sent2null space

This article was originally written and published at H+ Magazine online A recent article in the Wall Street Journal covers the topic of increasing interest by corporations to gain high resolution into the activities that workers are performing on the job. On the face of it this article may seem as if it is presenting a new paradigm to the workforce. Using new technologies like RFID tracking sensors coupled with electronic systems to meter and monitor the vagaries of workers in the office to try and extract more efficient and productive work by reshaping either the work place itself or the business processes that workers engage. On it's face this is an admirable goal but unfortunately it is not really new, it is essentially an attempt to replicate ideas that were rampant in business during the 50's and 60's and 70's using current technology, to see why we need to first take a walk down memory lane to see what automation and productivity was back in the 60's.

In the wake of the unfortunate events in Newtown, Connecticut , a gun massacre of mostly babies by a demented young man, much discussion has been had about the prevalence of guns in the United States. Among the arguments I've heard most often in the debate is that having more guns would make us safer because people would be able to defend themselves against attempts at violence against them. However, this argument is flawed and can be demonstrated as so with a simple thought experiment without any need to appeal to statistics on gun violence on the matter. The thought experiment proceeds as thus: Scenario 1:  If by fiat  I can snap my fingers and all guns would disappear, the number of those killed by guns would go to zero, indisputably. The rate of those killed by other means at all relative to guns would go DOWN . Why? Because the guns no longer exist, those in anger situations would either find other means to exact vengeance if they really mean it OR they simply will cool d

In a recent discussion I had with a friend of mine, the topic of evolutionary fitness and the emergence of highly resilient systems of repair inside biological organisms was the impetus for me to explain an aspect of capitalistic systems that I've touched on in previous posts but had not fully explored in a post. The discussion originally started with my describing how a Self Healing Infrastructure (SHI) for Energy purposes can free us from one of the major survival needs of all human beings. A Self Healing Energy Grid The Zeitgeist of late has been filled with the idea that the autonomous future will make work non existent, any of my readers know I've been pioneering such talk going as far back as 2006 and the technologies I've built in the form of the AgilEntity platform and the invention of Action Oriented Workflow  in 2004, are first steps toward making such systems of efficiency effective for the needs of machine human interaction. One of the many SHI related

This is going to piss off my more progressive natural food movement proponent friends but this video was really disingenuous to the viewer in many ways. Rather than bring on A scientist who understands the deep history of processing methods for food production and can detail the physical and chemical realities of the different products used, they get a sensationalist author who has an OBVIOUS bias against processing of any sort when it comes to food. It is so absurd that the contradictions over whelmed me as I watched the video but here I will do a short take down of the arguments she put forward and as a Scientist I will back up my statements with data because you know, that's all that ultimately matters. First, the premise that processing of food is in itself a bad thing stands in stark contrast to the fact that we as human beings have been processing food for the last 12,000 years into forms more amenable for our production, distribution and consumption. From selecting cro

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has died according to news reports . Given the controversial statements he's made regarding the US and US leaders and his performance in his own country, he's definitely a mixed legacy he's leaving behind. As an international figure he was not afraid to speak truth to the larger powers of the geo-political stage and say what he felt needed to be said but at the same time domestically his efforts to move progress forward for the poor of Venezuela didn't seem to have the impact that one would have expected given the vast resource wealth that the country possesses. I have always had a strong pull to that country, as a child I dreamed of going to see Angel Falls...the tallest waterfall in the world.  In what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called "The Lost World" when he wrote about it. I made friends online and one was from Venezuela and she introduced me to a diversity of views on the country, an inside look into what it was like