There *are* uses of surveillance that I think cross the line. However the examples mentioned in the article are, I think, quite reasonable. If we do use the technology we have *within reasonable limits* - thats good. However, we also need a new national dialogue on preventing a surveillance society that ignores reasonable limits as well.
But, lets face it, nobody wants to see real terrorism occur, either, when we could have been doing something..but weren't.
In the early 80s I knew a professional juggler, a guy who was unfortunately one of the campers who were in the area when it went off. He actually saw the explosion and was blown an undeterminable distance by the shock wave. His companions were presumably killed and their bodies never found. He was lucky to have been blown into a ravine and he climbed out of a pile of debris in a daze. Trees were on fire and chunks of ice and ash were raining down from the sky. He saw animals wandering around in a state of concussion from the huge shock.. He put some ice in a bandanna to make a face mask and hiked his way out, following the direction of the fallen trees. When I knew him, he was still struggling with the lung condition that he had gotten from inhaling the sharp, glass-like ash...
Pretty intense experience...
Immigration DOES work - I.T. does too.....
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It does work. It keeps wage costs down. But the real culprit is automation and I.T. It's enabled companies to dramatically cut their costs by automating an increasing number of jobs. In 20 or 30 years, only a very few people will be needed to sustain the same size economic output we have now. And those jobs will probably be in low wage countries. So we will have achieved a major goal of technology.
Freeing people from drudge work!
Note that I don't think that mass unemployment is a good thing. But corporations are in the business to make money, not spend it unnecessarily.
They are not welfare programs...
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save)
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
Around a year ago I read an excellent book by Simon Head, "The New Ruthless Economy" in which he described what is happening to us very well. I would reccomend this book highly to anyone who is interested in what is going on.
Basically, it is a crisis caused by the success of our methods of increasing productivity and decreasing the need for many people to work. You can trace the problems and successes back to Frederick Taylor's theories of 'scientific management', which held that many workers spend more time slowing work down than working. So he devised a system to continually automate - or commoditize and compartmentalize manufacturing wark.
This was an incredibly successful system, and Taylor, who is probably the most influential person in American business history, left a very big mark on American business practice. His technique, (some called this "Taylorism", but a better term is 'scientific management') which was later adapted and refined by Leffingwell for service/office type jobs, was the core idea around which the rest of the changes evolved. (Now we call this pervasive trend 'reengineering' and it is commonly seen in ERP, CRM and other logic-driven decision-making systems that take 99% of all decision making out of th hands of skilled staff and move them to machines, with humans only handling the increasingly rare 'exception')
It goes without saying that this revolutionized American - and by extension, the rest of the world's business practices.
The missing pieces of the puzzle were computers and the Internet.
Taylorism and scientific management were slowed for a while in the postwar years but this was more of an adjustment period than a setback..
But reengineering is back and in the competitive global business climate most companies don't see themselves as having choices not to implement it's effciencies. Working people are now increasingly expected to behave like machines or lose their jobs. Speedup is taken as a given, and there are even situations where the pace of work is speeded up at regular intervals and anyone who cannot make the newer, faster pace is let go. (this is common in phone-center type work see this excellent description at http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/ch6.pdf )
Unfortunately, the postwar lull in this aggressive move towards automation blinded many people to the fact that this pervasive 'speedup' was occurring everywhere - because the media kept the focus on the increased skills that were becoming necessary for the new - temporarily emergent middle management class.. "white collar workers".
the introduction of computers, however, should have made more of us realize that many of the functions of this middle manager group were destined to be automated.. it was only a matter of time..
Basically, I think that we are headed towards a society where only scientists and artists will need to work. Any other job that can be defined as a series of rules and decisions can probably be automated in some way.
That process will take some time, but as the pieces fall into place, the cost incentive in various fields will drive rapid, and very disruptive changes, concentrating the displaced workers in ever shrinking areas. Some big changes in the immediate future will probably be in agriculture, customer service and driving/delivery work.
