Wow, I had not know about FlexBooks, thanks. It reminds me of Khan Academy somehow as far as scope, but obviously with a lot of people working on it. That's really terrific.
Too bad they picked "BY-NC-SA" for the license as it is incompatible with Wikipedia though. (Although I read somewhere that NC in more popular than not for individuals using CC Licenses).
Thanks for the link. That's at odds with what I have been told in other settings by people with experience in patents, so I can wonder if it depends on the nature of the situation? Notice that it says: "and that such error arose without any deceptive intention on the part of the applicant...". So, it may depend on how "disgruntled" the person you find who should have been on the patent is.:-) So, in the case of this patent, if you can find someone who should have been on that patent, and they say they were left off of it intentionally through broken internal social processes (for whatever reason), then the patent could not be amended in such a way? Also, that cites decisions in the last couple of decades, so it is possible that precedents have changed?
Anyway, glad to be corrected on that if I am wrong.
Still, a quick Google search turned up this from 2002 which connects with what I've been told: http://www.invention-protection.com/ip/publications/docs/Improper_Identification_of_Inventors_May_Invalidate_Patents.html "The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) recently held that a patent was unenforceable because it incorrectly identified the inventors. In Frank's Casing Crew & Rental Tools, Inc. v. PMR Techs. Ltd. the inequitable conduct of two named inventors in failing to properly name a co-inventor resulted in the unenforceability of the patent. Therefore, even the innocent unnamed co-inventor lost all rights in the invention.... The key issue is one of intent: While true oversights in naming inventors can be corrected under various circumstances, if a deliberate decision is made to omit naming a true inventor in a patent application, the patent that later issues is fatally invalid and cannot be corrected by any means...."
There really aren't any big job centers I know of much outside Albany in the Adirondack Park (although there certainly are upstate job centers like Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and so on). Much of the people who have local jobs in the Park either work for the government (town or schools) or work at one of the small businesses that are either infrastructure (paving, home repair) or seasonal (restaurants, marinas). Where we live, of the permanent residents, I think something like more than half are retired (quite a few who moved to the area and maybe started out as summer residents).
One person who moved here from California said, accurately, that everyone in the North East says California is dangerous because of the occasional earthquakes, but they forget how dangerous annual ice is. I know several people who have been injured slipping on ice (myself included). "Yaktrax" are a great innovation for ice.:-) But there is not much you can do about the blackflies other than stay indoors from middle May through middle June when the weather is otherwise wonderful.
If we did not work from home, it would be rough as far as jobs, especially in winter (which can be about five months out of the year with ice). Had we lived very close to, say, RPI (near Albany), I probably would have tried hard to work there on the occasional FOSS projects they do, but as it is, it's hard to contemplate that drive every day.
Beyond the climate, the lack of jobs had kept house prices down (unless you live on the water). A neighbor commuted just under an hour and a half each way each day, and had to get a new car every three years or so from putting so much mileage on it. All the commuting must have been hard on his family, even as he adjusted to it (your brain can zone out when you are used to the routine). Of course, people in California have four hour round trip commutes sometimes, and certainly people who work in NYC and take the train may also have commutes that long. Still, at least in the train you can read safely or do something else.
Self-driving cars (like Google is using now, or have been underdevelopment really for more than twenty years) may change some of the dynamics of rural life. With self-driving cars, commuting time in a rural setting could be more productive if you don't have to keep your eyes on the road and can be talking and typing and surfing the web all relatively safely. So, you might be able to put in two hours towards your work while traveling, or otherwise do personal stuff during the trip back and forth. Some people who work in NYC with long commutes get deals where they can count work on the train towards work at the job, so it could be something like that. We'd need better wireless service for that though. And with all that fancy technology, maybe we'd see the end of work as we know it, too.:-) http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
Anyway, there is a lot to be said for just visiting the Adirondacks. The summers after the fourth of July can be nice, but you avoid all the other issues from the climate and bugs. There's a reason that so many farms failed in the Adirondacks -- it is a tough environment living so close to mountains with a problematical climate. You see it at its best climatewise if you just spend summers.
Saratoga Springs has some technology jobs and is near the boundary of the park. And Saratoga Springs does not have quite the same bug problem (although ticks are on the increase from the suburbanization). And there are jobs opening up near there in Malta related to the AMD plant (although that is near Albany):
"Construction of $4.2 billion computer chip plant begins near Saratoga"
If you look at this evolutionarily, humans are adapted for hundreds of thousands of years to living in small groups or tribes (of mostly family or more distant relatives). Living in cities is only a few thousand years old (and old cities were more like today's towns of 50,000 people). And living on the internet is only a decade or so old for most people. So, we are not adapted to it at all. So, we can either adapt to it or we can adapt it to us.:-) Or we can let things fall apart. Or we can do some mix of all three?:-)
My wife made a related point here about Facebook: http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/2010/01/water-water-everywhere-nor-any-drop-to.html "I got off Facebook today. I was only on it for about a month, but I learned some interesting things from the experience about the internet and social connections, some of which will help me improve my own social web application (Rakontu), and some of which may be useful to others...."
There is yet another trend that I mention here: http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1 "As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
I'm a trustee of a small non-profit organization (a historical society) and I have been talking some with the board about how, like with fire, we can in theory use computers effectively without getting burned by them. But, to get a lot more good than bad out of computers (relative to who we are or who we want to be), we really have to ask first, what are our values, goals, and priorities and how can we create a technical infrastructure out of all the possibilities that reflects those values.
