Religion trends on the horizon for 2008 :: The Courier News :: Lifestyles

Religion trends on the horizon for 2008 :: The Courier News :: Lifestyles: "First, 2008 is the year of the 29th Olympiad to be held in Beijing, China. In the spectator section of the official Beijing Games Web site (http://en.beijing2008.cn/spectators) is a listing of places of worship for those attending the Olympic Games Aug. 8-24, and the Paralympic Games there from Sept. 6-17. The list includes five Buddhist temples, one Protestant church, five Catholic churches and one Islamic mosque."

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008: "Most large IT corporations now make more than half of their revenues outside the U.S., and most other countries are showing GDP growth rates that will remain robust, even with a dip in the U.S. China now depends more on Europe than on the U.S. (and, interestingly, Europeans fear Chinese trade policies more than Americans do – 59% to 50%). India increasingly is doing work that may be outsourced, at the very high end (doctors reading medical imaging, engineers reviewing structural requirements), or may be destined for domestic or other non-U.S. clients."

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » My Top Ten Predictions for 2008: "The global economy has now essentially “outgrown” the U.S., particularly in IT markets.
If this were a question, most economists would answer with an unqualified “No.” But my bet is that, for the first time, IT spending will continue to grow so quickly outside the U.S. that a decline in U.S. markets will not pull down total spending."

Official Google Blog: A world in motion

Official Google Blog: A world in motion: "In this regard, we are excited to announce that we have acquired Gapminder's Trendalyzer software, and we welcome the Trendalyzer team to Google. Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in global health—as literally a world of opportunity. Like Google, Gapminder strives to make information more useful, and Trendalyzer will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized."

Gapminder - Home

Gapminder - Home: "This website, powered by Trendalyzer, enables you to explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries by the indicators you choose." ******

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, humans have altered approximately half of all the land on Earth for our own uses—around 22 percent for farming and forestry combined, 26 percent for pasture areas, and 2 to 3 percent for housing, industry, and roads. Population growth will necessitate further conversion of land, which in some regions can interfere with natural defenses against flooding, landslides, and erosion. Furthermore, experts believe that the abundance of agricultural topsoil on which our food supply depends is sharply diminishing due to overuse, urbanization, and other human-induced factors."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "Water covers roughly 70 percent of Earth's surface, but only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater, which humans need for irrigation, drinking water, and other everyday uses. According to the United Nations, the scarcity of freshwater due to overuse and contamination will be the second most pressing global concern in the 21st century, after population growth. On the map above, countries with less than 5,000 cubic meters of freshwater per capita are considered short of water. Experts believe that people may be able to replenish water tables with new water-saving irrigation methods, bioengineered crops that require less water, rainwater harvesting, and public information campaigns, but it will be centuries, if ever, before freshwater is plentiful again worldwide."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Earth in Peril | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Earth in Peril PBS: "Water covers roughly 70 percent of Earth's surface, but only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater, which humans need for irrigation, drinking water, and other everyday uses. According to the United Nations, the scarcity of freshwater due to overuse and contamination will be the second most pressing global concern in the 21st century, after population growth. On the map above, countries with less than 5,000 cubic meters of freshwater per capita are considered short of water. Experts believe that people may be able to replenish water tables with new water-saving irrigation methods, bioengineered crops that require less water, rainwater harvesting, and public information campaigns, but it will be centuries, if ever, before freshwater is plentiful again worldwide."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "World Population Growth, 1800-2050
At the turn of the 21st century, almost 75 million people were being added to the earth every year—about a quarter of the entire U.S. population. In the future, almost all population growth will be in the developing world."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "Over the next half century, our numbers will increase again, likely to a staggering nine billion people. Nearly all of this growth will take place in developing countries, where the demand for food and water already outstrips supplies."