One thing we could do now is shorten the working week, like they did during the Great Depression. But that would take a decision by society to face and accept these changes. Otherwise, wages will continually be depressed as the remaining low and medium-skilled jobs migrate to low-skilled countries or workers with reduced bargaining power accept pay cuts 'to keep their jobs'.
I don't think that this HAS to be a crisis for capitalism, but our current 'pretend there's not a problem' attitude in many ways bodes ill for the political stability and social contract on which capitalism - and our system's current stability - depends...
We could drop radios into North Korea using leaky mylar balloons to loft them in, when the wind is right. I know several North Korea defectors and I have discussed this with them and they agree that this would do serious damage to Kim Jong Il's reality distortion field...perhaps upsetting his apple cart bigtime. And it would be cheap.
Food/vitamin-enriched biscuits would also do a world of good and undermine Kim Jong Il's regime - as it feeds on hate...
Write your Senators or Congresspeople suggesting this, please...
From what I have read, the Altix machines have an amazing 1:1 relationship of the 'N' of CPUs to improved performance, a computing Holy Grail of sorts.
Thats why they received 'Best of Show' at LinuxWorld last year. It wasn't for a 'me too' implementation.
Who would pay for that? (And if everything is free, how would the powers that be make any money?)
So these humans are independently wealthy? What planet are you on? Even air and water costs something, or will... Selling water, for example, is becoming a new profit center in the Third World as privatization takes hold..
Never give people something for free that they might be willing to pay for.;)
Basically, there is almost NO job that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence in some way or another. Yes, that is good in a sense and it *could* lead to a paradise of sorts, but WILL IT? No, because that radical change would require us to adopt a new economic system, and that won't happen.
So I think we all know the answer to the question.. it's NO -
So, you can pretty much bet on it - yes, widespread use of computer-assisted technologies will, in another few years, lead to another great depression because corporations won't - they CAN'T - employ people they don't HAVE to. (and with their current 'corporate' greed-centered priorities, the robot-service jobs they do create, will probably be in China)
What is it all leading to? I don't know, but anybody who doesnt see this coming is in serious denial. Its right around the corner. And billions of people will be effected.
For an interesting movie that I think shows us this world in one version of this *quite* possible scenario, see Spielberg/Kubrick's "AI".
Seriously, it's closer than you think.. really right around the corner..
Robots will do most of the work. Software that six year olds can use will commoditize programming. Most other jobs will be gone too. Why use people when machines can do the work? Even cars will drive themselves and robots will pick our fruit, sell us groceries and even serve us in restaurants as well as cook the food.
Productivity will continue to soar. Society will make more than it does now, much more, with ony 1/5 the people employed. Those people will make little. Because they will be a dime a dozen. Decision support software will make all the critical decisions, humans will simply be a front to maintain illusions.
Taking care of the masses of homeless poor will be outsourced to China and India.
People will live on their inherited wealth or be forced to move to the inexpensive planets like Mars or Ganymede. (but they will get soaked on the cost of oxygen) Humans will be able to buy everything they need if they have the money. Indentured servitude in the colonies awaits the rest. Sure, as before, many won't survive. This is part of progress. The strong inherit the weak.
Fighting offshoring is futile. You will be assimilated! Bend over!
I'm sure that nobody needs a study to tell them the effects of lack of sleep, we all have experienced them more than most.. But there are some things you can do to improve your chances of getting more out of the time you are asleep *and* awake. Give me a listen because I have done my homework in this area just as surely as you have done your homework in yours. You can deal with stress and lack of quality time to sleep much better with some basic knowledge..
Basically, the brain has a number of systems which regulate the flow of electrical impulses..the brain is a massively parallel computer. And just as a computer starts to fail if the voltage dips below a certain threshold, the brain starts to malfunction if your neurotransmitter tone drops below a certain point.
One of the things which will do this is lack of REM sleep. Another thing that will do this is a lack of the proper precursors to generate those neurotransmitters, or a temporary or permanent deficiency in synthesizing them.
Another thing that will cause problems is a lack of "plasticity" or an inability of the brain's mambranes to properly pass neurotransmitters.
