The Australian Government is seeking comments on possible amendments to telecommunications carrier powers and immunities. Titled, “Consultation on possible amendments to telecommunications carrier powers and immunities” this exercise looks suspiciously like preparing the ground for the next generation of wireless technology such as 5G, enabling the Internet of Things (IoT). A Brave New World…
Read more →Excerpt from “The Story of Stuff” Project
In July 2017, the loving guidance of a parent or caretaker has new competition from Aristotle, a “digital nanny” by toy-maker Mattel. The internet-connected device, which includes a microphone and camera, is designed to live in a child’s bedroom from birth and be a constant companion as she grows up. Mattel boasts Aristotle can “soothe” crying baby, help toddlers learn to speak, and facilitate learning in older children.
What is the impact on a child’s development when you replace a caregiver with a robot? …SNIP
Read more →A report written by Dr. Cindy Russell
A 5G WIRELESS FUTURE: WILL IT GIVE US A SMART NATION OR CONTRIBUTE TO AN UNHEALTHY ONE?
EXCERPT
BRAVE NEW WORLD OF COMMUNICATION
The use of mobile wireless technologies continues to increase worldwide. A new faster 5th generation (5G) telecommunication system has recently been approved by the Federal Communications
Commission(FCC) with new antennas already being installed and tested in Palo Alto and Mountain
View. While it may give us uber automation and instantaneous “immersive entertainment” a lot of
questions remain with regards to public health and safety of wireless devices. Will the adoption of this new 5G technology harm directly or indirectly the consumers and businesses it hopes to attract? SNIP
From Truthout
The Robot Economy: Ready or Not, Here It Comes
Sunday, May 07, 2017 By JP Sottile, Truthout | News Analysis
Excerpt
September 17th changed everything.
On that day in 2013, Oxford University published an innocuously titled academic paper by two mostly unknown economists. But “The Future of Employment” wasn’t just another number-crunching exercise in opacity by a couple of dreary scientists. No, their bombshell report portended a coming robot apocalypse that could change the nature of human civilization, and perhaps even human beings themselves. SNIP….
Read more →In what may be a backroom deal between Trump and Rupert Murdock, the head of FOX News, the TV’s at the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) research campus are to be locked on the FOX News station.
CBS News has confirmed an email was sent to researchers at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research responding to apparent efforts to change the channel on internal television screens. The email from “[White Oak] Digital Display” sent on Wednesday, May 3, was sent to inform the researchers of the “reason for the change from CNN to Fox.” White Oak is the name of the FDA’s campus.
The email goes on to inform employees that the decision came from the Trump administration.
SNIP….
Excerpt
DARPA is a Technocrat-run agency of the Department of Defense and is wholly-dedicated to the Transhuman idea of improving man through technology. This is dangerous on a number of levels, including the fact that resulting technology will be in the hands of the government and not its citizens. ⁃ TN Editor
The DARPA Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program is exploring ways to speed up skill acquisition by activating synaptic plasticity. If the program succeeds, downloadable learning that happens in a flash may be the result.
In March 2016, DARPA – the U.S. military’s “mad science” branch – announced their Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program. The TNT program aims to explore various safe neurostimulation methods for activating synaptic plasticity, which is the brain’s ability to alter the connecting points between neurons – a requirement for learning. DARPA hopes that building up that ability by subjecting the nervous system to a kind of workout regimen will enable the brain to learn more quickly. SNIP…
Read more →According to Elon Musk, as a result of the loss of human jobs as a result of automation’ “people will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,” He added that these people will have “certainly more leisure time” and “will be sustained by payments from the government”. Well, just where will this money come from? Perhaps the robots will have to chip in and pay taxes? But robots don’t get wages so what then?
Sorry but the numbers simply do not stack up….SNIP
Read more →The UK’s unemployment statistics are about to get far worse with Theresa May’s high tech industrial policy (below). This policy promotes: (1) a nation-wide rollout of 5G which is necessary for the Internet of Things (IoT); (2) smart grids and smart meters; and (3) artificial intelligence/robotics. Putting aside the issues around 5G and the smart grid, the rise of the age of robots inherent in May’s policy stands to replace the jobs of millions of UK workers with robotics according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report found in part that: …SNIP
Read more →Excerpt
ABC News, Australia
By By Nick Grimm
April 3, 2017
Would you agree to have a microchip implanted in you by your workplace that could potentially monitor your toilet breaks and how many hours you worked?
