Dr. Anil K. Rajvanshi
Field of reference: Ecology, Biology
Description: examples for why sustainability and balance with nature are imperative
"How Nature Helps Us Nature provides us direct benefits and without it we will not be able to survive. Majority of medicines presently in use and all our foods are derived from plants and animals. The cost of over-the-counter drugs from plants alone has been estimated to be about US$ 84 billion worldwide 1. Yet a tiny fraction of biodiversity has been utilized in the allopathic medicines. Similarly in 1997 an international team of economists and environmental scientists came out with a figure of US$ 33 trillion for all ecosystem services provided by natural systems to humanity free of charge. This amount was more than twice the total GDP of the world
2. Ecosystem services include regulation of the atmosphere and climate; purification and retention of fresh water; formation and enrichment of soil; nutrient cycling; detoxification and recirculation of waste; pollination of crops and the production of lumber, fodder and biomass fuel. Even if by magic we get the necessary technology and this much money to provide these services, the physical task will be nearly impossible to accomplish it thereby proving the superiority of natural systems over manmade ones. Besides providing ecosystem utilities, nature also provides us knowledge for our future science and technology. Nature had billions of years of head start and hence it has evolved through infinite permutations and combinations of designs. Since our brains are a product of natural evolution and earth time, it can be conjectured that we cannot think more than what already exists in nature. Thus the fastest way for us to progress is to copy nature. For if we destroy nature we will be robbed of the design template for our further development."
| שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 3. איזון עם הטבע |
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Wikipedia - Weightlessness / General Relativity
Field of reference: Physics
Description: Freely falling objects (i.e. particles moving purely under the force of gravity will "feel" no "pressure", they will not be squeezed, etc. Likewise, a free falling spce shuttle will not "feel" gravity until igniting its thrusts ... If it follows "nature" it will feel nothing. It will only start expriencing resistance once it departures/deviate from the "natural" motion, i.e. the force of gravitation. This was a key insight that led Einstein to discover the general theory of relativity (GR)
"Einstein's theory suggests that it actually is valid to consider that objects in inertial motion (such as falling in elevator, or in a parabola in an airplane, or orbiting planet) can indeed be considered to experience a local loss of the gravitational field responsible for their general motion."
| שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 3. איזון עם הטבע |
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Berkeley University
Field of reference: Science
Description: humanity benefits from science and scientific innovations
"... And that knowledge is useful for all sorts of things: from designing bridges, to slowing climate change, to prompting frequent hand washing during flu season. Scientific knowledge allows us to develop new technologies, solve practical problems, and make informed decisions - both individually and collectively. ..."
| שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, הטבע, 3. איזון עם הטבע |
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Dr. Eric Brynjolfsson, Dr. Andrew McAfee
Field of reference: Economics
Description: Many details on the replacement of human labor by machinery and technology in nearly every field of human endeavor
""From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out," said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. "People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don't."The computers seem to be good at their new jobs. ... Herr ... used e-discovery software to reanalyze work his company's lawyers did in the 1980s and '90s. His human colleagues had been only 60 percent accurate, he found. "Think about how much money had been spent to be slightly better than a coin toss," he said.We're starting to see evidence that this digital progress is affecting the business world. A March 2011 story by John Markoff in the New York Times highlighted how heavily computers' pattern recognition abilities are already being exploited by the legal industry where, according to one estimate, moving from human to digital labor during the discovery process could let one lawyer do the work of 500. In an industry that employs nearly 1 in 10 Americans and has long been a reliable job generator, companies increasingly are looking to peddle more products with fewer employees. ... Virtual assistants are taking the place of customer service representatives. Kiosks and self-service machines are reducing the need for checkout clerks.The [machines] cost a fraction of brick-and-mortar stores. They also reflect changing consumer buying habits. Online shopping has made Americans comfortable with the idea of buying all manner of products without the help of a salesman or clerk."
| שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, התפתחות האגו, 1. מעל צרכים בסיסיים |
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Jeremy Rifkin
Field of reference: Economics
Description: Many details on the replacement of human labor by machinery and technology in nearly every field of human endeavor
"A technology revolution is fast replacing human beings with machines in virtually every sector and industry in the global economy. Already, millions of workers have been permanently eliminated from the economic process, and whole work categories and job assignments have shrunk, been restructured, or disappeared.New breakthroughs in the information and life sciences threaten to end much of outdoor farming by the middle decades of the coming century. The technological changes in the production of food are leading to a world without farmers, with untold consequences for the 2.4 million people who still rely on the land for their survival.In 1850, 60 percent of the working population was employed in agriculture. Today, less than 2.7 percent of the workforce is engaged directly in farming. The Israelis are also experimenting with a Robotic Melon Picker (ROMPER) that uses special sensors to determine whether a crop is ripe to pick. The introduction of ROMPER and other automated machinery will dramatically affect the economic prospects of the more than 30,000 Palestinians employed during harvesting season. In the United States, Purdue University scientists say they expect to see ROMPER in use "in every Indiana county by the end of the decade." Similar robots are being developed with artificial intelligence to plough and seed fields, feed dairy cows, even shear live sheep. Researchers predict that the fully automated factory farm is less than 20 years away."
| שייך לנושאים: 1-13 - חינוך אינטגרלי, -מקורות מדעיים, התפתחות האגו, 1. מעל צרכים בסיסיים |
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