So what does this mean? It means you have to eat (or drink) some of the right things.. Nothing nasty, but you may need to spend some money on 'brain food'. Don't worry, I'm not trying to sell you anything, you will have to go to your own health food store..
You'll have to take my word on this, but I know that these approaches work.
Lets start with some basics.. Your brain is effected pretty dramatically by what you eat, and what time of the day you eat it at.
Your body is a supremely complex, self-regulating system, and evolution has made it very good at moderating the effects of rapid changes in your environment on the brain.. But it also uses some of these changes to help you go through the daily cycle.. This is a cycle that nourishes you, renews you (through sleep) and regulates your neurotransmitters.
Basically, its a good idea to eat a high-protein breakfast, and try to get exercise in the morning, and then to eat a high carbohydrate meal at night.
Some people also take 5-HTP, the direct precursor of serotonin, around an hour before going to bed..GABA and niacin can also help.
This will help you sleep. Try it, you will see what I mean. 5-HTP and these other vitamins are relatively cheap, and worth it if they will improve your sleep. (Of course, your mileage may vary..)
This process works this way because of the way your body metabolizes carbohydrates. Your body allows for more tryptophan to be turned into serotonin in your brain in the evening than it does at other times of the day. This makes you sleepy and eventually, lets you go to sleep. While you sleep, the serotonin is metabolized into melatonin, and later, towards the morning, into tryptamines.. When the tryptamines predominate over the melatonin, you dream, the cycle modulates back and forth, and new nerves are created wiring memories into your brain permanently. And eventually you wake up. The more you have these periods of deep sleep, and the more you dream, the more "rest" you will subjectively feel you have gotten.
For men, a good emprical measure of "rest" can be derived from beard growth, because beard growth occurs in periods of growth hormone release, which only occurs during periods of deep sleep. GH release is very good for you. It will extend your body's ability to deal with stressors.. among other things.. When GH release slows down, at around age 30 or so.. you start to die.. (it takes a while.. but that is true..But enough of THAT. *lol*)
When you wake up, your brain shifts into wake up mode.. This means producing alerting neurotransmitters, the catecholamines..One of them is dopamine..the alerting and rewarding neurotransmitter..
A way you can increase catecholamines, is by taking catecholamine precursors like tyrosine.. or getting them in a good protein-rich meal. Exercise will also prime the catecholamine pump in a big way..
Alertness will improve your memory. "Smart foods" like DMAE can also help. DMAE is a close precursor of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that high levels of, seem to fuel the process of imprinting memories.. DMAE occurs in high quantities in fish..it can also be bought in stores.. Pure DMAE is a bit like coffee, but it wont make you jittery. It definitely improves memory.
Another good supplement to take is fish oil. It takes a long time to take effect, but taking fish oil gradually imcreases the ability of the brain's membranes to pass neurotransmitters. So ultimately, taking 5 or 6 capsules of fish oil a day will improve your neurotransmitter tone across the board..a very good thing. Its interesting to note that clinical depression is almost unknown in Japan where they eat lots of fish.
Anyway, I hope I've been helpful.. Slashdot is a great site.. have fun !
Chris
neurotech@iname.com
Tony Sale will be speaking in Berkeley Oct 19
on
Rebuilding Colossus
·
· Score: 4
Anthony E Sale is Hon FBCS ex Museums Director, Bletchley Park (the person who saved the historic Bletchley Park buildings from demolition and was the single greatest force behind making it into the fascinating cryptography museum it is today)
Here is the blurb:
"
Allied cryptographers in Bletchley Park had an enormous impact on WW II. Tony Sale will first describe how the German Enigma cipher was broken, first by the Poles, and then by the code breakers in Bletchley Park using the remarkable contributions of Alan Turing. He will then discuss the breaking of the German Lorenz code with the Colossus, the world's first large electronic computer.
He will also relate some of the many anecdotes about life in Bletchley Park, which had 250 people in 1939 but exploded to 12,000 people by the end of the war.
