that we may look at our mobile phones a little too much right now but in the future, “we can expect the cellphone to revolutionise education, it will revolutionise healthcare”. He believes future generations will find a solution to the obsession with phones. “When television first came out, people were just hypnotised. But we somehow... managed to understand that there is a quality associated with looking at a television…. Each generation is going to be smarter... They will learn how to use the cellphone more effectively. Humans sooner or later figure it out,” he told AFP.
Could AI give us a four-day week?
Artificial intelligence (AI) models like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are already doing many of the tasks that used to be reserved for humans. Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides, a professor at the London School of Economics who specialises in the impact of automation on work, believes the “ChatGPT revolution” opens the door to a four-day week by providing a major productivity boost for many jobs, reported Bloomberg. “I’m very optimistic that we could increase productivity,” he said. “We could increase our well-being generally from work.... We could move to a four-day week easily.”
The 'Artemis II' astronauts are here
On 3 April, the US space agency Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency revealed the names of the four astronauts who will perform a lunar fly-by as part of the historic Artemis II mission next year. The mission crew includes the first woman and first African-American ever assigned as astronauts to a lunar mission. Christina Koch, 44, who holds the record for longest continuous spaceflight by a woman and was part of Nasa’s first three all-female spacewalks, will be a mission specialist, while Victor Glover, 46, a US Navy aviator who has been designated as the pilot of Artemis II, will be the first black astronaut on a lunar mission. The other two members are Jeremy Hansen, who is Canadian, and mission commander Reid Wiseman, a former US Navy fighter pilot.
