Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Doha Debates; a well-known series that is produced in Doha, Qatar by the Qatar Foundation and aired monthly via BBC World news. The aim of the debates: to enable the outside world to catch a glimpse of the issues affecting the Arab world, and provide a free forum for discussion. Launched over seven years ago, the programme – which is filmed in front of a select audience of students and high-end university scholars – identifies tough local issues and pulls in senior level politicians and academics from across the world to discuss, debate and take questions from the audience.

The internet of things or the outer web has been much talked about already, and from my perspective, is an intriguing future. The idea that objects will all have an IP address is a powerful and exciting image for someone working in the field of technology marketing – the possibilities for application are almost limitless. I can see a real race of innovation taken place around this – indeed reading the BBC Tech section today I saw this story about RFID application in clothing as a bootlegging deterrent.

An interesting study has just been released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development arguing that the potential risk for a cyber war is over-hyped. This study, which was reported by theBBC is evidently the first in a series of reports that look at incidents that could cause global disruption. This jumped out to me as a story, as I currently live in a region where tensions run high in some countries, and and indeed the recent Tunisia up-rising has, by some, been referenced as the Middle East’s first cyber war.