פורסם: 21.02.12, 12:44 am
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. ..."
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שייך לקטגוריות 3. איזון עם הטבע | להשאיר תגובה | |
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.>"
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שייך לקטגוריות 1. מעל צרכים בסיסיים | להשאיר תגובה | |
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.>"
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שייך לקטגוריות 1. מעל צרכים בסיסיים | להשאיר תגובה | |
Field of reference: Technology
Description: Biggest electronics manufacturer on earth to relpace staff of 1.2 million with robots
>"it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that one robot could probably work as efficiently as 1.2 humans, especially considering that the robot can be less productive (even substantially less productive) if it just works more hours than a single human is capable of.think we all realize that robots replacing humans when it comes to repetitive manufacturing jobs is a gradual inevitability, but it's a bit of a shock to consider a million robots over such a short span of time.>"
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שייך לקטגוריות 1. מעל צרכים בסיסיים | להשאיר תגובה | |
Field of reference: Biology
Description: altruistic behavior in nature
>"Mutual grooming plays an important part in the social life of chimpanzees, and two friends, or even a small group, will sit quietly for hours searching through each other's long black hair for specks of dirt, grass seeds, or ticks.Some students of animal behavior see in this grooming activity the first beginnings of true social and altruistic behavior in the whole animal kingdom."
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שייך לקטגוריות 2. הטבע כמערכת | להשאיר תגובה | |