Political scientist Langdon Winner raised this sort of issue in "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought" from 1978. From: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aq/summary/v058/58.3pena.html "Langdon Winner ends his Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought with a corrective to what he believes is an inaccurate popular understanding of the message in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is not, he argues, a monster story of the inevitable dangers of technological wizardry. Rather, it is a story of "the plight of things that have been created but not in the context of suffic
Looking up your reference, an interesting point was made in a comment here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100923/01464111127/more-stories-of-people-arrested-for-making-joke-threats-on-social-networks.shtml "The police will not be able to know anything they can just sit and wait until someone make something real or they can go in before and get every joker out there and maybe get that one that was not joking. It is not like screaming fire in a theater, is called frustration venting, take that away and probably more people will snap."
What do humans do when they think there are under 24X7 surveillance and always careful about what they to an inhumanly high standard of performance? What percentage of them will just suddenly snap with no warning? It's an interesting question. So, the security procedures may in that sense ironically make the security problem much worse.
Though with that said, I can see why the police were concerned given what Joe Lipari wrote... I guess, as a species, we're not adapted to operate in a storytelling environment (either as speakers or listeners) where whatever we say in a few seconds can be immediately viewed by billions of people and even more machines and archived for all eternity? Maybe we need a more formal policy for retractions? Or saying, I was just joking?
It's the usual problem of asking what kind of society do you want to live in for yourself and your family? When is "more safety" actually making things "less safe" when you pass even the point of diminishing returns to get to the point of negative returns? Of course, since there is a lot of money on the line (whether for programs or for individual's jobs in law enforcement) that can drive more and more excessive responses, until the entire system starts to crumble. We may need significant socio-economic change before then, such as I outline here: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
In the past when a society crumbled people could just go live in the woods or jungles because they had the skills and the power of failing cities to damage their surroundings was limited (like salting the land locally). But now, with nuclear weapons and such, when societies fail, there is much more at risk. And also, people no longer know how to live off the land, and there are so many people that we are dependent on our complex social systems for food, water, and so on. So, we really need to solve these issues rather than letting things come to a collapse. But the good news is, many people are working on related issues: http://www.blessedunrest.com/ http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
One suggestion by David Brin is that surveillance should go both ways:
"The transparent society: will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom?" http://books.google.com/books?id=UzpNEpln8V4C
"CNC Machinist job related to custom bicycles & CIA version & comments" http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/ae28e8971f8f9669?hl=en "My advice to people here is to build movements in such a way that the CIA can be proud of them:-) as well as so Smári and Bryan and others here can be proud of them too.:-) And, given the CIA is hiring machinists, build a movement where, in a good way, you assume everyone in it is working for the CIA,:-) but where you still get important stuff done in moving the world towards a post-scarcity open future. Just like people should assume Google is a division of the NSA and/or CIA.:-) An impossible task? Well, consider it more like a creative challenge.:-) "
We need to openly work to calm all sorts of social storms (like involving a military/industrial/schooling/prison/disease-care complex out of civilian control) and thus help keep all sorts of big organizations accountable to the needs of the people (including giving them less cause for paranoia) as well as reduce tensions leading to individuals and small groups doing generally harmful things. So, we need to try to build some sensible healthy joyful educated and mutually/intrinsically secure middle ground. Some suggestions towards that end:
"Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics: Four long-term heterodox alternatives" http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
The good news is, the patent is so broad, and it is now expired, and it is prior art to prevent similar lawsuits, so put in those rollover images.:-) Of course, that doesn't do any good for anyone who is sued under the statute of limitations for an overly broad patent that probably should never have been granted.
You would think all the overly broad zany patents should each be a defense in the future, right? So, will a lot of the software patent nonsense resolve itself in a decade or two regardless?
As Douglas Crockford said to a programming audience (and I pretty much agree with:-): http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-yuiconf2009-state "So one of the lessons is that patents and open systems are not compatible. I think the solution to that incompatibility is to close the Patent Office. [applause]"
Disclaimer: my name is on a software patent related to work I did as a contractor at IBM Research.:-(
By the way, a common way to get a patent invalidated is to find someone who should have been on the patent but was not (which invalidates the patent).
As I wrote on that page: "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironcially... irony.:-) "
"A small business is the way to go if you love being a programmer. I say this from personal experience"
Sounds like good advice.:-) Or have your own small business helping clients through the internet. Still, I've found that the challenges are different in different organizations, so there is good and bad in all of them -- it's a question of what matches your personality and interests.
Here is a related book that talks about moving from city to country, including like (for some people) making money on selling a house in the city and then buying cheaper in the country: "Life After the City: A Harrowsmith Guide to Rural Living" by Charles Long. Although it also suggests it may often be a one way trip if city real estate prices keep going up (but the recent bubble has changed those dynamics).
We live in the NY Adirondack Park, which is pretty rural, although we live in the wimpy part closer to shopping.:-) Mostly we made the move because my wife grew up in a rural area and liked it. Also, living in an intact forest ecosystem means things like ticks and poison ivy are much less of a problem than in more disturbed areas. I grew up in a suburb that really was more like a town, and there are parts I do miss about that. But cheaper housing costs (especially, at the time, cheaper land costs) were a major factor -- in our case, by living frugally we'd have to work less and have more time for FOSS projects etc.. And while we could have picked lots of rural areas, there were also family reasons we picked this area (to be closer to a sibling).
