Things shot, destroyed, burnt at super slow motion.
What disturbs me is the idea that a book about the moral hazard of military technologies should be written as if it was going to be read by robots: input decision procedure, output decision and correlated action. I know that effective military operations have traditionally been based on the chain of command and that this looks a little like the command and control structure of robots. When someone is shooting at you, I can only imagine that you need to follow orders mechanically. The heat of battle is neither the time nor the place for cool ethical reflection.
Warfare, unlike philosophy, could never be conducted from an armchair. Until now. For the first time in history, some soldiers have this in common with philosophers: they can do their jobs sitting down. They now have what I’ve always enjoyed, namely “leisure,” in the Hobbesian sense of the word, meaning they are not constantly afraid of being killed.
Drones, Ethics and the Armchair Soldier, a thoughtful piece by John Kaag for The Stone. This is a paradox in the making; the necessity of mechanical orders during wartime versus the required coolness of ethics.
What disturbs me is the idea that a book about the moral hazard of military technologies should be written as if it was going to be read by robots: input decision procedure, output decision and correlated action. I know that effective military operations have traditionally been based on the chain of command and that this looks a little like the command and control structure of robots. When someone is shooting at you, I can only imagine that you need to follow orders mechanically. The heat of battle is neither the time nor the place for cool ethical reflection.
Warfare, unlike philosophy, could never be conducted from an armchair. Until now. For the first time in history, some soldiers have this in common with philosophers: they can do their jobs sitting down. They now have what I’ve always enjoyed, namely “leisure,” in the Hobbesian sense of the word, meaning they are not constantly afraid of being killed.
Batman as ancient Greek art. More on the source link.
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Batman as ancient Greek art. More on the source link.
Extreme close-up photos of eyes.
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Extreme close-up photos of eyes.
Dragdis - a visual bookmarking tool
Dragdis - a visual bookmarking tool
Very clever and well implemented. You should try it.
The main problem with most bookmarking tools is that you either need to do a lot of actions to save anything or you end up with a huge clutter later. Dragdis solves all this by allowing you to drag and drop links, images, videos and text to folders that appear on the right side of your browser the moment you start dragging something. With two full days of Dragdis behind me, I am a very happy user as links and smaller pieces of content ar organized and easily shareable.
Dragdis - a visual bookmarking tool
Very clever and well implemented. You should try it.
The main problem with most bookmarking tools is that you either need to do a lot of actions to save anything or you end up with a huge clutter later. Dragdis solves all this by allowing you to drag and drop links, images, videos and text to folders that appear on the right side of your browser the moment you start dragging something. With two full days of Dragdis behind me, I am a very happy user as links and smaller pieces of content ar organized and easily shareable.
More on the fabled iWatch
Ok, this is another post about the iWatch in a relatively short time span. Sorry for that readers who are not interested in Apple.
But take a look at this presentation above, made by David Galbraith. There are some really interesting potential uses for the iWatch.
The first is that it won’t look like a classic wristwatch but rather like a rubber wristband. We know that Apple is investigating flexible displays for iPhones and iPads; what about the wristband?
Authentec, a company Apple bought in July produces small fingerprint sensors.
So… What can you do—or shall I say, disrupt—with a flexible display on your wrist which only you can authenticate?
Purchase goods physically and on the Internet - with the most secure authentication possible. As Gary Williams puts it on Quora, fingerprint recognition would allow:
1) The presence of a personal device registered to the individual.
2) The location of the device recorded at the time of the transaction
3) The biometric recognition of the individual present and giving their authorisation recorded at the time of the transaction
This three-way lock would be significantly more secure than anything we use at present. All sorts of fraud, identity theft and hackery would be not be possible with this sort of technology.
Kill passwords - login to Facebook, or your iPhone, or your Home with this device.
Display messages, tweets, headlines.
And more
More on the fabled iWatch
Ok, this is another post about the iWatch in a relatively short time span. Sorry for that readers who are not interested in Apple.
But take a look at this presentation above, made by David Galbraith. There are some really interesting potential uses for the iWatch.
The first is that it won’t look like a classic wristwatch but rather like a rubber wristband. We know that Apple is investigating flexible displays for iPhones and iPads; what about the wristband?
Authentec, a company Apple bought in July produces small fingerprint sensors.
So… What can you do—or shall I say, disrupt—with a flexible display on your wrist which only you can authenticate?
Purchase goods physically and on the Internet - with the most secure authentication possible. As Gary Williams puts it on Quora, fingerprint recognition would allow:
1) The presence of a personal device registered to the individual.
2) The location of the device recorded at the time of the transaction
3) The biometric recognition of the individual present and giving their authorisation recorded at the time of the transaction
This three-way lock would be significantly more secure than anything we use at present. All sorts of fraud, identity theft and hackery would be not be possible with this sort of technology.
Kill passwords - login to Facebook, or your iPhone, or your Home with this device.
Display messages, tweets, headlines.
And more
Stunning macro photographs of the elements of the periodic table by Japanese photographer R. Tanaka. Pair with BBC’s volatile history of chemistry and Theodore Gray’s magnificent photographs of the elements.
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Stunning macro photographs of the elements of the periodic table by Japanese photographer R. Tanaka. Pair with BBC’s volatile history of chemistry and Theodore Gray’s magnificent photographs of the elements.
