Some patently good news Turkish innovators have been slow to realize the potential of a patent. For years we have been lagging far behind the western world. But things are getting better. According to the World Intellectual Property Organizations 2015 report based on intellectual property filings in 2014, Turkey ranked 24th in…

Is TikTok the new marketing hype? A recent BBC piece by Esra Yalçınalp went viral after it shed light into the next big thing called TikTok. It is a social media application in which people share short videos of themselves, singing, dancing, doing karaoke, sportive or theatrical performances, etc. It has caught…

What is really real? The boundaries between science fiction and non-fiction are blurring rapidly. The advances in science and technology are so fast that our ability to understand what is really real is diminished. There are three main reasons behind it. First is the fact that with the nearly complete saturation…

September means going back to business We had unusually long holidays this summer. We had so many holidays that Istanbul’s water consumption fell 27 percent compared with last year in the three months of June, July and August. Alas, September is coming, and it means going back to business.class="cf"> There are many wonderful…

We must act for youth, right now Among many human endeavors, “trying to understand” has a special place. When we are born, we try to understand where we are and who we are. Later on, we try to understand the nature, technology, relationships, etc. We also try to understand one another and…

Why crowdfunding matters? Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are very familiar concepts to Turkish people. That’s how we handled everything before the industrialization and open market economy. We called it “imece.” class="cf"> However, we have been surprisingly late in institutionalizing this phenomenon like Americans do. It has relatively remained on a personal level in…

Twenty percent is not enough One of my favorite topics to write about is the gig economy. I have witnessed the birth and progression of it in Turkey. However, it had not occurred to me to compare gig economy statistics of Turkey with countries that have similar demographics. Thankfully, we have the…

Algorithms and Turkey’s record of online dating Like most functions of daily life, dating is becoming something that you can do online very fast. Some countries are fast adaptors, some are not. Turkey is catching up. class="cf"> A recent study by Dilşah Ece Eren and Selenga Gurmen at Istanbul’s Özyeğin University found that…

What does ‘war’ mean in 2019? There is a special relationship between language and technology. One of the phenomena of technological advancement is that it forces people to create new words like computer, byte and internet, or it realizes dreams of those who dare to create new words, like spaceship, before rockets…

Selling snail in a Muslim neighborhood The title is a saying in Turkish. It means that what you sell and your target group should be in line. Since Muslims don’t really care for snails, it would be very difficult and pointless to try to push snails in a dominantly Muslim target group.…