Internet Week Guyana

This event organised by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications along with the CTU and international organisations was a first for Guyana and was a success. A report from the Guyana Chronicle says in part:

The high-level technology conference was held at the Pegasus Hotel from October 9 -13 2017, as part of celebrating International Internet Week 2017. Stakeholders from the Ministry of Public Telecommunications, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), the Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), and the Internet Society (ISOC), were all part of the success of this event.

A number of reports on it and other related activities can be found at the Ministry website.

Internet Society Guyana branch

Internet week was recently held in Guyana. One major outcome was the launching of the Guyana branch of the well-known and long-established international Internet Society. Here is an extract from a report of the event from CircleID by Malisa Richards, one of the main proponents:

Finally, Guyanese Internet users at all levels who are interested in internet governance issues and policy-making now have a local organization to address their interest. The Internet Society, a leading advocate for the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for everyone, announced on October 10, 2017, at the official launch of the Internet Society Guyana Chapter that they were happy to finally have Guyana onboard. It serves as a major development for the telecommunication sector in Guyana since we are currently in the process of liberalizing the telecommunication sector.

Work is underway to organise the local branch.

Bahá’ís celebrate 200th anniversary

Inspired by the life and teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, millions of people worldwide have been celebrating the 200th anniversary of His birth on the 21st and 22nd of October 2017.
According to the Bicentenary website:
"Bahá’u’lláh was born in Tehran in 1817. Two centuries later, the day of His birth is celebrated around the world alongside the birth of the forerunner of His Revelation, the Báb, born in 1819 on the day before the birth of Bahá’u’lláh according to the calendar used in Persia. These Twin Holy Birthdays are celebrated by Bahá’ís and their friends as one annual festival where the closely interwoven lives and missions of these two Divine Luminaries are remembered together."
The website contains many great reports and pictures of these activities from around the world.

So what's going on with AI (Artificial Intelligence)?

There have been a number of scare stories about AI recently. This article from Hackaday (a techie news site) attempts to put it into perspective:

"AI techniques include matching natural language to predefined templates. That’s really all these devices are doing today. Granted the neural nets that allow for great speech recognition and reproduction are impressive. But they aren’t true intelligence nor are they even necessarily direct analogs of a human brain."

Baha'i Bicentennial 2017

Mansion of Bahji

For Baha'is a major event is coming up in October - the bicentennial of the birth of Baha'u'llah in 1817. This occassion will be celebrated world-wide nationally and locally.

Here is some background information from Huffington:

"As 2017 begins, over 5 million Baha’is worldwide are preparing for major upcoming celebrations. On October 22, 2017, in some 100,000 localities worldwide, they will celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith."

And another background article from BWNS mentions a tribute from the President of India:

"In India, as preparations advance, the Baha’i community has received from the President of India—His Excellency Pranab Mukherjee—a moving tribute honoring this bicentenary year."