Scientific American's Fred Guterl Explores the Threats Posed By Technology 93
Lasrick writes "Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American, and in this piece he explores various threats posed by the technology that modern civilization relies on. He discusses West African and Indian monsoons, infectious diseases, and computer hacking. Here's a quote: 'Today the technologies that pose some of the biggest problems are not so much military as commercial. They come from biology, energy production, and the information sciences — and are the very technologies that have fueled our prodigious growth as a species. They are far more seductive than nuclear weapons, and more difficult to extricate ourselves from. The technologies we worry about today form the basis of our global civilization and are essential to our survival.'"
Confusing summary (Score:1)
What do Monsoons have to do with technology?
They've been happening annually since the Pleistocene, and nobody has any records that prove any technology link.
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Re:Confusing summary (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently you're not getting the nature of the problem. This is an issue all over the planet. There are a number of human contributions to the ecosphere. Many of these things are antagonistic, as in the case of the Indian Monsoons, The smoke causes local dimming, reducing the amount of solar energy that gets to the ground (or in this case, the ocean.) The green house gases (and you need to appreciate how fast India's use of fossil fuels is growing and how fast their middle class is growing and they want to live like Americans) are being produced by Indians themselves. They want cars and night life and products that have to be shipped half way around the world. So they're producing more than enough local greenhouse gas to impact their own local climate and the climate of others around them. Poor Bangladesh is already in deep guano. Water is rising, and they live on a flood plain. A population half that of the United States lives in profound poverty and they will be displaced by the effects of Global Warming in this century... where do they go? The likely answer is away.
Anyway, you have these two growing forces pushing harder and harder in the opposite direction and for now canceling out. Alls well right? Not so fast, as the two sides push harder and harder, the probability of a catastrophic failure of the system grows exponentially, So, even though the system is almost completely unpredictable what starts to become clearly predictable it that they are going to be faced with severe flood or drought or both quickly alternating in a bistable environment, and the damage it will do to their society and their people will be simply shocking.
I know this is really hard for people to get, this is absolutely solid science. We understand the mechanisms, We are clear what will happen, we just don't know when. Mount Ranier in Washington State has the dark side. After hundred of years, acid from its vents slowly breaks down the rocks of which its made. Here's the problem. They've discovered catastrophic lahars from the mountain that wash right out to the sea every so often. Huge catastrophes, nightmares that beggar the imagination. Scientists know its coming, but they can't say when, Its already overdue. It could be any time. There are folks living at the base of the mountain and they think its all a big joke and the scientists are full of crap. Not all of them, but a lot of them. So there they live mooning the mountain gawd and taunting fate. The thing is, being smug about someone else's endangerment is pretty crass. Being so ignorant about you own endangerment, well that just make you foolish.
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We've had global warming and sea level rise for 20000 years and people have always coped with it via migration. The only reason Bangladesh is so strongly affected because it has been artificially separated from India, impeding t
Re:Confusing summary (Score:4, Informative)
Oh yeah, this makes complete sense, for example Americans have always been so excited to have Mexicans just come marching over the border. I'm sure if that number ever rose to 150,000,000 we'd welcome them with open arms. Those pesky artificial boundaries of which you speak of are called national borders and when refugees anywhere on the planet try to leave the disaster they come from, they create a brand new disaster where they are stopped, at of all places... NATIONAL BORDERS. You imagine that's going to go away? Whatever you're smoking, please let me know, I'd like some. As for the amount of sea level rise... the last two years have shown an acceleration of the melting of the Greenland ice mass and a number of other large bodies of ice profoundly faster than expected. I'm the first to say 2 years does not a trend make, give it what, 10 more years, if this in fact the new normal, we're all boogered. The Greenland ice mass could raise global sea levels 20 feet all by itself. Say goodbye to Bangladesh. Florida becomes the newest Caribbean Island and its half its current size. Most of Louisianan is gone, as well as significant amounts of coastal Texas, Mississippi and Georgia. The San Francisco bay expands engulfing the entire Silicon Valley and the wine country of the North Bay. Kiss Manhattan goodbye. Amsterdam gone. Venice Ciao. Even London would be seriously threatened. So your answer is to open borders and let people come and go as they please when the water rises. Logical. Utterly batfsck insane, but logical.
The problem with this conversation is that when the same change that has happened over 20,000 years happens in 80, particularly in a world with strong national borders and infrastructure to prevent both animal and human migration, what you have coming is a biblical disaster. You know... Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria! So you propose a 50 year human exodus from the tropics for most of 3-6 billion people as a solution to us as opposed to just cleaning up the mess we made. So let me wrap my head around this, correct me if I'm missing something, rather than ceasing to crap all over the scenery and cleaning up the mess we've been making for centuries, you suggest we should just keep crapping away and avoid the advancing crap wall as it chases us north. Yeah, that sounds like a plan, sign me up. Just for laughs, what happens when the last 100 million of us are treading water at the north pole trying to climb up each others back? Don't bother, I don't need an explanation.