NOVA | World in the Balance | Human Numbers Through Time | PBS

NOVA World in the Balance Human Numbers Through Time PBS: "...at the dawn of the first millennium A.D. the world's population was around 300 million people."

http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/documents/ZB79_000.pdf
Th e Warsaw Pact participants explained how great the pressure from
the arms industry was. Th e greater part of the industrial capability was
directly and indirectly employed in making defence-related products. In
many cities and other areas, the population was dependent on the defence
industry. Th is was another reason why politicians and the military had to
maintain a very negative picture of the enemy. Th at way, the population
would continue to support defence policy. Th e military profi ted from
it; their jobs were not questioned. Armament had a dynamic of its own,
entirely divorced from the requirements of military strategy and logic.

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View: "The second annual 'IBM Next Five in Five' is a list of innovations with the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years:

1. It will be easy for you to be green and save money doing it.
2. The way you drive will be completely different.
3. You are what you eat, so you will know what you eat.
4. Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more.
5. Doctors will get enhanced 'super senses' to better diagnose and treat you.

Read Original Article>>"

Technology Review: Some US companies say China may be losing competitive edge as costs

Technology Review: Some US companies say China may be losing competitive edge as costs: "China may be losing its competitive advantage, mainly because of rising costs, according to a survey of companies compiled by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai."

The biggest library ever built | Ben Macintyre - Times Online

The biggest library ever built Ben Macintyre - Times Online: "The great Internet Library is more ambitious: it may one day contain the entire written culture, not just all the books, but countless millions of articles, half a million films, and billions of web pages. Kevin Kelly, “senior maverick” of Wired magazine, recently predicted in The New York Times that the online library would eventually contain “the entire works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages, available to all people, all the time”. Technology has made achievable what the librarians of Alexandria could only dream of: one vast, searchable, all-encompassing book, the complete history of the race. "

The biggest library ever built | Ben Macintyre - Times Online

The biggest library ever built Ben Macintyre - Times Online: "This digitising of human knowledge is the most profound cultural event since the invention of the printing press itself. In the third century BC the librarians of Alexandria sought to collect “books of all the peoples of the world”, and amassed perhaps half a million scrolls. But even the library at Alexandria was thought to contain perhaps as little as a third of all the books then written. "

Minyanville - NEWS & VIEWS-Article

Minyanville - NEWS & VIEWS-Article: "Another important driver of energy demand comes from the often overlooked global change in dietary trends. As global living standards increase, people want not just more food, but better food. While much of the energy required to harvest agriculture product comes from natural gas (in the production of fertilizer), oil also plays a significant role. Most farm equipment is run on oil-based products, as are the planes, trains and trucks used to transport agricultural product to consumers. The average distance the typical American meal travels from “farm to fork” is about 1,500 miles. It is estimated that about 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American. As per capita income continues to trend up in developing countries, food demand will continue to increase adding incremental energy demand. "

They are of potentially
global consequence with the biggest threat of all
coming from man's traditional enemy - humanity itself.
Whether the hobbyist gene-hacker, the mischiefmaking
virus-creator of software viruses, the apparently
socio-pathic suicide bomber, or the institutional
socio-pathology of the military, the unlocking of Pandora's
box of knowledge is making it easier than ever
to create self-propagating disruption some of which
have runaway and hence global catastrophic consequences.
Also the unintended side effects of an intended
`good use’ of the scientific and technological
knowledge might be disastrous. One such risk which
just recently has gained publicity and political attention
is a man-made greenhouse effect.

Moreover, our prospective
well-being depends on the future course of economic,
social and political systems - and not merely those in
the West. That these evolutions are hard to predict
was starkly illustrated in recent history by the collapse
of the eastern block.