Tony Sale has had careers in electronics, intelligence (with MI5), and (since 1963) in computers. He started the Bletchley Park Museums and the Colossus rebuild in 1993, and was Museums Director until 1999. He has lectured and written widely on the history of cryptography and computers, appeared on television, and served as a consultant for ``Breaking the Code'' and the soon-to-be-released film version of Robert Harris's book ``Enigma.''"
Tony will also be giving a talk on "Tackling 10^20 size search spaces with pencils, wheels, wires tubes: Code breaking in WW II
" at MSRI in Berkeley on the 20th. (this will be a technical talk for mathematicians and cryptographers)
I think he will also be doing some speaking at Stanford..but I don't know when or where..
I was very sad to hear about the death of Hedy Lamarr tonight, and I wanted to share my opinions on her invention. George Antheil, her co-inventor, was my father, and Hedy's son Tony is a close friend of mine.
The story of the "Secret Communications System" patent is truly one of the most incredible stories I've ever heard, (wouldn't it make a great film?) and a look at the patent is a real eye-opener for people who are familiar with modern digital technology.. Why? Because the design was for a digital system built with analog components..
And the person who said that Hedy and George had given their patent to the government in hopes of helping to stop Hitler was right..Hedy had seen facists and facism at close hand.. and so had my father, and they both knew what was at stake..
in spite of this, Hedy was still looked at suspiciously as an "enemy alien" by some..:(
She was married off by her family when she was stillin her teens, and was kept virtual prisoner in Austria as a "trophy bride" of the Austrian arms magnate Fritz Mandel a few years before the war, and she literally had to drug a maid in order to flee..
While being forced to sit at the dinner table with her husband and his facist friends, who included high-ranking Nazi military officials, she built up a knowledge of military technology and carried that with her when she fled to London. (where Samuel Goldwyn, I think, gave her a ticket to the US) She met my father at a party at Janet Gaynor's house, and asked him if he could help her turn what was then a valid, but unformed idea into something that could work..(My father had a reputation in Hollywood as an experimental musician and as somebody who was familiar with the latest in technology..)
It took them about six months to do the whole process, and the patent is really interesting.
(you can see it at http://www.ncafe.com/chris/pat2/index.html at some point. I tried to check my site tonight and got a message saying that I had exceeded my "hard limit"..Ive been linked to by media outlets several times, but this has never happened before..
I have my web site virtual hosted at what was until recently Best, but they were recently bought by Verio -perhaps "assimilated" is a better word..:(
(Best said that they would not turn off a site for a short anomaly like being picked "Cool Site of the Day", which is sort of like what has happened..but maybe that has changed..)
an aside...does anybody have any suggestions how to avoid this in the future?
Hedy and George never made a penny from the patent, which was really unjust, I think, because the government had classified it as "Top Secret" and made the commercial utilization of the invention difficult. Just after the patent expired, in 1960, it began to see commercial use..(in the Cuban Missle Crisis) Its now the main secure communications technology in use in Milstar, the US govt's 25 billion dollar "survivable" satellite communications system. Spread Spectrum is, in addition to being an incredibly efficient way to send data, inherently secure.. (one needs to know the code, in order to read the message..or usually, even know a message exists..)
By the way, spread spectrum holds out another possibility with startling implications.. It could be used to create a new television and/or radio broadcasting service that would be able to, in any given geographic area, accomodate the broadcast of many, many more channels of information, at higher quality, than we have now, eliminating scarcity on the airwaves and the battles over bandwidth.. Just imagine, community radio, community television, creativity, true democracy of the airwaves, and perhaps, even, no need for a license to broadcast..and no more canned satellite shows..
That possibility scares some interests tremendously. And its something worth fighting for.
They have digital radio in Europe, why not here?
Guess why...
Back to the patent: Just a thought: The government sat on this..Rightfully, they should have compensated Hedy and George for that, or extended the patent to make up for the years in which it was classified... I know that Hedy was poor for many years.. until quite recently actually. She lived on a small pension and basically spent time with friends and tried to live cheaply.. My father was better off in the later years of his life, I understand, but was never rich in the same way that many well-known composers were. He was quite prolific musically, writing the scores for over 60 films.. But my favorite music of his was his early pieces.. He was enamoured with the possibilities opened up by machines, which could play faster and more accurately than any human ever could..