I'm all for technological solutions, bright folks all over the place are coming out with genius plans to harness the carbon, sequester it, use to to advance out society. Sticking my head in the sand and waiting for the lion to chew my haunches off just wasn't among them, it lacks a wee bit of technological finesse, don't you think, eh?
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I don't "propose" anything and there is no "as opposed to". Climate change is inevitable. We can't remove the carbon from the atmosphere, and nations aren't agreeing to stop adding to it either. Sea level rise has been happening independent of AGW anyway. You can either wallow in apocalyptic visions, or you can simply accept it and deal with it. And dea
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Apparently you're not getting the nature of the problem. This is an issue all over the planet. There are a number of human contributions to the ecosphere. Many of these things are antagonistic, as in the case of the Indian Monsoons, The smoke causes local dimming, reducing the amount of solar energy that gets to the ground (or in this case, the ocean.) The green house gases (and you need to appreciate how fast India's use of fossil fuels is growing and how fast their middle class is growing and they want to live like Americans) are being produced by Indians themselves. They want cars and night life and products that have to be shipped half way around the world. So they're producing more than enough local greenhouse gas to impact their own local climate and the climate of others around them. Poor Bangladesh is already in deep guano. Water is rising, and they live on a flood plain. A population half that of the United States lives in profound poverty and they will be displaced by the effects of Global Warming in this century... where do they go? The likely answer is away.
Anyway, you have these two growing forces pushing harder and harder in the opposite direction and for now canceling out. Alls well right? Not so fast, as the two sides push harder and harder, the probability of a catastrophic failure of the system grows exponentially, So, even though the system is almost completely unpredictable what starts to become clearly predictable it that they are going to be faced with severe flood or drought or both quickly alternating in a bistable environment, and the damage it will do to their society and their people will be simply shocking.
I know this is really hard for people to get, this is absolutely solid science. We understand the mechanisms, We are clear what will happen, we just don't know when. Mount Ranier in Washington State has the dark side. After hundred of years, acid from its vents slowly breaks down the rocks of which its made. Here's the problem. They've discovered catastrophic lahars from the mountain that wash right out to the sea every so often. Huge catastrophes, nightmares that beggar the imagination. Scientists know its coming, but they can't say when, Its already overdue. It could be any time. There are folks living at the base of the mountain and they think its all a big joke and the scientists are full of crap. Not all of them, but a lot of them. So there they live mooning the mountain gawd and taunting fate. The thing is, being smug about someone else's endangerment is pretty crass. Being so ignorant about you own endangerment, well that just make you foolish.
Wow, you got this Fear Mongering thing down. I think you'd have a great job as a politician.
Ya, I live in Seattle, Mt. Rainier is an volcano that can go boom! Guess what? It's not the only one in the Pacific Mountain Range. Or in Washington. And guess what? We don't care, we don't change our lives because of it. When it goes, it goes. Nothing we can do about it. Living in fear because of it is a stupid and wasteful thing to do.
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Imagine a parent telling a kid about how hot the stove is, and that touching it, or even tripping and falling right in, is not a good idea. And the kid just gives a little self-important speech how it doesn't care, when it happens, it happens, and that "living in fear" wouldn't solve anything.
You see how that would be silly, right? NOBODY, other than you, suggested living in fear. What instead was suggested is learning a thing or two about how the world works, and making smarter choices maybe.
Because when s
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I wish! I just hate a lot of people when I'm not in direct contact with them. I like 'em when they're near, or when considering them individually, but I hate them in theory and in numbers. So useless, and so full of shit.
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So I guess you're personally and deeply offended by the significant state and local taxes spent on the early warning systems built in the Lahar flood plain in Washington precisely to save tens of thousands of lives and prevent human tragedy WHEN the mountain gives way. Maybe you'd think the money was better spent training folks on the finer points of surfing boiling mud. You can stand around spelunking your own rectum and be surprised when you and yours are wiped from the face of the earth. Or you can begin
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Let's get real for a minute, eh. I've considered becoming a politician because somebody sane needs to go to Washington. Sadly I have strong convictions, a relatively strong moral compass and I'm not for sale, so I have no illusions that I'd make it there. Friend there's bad news in the world, and good news too, but you have to be able to deal with both without losing your mind. I just lost my partner of 35 years to ovarian cancer. When she's lost 40% of her body mass in under 2 months, it was pretty clear
Time to build habitats in space and sea (Score:2)
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page [wikia.com]
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ [kurtz-fernhout.com]
I agree risks have increased. We need to think bigger than just the risks though. At the same time, we need to think different on Earth: http://anwot.org/ [anwot.org]
Problem is, most people are still enmeshed in "scarcity" thinking -- even with the tools of abundance at their fingertips. So, rather than build solutions, we build drones to fight over the problems.
