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Diaries

Anti-Capitalism Meet-Up: What's your insincerity score or have you run up your social debt?

Submitted by annieli on Sun, 02/24/2019 - 5:16pm

800px-Industry_4.0[1][1]

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Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.
Industry 4.0 fosters what has been called a "smart factory". Within modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions. Over the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real-time both internally and across organizational services offered and used by participants of the value chain. (Wikipedia)

There are numerous descriptions of the history of industrial revolution and the claim that there is a fourth such revolution remains to be seen, much like the sobriquet of “2.0” to reflect versioned improvement. Technological determinism persists and insists on its inevitable progress, even as we experience the failures of post-Fordism.

The analog world remains, despite digital improvements, and we are pestered by commodity fetishism, the latest of which in telecommunications is “5G”. Most of us with smart phones now use a 4G device that provides an unprecedented amount of communication. More likely your next phone replaced by obsolescence will be more biometric in terms of user interface and access safeguards.

Our online sincerity is now tested by a variety of technologies, some biometric, others because there’s enough bandwidth to provide live, visual full-motion communication, but also there’s the processing speed to consult multiple large databases of personal information. “Googling someone” is changing.

Will your presence, your social being, be valued by some external system of credit much as your “credit rating” now measures your net worth and for some your social status.

Even more insidious will be social interactions valued instantaneously by technology comparing databases with few controls on privacy. “Background checks” will be more intrusive, as entire cottage industries will develop to “improve your social credit standing”.

The Weekly Watch

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 02/24/2019 - 7:42am

Directing the Flow with the Magic of Water

What a long, wet week its been. About a foot of rain last week. It rained every day. It's just breaking up today with a forecast of a few dry sunny days. So with water flowing everywhere, it seems a natural topic for this column. Like other lifeforms, we are mostly water. Water is life. Over two thirds of our planet is covered with water. However less than 2% is fresh water, and most of that tied up as ice. As the climate continues to become more extreme, we can expect both more droughts and more flooding. However if we manage our environment sustainably we can cope with these wild variations.

water cycle.jpg

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