Having billions more people, in very different cultural and economic circumstances, online will change the Internet in significant and unpredictable ways, as well as changing the lives of people who now have access to information about markets, the ability to transact remotely, and many other new abilities that nobody has even thought of yet.

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

The race for global Internet coverage is heating up between SpaceX, Google, and Facebook? Take the poll to let us know who you think should win.

http://bit.ly/2fVMJpf

Originally shared by Rob Jongschaap

Lip-reading is notoriously difficult, depending as much on context and knowledge of language as it does on visual clues. But researchers are showing that machine learning can be used to discern speech from silent video clips more effectively than professional lip-readers can.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602949/ai-has-beaten-humans-at-lip-reading/

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

There’s an old Soviet joke: “Don’t think. If you think, don’t speak. If you speak, don’t write. If you write, don’t sign. If you sign, don’t be surprised.” While it may encode some good advice for keeping out of Siberia, the realities of living in an autocracy are somewhat more subtle. The most important rules aren’t about not attracting the notice of the secret police – they’re about how to keep track of your sense of reality, when you are subject to a continuous and concerted effort to redefine it.

I was reminded of this just a few days ago by my Peruvian mother-in-law, who described how Fujimori would engage in elaborate public shuffles of his cabinet, making “who’s in and who’s out” the center of all media attention, whenever he was up to something particularly nefarious behind the scenes. The media is hungry; if you feed it, it will eat.

Behind here is an essay by Masha Gessen, who grew up in Russia under Brezhnev, about what you need in order to survive. She gives six slightly different rules: “1. Believe the autocrat; 2. Do not be taken in by small signs of normality; 3. Institutions will not save you; 4. Be outraged; 5. Don’t make compromises; 6. Remember the future.”

There’s a great deal of subtlety behind each of these, especially the first three. The art of surviving in an autocracy, whether it be the USSR or a tinpot banana republic, is the art of recognizing when you are being told the simple, unvarnished truth, and when you are being treated to a spectacular song-and-dance designed to distract you from what’s really going on.

What’s particularly important here, and why you should read Gessen’s essay, is that the instincts you have developed for understanding democracies will lead you exactly astray when trying to understand autocracies – the instincts to search for a rationalization when you hear something extreme, or to treat “small signs of normality” like stock market stability or a “normal” news story like a cabinet reshuffle as a sign that things really are normal, for example. In a democracy, this habits are frequently correct; to an autocrat, this tendency of people to assume that everything is normal is a basic part of operations.

There are many good books on the theory of propaganda, but Gessen’s essay is perhaps one of the most concise and useful introductions. You will likely find it very useful when understanding anything you see or hear from a dictatorship anywhere in the world.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/

Originally shared by Alan Stainer

Deforestation and upcycling

This is a really good idea to combat illegal logging in the rainforest.

http://www.natgeoexplorer.com/article/old-cell-phones-used-save-rainforest/

Hat tip Jayson Gurney

http://www.natgeoexplorer.com/article/old-cell-phones-used-save-rainforest/

The manufacturing sector is following the same trend that agriculture has been following for a much longer period: increased productivity with reduced labour input. Manufacturing productivity per worker has increased five times since 1980.

That trend isn’t going away. As this article points out, the need is not to fiddle with the economics of the manufacturing sector or international trade; that isn’t going to change the underlying technological reality. A much more effective response would be to provide a better safety net for the workers who will inevitably be displaced, and better retraining to fit them for new jobs (since technology does tend to produce new jobs even as it removes old ones; they’re just different kinds of jobs).

A lot of current thinkers are also suggesting that the increased productivity per worker, instead of going to benefit mostly the owners of the manufacturing companies, should be partly redirected into a Universal Basic Income to provide stability independent of employment. (This particular article doesn’t go into that question directly.)

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs-arent-coming-back/

Just had an idea that someone is probably working on already. If they’re not, it wouldn’t be hard to do if you were a decent maker.

You run a rail the length of the ceiling in your room.

On it, you mount a mobile crossbar that reaches the width of the room.

On the crossbar, you mount a mobile unit that can move to each end of the bar or any point in between. Think industrial hoist, inkjet, 3D printer, or CNC machine working head – only this one is a grabbing hand and some cameras, mounted on three or four retractable cables so that it can descend to floor level at any point of the room and move around in three dimensions. You might want it on some kind of flexible arm, so it could reach into cupboards and the like, but that’s an elaboration of the basic idea.

Let’s say you’re a disabled person, or old, or just have a cat on your lap, and you want to get something that’s in another part of the room without getting up. You direct the hand to pick it up – early on, using your tablet and looking through the cameras, but this is the kind of thing AI could learn to do in the next few years. The hand positions itself over the item, descends on the cables, grabs securely, reels in, moves over to where you are, descends to within your grasp, and gives you the item.

Congratulations, you have an aerial servant. One that, within a few years, will be able to respond to voice commands, and a few years after that to your mental commands.

Eventually, I can imagine it bringing you a glass of water when you weren’t consciously aware you were thirsty, because the tech now embedded in your body told it you needed to drink.

If you showed it to someone from the Renaissance, they’d think you were a sorcerer.