Im a teacher and IT IS a useful tool just like many other things. As several intelligent people in this thread has pointed out, the most important factor for learning is the teacher and the way the students work is organised. Feedback and feedforward, formative assessment and engaged and enthusiastic teachers are the best way of improving learning. Computers are a good tool both for me as a teacher and for my students. Im not a fan of the 1-1 projects that pop up everywhere, a computer is in my experience best used as a collaborative tool where two to four students use it for writing, making presentations and doing research. I work with kids in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade (9-11 years old here in Sweden). Its not the technology in itself, but what you do with it that has an impact.

Start with "Enders Game" and you will be hooked. Orson Scott Card is a good writer, "Enders Game", "Speaker for the dead" and "Xenocide" are great SciFi.

Seconded. Peter Watts writes strange stuff full of ideas. Its believable and thoroughly disturbing.It reads like a mix of William Gibsons early stuff, a biology primer and Richard Morgans Takeshi Kovacs books.

In my experience theres ways of making things run smoother IT-wise. Im a teacher at a school with about 45 staff. We have our IT-support outsourced to a company through the local council and we have a very stable system. Things work just fine most of the time but getting something changed is a glacial process. There is little flexibility and most of our software is the same as five years ago.

Five years ago though things were not as smooth. We had a generally high incidence of support tickets, there was a lot of frustration and anger directed at the IT people. A large portion of the support tickets were simple things attributable to user error or lack of information. So, my boss and I decided to try and do something to fix this. Today almost all support tickets are placed by me. If someone has a problem they tell me and I check it out first. Im pretty knowledgable about IT and able to tell when its something I can fix and when its something I need to pass on. The benefits of this is that if the issue comes from user error, a loose connector, broken mouse or keyboard or something like that it gets fixed at once and I teach the user how to avoid this in the future. I hardly ever have to reinsert loose connectors these days. I spend maybe an hour a week on average dealing with IT stuff and thats less than before when everyone made their own calls. It also means that when I place a ticket I include screenshots if possible, the machine ID, an error report thats relatively verbose and how fast it needs to be fixed.

The not so good part is that it still takes at least two weeks to get software installed, often a month, and that our IT people still havent learned to call me before coming out so I can sort out access to the wiring closets and so on. The funny part is that their infrastructure people are usually better at this than the support guys. Most of the tickets I place now are attributable to stuff IT has done without telling me, like messing around with the printers, "upgrading" the email servers so that noone can log in and so on. Frustrating, to say the least.

And you find nothing wrong with government agencies tracking visitors to sites THEY consider terrorist ? It been shown quite clearly that in most parts of the world its a quite convenient excuse for surveillance. Just break out the big fat rubber stamp labeled "Terrorist leanings" and use it on your political enemies or assorted dissidents. The US showed the world how to do it and the rest followed suit. Good work!

You forgot bombing Iran. Its their turn next, you know.

The brain isnt a monolithic structure, it has many different parts that are tied together by the brainstem. Its very possible that we eventually can start making decent copies of these parts and construct a brainstem analog to tie them together. The interesting thing is that they have an artificial neuron, the rest as they say is engineering.

Secure doesnt equate useful.

SpaceX has shown a profit for most of its existence and has a long list of orders for its rockets. If NASA got its head out of its ass, or more correctly if your congress and senate wasnt so fixated on pork barrel contracts, there would be a proper space programme in no time at the same cost or lower.

The wear and tear on the body is such that even if you can increase the lifespan to a theoretical 150 years you wouldnt be very healthy for the last 90 or so years. You also need something that adresses the wear on the body. Our hearts arent made for 150 years of use and we build up various plaques and toxins in our bodies as time goes by. Even if we all lived under controlled and ideal circumstances the last seven decades would be pretty much seven decades of being eighty.

Being a teacher means that you have to teach all the kids, not just the 5-10% that will learn even if you suspend them over an alligator pit and hand them a textbook. It also means that you have to teach the kids that didnt have breakfast today, the kids that are distracted by family situations, the kids that have some kind of learning disability and the kids that think that the best part of school is when it ends. Online courses are fine, but theyre not for everyone and for everything. Another thing to consider is that just digitizing a textbook and adding a few video lectures doesnt mean that its a GOOD online course. Khan Academy is great stuff, short snippets with limited scope, but its not a panacea.

Arent most of the American elections for "special" people ?

I have a LaserJet 1200 thats 8 years old or so. Its great and I havent even had to replace the toner in it even after printing a few thousand pages. It Just Works(tm). At work we had a pair of LaserJet 4000N that lasted 12 years with no maintenance at all save the occasional vacuuming to remove dust from the fans. We went through a 10kpage toner every quarter or so. Best printers ever. Sadly, the newer HP printers that replaced them are real toner hogs and much more fussy to deal with.

I think Neuromancer has aged quite well. Sure, we dont use VR goggles, but its still early days as far as the net goes. Bionics, custom drugs and corporate espionage...well...I never believed that a company like Blackwater would come into existence...

iTunes is why I gave up my iPod, its a horrible piece of sofware.

I have a Creative Ziio 7" Android WiFi tablet running Android 2.2. It works quite well and cost me half what a WiFi 16G iPad would have.