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Tag Archives: technology
Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots
Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots I’m not one of those people who thinks robots taking over menial labor from human employees is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think such a displacement could ultimately prove very positive for the species. Nevertheless, the short-term pain and suffering that this could […]
The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve
The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve Last week’s post on the impending decline and fall of the internet fielded a great many responses. That was no surprise, to be sure; nor was I startled in the least to find that many of them rejected the thesis of the post with some heat. Contemporary pop culture’s […]
Collaboration, Adaptation and Risk: Innovate or Die
Collaboration, Adaptation and Risk: Innovate or Die Collaboration, innovation and risk are all intrinsic to adaptation. Without adaptation, every system eventually perishes once conditions change. One feature of capitalism that is rarely discussed is the premium placed on cooperation and collaboration. The Darwinian aspect of competition is widely accepted (and rued) as capitalism’s dominant force, but […]
The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem The mythic role assigned to progress in today’s popular culture has any number of odd effects, but one of the strangest is the blindness to the downside that clamps down on the collective imagination of our time once people become convinced that something or other is the wave […]
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse – David Graeber on “The Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse – David Graeber on “The Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” Graeber’s argument is similar to one he made in a 2013 article called “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”, in which he argued that, in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century technology would have […]
The Retro Future
The Retro Future Is it just me, or has the United States taken yet another great leap forward into the surreal over the last few days? Glancing through the news, I find another round of articles babbling about how fracking has guaranteed America a gaudy future as a petroleum and natural gas exporter. Somehow none […]
John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead
John Michael Greer: The God Of Technological Progress May Well Be Dead But society is unwilling to consider that As we often state here at Peak Prosperity, the narratives we hold are immensely important. The stories running our heads influence everything from our beliefs to our values to our actions. Which is why it’s so […]
The Tyranny of Convenience
The Tyranny of Convenience Our lives are ridiculously convenient in this day and age, and much of the consumer economy seems to be directed at making life ‘easier’ still. It seems that the more convenient life becomes, the more need there is for more convenience. Anything is possible in this technological age and if it can’t be […]
The Burden of Denial
The Burden of Denial It occurred to me the other day that quite a few of the odder features of contemporary American culture make perfect sense if you assume that everybody knows exactly what’s wrong and what’s coming as our society rushes, pedal to the metal, toward its face-first collision with the brick wall of […]
Revisiting the Shale Oil Hype: Technology versus Geology
Revisiting the Shale Oil Hype: Technology versus Geology The press has been all abuzz the past few weeks speculating on what the drop in oil prices will mean for U.S. shale oil (tight oil) production. Pundits have been falling over themselves quoting various estimates of the breakeven cost of production in this play or that, […]
The Wolf Is Guarding the Hen House: The Government’s War on Cyberterrorism
The Wolf Is Guarding the Hen House: The Government’s War on Cyberterrorism “The game is rigged, the network is bugged, the government talks double-speak, the courts are complicit and there’s nothing you can do about it.”—David Kravets, reporting for Wired Nothing you write, say, text, tweet or share via phone or computer is private anymore. As […]
Fierce Assaults on the “Attentional Commons”
Fierce Assaults on the “Attentional Commons” People in tech circles often talk about the “attention economy” with knowing nonchalance. Instead of things being scarce, they note, the real shortage these days ispeople’s attention. Hence the ferocious drive to capture people’s attention. This analysis is true as far as it goes. What it fails to address is that […]
Troy Will Burn – the Big Deal about Big Data
Troy Will Burn – the Big Deal about Big Data I know, I know … I’m a broken record and a Cassandra, with 2 successive notes on Big Data. But I don’t care. This is a much larger structural risk for markets and investors than HFT and the whole Flash Boys brouhaha, it’s just totally under the radar and […]
RED ALERT – IBM Moves to Create a Centralized, Central Bank Controlled Blockchain for Currency Control
RED ALERT – IBM Moves to Create a Centralized, Central Bank Controlled Blockchain for Currency Control International Business Machines Corp is considering adopting the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the “blockchain,” to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies, according to a person familiar with the matter. Unlike bitcoin, where the network […]
