RehanKhan.com

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 3^rd January 2011.

Information technology often brings together innovative hobbyists seeking “to do some good”. Over a period of time their labours of love create new industry elements the rest of us consume. The technology migrates from accessible free channels created by entrepreneurs to tightly controlled ones managed by a few corporations for which the pursuit of profit is the driving force. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 20^th December 2010.

Anyone who has read of the adventures of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, can only have been left with a sense of wonderment as to the mysteries of the deep. The journey to an incredible underwater forest, a visit to the lost city of Atlantis and a ferocious fight with a giant squid are all memorable sequences in the novel. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 18^th October 2010.

The lore of Star Trek postulates the existence in space of an Alpha quadrant, home to the United Federation of Planets – called simply “the Federation”.  There is also, among three others, a Delta quadrant dominated by villainous cybernetic humanoid drones, the Borg, whose raison d’etre is to acquire new species and assimilate them into the Borg collective. Prior to acquisition, the target species are candidly told “resistance is futile”.

These two fictional quadrants are an extremely accurate pop-culture metaphor for the telecommunications industry – the Alpha quadrant – and the IT industry – the Delta quadrant. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 16^th August 2010.

The seventh commandment of Animalism, the laws put in place by the animals after they’d overthrown the humans and taken control in George Orwell’s political satire Animal Farm, was: “All animals are equal.” But once the pigs became corrupted with power and greed they added “… but some animals are more equal than others”. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 31^st May 2010.

This is going to make me incredibly unpopular but I agree with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s (TRA) decision not to allow any new operators into the country for the next three years. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 17^th May 2010.

Technology is converging all around us. Where is it headed? Nobody knows. What does it mean to our lives? Nobody knows. But its allure is beguiling. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 26^th April 2010.

By all accounts, the final bout of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) held at Yas Island recently was a bit of a drab affair. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 1^st March 2010.

Case, the flawed anti-hero of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, is desperate to link his brain through a computer interface back into cyberspace. If executives attending last month’s Mobile World Congress have their way, we’ll all end up like Case, craving to be hooked up to smart devices. Read more »

By Rehan Khan. Published in The National www.thenational.ae on 2^nd February 2010.

Telecommunications operators have a love-hate relationship with their business customers. Companies and organisations love their telecoms operator when they are looking for sponsorship or donations. The rest of the time they hate them. It is no different here. Read more »