A Swedish firm in Stockholm – Epicenter – has offered to inject its staff with microchips for free, and around 150 of the company’s young workforce have so far taken up the offer.
The RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips are roughly the size of a grain of rice, and are implanted using a syringe into the fleshy part of the recipient’s hand.
SNIP
When I was five, my parents got me a robot. Connected to a wired controller, I could move it back and forth, raise its arms, flash lights and plenty of other awesome things that would spark any child’s imagination. I loved that robot even though it sucked in a few different ways.
It made me want to improve it and I would dream of ways it could be better, like having it talk to other robots and machines (I was a tad too young for The Terminator at this point) or making it do things for me. Thanks to the internet and the advancement of robotics, my boyhood dreams are coming true.
We are at the dawn of this era and the Internet of Things (IoT) explosion is the foundation for this advancement. Sadly, though, we must take the good with the bad. As we make our lives more convenient with IoT devices, we must also take notice of the increasing cybersecurity threats and issues accompanying this evolution. SNIP
Read more →As Australia rapidly rolls out the smart electricity grid with smart meters for every household as an essential part of the $17 trillion Internet of Things (IoT)technological ‘revolution’, little heed is given for the grid/meters vulnerability to hackers. Already there have been reports of household wi-fi enabled appliances being hacked and there are concerns over the vulnerability of smart meters to being hacked.
A Brave New World or Hackers Heaven? Read on.
Excerpt
“The [Mirai] malware… spreads to vulnerable devices by continuously scanning the Internet for IoT systems protected by factory default or hard-coded usernames and passwords,” explained KrebsonSecurity. “The insecure IoT devices are then loaded with malicious software, transforming them into “bots” and forcing them to report to a central control server, which is utilized to launch massive DDoS attacks in an effort to knock websites offline.”
Read more →From Nick Hunn’s blog Creative Connectivity
June 8th, 2014 | Published in Smart Energy |
There‘s a lot of talk about grid security and data privacy in the energy industry, but very little about the consequences of what happens if smart meters go wrong. By going wrong, I don‘t just mean people attempting to hack their meters to reduce their bills.That will probably happen.I‘m more interested in the nightmare scenario when several million electricity meters suddenly disconnect……In other words, it could happen. It doesn’t need to happen now. Once they’re deployed, utilities aim to update the programs in these meters as new functionality is developed or bugs fixed. So at any point in their lives, new malicious code could be inserted…. SNIP
Read more →I am assuming that the outcome of the current election circus will be a Clinton win – A Trump win is simply too scary to contemplate, unless you happen to be a simpleton that is. However, assuming Hillary gets in, here are some of her policies on 5G and the Internet of Things. Its even clearer now why Obama appointed industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler to head the FCC.
SNIP
From Joel Moskowwitz
The ECOLOGIST
Wireless pollution ‘out of control’ as corporate race for 5G gears up
Lynne Wycherley
27th October 2016
EXCERPT
With the UK’s Digital Economy Bill set to be finalised today, new 5G microwave spectra are about to be released across the planet without adequate safety testing, writes Lynne Wycherley. Global neglect of the Precautionary Principle is opening the way to corporate profit but placing humans and ecosystems at risk, and delaying a paradigm shift towards safer connectivity.
In Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, the late geneticist Dr Mae-Wan Ho – a visionary voice who opposed GMOs – identified pollution from wireless technologies as a pressing issue of our times….SNIP
Read more →The Hype Surrounding 5G and Connecting “Everything” Wirelessly
Posted on September 24, 2016 by SkyVision Solutions
by K.T. Weaver, SkyVision Solutions
The-hype-surrounding-5g
There has recently been a lot of hype surrounding the planned deployment of 5G wireless technologies in the United States and elsewhere. 5G is considered the next major phase of mobile telecommunications and is expected to be much faster than the currently deployed 3G and 4G communications networks [1]. More importantly, however, 5G is expected to extend far beyond people just communicating on their smartphones; it is planned to connect literally “everything” as part of the Internet of Things (IoT).
SNIP
Read more →From the Sunday Tasmanian, September 18, 2016
TIME’S UP ON SCREENS
How digital devices are building anxiety in our kids
TASMANIAN parents are being urged to help their children unplug from mobile devices amid concerns our hyper-connected world is adding to their anxiety and impacting on mental health.