Anyway, my father died about six weeks after I was born, so I never knew him.. But I definitely did inherit his interest in communications technology...and music..and now that I know the real story, I'm very proud of him..
Now if only I could only get my only two relatives on this planet to stop saying I'm "blackmailing" them for simply being open about my father..(Its a generational thing, I guess. my mother and father weren't married, big deal..)
By the way, thanks for an excellent site, I read it almost every day..
Slashdot Mirror
There *are* uses of surveillance that I think cross the line. However the examples mentioned in the article are, I think, quite reasonable. If we do use the technology we have *within reasonable limits* - thats good. However, we also need a new national dialogue on preventing a surveillance society that ignores reasonable limits as well.
But, lets face it, nobody wants to see real terrorism occur, either, when we could have been doing something..but weren't.
Its a slippery slope..
In the early 80s I knew a professional juggler, a guy who was unfortunately one of the campers who were in the area when it went off. He actually saw the explosion and was blown an undeterminable distance by the shock wave. His companions were presumably killed and their bodies never found. He was lucky to have been blown into a ravine and he climbed out of a pile of debris in a daze. Trees were on fire and chunks of ice and ash were raining down from the sky. He saw animals wandering around in a state of concussion from the huge shock.. He put some ice in a bandanna to make a face mask and hiked his way out, following the direction of the fallen trees. When I knew him, he was still struggling with the lung condition that he had gotten from inhaling the sharp, glass-like ash...
Pretty intense experience...
It does work. It keeps wage costs down. But the real culprit is automation and I.T. It's enabled companies to dramatically cut their costs by automating an increasing number of jobs. In 20 or 30 years, only a very few people will be needed to sustain the same size economic output we have now. And those jobs will probably be in low wage countries. So we will have achieved a major goal of technology.
Freeing people from drudge work!
Note that I don't think that mass unemployment is a good thing. But corporations are in the business to make money, not spend it unnecessarily.
They are not welfare programs...
Job Crunch and Economics Inequality URLs - sorry if it is a little ragged, I'm just doing cut and paste...
/wasow_secure_ret.pdf
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge
But its even more profitable if you don't emply others..
See This interesting piece about what is happening with call center jobs (from Simon Head's "The New Ruthless Economy" - a must read book)
Around a year ago I read an excellent book by Simon Head, "The New Ruthless Economy" in which he described what is happening to us very well. I would reccomend this book highly to anyone who is interested in what is going on.
Basically, it is a crisis caused by the success of our methods of increasing productivity and decreasing the need for many people to work. You can trace the problems and successes back to Frederick Taylor's theories of 'scientific management', which held that many workers spend more time slowing work down than working. So he devised a system to continually automate - or commoditize and compartmentalize manufacturing wark.
This was an incredibly successful system, and Taylor, who is probably the most influential person in American business history, left a very big mark on American business practice. His technique, (some called this "Taylorism", but a better term is 'scientific management') which was later adapted and refined by Leffingwell for service/office type jobs, was the core idea around which the rest of the changes evolved. (Now we call this pervasive trend 'reengineering' and it is commonly seen in ERP, CRM and other logic-driven decision-making systems that take 99% of all decision making out of th hands of skilled staff and move them to machines, with humans only handling the increasingly rare 'exception')
It goes without saying that this revolutionized American - and by extension, the rest of the world's business practices.
The missing pieces of the puzzle were computers and the Internet.
Taylorism and scientific management were slowed for a while in the postwar years but this was more of an adjustment period than a setback..
