Nixie Clock by Nixieclock Net
17th February 2012
Reblogged From szymon
Notes: 698
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufwp6YnI6nc&feature=player_embedded#!
Shift in technology.
Motorola has developed a whole new system to equip professional bodies with an extension of their cognitive capabilities. What they have at hand now is an effective communication of data through display, head gestures and speech. We all remember the vision from couple of years ago when BMW was projecting their future garage where car mechanics used AR glasses for getting instructions. Now we have a network of communications that can easily broadcast whole range of specific data to help professionals have more knowledge of their task. We read about professions being taken over by robots in the near future (read Wired Magazine, March 2012, page 51. “AI wants nurses to earn more than bankers” by David Baker) and you begin to wonder: what changes will take place due to such a rapid development of technology? Where will this lead the society? What will happen to the economy? What we look at now is a possibility that some professions will be “deprofessionalized”. People will rely on technology to ever wider extent. The system introduced by Motorolla is an example. A mechanic will not have to know a lot about mechanics to work in a garage, as the system will aid him with almost anything, so he will be cheaper and easier replaceable (a trend we see since Ford mass production tape). Robots always have been taking over human professions, ever since they could save money on human labour. The technology further disposes people of their traditional professions, and economy obviously takes the best of it. This means savings for huge corporations that grow, but on the other hand, in terms of a man force, they may shrink. Hypothetically, we will see further accumulation of money to small number of individuals.Money has to circulate.
From the point of view of economy, the money has to be in circulation. If common people are deprived of jobs or earn less, demand will go down and slow down the economy. This is true for capitalism. How do we provide for that circulation? By the reach sharing with the poor? Most recently we see the shift caused by the Internet: the so called old media don’t want to let new media take over their position, so they introduce SOPA/PIPA. The Internet, open and spread all over the world with virtually no boundaries, is an incubator for initiatives that can easily replace some of current (government, funded by taxpayers) organizations, off-source work between individuals and be yet same effective. If the Internet is censored we will loose that unique global self sufficient structure. But what if we maintain this structure, cut taxes, and then help people foster more innovation within technology that will be cheaper and available for broader audience (due to industrial robotization, 3d printers, micro-factories and so on)? Is there a way to afford smooth shift in the technology without risking socio-economical trouble?Clay Shirky on PIPA and SOPA (TED).
Clay Shirky gave an interesting speech on the roots of media industry trying to censor IP and speaks about reversing a legal concept of law by PIPA and SOPA, that marks users as ‘guilty until proven innocent’.
This is extremely difficult topic because IP must be protected, but at the same time we have to allow free and open communication for the Internet users. Let’s suppose that I make a movie that people will like and therefore share it and I will earn too little money to continue making movies and loose money so that I cannot make more movies, I will be pissed off. But if I make a blockbuster, get return and still earn millions, I would not care if people shared it. I would even be happy it is that wide spread and appreciated.
The problem is greed. I suggest that this problem can be solved by granting the capitalism with a bit of communism (but as long as politics are corrupted that shall not pass). How about sharing the cake by harvesting fixed amount of money every month from every internet user? Imagine you pay altogether 50 quids a month and get access to anything you like, would that not be cool? The question here is how to share the cake?
This is my answer: if we already can secure digital content (to some extent) and track files, we could have a tracker built-in to every file, and this tracker would count how many shares a file had (and each copy of the file). This would then be sent into a database, where all the data was processed, and converted into percentage. I know this sounds huge, but it is possible. You, as a user, would hold an account that would let you do that, so that you could be identified (on a basis of a credit card that you pay for the Internet) and thus you could not download a movie that you made a million times for your own benefit. Of course services like YouTube would screen movies free (not in this system) and there would be another place like iTunes that would get you the pre-paid content that you paid for with your Internet bill.
This micro-payment option would actually foster sharing content between people, and the IP people would be happy for it to be spread. And let’s not forget that money will also always be earned on things like cups with Winnie The Pooch that you buy for your 4-years old in a Tesco, or selling a collector’s special edition stuff with cool augmented reality game and packed in an ivory cover (as phenomenon with pirated books has shown, people who downloaded an ebook and liked it were very likely to buy a hardcover version, and if they had not have downloaded the ebook they might not even know about the book at all).
And to paraphrase Clay Shirky, we have always used technology to share thinks, and (hopefully) we always will
Lichtfestival Gent 2012
Cathedral made from 55,000 LED lights by Luminarie De Cagna
Photo by Stijn Coppens