Do we have any credible (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do we have credible reports of someone actually being killed because of hacking? The media and politicians for the last few years have been hyping the hell out of the hacker menace and the "cyber" war but no one is even providing any body counts
Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence [wikipedia.org].
Re:Do we have any credible (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why you should pay me for unicorn insurance.
Just because you haven't heard of any attacks, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. With their pointy, pointy horns.
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Which is why you should pay me for unicorn insurance.
Where did I say anything about unicorns?
Just because you haven't heard of any attacks, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. With their pointy, pointy horns.
That's true. And will continue to be so until someone will come with a positive proof about the impossibility of unicorns or the impossibility of unicorns to harm anyone.
With the note this is an argument neither for nor against unicorn insurances.
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And lack of evidence can very easily establish unlikelihood.
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The impossibility of unicorns is next to irrelevant. What matters is the unlikelihood of unicorns, just like the unlikelihood of murderous hackers is the issue at hand.
In what context?
* If it's in the context of "unicorn insurance", I almost agree (my reserve: one can't properly assess the risk without knowing enough details of the situation, and what's enough varies from case to case. Or... do you think it's possible for a building/construction project manager to manage a software development proj without knowing anything about SoftEng?)
* If it's in the context of "impossible to kill someone by hacking", then it's relevant.
The OP didn't fix the context well enough.
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Insurance, like anything else that matters, is not about possibility, it is about probability.
Re:Do we have any credible (Score:4, Informative)
Unicorns? You just drop a teapot on them. From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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We seek finality, an end to this terrible race
Only weapons terrible and potent
Shall crush this feared menace
Shall it be a hail of bullets?
Or poisoned, sweet millet?
Rainbows sparkle showers?
Or a rain of nuclear power?
The unicorn's horn is proof against those things of Earth,
The locale of its supernatural birth
The mightiest weapons of our lands are impure
no better than firing peas from a pod
That is why to be sure
One must send teapots from God.
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Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence
True, but absence of evidence after a thorough search can give you certainty with P > .97
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Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence
True, but absence of evidence after a thorough search can give you certainty with P > .97
Belief without evidence is called faith and not just in matters of religion.
Or... cowboy project (risk) management? (as in: one doesn't understand how the things work but... no matter.. one does have nice statistic charts handy).
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The absence of evidence can be evidence by itself. And after a therough search, it generally is.
Some people seem to confuse evidence with proof. Evidence is anything which makes an assumption more likely to be true. While a proof makes it certain that the assumption is true.
Note that something doesn't even need to make the assumption more likely true than false to be evidence. If without the observation, you'd consider the probability of the assumption to be true as 0.1%, but the observation raises the prob
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Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence
True, but absence of evidence after a thorough search can give you certainty with P > .97
Apropos your reply and your signature: home prices never go down, right? 'Cause it was > 0.97 certain before 2008.
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? Clearly your search wasn't very thorough.
True. But that's my point - one trap of the "thorough search" and "statistical/risk assessment" approach (vs "actual evidence of the absence") as a base to one's decision: when is the thorough search thorough enough?
Other than this... ummm... my search?
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Good question, and you have to be careful, but it still doesn't invalidate the technique.
Invalidate, no. Set the limits into evidence and prove that the statement "the technique is always valid" is false: yes... (unless you want to discuss the "True Scotsman" fallacy as well).
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Which isn't to say that with our country weaponizing hacking the face of other nations and organization weaponizing hacking that something bad won't eventually, in fact probably happen. Its time to being looking at our information infrastructure as a psuedoliving entity and build it an immune system predicated on protecting human beings and the assets first and then network resources second. Such an immune system should include a way of marking intruders such that cyber antibodies can hunt them down and wra
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Its time to being looking at our information infrastructure as a psuedoliving entity and build it an immune system predicated on protecting human beings and the assets first and then network resources second.
Just so you know, this is a metaphor, and doesn't actually mean anything concrete at all.