But reengineering is back and in the competitive global business climate most companies don't see themselves as having choices not to implement it's effciencies. Working people are now increasingly expected to behave like machines or lose their jobs. Speedup is taken as a given, and there are even situations where the pace of work is speeded up at regular intervals and anyone who cannot make the newer, faster pace is let go. (this is common in phone-center type work see this excellent description at http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/ch6.pdf
)
Unfortunately, the postwar lull in this aggressive move towards automation blinded many people to the fact that this pervasive 'speedup' was occurring everywhere - because the media kept the focus on the increased skills that were becoming necessary for the new - temporarily emergent middle management class.. "white collar workers".
the introduction of computers, however, should have made more of us realize that many of the functions of this middle manager group were destined to be automated.. it was only a matter of time..
Basically, I think that we are headed towards a society where only scientists and artists will need to work. Any other job that can be defined as a series of rules and decisions can probably be automated in some way.
That process will take some time, but as the pieces fall into place, the cost incentive in various fields will drive rapid, and very disruptive changes, concentrating the displaced workers in ever shrinking areas. Some big changes in the immediate future will probably be in agriculture, customer service and driving/delivery work.
One thing we could do now is shorten the working week, like they did during the Great Depression. But that would take a decision by society to face and accept these changes. Otherwise, wages will continually be depressed as the remaining low and medium-skilled jobs migrate to low-skilled countries or workers with reduced bargaining power accept pay cuts 'to keep their jobs'.
I don't think that this HAS to be a crisis for capitalism, but our current 'pretend there's not a problem' attitude in many ways bodes ill for the political stability and social contract on which capitalism - and our system's current stability - depends...
We could drop radios into North Korea using leaky mylar balloons to loft them in, when the wind is right. I know several North Korea defectors and I have discussed this with them and they agree that this would do serious damage to Kim Jong Il's reality distortion field...perhaps upsetting his apple cart bigtime. And it would be cheap.
Food/vitamin-enriched biscuits would also do a world of good and undermine Kim Jong Il's regime - as it feeds on hate...
Write your Senators or Congresspeople suggesting this, please...
From what I have read, the Altix machines have an amazing 1:1 relationship of the 'N' of CPUs to improved performance, a computing Holy Grail of sorts.
Thats why they received 'Best of Show' at LinuxWorld last year. It wasn't for a 'me too' implementation.
Who would pay for that? (And if everything is free, how would the powers that be make any money?)
;)
So these humans are independently wealthy? What planet are you on? Even air and water costs something, or will... Selling water, for example, is becoming a new profit center in the Third World as privatization takes hold..
Never give people something for free that they might be willing to pay for.
Basically, there is almost NO job that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence in some way or another. Yes, that is good in a sense and it *could* lead to a paradise of sorts, but WILL IT? No, because that radical change would require us to adopt a new economic system, and that won't happen.
So I think we all know the answer to the question.. it's NO -
So, you can pretty much bet on it - yes, widespread use of computer-assisted technologies will, in another few years, lead to another great depression because corporations won't - they CAN'T - employ people they don't HAVE to. (and with their current 'corporate' greed-centered priorities, the robot-service jobs they do create, will probably be in China)
What is it all leading to? I don't know, but anybody who doesnt see this coming is in serious denial. Its right around the corner. And billions of people will be effected.
For an interesting movie that I think shows us this world in one version of this *quite* possible scenario, see Spielberg/Kubrick's "AI".
Seriously, it's closer than you think.. really right around the corner..
The one who we really should look at is Frederick Winslow Taylor - The father of "dumb it down and speed it up"
Do a search on "Taylorism" - it's the REAL philosophy of American business...
And read Foucault, who coined the term 'panopticon' for a prison in which everyone is under surveillance.
Robots will do most of the work. Software that six year olds can use will commoditize programming. Most other jobs will be gone too. Why use people when machines can do the work? Even cars will drive themselves and robots will pick our fruit, sell us groceries and even serve us in restaurants as well as cook the food.
Productivity will continue to soar. Society will make more than it does now, much more, with ony 1/5 the people employed. Those people will make little. Because they will be a dime a dozen.
Decision support software will make all the critical decisions, humans will simply be a front to maintain illusions.
Taking care of the masses of homeless poor will be outsourced to China and India.
