Monday, August 23, 2004

Posted here Monday, August 23, 2004 at 9:59:06 PM     Highly recommend this unusual article. on the nature of a negaqtive economy, that is, the US now. http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=667   ********

Posted here Monday, August 23, 2004 at 9:49:44 PM     Part of the problem of the overly graphic portrayal of sexiness is that we begin to lose the distinction between real people and the  perception of their surface. We are then ripe for the introduction into our lives of various mechancial surrogates. http://www.artificial-life.com/ ********

Posted here Monday, August 23, 2004 at 9:44:36 PM     Here is a link for Sterling's fascinating speech referenced yesterday http://www.boingboing.net/images/blobjects.htm ********

Posted here Monday, August 23, 2004 at 8:52:35 AM     From bruce sterling (site at http://blog.wired.com/sterling/ but not the text). The shape of things today is condemning our world to steadily increasing poverty, degradation, and turmoil. Four planets couldn't supply the material and energy to let the world live the so-called advanced world lives now. We're pretty advanced, but we're nowhere near advanced enough. This may sound a bit alarmist and theoretical, so let me phrase it to you in a way that holds your own feet to the fire. Steve Jobs is a pioneer of personal computing and the head of Pixar. Apple is the biggest vendor here. It's hard to get any more SIGGRAPH than Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has neuroendocrinal pancreatic cancer. That's because, like everybody else in the world, like you and like me, Steve Jobs is carrying a load of carcinogens in his flesh. Silicon Valley, as an industrial clean-up site, is rather well known for its mutagens. The disturbing substances that are in the body of this captain of your industry, they should not be in there. They are wasted resources, they are systemic inefficiencies, they are externalities. We need ways to keep these substances organized and contained, and, eventually, designed out of the production system entirely. Steve is sick for physical reasons, for metabolic reasons. We may not know the exact chain of cause and effect, but there is one; he's not sick because some dark angel blew on his dice wrong. He has effluent, byproducts of industry, inside his body. It's painful. But we need to understand that our bloodstreams are our dumping grounds. So are our lungs and our livers. If we could visualize that, if we knew and could prove what had gone wrong inside of ourselves, if we could put a digital medical imaging screen on our bellies, our lungs and our livers, and make those invisible problems visible, then everything would become different. If that knowledge was attached to every object in our possession, the objects that were killing us would vanish quickly. That wouldn't be easy to do. But in the year 2004 it is no longer unimaginable. It could be done. It's possible to live in a cleaner way. We live in debris and detritus because of our ignorance. That ignorance is no longer technically necessary. Those who know, know. Instead, our problem is becoming obscurantism, which is a deliberate hiding of the facts by vested interests who know they are injuring us. Such acts of evil must be combated. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Wanting to know, wanting to do it, that's half the struggle right there. Our capacities are tremendous. Eventually, it is within our technical ability to create factories that clean the air as they work, cars that give off drinkable water, industry that creates parks instead of dumps, or even monitoring systems that allow nature to thrive in our cities, neighborhoods, lawns and homes. An industry that is not just "sustainable," but enhances the world. The natural world should be better for our efforts and our ingenuity. It's not too much to ask. You and I will never live to see a future world with those advanced characteristics. The people who will be living in it will pretty much take it for granted, anyway. But that is a worthy vision for today's technologists: because that is wise governance for a digitally conquered world. That is is not tyranny. That is legitimacy. Without vision, the people perish. So we need our shimmering, prizes, goals to motivate ourselves, but the life is never in the prize. The living part, the fun part, is all in the wrangling. Those dark cliffs looming ahead == that is the height of your achievement. We need to leap into another way of life. The technical impetus is here. We are changing, but to what end? The question we must face is: what do we want? We should want to abandon that which has no future. We should blow right through mere sustainability. We should desire a world of enhancement. That is what should come next. We should want to expand the options of those who will follow us. We don't need more dead clutter to entomb in landfills. We need more options. ********

Posted here Monday, August 23, 2004 at 8:45:22 AM     The pace of technology continues. Is there a positive in it?  The nature of all physical objects will change. from http://stoprfid.org/rfid_overview.html RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere by Katherine Albrecht, CASPIAN [Excerpted from: Albrecht, Katherine. "Supermarket Cards: The Tip of the Retail Surveillance Iceberg."  Denver University Law Review, Volume 79, Issue 4, pp. 534-539 and 558-565.] "In 5-10 years, whole new ways of doing things will emerge and gradually become commonplace. Expect big changes." 1  - MIT's Auto-ID Center Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley of the marketers' war against consumers. If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science fiction novel. A new consumer goods tracking system called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is poised to enter all of our lives, with profound implications for consumer privacy. RFID couples radio frequency (RF) identification technology with highly miniaturized computers that enable products to be identified and tracked at any point along the supply chain. 2 The system could be applied to almost any physical item, from ballpoint pens to toothpaste, which would carry their own unique information in the form of an embedded chip. 3 The chip sends out an identification signal allowing it to communicate with reader devices and other products embedded with similar chips. 4  Analysts envision a time when the system will be used to identify and track every item produced on the planet. 5 A number for every item on the planet RFID employs a numbering scheme called EPC (for "electronic product code") which can provide a unique ID for any physical object in the world. 6 The EPC is intended to replace the UPC bar code used on products today. 7 Unlike the bar code, however, the EPC goes beyond identifying product categories--it actually assigns a unique number to every single item that rolls off a manufacturing line. 8 For example, each pack of cigarettes, individual can of soda, light bulb or package of razor blades produced would be uniquely identifiable through its own EPC number. 9 Once assigned, this number is transmitted by a radio frequency ID tag (RFID) in or on the product. 10 These tiny tags, predicted by some to cost less than 1 cent each by 2004, 11 are "somewhere between the size of a grain of sand and a speck of dust." 12 They are to be built directly into food, clothes, drugs, or auto-parts during the manufacturing process. 13 ********