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Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence [wikipedia.org]
A phrase often ritually quoted by people whithout thinking about it first. I believe it was here in Slashdot that I read a comment to the effect of: "YES, YES IT IS. Absence of evidence is not PROOF of absence, but it certainly is EVIDENCE of it". I can't help but to concur, although I think this can stem from the ambiguousness of the word "evidence" (evidence as proof, or evidence as something that increases the probability of truth for a prediction). Failing to detect something can mean simply that the in
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Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence [wikipedia.org]
A phrase often ritually quoted by people whithout thinking about it first. I believe it was here in Slashdot that I read a comment to the effect of: "YES, YES IT IS. Absence of evidence is not PROOF of absence, but it certainly is EVIDENCE of it"
Cool. Thanks for being precise.
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You're misapplying that. The "argument from ignorance" fallacy tell you that just because you haven't seen something, you can't conclude that it doesn't exist. That's because you may not have looked or may not have had a chance to observe it. But police and media are looking for such cases, are capable of identifying them, and would be reporting them publicly. If you look for something that could happen to millions of people and you don't observe it, it is reasonable to conclude that it's rare.
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That's because you may not have looked or may not have had a chance to observe it.
Even if you searching long enough, not finding something is still not a proof of impossibility.
Here's an example: "based on my numerous attempts, I must conclude that is impossible for me to win the lottery. Yes, I know, almost every week somebody wins it, but it's not me." - is this a true statement?
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Do we have credible reports of someone actually being killed because of hacking? The media and politicians for the last few years have been hyping the hell out of the hacker menace and the "cyber" war but no one is even providing any body counts
Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence [wikipedia.org].
Ya, but it serves people policies by pretending it's an issue when it's not.
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Do we have credible reports of someone actually being killed because of hacking? The media and politicians for the last few years have been hyping the hell out of the hacker menace and the "cyber" war but no one is even providing any body counts
Repeat after me: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence [wikipedia.org].
Ya, but it serves people policies by pretending it's an issue when it's unlikely to be one.
FTFY.
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Simple - the media magnate and politicians are generally older people, who don't understand much technology at all. Not only that, every time they open their mouths ("I invented the internet","the internet is a series of tubes","we'll pass a law banning (X) on the internet", etc.) they look stupider and stupider.
The only things more fearsome than ignorance to a politician are those that they cannot control, and that which diminishes their power. The "internets" are both.
Poor phrasing: (Score:2)
"are generally older people, who don't understand much technology at all"
Thus, since you seem to say older people do not understand much technology at all, they couldn't have built the technology that led directly to what we have now.
So, light emitting diodes and such are all just figments of Nick Holonyak's imagination since an old person like him couldn't have understood them, and he's fooled us into thinking they glow for all these years.
Thanks for clearing that up, youngling. I think you need to change
If it bleeds, it leads (Score:2)
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Because many of the benefits of technology are plain to see, and continue to be heavily explored by many. Technology solves problems, sometimes problems we didn't even know we had at the time.
In fact, this is so widely known and obvious that the author took a moment to consider the other side, and explore negative impacts of technology, because there is a greater likelihood of finding interesting or insightful points to discuss on the road less traveled.
It's hardly a foolish thing to look at threats from te
Really ? (Score:1)
Another BS from the "Concerned" pseudo scientists. In XIX century steam engine was supposed to destroy us.
JAM
not convincing (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's look at the other scenarios he describes (not all necessarily related to technology):
Emerging diseases. Yes, if H1N1 were as bad as the 1918 influenza, millions would have died. Not worth comparing to nuclear winter.
Global Warming. I'll let you decide if it's as bad as a nuclear armageddon.
Computer Hacking. In theory, it could cut power to a lot of people, as the article mentions, but so could some well-placed sticks of dynamite.
At least he didn't mention the terminator [slashdot.org].
Not the same SA that I grew up with (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to read SA cover to cover when I was in high-school in the early '70s - it was great! The magazine was looking at using technology to improve our future - a lot of which happened.
Now, it is a bunch of nay-sayers and nervous ninny's which will prevent the future instead of embracing it.
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Absolutely. SA is staffed by a bunch of luddites. Most articles are about impending environmental catastrophe, which can only be averted by moving back to caves. And if we don't move back to caves, then our hubris will result in us having to move to caves. They have lost the plot.
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Not just limited to SA. Seems like most science journalism and popularization is focused on Malthusian pessimism.
Something more relevant to slashdot that makes my blood boil is every time Michio Kaku opens his mouth bangs on about how the end of Moore's law is imminent and this is going to have destructive repercussions for civilization. Give. It. A. Rest.