We should also consider biometric applications. The intimate contact of the iWatch makes it a natural carrier for the ever-improving sensors we find in today’s health monitors, devices that measure and record heart rate and perspiration during a workout, or that monitor sleep patterns and analyze food intake. What we don’t find, in these existing gadgets, is the ability to download new apps. An iWatch with health sensors coupled with the App Store would open whole new health and wellness avenues.
Jean-Louis Gassée explores possibilities of a potential Apple made iWatch. As we will move closer to replacing smartphones with wearable devices, the paradigm will also shift to quantifying our selves.
We should also consider biometric applications. The intimate contact of the iWatch makes it a natural carrier for the ever-improving sensors we find in today’s health monitors, devices that measure and record heart rate and perspiration during a workout, or that monitor sleep patterns and analyze food intake. What we don’t find, in these existing gadgets, is the ability to download new apps. An iWatch with health sensors coupled with the App Store would open whole new health and wellness avenues.
Jean-Louis Gassée explores possibilities of a potential Apple made iWatch. As we will move closer to replacing smartphones with wearable devices, the paradigm will also shift to quantifying our selves.
“The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom,” says the Foundation’s description of the challenge. So a “next-generation” condom would, perhaps, find some way to increase sensation as to get men to wear them more often — purely in the name of global health, of course.
Bill Gates Will Give You $100,000 to Build a Better Condom, a thorough challenge.
“The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom,” says the Foundation’s description of the challenge. So a “next-generation” condom would, perhaps, find some way to increase sensation as to get men to wear them more often — purely in the name of global health, of course.
An insincere cult of apology
Michael Moynihan for the Daily Beast:
As best I can tell, everyone on the Internet is upset, their tender feelings inflamed by insensitive jokes, panting with exhaustion from the endless search for new outrages, demanding that people they don’t know offer them abject apologies for saying things they don’t like. This, it seems, is why the Internet exists—to remind us that different people who think different things are funny, that some people think nothing is funny, and others who get a perverse joy in watching well-known people, fearful their bank accounts will deflate, prostrate themselves before the public, expressing “disappointment” in their true selves.
So how does one achieve forgiveness from the permanently offended? Well, in the most extreme situations, there is always the shame-faced march to rehab (“It was the booze that inspired my Wagnarian fits of anti-Semitism, because such profanities don’t exist in my heart”). There is, however, a much cheaper option: the ritualistic public apology. As public pressure mounts on the offender, threatening to damage their own “brand” or a company’s earnings, a carefully crafted apology is released into the wild, America’s wounds are salved, and the braying mob moves on to its next victim. Nothing has changed, of course, but nothing was meant to have changed.
The whole article is thought-provoking and truly these kind of apologies need to go.
An insincere cult of apology
Michael Moynihan for the Daily Beast:
As best I can tell, everyone on the Internet is upset, their tender feelings inflamed by insensitive jokes, panting with exhaustion from the endless search for new outrages, demanding that people they don’t know offer them abject apologies for saying things they don’t like. This, it seems, is why the Internet exists—to remind us that different people who think different things are funny, that some people think nothing is funny, and others who get a perverse joy in watching well-known people, fearful their bank accounts will deflate, prostrate themselves before the public, expressing “disappointment” in their true selves.
So how does one achieve forgiveness from the permanently offended? Well, in the most extreme situations, there is always the shame-faced march to rehab (“It was the booze that inspired my Wagnarian fits of anti-Semitism, because such profanities don’t exist in my heart”). There is, however, a much cheaper option: the ritualistic public apology. As public pressure mounts on the offender, threatening to damage their own “brand” or a company’s earnings, a carefully crafted apology is released into the wild, America’s wounds are salved, and the braying mob moves on to its next victim. Nothing has changed, of course, but nothing was meant to have changed.
The whole article is thought-provoking and truly these kind of apologies need to go.
Another complaint about austerity
It now may be clear to readers of this blog that I am not really in favour of austerity economics. Perhaps this is due to my naive or idealistic perception of the world but perhaps austerity has basic problems that no one seems to want to tackle.
Published in the Financial Times, this piece by Gillian Tett did really uncover some of these problems:
“There’s a lot of little kids going hungry round here,” explained one friend, who works in a local community centre. Indeed, just the other day she had spoken to a family where the child had been chewing wallpaper at night. “He didn’t want to tell his mum because he knew she didn’t have the money for supper,” she explained. “We hear more and more stories like this.”
To many readers of the Financial Times, such tales may seem hard to believe. After all, if you live in the more pleasant parts of southern and central England today, the idea of children chewing wallpaper seems far-fetched. To be sure, the “squeezed [English] middle” is howling about government austerity, inflation and stagnant wages – but life feels bearable for most Home Counties dwellers. And for the jet-setting international cadre in central London, austerity is just a theoretical word.
The problems are, in my humble opinion, excruciatingly simple. Kids are hungry and they do not understand why. They are human beings who lack food in some of the most developed countries in the world (a useless title if you can’t feed your children) and even though they might not inevitably become angry towards government, the transition to adulthood is not going to be all jolly and nice. They are not going to look back and say “the government did that for our own good”; one of their relatives might die from hunger and this will be the end of their hoped for exemplary citizenship.
Although one must always think about the long term and therefore accept sacrifices in the short term, sometimes the weight of these sacrifices are simply too heavy to bear.
The rationale that people will be better off suffering now from the lack of public spending (less education, less health care) in order to enjoy their lives in the foggy future is not appealing to anyone, even those who theorise it.
The solution surely cannot be as dramatically simple as erasing debt wholly. But it cannot be as dramatically simple as asking people not to eat anymore—because this is really what it is.