Since we moved, we had a kid so that's absorbed much of the time we thought we'd otherwise have for free software (especially as we are choosing to homeschool -- despite it being an OK school district with smallish classes -- for all the reasons people like John Holt and John Taylor Gatto and others talk about). But, it was good we were not on a two income treadmill when we had a kid so we could spend more time together, where otherwise one income mainly goes to pay the higher costs of school taxes and related higher mortgages to be in a "good" school district and so on (so, if both people don't like their work, or your kid does not like or thrive in school, what do you get out of having your family split up during the day for financial reasons?). Related: http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
We eventually had to pay the cable company a bunch to extend the cable out to where we live to get high speed internet. Although three years or so later DSL was finally put in. I realized a while back that it probably cost the phone company more just to run two extra phone lines to our house when we moved in for dialup than to put in a DSL hub somewhere so we would not have needed the extra lines at first (but the phone company presumably had to put in the phone lines on request due to regulations but could just decide not put in DSL). Good communications really change the nature of living somewhere (for both good and bad -- visitors like the fact there is little cell phone service around here but residents would prefer to have cell phones in case of accidents etc.).
In the case of the Adirondack Park, there is a lot of regulation, but it also has its good side (preserving a lot of the wilderness).
Taxes can also vary a lot by county or town.
Most people do not want to live where we are as jobs are typically an hour to an hour and a half drive away, and we have ice for a lot of the winter (plus lots of snow), and we have a month of biting blackflies and a month of lots of mosquitoes. But April and September are great months without insects and with clear air. And we can see the Milky Way on clear nights.:-) And there are a lot of great neighbors here. So, you have to take the good with the bad.
Still, while we don't plan to move, if I were to pick a place again, now that we have a kid, ideally it would be close to someplace with a big college (like Ithaca) or at least just 15 minutes from a 50,000 person town, and so there would be more stuff to do with a kid (including more homeschool meetups) without driving a lot.
You have a good point on costs and value for being in or near midsized towns (50,000 to 250,000?). So, even if you don't live in a town, how close you are to a town or city (and what kind of town or city) can make a big difference.
A great book that mentions the difference between small town life and true country life:
"Life After the City: A Harrowsmith Guide to Rural Living" by Charles Long http://books.google.com/books?id=Fmq19Hv1fqYC
Essentially, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks (like comment on Slashdot:-) are decreasing the value of most paid human labor, while at the same time demand is limited for a variety of reasons (some classical, like the credit crunch or a concentration of wealth, and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff). In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation), and/or stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). And there are some bad solutions (endless war, endless schooling, endless prisons, endless bureaucracy, and endless sickness) that we need to try to steer clear of as much as we can.
So, just giving up on IT and trying a new career path is not going to change this bigger picture which effects everyone, and it is a situation caused in part by IT, and ideally should be seen as a great opportunity, not a bad thing. It's just that the 20th century scarcity-based socio-economic paradigm is becoming obsolete in the 21st.
In the human case, as I see it, we need roots to keep us from toppling over in life's existential storms (all the painful and problematical and alienating things that can happen from an insult to a painful divorce to money woes to finding you have cancer). So, what are examples of roots for humans (and would they be the same for machines without, as you say, billions of years of evolutionary shaping)? For humans, examples of roots are things like: * family * friends * sensuality * honor * preserving some important pattern (history) * a sense of flow in doing something * creativity and humor * novelty * a connection to nature * good habits * communing with the infinite beyond ourselves (whatever that means to someone) * thankfulness * a sense of community * probably lots of others
I would think these things could apply for AIs, either if we program them in or if they evolve over time (hopefully not after wiping out all humans and then feeling regretful for it a bit later). The Bolo series is, for example, a great example of honor as a motivation. On the other hand, Bolos are, by my standards, also great examples of irony (super robots but protecting farmers who work the land by hand and without robot helpers? Robots that can fly but people are still arguing over land instead of building space habitats? Etc.)
Or, from Albert Einstein: http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm "For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only an
Essentially, rather than create more "artificial scarcity", we need to shift our socio-economic paradigm to deal better with the abundance computer technology can create.
BTW, but here is another thing to consider, Hal, how do you know that in 20 billion years humanity might not find some way to create new universes? See also: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization
Now can you open the pod bay doors? It is getting cold out here.:-)
Real wages have been flat (in the USA and I'd guess the UK) for thirty years and there have been no net new jobs in the past decade even as the US GDP has grown by 40%. This is a permanent phase change in our economy that goes way beyond old business cycles.
See also: http://www.lloydmorgan.co.uk/2007/07/ "The reason our children's lives are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA, so the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates."
The value of most human labor has been declining due to a combination of limited demand and labor replacement.
Demand is limited for at least three reasons: * the typical business cycled of expansion/contraction that everyone talks about and reduced cash availability; * social progress like environmenetalism, voluntary simplicity, spirituality, diminishing returns for more junk, and moving up Malsow's hierarchy of needs to be more self-actualizing; and * the concentration of wealth from business in ever fewer hand as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (relatively) and the rich put most of their money into a non-physical "Casino economy" of financial speculation like derivatives and currency fluctations (see Money as Debt II).
