“What’s revolutionary about [information communication technologies] is that they have restructured the very reality in which we perceive ourselves as living in, and the way in which we think about the concepts of warfare or the state. Take for example the concept of the state: we currently define a state as a political unit that exercises power over a certain physical territory. But when you consider that states are now trying to also dominate certain parts of cyberspace, our definition becomes problematic because cyberspace doesn’t have a defined territory. The information revolution is shuffling these concepts around in really interesting ways from a philosophical perspective, and more specifically, from an ethical perspective.”
—Cyber and Drone Attacks May Change Warfare More Than the Machine Gun - Atlantic Mobile
December 2012
47 posts
“
As early as 1937 the architect John Leslie Martin could be found arguing in Circle, the avant-garde casebook he edited with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, that the ‘new aesthetic’ which would provide the subjects to match new developments of modern form and technique in the visual and plastic arts was to be sought ‘in the motor-car and the aeroplane, in the steel bridge and the line of electric pylons.’ […]
The National Grid, it should be understood, was not just a network made up of steel and cable, but a high-tension system compounded of materials, electrical forces, politics, design, and cultural representation.
” —Apollo Magazine | Landscapes of Power
“Despite its ambitious aims, Amber, like Albatross, was largely home-made by Mr Karem’s small team. It was powered by a four-stroke petrol engine developed secretly in the garage of Hans Hermann, a Formula 1 racing legend of the 1950s. Its cutting-edge electronics and remote-control ground station were assembled in the living room of another employee. “When I started, people asked why I was making a UAV with four times the computational power of the F-16, the first fly-by-wire jet fighter,” says Mr Karem. The reason was that, as any computer buyer knows, a more powerful machine takes longer to become obsolete. “Almost all of our subsystems from 1985-89 are still flying in some Predators today,” says Mr Karem, “including its 27-year-old computer and, with minor changes, the ground station.”
—Brain scan: The dronefather | The Economist
“The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories,” Andreessen says. “People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.”
—Jobs fight: Haves vs. the have-nots – USATODAY.com
“
“According to a translated page from the Chinese site Techweb, each robot costs between $20,000 to $25,000, which is over three times the average salary of one worker. However, amid international pressure, Foxconn continues to increase worker salaries with a 25 percent bump occurring earlier this year.”
:: programable robots are now cheaper than human beings ::
and within a few short years will be just as capable in handling the intricate tasks of electrical construction.
so my question i guess is – what then?
” —006 : programable robots are now cheaper than human beings – those jobs at the factory aren’t coming back « T.H.E.J.A.Y.M.O
“
After rapidly expanding the number of drones around the world, the Air Force is now reaching out to ESPN and other experts in video analysis to keep up with the flood of footage the unmanned aircraft are transmitting.
“They’re looking at anything and everything they can right now,” said Air Force Col. Mike Shortsleeve, commander of a unit here that monitors drone videos.
The remote-controlled aircraft are mounted with cameras that transmit real-time video of terrorism suspects to military analysts in the USA.
The amount of video streaming into this base, one of a number of sites that monitors and analyzes the images, is immense. Drone video transmissions rose to 327,384 hours last year, up from 4,806 in 2001.
Given the huge amount of feeds, the Air Force has launched an aggressive effort to seek out technology or techniques that will help them process video without adding more people to stare at monitors.
“We need to be careful we don’t drown in the data,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and a senior military scholar at the Air Force Academy.
Air Force officials have met with the sports cable network ESPN to discuss how it handles large amounts of video that stream in. The visit resulted in no technological breakthroughs, but helped in developing training and expertise, the Air Force said.
” —Military turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
“Bitcoins are useful to Iranians wishing to move their money abroad, either to children studying in Europe or America or simply to stash cash in a safe place.”
—Dollar-Less Iranians Discover Virtual Currency - Businessweek (via iamdanw)
“
For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London, audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity.
It is an all pervasive hum that we normally cannot hear. But boost it a little, and a metallic and not very pleasant buzz fills the air.
“The power is sent out over the national grid to factories, shops and of course our homes. Normally this frequency, known as the mains frequency, is about 50Hz,” explains Dr Alan Cooper, a senior digital forensic practitioner at the Met Police.
Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source, be it plug socket, light or pylon, will pick up this noise and it will be embedded throughout the audio.
This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings. But for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime.
” —BBC News - The hum that helps to fight crime
Play
“
Efforts to fight wildlife crime received an important boost thanks to a new grant from Google. WWF will use the grant to adapt state-of-the-art technologies for the protection of endangered species like elephants, rhinos and tigers. These innovative new tools will give rangers in protected areas and local communities a welcome advantage against the ruthless and deadly gangs of criminals targeting wildlife.
Remote aerial survey systems, wildlife tagging technology and ranger patrolling guided by analytical software like the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) will be integrated to increase the detection and deterrence of poaching in vulnerable sites in Asia and Africa. Our goal is to create an efficient, effective network that can be adopted globally.
” —Google Helps WWF Stop Wildlife Crime | Stories | WWF
Play