These folk are utterly unimaginative. Completely underestimate our combined ingenuity and overestimate the hurdles infront of us. Fortunately there a
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I am a HUGE FAN of wonder and optimism. I've seen more than one person accomplish the utterly impossible by setting out guns a blazing, and the universe just seemed to line up in front of them as though by dent of will the universe wouldn't dare to deny such great intent. So I am clear that the dreamers and inventors may in fact be the only hope our species has because we are only a few paces in front of the stupid messes we made to get here, and it will honestly take greater technology than any we happen t
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Dude... Moore's law is coming to an end... you just can't look at Moore's law in a bubble. Its part of a much larger sweep, starting with the evolution of life, an asymptotic curve going back about 4 billion years. Then primates going back about 12 million years, then Genus Homo, then society, then the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, electronics, solid state and Moore's Law. Each is an asymptotic curve inside a larger asymptotic curve. What comes next? Photonics, Nanotechnology and Self Assembly? Pr
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You seem to be arguing more-so about Accelerating change [wikipedia.org] than Moore's law.
Back to Moore's law: I am not arguing against limits of Moore's law. I take issue with Michio Kaku's interpretation what it means when the limits of Moore's law begin to realise itself. In his rhetoric, a collapse in Moore's law will precipitate a collapse in society.
Maybe I've been watching a different Michio Kaku than you. Your's sounds like an optimistic futurist. The one I've watched peddles end-of-times by clinging to an nar
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It'd be great if all the people cheerleading technology would see what the impacts of those advancements are. Old satellites? Space junk to the point where it's hard to avoid debris in some parts of space. Networked cameras and cellphones? Constant surveillance. Data mining? Models of a person's lifestyle and background, whether they wanted that information public and purchaseable or not.
Although I'm probably the troll for pointing this out, because all these cheerleaders think that this tech wasn't develop
Not the same SA I knew either (Score:1)
What ever happened to SA. They now seem to be more of an anti-science based publication. Every time I look in an issue there are articles about how evil or dangerous science is. The articles have become totally superficial. Can someone find the real SA.
I RTFA (Score:2)
It amounts to not much more than chicken little running around saying 'the sky is falling'.
Guns don't kill people (Score:2)
People not properly understanding its consequences, or plain killers using them are the ones that kills people. With technology is more or less the same. The threat is people.
Regaring climate or diseases, could be attributed to people how damaging (or costly in lives) they could become.
Once again overblown scaremongering.... (Score:2)
... by people looking for money.
Let's be realistic, there are easy ways to deal with "hackers" on the internet = add more capacity then any hacker can hope to DDOS you with. The others deal with patching security issues in software/making hacking expensive (i.e. make it more trouble then it is worth). The whole idea of cyber war is idiotic to begin with. If you don't want anything made public don't put it on a public network.
The fact that we have people looking for $ who want to make an "industry" out of
Its the unknown that's the problem (Score:2)
I've held a theory for a very long time, that I fear advanced civilizations snuff themselves out with science all the time. I fear, that it's almost inevitable that it happens, and that it's not nuclear war or global warming that does them in. Dangerous things that we see coming... But the sudden surprise discovery that does it. Lets say we invent some marvelous device... like the microwave... and it seems innocuous enough and eventually everyone has one in their homes... and then lets say we invent a new o
globalization (Score:2)
Frankly I think all of this can be summed up in one word: 'globalization.' Unfortunately it doesn't consider the alternatives. The more connected the world is the faster things like disease spread and the more some deleterious event in one place can effect the rest of the world. Hacking isnt a threat, basing your civilization on systems that can break is, that has been true forever and always will be. The alternative is to live under a rock and have high mortality rates to keep the population down so we nev
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where the real weak points are in our current civilization.
What would you consider to be the real weak points of our current civilization then? Resource exhaustion? Climate change?
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Same as always: nationalism, xenophobia, totalitarianism. If you keep a lid on those, humanity can cope with anything.
Can't Fred Guterl do better than that? (Score:2)
Old news (Score:2)
James Burke was talking about this more than 30 years ago in Connections. The final episode is something every modern luddite should watch and learn from.
Get a grip (Score:1)
Seriously? This is not even a comprehensive list... He didn't even give an honorable mention to solar flare. And yes turbines fail, but probably not because of a computer virus. And if we had to rig something up here we do have the manufacturing capabilities.
Why all the "worry"? (Score:2)
You can't do anything about it. Your elected representative's real constituency are his corporate "campaign contributors". You get your electricity off the grid, and your Frankenburgers and Slave Labour Shoes from the Buy-N-Large. Very few of us can afford to effect change through purchasing decisions, certainly not enough to be significant.
So why worry? What are you achieving, other than to raise your blood pressure? Massive protests didn't stop the War on Eastasia, nor did Occupy bring down the 1%.