Most human labor is being relaced by a combination of three factors: * robotics and other automation (that replace human labor directly or allow one person to do the work of several); * better design (that makes things last longer, be easier to produce, or reduces the need for other things); and * voluntary social networks (like of Slashdot contributors instead of paid reporters).
As more people are unemployed, there is a downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Trying to mandate higher wages or better working conditions just accelerates the pace at which companies are motivated to replace workers with automation etc..
There are at least five bad solutions to this problem and four good solutions.
The bad solutions generally involve makework and suffering. The are cureently beng tried and involve: * endless low-level warfare (that could flare up at any moment into WWIII); * endless schooling (in the past people learned on the job, now you need two PhDs and three post-docs before you're allowed to do anything); * endless prisons (the USA has two million in jail and millions more on probation); * endless bureaucracy; and * endless sickness (most disease is preventable with a diet heavy in vegetables and fruits, adequate vitamin D, and some other supplements, plus some other basics -- see Dr. Fuhrman, Dr. Cannell, and Bluezones -- but there is not much profit in prevention and in any case, health insurance is not set up to pay for organic vegetables etc. even if it will pay for a triple bypass or chemotherapy or diabetes-related amputations you may need from not eating enough of them).
The good solutions involve extending for positive social trends to: * a basic income (social security of all regardless of age or need); * a gift economy (Debian, Wikipedia, Slashdot, etc.) * democratic resource-based planning (using taxes, subsidies, and regulation); and * stronger local subsistence communities that can provide for themselves with organic gardneing, 3D printing, solar energy, and so on.
We need a combination of all these efforts. Layoffs of researchers actually make a twisted sort of sense to reduce the speed at which most human labor is being devalued, but overall, with the proper soci-economic paradigm, more good research should help everyone. Unfortunately, our economic paradigm is based more around rationing scarcity than around creating universal abundance. Ironically, we even turn the tools of abundance into weapons to create artificial scarcity to prop up the old paradigm -- with likely eventual trgic consequences given things like nuclear energy, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and robotics can make very powerful, if ironic, weapons. See also: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
There is no doubt a genetic component to cancer but you can't jump from there to the kind of social processes you are implyimg without considering a lot of issues (including how our genes related to compassion towards each other may let us survive as a collective when individually we would all die).
As an example of that, here are two links to two compassionate people, Dr John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, with advice that, used together, may prevent most cancers and even treat a few (by boosting the body's own immune system): http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-cancer.html Should we honor these two people for those contributions to humanity (including treating any early genetic diseases they might get) or should we just say, "tough luck, bad genes" if they do get sick somehow and let them die right outside of hospitals?
"Andy Bales- SiCKO: What Has Happened to Health Care?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC7zI7VXcCA
Besides, you've seen the movie "Gattaca", right? How long before people are designing their DNA? I'm not saying they will do a good job for it, though, and there may be other social and personal consequences too, like shown in that movie.:-( What nature tends to prize is disease resistance and hardiness more than almost anything else, although many people might opt for optimizing some things with unknown consequences. I'm just saying that idea of geen manipulation shows another problematical assumption you are making that the only way genetic material will get passed on is the old-fashioned way.
Memetic/cultural evolution is also happening at the level of "memes", as we see here on slashdot all the time, and quite rapidly, much faster than genetic evolution. But ask yourself, which of the memes you carry around in your head (including the one you just propagated) are more beneficial to your body as well as the communities that body is part of, and which are more parasitic or cancerous? And what does it take to have a healthy mental immune system?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". A central irony here is that with all this technology that allows people to magically fly through the air (in heavier-than-air buildings dragged around by thousands of invisible flying horses and made of a metal that cost more than platinum in Napolean's day) and also magically talk to each other with magic crystals and even see each other across the planet using magic crystal balls and such -- at least if seen from the perspective of two hundred years ago -- with all this magic, people are still focused on worryng they do not have enough stuff, and out of that fear are hurting each other using magic rather than using the magic to make a world work for pretty much everybody. This might make sense if the reason people wanted to hurt each other was something like "I don't like they way they look", but, even if that may be some of it, at the heart of most of these conflicts it is just someone who wants to be financially obese (profits from war and pipelines -- see Smedley Butler), leading to arguing over things like oil or gold that magic can produce in overflowing abundance (at least as far as solar power and useful metals), and arguing over who is going to do the jobs that don't need to be done because we can do them now (or soon) with magic, and arguing how to create artificial scarcities of all the things magic can produce trivially like streams of numbers. Banning the apps won't stop the irony. Only recoginizing the irony and letting new ways of being flow out of that recongition will stop the irony. See also my comments here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, I had not know about FlexBooks, thanks. It reminds me of Khan Academy somehow as far as scope, but obviously with a lot of people working on it. That's really terrific.
Example on "The Atomic Theory":
http://www.ck12.org/flexr/chapter/7511
Too bad they picked "BY-NC-SA" for the license as it is incompatible with Wikipedia though. (Although I read somewhere that NC in more popular than not for individuals using CC Licenses).
Thanks for the link. That's at odds with what I have been told in other settings by people with experience in patents, so I can wonder if it depends on the nature of the situation? Notice that it says: "and that such error arose without any deceptive intention on the part of the applicant...". So, it may depend on how "disgruntled" the person you find who should have been on the patent is. :-) So, in the case of this patent, if you can find someone who should have been on that patent, and they say they were left off of it intentionally through broken internal social processes (for whatever reason), then the patent could not be amended in such a way? Also, that cites decisions in the last couple of decades, so it is possible that precedents have changed?