One of the nation’s leading mental health services for schools says the saturation of online games, information and social media is resulting in young children suffering “FOMO” – the “fear of missing out”.
The Principals Australia Institute, which delivers the mental health program KidsMatters and MindMatters in schools, has observed increased levels of anxiety in children and urges parents to let kids understand “it’s OK not to know”.
SNIP
The Telegraph, Science (UK)
Excerpt
Modern life is killing children with the number of youngsters diagnosed with cancer rising 40 per cent in the past 16 years because of air pollution, pesticides, poor diets and radiation, scientists have warned.
New analysis of government statistics by researchers at the charity Children with Cancer UK found that there are now 1,300 more cancer cases a year compared with 1998, the first time all data sets were published.
The rise is most apparent in teenagers and young adults aged between 15 and 24, where the incident rate has risen from around 10 cases in 100,000 to nearly 16.
Researchers say that although some of the rise can be explained by improvements in cancer diagnoses and more screening, the majority is probably caused by environmental factors.
Dr Denis Henshaw, Professor of Human Radiation Effects at Bristol University, the scientific adviser for Children with Cancer UK, said air pollution was by far the biggest culprit, accounting for around 40 per cent of the rise, but other elements of modern lifestyles are also to blame.
Among these are obesity, pesticides and solvents inhaled during pregnancy, circadian rhythm disruption through too much bright light at night, radiation from x-rays and CT scans, smoking during and after pregnancy, magnetic fields from power lines, gadgets in homes, and potentially, radiation from mobile phones…. SNIP
Read more →May 25, 2016, 6:52pm
Sharona Coutts
Women who have visited almost any abortion clinic in the United States have seen anti-choice protesters outside, wielding placards and chanting abuse. A Boston advertiser’s technology, when deployed by anti-choice groups, allows those groups to send propaganda directly to a woman’s phone while she is in a clinic waiting room.
Excerpts:
Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations? SNIP Flynn’s targeting of women seeking abortion presents a serious threat to the privacy and safety of women exercising their right to choose, as well as to abortion providers and their staff, a Rewire investigation has found. But due to weak and patchwork laws governing privacy and data collection in the United States, the conduct appears to be perfectly legal. SNIP
Read more →Following is an oldie (2014) but goodie from Salon.com which is quite relevant to recent postings on “A Brave New World”.
Don
*********************
The rise of smartphones and social media has ushered in a new age of techno-optimism. And that’s a big problem
Charles Howarth
Nov 30, 2014
Excerpt
The technology pages of news media can make for scary reading these days. From new evidence of government surveillance to the personal data collection capabilities of new devices, to the latest leaks of personal information, we hear almost daily of new threats to personal privacy. It’s difficult to overstate the implications of this: The separation of the private and public that’s the cornerstone of liberal thought, not to mention the American Constitution, is being rapidly eroded, with potentially profound consequences for our freedom.
As much as we may register a certain level of dismay at this, in practice, our reaction is often indifference. How many of us have taken to the streets in protest, started a petition, canvassed a politician, or even changed our relationship with our smartphone, tablet or smartwatch? The question is why are we so unconcerned?
We could say that it’s simply a matter of habit, that we have become so used to using devices in such a way that we cannot imagine using them any differently. Or we could, for example, invoke a tragic fate in which we simply have no option but to accept the erosion of our privacy because of our powerlessness against corporations and governments.
These are, however, retrospective justifications that miss the kernel of the truth. To reach this kernel, we have to excavate the substratum of culture to uncover the ideas that shape our relationship with technology. Only here can we see that the cause is a profound ideological shift in this relationship.
READ ON….
Elon Musk envisions a future “Brave New World” where, in order to keep up with advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, future humans (those who can afford it that is) will have to have a “neural lace”, embedded within their brains, becoming cyborgs, or super humans, in order to keep pace with the technology. An interesting concept worthy of the best of SiFi writers but consider that such technology would not come cheap. No coverage through medical insurance, ensuring that only the elites of the world will be able to afford having a neural lace implanted within their brains.
Essentially what Musk is envisioning is an Olympian super race – part human/part AI, essentially populated by only those who can afford it – the 1 % of the world’s population who now owns half the world’s wealth. As for all those who cannot afford joining the lofty Olympians with all their neural lace emplants, what future for them? A high-tech serfdom perhaps?
Read on…,