People will live on their inherited wealth or be forced to move to the inexpensive planets like Mars or Ganymede. (but they will get soaked on the cost of oxygen) Humans will be able to buy everything they need if they have the money. Indentured servitude in the colonies awaits the rest. Sure, as before, many won't survive. This is part of progress. The strong inherit the weak.
Fighting offshoring is futile. You will be assimilated! Bend over!
Basically, the brain has a number of systems which regulate the flow of electrical impulses..the brain is a massively parallel computer. And just as a computer starts to fail if the voltage dips below a certain threshold, the brain starts to malfunction if your neurotransmitter tone drops below a certain point.
One of the things which will do this is lack of REM sleep. Another thing that will do this is a lack of the proper precursors to generate those neurotransmitters, or a temporary or permanent deficiency in synthesizing them.
Another thing that will cause problems is a lack of "plasticity" or an inability of the brain's mambranes to properly pass neurotransmitters.
So what does this mean? It means you have to eat (or drink) some of the right things.. Nothing nasty, but you may need to spend some money on 'brain food'. Don't worry, I'm not trying to sell you anything, you will have to go to your own health food store..
You'll have to take my word on this, but I know that these approaches work.
Lets start with some basics.. Your brain is effected pretty dramatically by what you eat, and what time of the day you eat it at.
Your body is a supremely complex, self-regulating system, and evolution has made it very good at moderating the effects of rapid changes in your environment on the brain.. But it also uses some of these changes to help you go through the daily cycle.. This is a cycle that nourishes you, renews you (through sleep) and regulates your neurotransmitters.
Basically, its a good idea to eat a high-protein breakfast, and try to get exercise in the morning, and then to eat a high carbohydrate meal at night.
Some people also take 5-HTP, the direct precursor of serotonin, around an hour before going to bed..GABA and niacin can also help.
This will help you sleep. Try it, you will see what I mean. 5-HTP and these other vitamins are relatively cheap, and worth it if they will improve your sleep. (Of course, your mileage may vary..)
This process works this way because of the way your body metabolizes carbohydrates. Your body allows for more tryptophan to be turned into serotonin in your brain in the evening than it does at other times of the day. This makes you sleepy and eventually, lets you go to sleep. While you sleep, the serotonin is metabolized into melatonin, and later, towards the morning, into tryptamines.. When the tryptamines predominate over the melatonin, you dream, the cycle modulates back and forth, and new nerves are created wiring memories into your brain permanently. And eventually you wake up. The more you have these periods of deep sleep, and the more you dream, the more "rest" you will subjectively feel you have gotten.
For men, a good emprical measure of "rest" can be derived from beard growth, because beard growth occurs in periods of growth hormone release, which only occurs during periods of deep sleep. GH release is very good for you. It will extend your body's ability to deal with stressors.. among other things.. When GH release slows down, at around age 30 or so.. you start to die.. (it takes a while.. but that is true..But enough of THAT. *lol*)
When you wake up, your brain shifts into wake up mode.. This means producing alerting neurotransmitters, the catecholamines..One of them is dopamine..the alerting and rewarding neurotransmitter..
A way you can increase catecholamines, is by taking catecholamine precursors like tyrosine.. or getting them in a good protein-rich meal. Exercise will also prime the catecholamine pump in a big way..
Alertness will improve your memory. "Smart foods" like DMAE can also help. DMAE is a close precursor of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that high levels of, seem to fuel the process of imprinting memories.. DMAE occurs in high quantities in fish..it can also be bought in stores.. Pure DMAE is a bit like coffee, but it wont make you jittery. It definitely improves memory.
Another good supplement to take is fish oil. It takes a long time to take effect, but taking fish oil gradually imcreases the ability of the brain's membranes to pass neurotransmitters. So ultimately, taking 5 or 6 capsules of fish oil a day will improve your neurotransmitter tone across the board..a very good thing. Its interesting to note that clinical depression is almost unknown in Japan where they eat lots of fish.
Anyway, I hope I've been helpful.. Slashdot is a great site.. have fun !