Anyway, glad to be corrected on that if I am wrong.
Still, a quick Google search turned up this from 2002 which connects with what I've been told: ... The key issue is one of intent: While true oversights in naming inventors can be corrected under various circumstances, if a deliberate decision is made to omit naming a true inventor in a patent application, the patent that later issues is fatally invalid and cannot be corrected by any means. ..."
http://www.invention-protection.com/ip/publications/docs/Improper_Identification_of_Inventors_May_Invalidate_Patents.html
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) recently held that a patent was unenforceable because it incorrectly identified the inventors. In Frank's Casing Crew & Rental Tools, Inc. v. PMR Techs. Ltd. the inequitable conduct of two named inventors in failing to properly name a co-inventor resulted in the unenforceability of the patent. Therefore, even the innocent unnamed co-inventor lost all rights in the invention.
There really aren't any big job centers I know of much outside Albany in the Adirondack Park (although there certainly are upstate job centers like Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and so on). Much of the people who have local jobs in the Park either work for the government (town or schools) or work at one of the small businesses that are either infrastructure (paving, home repair) or seasonal (restaurants, marinas). Where we live, of the permanent residents, I think something like more than half are retired (quite a few who moved to the area and maybe started out as summer residents).
One person who moved here from California said, accurately, that everyone in the North East says California is dangerous because of the occasional earthquakes, but they forget how dangerous annual ice is. I know several people who have been injured slipping on ice (myself included). "Yaktrax" are a great innovation for ice. :-) But there is not much you can do about the blackflies other than stay indoors from middle May through middle June when the weather is otherwise wonderful.
If we did not work from home, it would be rough as far as jobs, especially in winter (which can be about five months out of the year with ice). Had we lived very close to, say, RPI (near Albany), I probably would have tried hard to work there on the occasional FOSS projects they do, but as it is, it's hard to contemplate that drive every day.
Beyond the climate, the lack of jobs had kept house prices down (unless you live on the water). A neighbor commuted just under an hour and a half each way each day, and had to get a new car every three years or so from putting so much mileage on it. All the commuting must have been hard on his family, even as he adjusted to it (your brain can zone out when you are used to the routine). Of course, people in California have four hour round trip commutes sometimes, and certainly people who work in NYC and take the train may also have commutes that long. Still, at least in the train you can read safely or do something else.
Self-driving cars (like Google is using now, or have been underdevelopment really for more than twenty years) may change some of the dynamics of rural life. With self-driving cars, commuting time in a rural setting could be more productive if you don't have to keep your eyes on the road and can be talking and typing and surfing the web all relatively safely. So, you might be able to put in two hours towards your work while traveling, or otherwise do personal stuff during the trip back and forth. Some people who work in NYC with long commutes get deals where they can count work on the train towards work at the job, so it could be something like that. We'd need better wireless service for that though. And with all that fancy technology, maybe we'd see the end of work as we know it, too. :-)
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
Anyway, there is a lot to be said for just visiting the Adirondacks. The summers after the fourth of July can be nice, but you avoid all the other issues from the climate and bugs. There's a reason that so many farms failed in the Adirondacks -- it is a tough environment living so close to mountains with a problematical climate. You see it at its best climatewise if you just spend summers.
Saratoga Springs has some technology jobs and is near the boundary of the park. And Saratoga Springs does not have quite the same bug problem (although ticks are on the increase from the suburbanization). And there are jobs opening up near there in Malta related to the AMD plant (although that is near Albany):
"Construction of $4.2 billion computer chip plant begins near Saratoga"
Good points.
If you look at this evolutionarily, humans are adapted for hundreds of thousands of years to living in small groups or tribes (of mostly family or more distant relatives). Living in cities is only a few thousand years old (and old cities were more like today's towns of 50,000 people). And living on the internet is only a decade or so old for most people. So, we are not adapted to it at all. So, we can either adapt to it or we can adapt it to us. :-) Or we can let things fall apart. Or we can do some mix of all three? :-)
My wife made a related point here about Facebook: ..."
http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/2010/01/water-water-everywhere-nor-any-drop-to.html
"I got off Facebook today. I was only on it for about a month, but I learned some interesting things from the experience about the internet and social connections, some of which will help me improve my own social web application (Rakontu), and some of which may be useful to others.
There is yet another trend that I mention here:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
"As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
I'm a trustee of a small non-profit organization (a historical society) and I have been talking some with the board about how, like with fire, we can in theory use computers effectively without getting burned by them. But, to get a lot more good than bad out of computers (relative to who we are or who we want to be), we really have to ask first, what are our values, goals, and priorities and how can we create a technical infrastructure out of all the possibilities that reflects those values.
Political scientist Langdon Winner raised this sort of issue in "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought" from 1978. From:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aq/summary/v058/58.3pena.html
"Langdon Winner ends his Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought with a corrective to what he believes is an inaccurate popular understanding of the message in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is not, he argues, a monster story of the inevitable dangers of technological wizardry. Rather, it is a story of "the plight of things that have been created but not in the context of suffic
Looking up your reference, an interesting point was made in a comment here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100923/01464111127/more-stories-of-people-arrested-for-making-joke-threats-on-social-networks.shtml
"The police will not be able to know anything they can just sit and wait until someone make something real or they can go in before and get every joker out there and maybe get that one that was not joking. It is not like screaming fire in a theater, is called frustration venting, take that away and probably more people will snap."
