If you haven’t visited my site before and only read these things through email, may I ask you go and have a look at the site. It’s matthewcowen.org, and I have been dipping into the world of CSS styles and such. I’ve added a preferred font for the site, styled the text and paragraphs better and messed with the dividers. Rather than have the thousands of words on the home page, I changed it to include first paragraph summaries with an invitation to “Read more…”. The last thing I did is add a Dark Mode for those of you that prefer that on your operating system of choice.
I think the posts look a lot more professional now have tweaked and wrangled the underlying theme to my will. I just had to get rid of the American date formatting too!
It is not without its issues, and I hope to fix a couple of them over the coming weeks, but I’m pretty happy with where the site is now.
If you spot anything odd, please let me know, and I will resolve it as soon as possible.
Podcast appearance
I was invited to take part in the Community Chat on the ICT Pulse Podcast, as podcast I have had the privilege to participate on numerous times.
You can get it on your podcast app of choice, or anywhere that furnishes good podcasts.
You can have a look at the show description here and also look for any episode.
I shared the episode with Esmeralda Levens-Wijngaarde of Blyce in Curaçao, and it was a really interesting discussion, one that is difficult and challenging to navigate. But I think we did a good job of it.
From the show notes:
THE TOPICS DISCUSSED
One of the most fundamental issues shaping the region’s digital future is sovereignty in the digital age. As Caribbean countries rely increasingly on foreign-owned infrastructure, platforms and cloud services, questions arise around who controls critical systems, where data is stored and processed, and who ultimately has access to that data. These issues are not purely technical; they touch on national security, economic resilience, regulatory authority and the ability of states to design policies that reflect local priorities. Hence our very first topic was, How important are sovereign systems, dataflows and data access for the Caribbean region?
We then discussed The AI hype cycle and the pressure to adopt. AI is widely portrayed as an unavoidable leap forward, creating pressure on governments and organisations to adopt quickly or risk being left behind. For Caribbean policymakers and institutions, the challenge is not whether AI is important, but how to separate genuine, context-appropriate opportunities from inflated expectations.
Finally, there is growing uncertainty around other once-celebrated technologies. Web3, blockchain and decentralised platforms were heralded as tools that could democratise finance, reshape the internet and empower small states and creators. Today, enthusiasm has cooled, investment has become more selective and practical use cases are being re-examined. However, a recent article in the Cayman Compass stated that the Cayman Islands had made some major strides towards becoming a global centre for Web3 businesses, which led us to ask, Web3: Is it still a thing?
As always, my thanks to Michele Marius for hosting me, and a big thank you to Esmeralda. I’m really looking forward to the book!
Thanks for reading and I look forward to writing more articles for you in 2026.