Chris
neurotech@iname.com
Anthony E Sale is Hon FBCS ex Museums Director, Bletchley Park (the person who saved the historic Bletchley Park buildings from demolition and was the single greatest force behind making it into the fascinating cryptography museum it is today)
Here is the blurb:
" Allied cryptographers in Bletchley Park had an enormous impact on WW II. Tony Sale will first describe how the German Enigma cipher was broken, first by the Poles, and then by the code breakers in Bletchley Park using the remarkable contributions of Alan Turing. He will then discuss the breaking of the German Lorenz code with the Colossus, the world's first large electronic computer.
He will also relate some of the many anecdotes about life in Bletchley Park, which had 250 people in 1939 but exploded to 12,000 people by the end of the war.
Tony Sale has had careers in electronics, intelligence (with MI5), and (since 1963) in computers. He started the Bletchley Park Museums and the Colossus rebuild in 1993, and was Museums Director until 1999. He has lectured and written widely on the history of cryptography and computers, appeared on television, and served as a consultant for ``Breaking the Code'' and the soon-to-be-released film version of Robert Harris's book ``Enigma.''"
Tony will also be giving a talk on "Tackling 10^20 size search spaces with pencils, wheels, wires tubes: Code breaking in WW II " at MSRI in Berkeley on the 20th. (this will be a technical talk for mathematicians and cryptographers)
I think he will also be doing some speaking at Stanford..but I don't know when or where..
The story of the "Secret Communications System" patent is truly one of the most incredible stories I've ever heard, (wouldn't it make a great film?) and a look at the patent is a real eye-opener for people who are familiar with modern digital technology.. Why? Because the design was for a digital system built with analog components..
And the person who said that Hedy and George had given their patent to the government in hopes of helping to stop Hitler was right..Hedy had seen facists and facism at close hand.. and so had my father, and they both knew what was at stake..
in spite of this, Hedy was still looked at suspiciously as an "enemy alien" by some.. :(
She was married off by her family when she was stillin her teens, and was kept virtual prisoner in Austria as a "trophy bride" of the Austrian arms magnate Fritz Mandel a few years before the war, and she literally had to drug a maid in order to flee..
While being forced to sit at the dinner table with her husband and his facist friends, who included high-ranking Nazi military officials, she built up a knowledge of military technology and carried that with her when she fled to London. (where Samuel Goldwyn, I think, gave her a ticket to the US) She met my father at a party at Janet Gaynor's house, and asked him if he could help her turn what was then a valid, but unformed idea into something that could work..(My father had a reputation in Hollywood as an experimental musician and as somebody who was familiar with the latest in technology..)
It took them about six months to do the whole process, and the patent is really interesting.
Hedy and George never made a penny from the patent, which was really unjust, I think, because the government had classified it as "Top Secret" and made the commercial utilization of the invention difficult. Just after the patent expired, in 1960, it began to see commercial use..(in the Cuban Missle Crisis) Its now the main secure communications technology in use in Milstar, the US govt's 25 billion dollar "survivable" satellite communications system. Spread Spectrum is, in addition to being an incredibly efficient way to send data, inherently secure.. (one needs to know the code, in order to read the message..or usually, even know a message exists..)
By the way, spread spectrum holds out another possibility with startling implications.. It could be used to create a new television and/or radio broadcasting service that would be able to, in any given geographic area, accomodate the broadcast of many, many more channels of information, at higher quality, than we have now, eliminating scarcity on the airwaves and the battles over bandwidth .. Just imagine, community radio, community television, creativity, true democracy of the airwaves, and perhaps, even, no need for a license to broadcast..and no more canned satellite shows..
That possibility scares some interests tremendously. And its something worth fighting for.
They have digital radio in Europe, why not here?
Guess why...
Anyway, my father died about six weeks after I was born, so I never knew him.. But I definitely did inherit his interest in communications technology...and music..and now that I know the real story, I'm very proud of him..
Now if only I could only get my only two relatives on this planet to stop saying I'm "blackmailing" them for simply being open about my father..(Its a generational thing, I guess. my mother and father weren't married, big deal..)
By the way, thanks for an excellent site, I read it almost every day..
Chris Beaumont
chris@ncafe.com