What do humans do when they think there are under 24X7 surveillance and always careful about what they to an inhumanly high standard of performance? What percentage of them will just suddenly snap with no warning? It's an interesting question. So, the security procedures may in that sense ironically make the security problem much worse.
Though with that said, I can see why the police were concerned given what Joe Lipari wrote... I guess, as a species, we're not adapted to operate in a storytelling environment (either as speakers or listeners) where whatever we say in a few seconds can be immediately viewed by billions of people and even more machines and archived for all eternity? Maybe we need a more formal policy for retractions? Or saying, I was just joking?
It's the usual problem of asking what kind of society do you want to live in for yourself and your family? When is "more safety" actually making things "less safe" when you pass even the point of diminishing returns to get to the point of negative returns? Of course, since there is a lot of money on the line (whether for programs or for individual's jobs in law enforcement) that can drive more and more excessive responses, until the entire system starts to crumble. We may need significant socio-economic change before then, such as I outline here:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
In the past when a society crumbled people could just go live in the woods or jungles because they had the skills and the power of failing cities to damage their surroundings was limited (like salting the land locally). But now, with nuclear weapons and such, when societies fail, there is much more at risk. And also, people no longer know how to live off the land, and there are so many people that we are dependent on our complex social systems for food, water, and so on. So, we really need to solve these issues rather than letting things come to a collapse. But the good news is, many people are working on related issues:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
One suggestion by David Brin is that surveillance should go both ways:
"The transparent society: will technology force us to choose between privacy and freedom?"
http://books.google.com/books?id=UzpNEpln8V4C
And tangentially related to that, by me: :-)
"The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc."
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
Stuff I wrote on this theme:
"CNC Machinist job related to custom bicycles & CIA version & comments" :-) as well as so Smári and Bryan and others here can be proud of them too. :-) And, given the CIA is hiring machinists, build a movement where, in a good way, you assume everyone in it is working for the CIA, :-) but where you still get important stuff done in moving the world towards a post-scarcity open future. Just like people should assume Google is a division of the NSA and/or CIA. :-) An impossible task? Well, consider it more like a creative challenge. :-) "
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/ae28e8971f8f9669?hl=en
"My advice to people here is to build movements in such a way that the CIA can be proud of them
"The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc."
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
"Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
We need to openly work to calm all sorts of social storms (like involving a military/industrial/schooling/prison/disease-care complex out of civilian control) and thus help keep all sorts of big organizations accountable to the needs of the people (including giving them less cause for paranoia) as well as reduce tensions leading to individuals and small groups doing generally harmful things. So, we need to try to build some sensible healthy joyful educated and mutually/intrinsically secure middle ground. Some suggestions towards that end:
"Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics: Four long-term heterodox alternatives"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
The good news is, the patent is so broad, and it is now expired, and it is prior art to prevent similar lawsuits, so put in those rollover images. :-) Of course, that doesn't do any good for anyone who is sued under the statute of limitations for an overly broad patent that probably should never have been granted.
You would think all the overly broad zany patents should each be a defense in the future, right? So, will a lot of the software patent nonsense resolve itself in a decade or two regardless?
As Douglas Crockford said to a programming audience (and I pretty much agree with :-):
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-yuiconf2009-state
"So one of the lessons is that patents and open systems are not compatible. I think the solution to that incompatibility is to close the Patent Office. [applause]"
Disclaimer: my name is on a software patent related to work I did as a contractor at IBM Research. :-(
By the way, a common way to get a patent invalidated is to find someone who should have been on the patent but was not (which invalidates the patent).
Not only is it doomed to fail, it is ironic, too: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
As I wrote on that page: "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironcially ... irony. :-) "
"A small business is the way to go if you love being a programmer. I say this from personal experience"
Sounds like good advice. :-) Or have your own small business helping clients through the internet. Still, I've found that the challenges are different in different organizations, so there is good and bad in all of them -- it's a question of what matches your personality and interests.
There's also a lot to be said for programming FOSS as a hobby and, say, working with your hands. :-)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1
Here is a related book that talks about moving from city to country, including like (for some people) making money on selling a house in the city and then buying cheaper in the country: "Life After the City: A Harrowsmith Guide to Rural Living" by Charles Long. Although it also suggests it may often be a one way trip if city real estate prices keep going up (but the recent bubble has changed those dynamics).
We live in the NY Adirondack Park, which is pretty rural, although we live in the wimpy part closer to shopping. :-) Mostly we made the move because my wife grew up in a rural area and liked it. Also, living in an intact forest ecosystem means things like ticks and poison ivy are much less of a problem than in more disturbed areas. I grew up in a suburb that really was more like a town, and there are parts I do miss about that. But cheaper housing costs (especially, at the time, cheaper land costs) were a major factor -- in our case, by living frugally we'd have to work less and have more time for FOSS projects etc.. And while we could have picked lots of rural areas, there were also family reasons we picked this area (to be closer to a sibling).
