'We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another.' So wrote Klaus Schwab in January, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. 'In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.'Schwab was referring to what he calls the 'fourth ind

The robot - an unyielding, emotionless and relentless mechanical conception - has haunted the public imagination ever since the term was first coined in Czech playwright Karel ?apek's play R.U.R. in 1921. The intervening nine decades may not have produced the kind of advances promised by science fiction but robotics is still one of today's most important long-term investment stories.According to t

'Big data' is everywhere these days. Consultants, analysts and journalists are churning out seemingly endless reams of reports, analyses and column inches flagging the explosion of information that our digital world is spewing out. Whether it's retailers monitoring the personal shopping habits of millions of customers in a flash or public health officials proposing grand schemes to map the DNA of