It seems a wonderful time to be alive - greater prosperity
than ever before, technology advancing ever
onwards and upwards to improved standards of living,
and unprecedented capabilities for many to change
their lives for the better. We live at a time when we
have begun to understand life itself and in many parts
of the world begun to apply this knowledge to reduce
disease, improve health, and live longer. Developments
in bio-science include unravelling the human
genome, learning how to modify genes, and applying
stem cells for a wide variety of beneficial purposes. In
material science, we can already witness exploitation
of the extraordinary properties of matter at the nanoscale.
This is just the beginning of a revolution offering
exciting and potent new physical and chemical capabilities
which can be likened to the change brought
by cars to the age of the horse.

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "Crunches, ranging from resource depletion or ecological destruction. Misguided world government or another source of social equilibrium that stops technological progress. So, again, in judging the possibility of something like that, don’t think of whether right now at this moment or during the last few years the world has been moving toward global governance or further away from it, but think from a much bigger time perspective whether something like this could happen. We started out by being hunter-gatherer tribes, and then cities and city states, nation states and now regional forms of governance in different parts of the world might not be such a far-fetched idea. And again, listing bad risk here does not mean that one should either be in favor or opposed to international forms of governance. A lot of the things that are listed here that have beneficial effects could help produce risks overall. Dysgenic pressures, this would be evolutionary selection that could kick into effect at various points in our future and lead in the wrong direction. It’s not true that evolution through some natural law must always lead to better, more valuable, higher complexity. It can also evolve things in the other direction."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "Now there is good news and bad news in this. On the one hand, since anthropogenic risks arise from human activity, they also in principle are within our power and ability to do something about. On the other hand, it is often extremely complex and difficult to change these risks that emerge from our human behavior. Here is another way you can divide different types of existential risks. Bangs: earth-originating intelligent life goes extinct in a relatively sudden disaster. So this is what comes most immediately to mind when one thinks of extinction scenarios. It is not the only type of existential risk. The point of using this terminology here is that it draws attention to the other, perhaps subtler ways in which we could suffer an existential disaster. Crunches: humanity’s potential to develop into post-humanity is permanently lost, although human life continues in some form. So here it is just useful to have a term for the potential state of flourishing that human civilization might one day be able to attain if everything goes well. I use the term post-humanity for this, just to have a label for it. Shrieks: a limited form of post-humanity is attained, but it is an extremely narrow band of what is possible and desirable. Whimpers: our post-human civilization is temporarily attained but then it evolves"

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "There are different ways you can carve up existential risks into different categories. One distinction one can make is anthropogenic risks that emerged in some way due to human activity. I believe that the real issue is the anthropogenic risks. Without going into details, our species has survived the non-anthropogenic risks for hundreds of thousands of years. They haven’t wiped out the human species yet, so this includes things like meteors, earthquakes and other things. So, if they haven’t managed to do this in the last 100,000 years, then it’s probably not going to happen in the next hundred years. The non-anthropogenic risks, on the other hand, resulting from human activity might very well pose a much greater threat over the next hundred years, because we are now doing a lot of things that we have never done before, and we will be doing a lot more of those things in the coming century, including particularly new technologies. So this is what I think should be the primary focus of efforts to reduce existential risk."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "An existential risk is one where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. We have a lot of experience with other kinds of risks: dangerous animal, hostile tribes and individuals, toxic berries and mushrooms, automobile accidents, Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, wars, epidemics of different diseases, influenza, smallpox, AIDS. Those kinds of disasters have occurred many, many times throughout human history. And our attitudes towards risks have been shaped by trial and error in dealing with those types of risks. But even the worst of these catastrophes, as tragic as they might have been for the people immediately affected, and millions have been affected by some of these examples, if you zoom out and look at these from the point-of-view of humanity as a whole, even the worst of these disasters would be mere ripples on the great sea of life. They have not significantly affected the total amount of happiness or suffering there will have been. They have not determined or significantly shaped the future of humanity."

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks

People Database blog » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks: "We can characterize risk in terms of three dimensions: Scope, which would be the number of people affected. Intensity, which would be how badly each affected person would be. And probability, the likelihood of its occuring given all the available information."