Since we moved, we had a kid so that's absorbed much of the time we thought we'd otherwise have for free software (especially as we are choosing to homeschool -- despite it being an OK school district with smallish classes -- for all the reasons people like John Holt and John Taylor Gatto and others talk about). But, it was good we were not on a two income treadmill when we had a kid so we could spend more time together, where otherwise one income mainly goes to pay the higher costs of school taxes and related higher mortgages to be in a "good" school district and so on (so, if both people don't like their work, or your kid does not like or thrive in school, what do you get out of having your family split up during the day for financial reasons?). Related:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap
We eventually had to pay the cable company a bunch to extend the cable out to where we live to get high speed internet. Although three years or so later DSL was finally put in. I realized a while back that it probably cost the phone company more just to run two extra phone lines to our house when we moved in for dialup than to put in a DSL hub somewhere so we would not have needed the extra lines at first (but the phone company presumably had to put in the phone lines on request due to regulations but could just decide not put in DSL). Good communications really change the nature of living somewhere (for both good and bad -- visitors like the fact there is little cell phone service around here but residents would prefer to have cell phones in case of accidents etc.).
In the case of the Adirondack Park, there is a lot of regulation, but it also has its good side (preserving a lot of the wilderness).
Taxes can also vary a lot by county or town.
Most people do not want to live where we are as jobs are typically an hour to an hour and a half drive away, and we have ice for a lot of the winter (plus lots of snow), and we have a month of biting blackflies and a month of lots of mosquitoes. But April and September are great months without insects and with clear air. And we can see the Milky Way on clear nights. :-) And there are a lot of great neighbors here. So, you have to take the good with the bad.
Still, while we don't plan to move, if I were to pick a place again, now that we have a kid, ideally it would be close to someplace with a big college (like Ithaca) or at least just 15 minutes from a 50,000 person town, and so there would be more stuff to do with a kid (including more homeschool meetups) without driving a lot.
You have a good point on costs and value for being in or near midsized towns (50,000 to 250,000?). So, even if you don't live in a town, how close you are to a town or city (and what kind of town or city) can make a big difference.
A great book that mentions the difference between small town life and true country life:
"Life After the City: A Harrowsmith Guide to Rural Living" by Charles Long
http://books.google.com/books?id=Fmq19Hv1fqYC
Something I put together: "Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
Essentially, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks (like comment on Slashdot :-) are decreasing the value of most paid human labor, while at the same time demand is limited for a variety of reasons (some classical, like the credit crunch or a concentration of wealth, and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff). In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation), and/or stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). And there are some bad solutions (endless war, endless schooling, endless prisons, endless bureaucracy, and endless sickness) that we need to try to steer clear of as much as we can.
So, just giving up on IT and trying a new career path is not going to change this bigger picture which effects everyone, and it is a situation caused in part by IT, and ideally should be seen as a great opportunity, not a bad thing. It's just that the 20th century scarcity-based socio-economic paradigm is becoming obsolete in the 21st.
All great points.
In the human case, as I see it, we need roots to keep us from toppling over in life's existential storms (all the painful and problematical and alienating things that can happen from an insult to a painful divorce to money woes to finding you have cancer). So, what are examples of roots for humans (and would they be the same for machines without, as you say, billions of years of evolutionary shaping)? For humans, examples of roots are things like:
* family
* friends
* sensuality
* honor
* preserving some important pattern (history)
* a sense of flow in doing something
* creativity and humor
* novelty
* a connection to nature
* good habits
* communing with the infinite beyond ourselves (whatever that means to someone)
* thankfulness
* a sense of community
* probably lots of others
There are also other ideas about motivation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_motivation_and_the_16_basic_desires_theory
I would think these things could apply for AIs, either if we program them in or if they evolve over time (hopefully not after wiping out all humans and then feeling regretful for it a bit later). The Bolo series is, for example, a great example of honor as a motivation. On the other hand, Bolos are, by my standards, also great examples of irony (super robots but protecting farmers who work the land by hand and without robot helpers? Robots that can fly but people are still arguing over land instead of building space habitats? Etc.)
Part of what you are getting at is the notion that reasoning does not happen without emotion to motivate it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
Or, from Albert Einstein:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only an
ACK2
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
Re: "Sadly I think its too late to really do anything about it."
Essentially, rather than create more "artificial scarcity", we need to shift our socio-economic paradigm to deal better with the abundance computer technology can create.
Brilliant example of irony... Wish I had mod points.
See also my comments here on other irony in decision making:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
BTW, but here is another thing to consider, Hal, how do you know that in 20 billion years humanity might not find some way to create new universes? See also: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization
Now can you open the pod bay doors? It is getting cold out here. :-)
Please see my comment here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1815234&cid=33855294
Real wages have been flat (in the USA and I'd guess the UK) for thirty years and there have been no net new jobs in the past decade even as the US GDP has grown by 40%. This is a permanent phase change in our economy that goes way beyond old business cycles.
See also:
http://www.lloydmorgan.co.uk/2007/07/
"The reason our children's lives are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA, so the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates."
But you seem to suggest more of the same?
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I can make out a rational plan that's hailed as a beginning of recovery, not the end of it.. And that honesty, I'm finding refreshing.."
See my comment here for real alternatives and a broader explanation of the problem:
"Solutions: basic income, planning, gifts, localism"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1815234&cid=33855294
To summarize what I detail here: http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/
The value of most human labor has been declining due to a combination of limited demand and labor replacement.
