make it all like spam. maybe worth doing if ya got a hundred million to fish amongst otherwise worthless. Cut the balls of monetizing information. Drown this industry before it grows any larger.

From chopping wood cranking the telephone and radio maybe...to today. Every innovation starts with an elite, either of money or of experimentation. The more attractive ones tend to spread, attracting people money ideas and tending to in these times where so little (besides outrageously expensive NECESSITIES) depends of things which tend to be both physical and scarce. And would you rather the big hats experimented on us po folk?

Sounds like the devices have already accomplished all they can: the students have learned how to master their iPads and are now using them exactly as they please. Which is what human being do with anything they find lying about in their environment. HOORAH!

If the ideas were to empower, to teach electronic/digital literacy, to open minds to options and to information, mission accomplished!

Probably the only thing NOT learned by now, is adult interaction with others. Perhaps when these kids are 10 or 20 years older, THAT may be largely digitally mediated as well.

Some Sci Fi has speculated that people will mostly not HAVE to work to have abundant goods and services. That future may be at hand. It's a good thing!

What is needed are: (1) Continuing encouragement to those who are able and willing to advance or maintain this state of affairs; (2) reasonable re-distribution for all others; (3) sea change in how we look at work - from a prerequisite for having stuff, to a matter of having an option to be useful to others for purposes of dignity and possibly access to the latest and greatest.

OMG! ROTFLMAO! Convergence, with a vengeance!

I am unalterably opposed to collective action of any kind to address the alleged drawbacks of what happens when technology empowers me and others to effectively make choices that others may dislike whether because the idea offends them or the consequences harm them. Actionable harm ought to be limited to damage or threat of damage to life, liberty or property. If all the businesses in a neighborhood go broke and none of the property has much value on the market because outsiders avoid the place, so what.

And it does not matter if its a racial think or even a conscious conspiracy. There is no particular reason people's choices should be limited because of harm to others - unless the harm involves use of force or its threatened use. There are criminal laws about that.

johnwerneken
  a few seconds ago

DISAGREE.

Perhaps Pearl Harbor was NOT an act of war. It was after all only a single airborne strike, doing limited damage (no aircraft carriers were even hit - as they were not there at the time), with no boots on the ground.

Acts of War are not casual and typically have consequences unanticipated and undesired by those who commit them.

Demolishing the public school system and the stupid arrangement of local governments or authorities at the base of it would both be excellent ideas. And the caring anbd capable people completely separating fron the rest is also a good trend.

Is fun watching folks compete to be best, I have seen it at the Olympic level, but it is useless. And considering the expense, outrageous.

Fairs were a good custom in many ways, particularly World's Fairs. I miss them, and could do entirely without the Oily Pimpics.

Any fool can learn a name a postal address an email address a birthdate a social security number. Those things therefor have no value and there is not much point in obscuring them. Passwords (disgusting method, relies on users and communication cryptography, neither of which is reliable) are perhaps another matter - but hopefully if the access a password guards matters, that password is NOT used elsewhere by that user. Well, one might hope I suppose.

Biometric has a chance, at least to guard access at the endpoints. Maybe the quantum folks will discover something that not only obsoletes existing cryptography (as it appears they basically have), but something reliable.

I suspect currency interchange by NFC might be the solution for money. I can think of no solution for privacy and reputation. Perhaps social and legal penalties for degrading someone based on information that in former times would have been private might help, but gossip control is contrary to human nature. We're in a village of a billion and climbing towards ten times that many, this is one of the ways things are and increasingly will be different.

I'm in between Manning’s original statements-by-his-actions and this contrition. (1) Airport users and news watchers knew, or IMHO ought to have known, a great deal about the several threads behind the growing security state: (1) Power politics just can't be nice; we may one day have species-wide law IF we can figure out how to have one government and not be oppressed, but it's a jungle until then. So the revelations ought not to surprise; (2) Government has a propensity to avoid embarrassment at almost any cost. Obviously silly and wrong yet in part somewhat excusable: graceful acceptance by most of at least the general legitimacy of authority is fundamental to authority existing without either stark oppression or the sort of anarchy that can kill a major fraction of the whole people; and (3) individual empowerment is a new thing, with the part that applies to the ability of seriously angry people to essentially wage war like a State being a real threat, one that properly scares people.

I think we knew about most all of it, or ought to have, making almost all of the revelations not revelations at all. Except for the disclosure of sources and methods, this could endanger the lives of people acting from conviction and in our interests, not a good thing.

In sum, Manning was no traitor, yet if his apology is centered on the possible risk to the lives of agents and tipsters; it makes sense that he would now say that.

Why were the family concerns considered worth blocking research over? I find it unbelievable that an individual would be thought to "own" their dna.

Maybe exactly how the well-connected and well-healed do it is technically new, but gossip is as old as humanity and is actually a far more reliable safeguard of reasonable behavior by most people most of the time than any number of laws. For almost all of our species' existence - except maybe from 1750 to 200 - everyone knew everything about everybody. That's normal. Privacy is a middle class addiction - we are too well off to do as we please because we have nothing to lose, and not powerful enough to do as we please because everyone fears us, so we pretend we can do as we please via privacy.

Bullshit.

What works is what Britain did in Malaysia and Kenya, what Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane did: kill every last one of their race, culture, faith, and nation, and destroy the capacity of all their lands to support civilization or indeed human life.

Old style media would enjoy it, and so would I.