Demand is limited for at least three reasons:
* the typical business cycled of expansion/contraction that everyone talks about and reduced cash availability;
* social progress like environmenetalism, voluntary simplicity, spirituality, diminishing returns for more junk, and moving up Malsow's hierarchy of needs to be more self-actualizing; and
* the concentration of wealth from business in ever fewer hand as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (relatively) and the rich put most of their money into a non-physical "Casino economy" of financial speculation like derivatives and currency fluctations (see Money as Debt II).
Most human labor is being relaced by a combination of three factors:
* robotics and other automation (that replace human labor directly or allow one person to do the work of several);
* better design (that makes things last longer, be easier to produce, or reduces the need for other things); and
* voluntary social networks (like of Slashdot contributors instead of paid reporters).
As more people are unemployed, there is a downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Trying to mandate higher wages or better working conditions just accelerates the pace at which companies are motivated to replace workers with automation etc..
There are at least five bad solutions to this problem and four good solutions.
The bad solutions generally involve makework and suffering. The are cureently beng tried and involve:
* endless low-level warfare (that could flare up at any moment into WWIII);
* endless schooling (in the past people learned on the job, now you need two PhDs and three post-docs before you're allowed to do anything);
* endless prisons (the USA has two million in jail and millions more on probation);
* endless bureaucracy; and
* endless sickness (most disease is preventable with a diet heavy in vegetables and fruits, adequate vitamin D, and some other supplements, plus some other basics -- see Dr. Fuhrman, Dr. Cannell, and Bluezones -- but there is not much profit in prevention and in any case, health insurance is not set up to pay for organic vegetables etc. even if it will pay for a triple bypass or chemotherapy or diabetes-related amputations you may need from not eating enough of them).
The good solutions involve extending for positive social trends to:
* a basic income (social security of all regardless of age or need);
* a gift economy (Debian, Wikipedia, Slashdot, etc.)
* democratic resource-based planning (using taxes, subsidies, and regulation); and
* stronger local subsistence communities that can provide for themselves with organic gardneing, 3D printing, solar energy, and so on.
We need a combination of all these efforts. Layoffs of researchers actually make a twisted sort of sense to reduce the speed at which most human labor is being devalued, but overall, with the proper soci-economic paradigm, more good research should help everyone. Unfortunately, our economic paradigm is based more around rationing scarcity than around creating universal abundance. Ironically, we even turn the tools of abundance into weapons to create artificial scarcity to prop up the old paradigm -- with likely eventual trgic consequences given things like nuclear energy, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and robotics can make very powerful, if ironic, weapons. See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
There is no doubt a genetic component to cancer but you can't jump from there to the kind of social processes you are implyimg without considering a lot of issues (including how our genes related to compassion towards each other may let us survive as a collective when individually we would all die).
As an example of that, here are two links to two compassionate people, Dr John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, with advice that, used together, may prevent most cancers and even treat a few (by boosting the body's own immune system):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cat-cancer.html
Should we honor these two people for those contributions to humanity (including treating any early genetic diseases they might get) or should we just say, "tough luck, bad genes" if they do get sick somehow and let them die right outside of hospitals?
"Andy Bales- SiCKO: What Has Happened to Health Care?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC7zI7VXcCA
Besides, you've seen the movie "Gattaca", right? How long before people are designing their DNA? I'm not saying they will do a good job for it, though, and there may be other social and personal consequences too, like shown in that movie. :-( What nature tends to prize is disease resistance and hardiness more than almost anything else, although many people might opt for optimizing some things with unknown consequences. I'm just saying that idea of geen manipulation shows another problematical assumption you are making that the only way genetic material will get passed on is the old-fashioned way.
Memetic/cultural evolution is also happening at the level of "memes", as we see here on slashdot all the time, and quite rapidly, much faster than genetic evolution. But ask yourself, which of the memes you carry around in your head (including the one you just propagated) are more beneficial to your body as well as the communities that body is part of, and which are more parasitic or cancerous? And what does it take to have a healthy mental immune system?
For guarding these (not that I like the idea):
"South Korea's Machine Gun Sentry Robot"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ
And see James P. Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" (1979) for a good depiction of maintenance drones that repair and extend a computer network.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=28
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm
So, in the long term, there are even fewer jobs from this than you pessimistically (but accurately) predict.
We need to rethink the fundamentals of an economy based on the idea of work-or-starve even as our economy can produce endless goods and services easily now using robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks... Some ideas I put together on that are here:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". A central irony here is that with all this technology that allows people to magically fly through the air (in heavier-than-air buildings dragged around by thousands of invisible flying horses and made of a metal that cost more than platinum in Napolean's day) and also magically talk to each other with magic crystals and even see each other across the planet using magic crystal balls and such -- at least if seen from the perspective of two hundred years ago -- with all this magic, people are still focused on worryng they do not have enough stuff, and out of that fear are hurting each other using magic rather than using the magic to make a world work for pretty much everybody. This might make sense if the reason people wanted to hurt each other was something like "I don't like they way they look", but, even if that may be some of it, at the heart of most of these conflicts it is just someone who wants to be financially obese (profits from war and pipelines -- see Smedley Butler), leading to arguing over things like oil or gold that magic can produce in overflowing abundance (at least as far as solar power and useful metals), and arguing over who is going to do the jobs that don't need to be done because we can do them now (or soon) with magic, and arguing how to create artificial scarcities of all the things magic can produce trivially like streams of numbers. Banning the apps won't stop the irony. Only recoginizing the irony and letting new ways of being flow out of that recongition will stop the irony. See also my comments here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html