The Stolen 2004 Election

The current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is featuring an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. titled, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" -- Read this article. Rolling Stone also offers an editorial calling for an investigation. The lead to Kennedy's article:

"Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."

The editors of Rolling Stone:

"Enough. Only a complete investigation by federal authorities can determine the full extent of any bribery and vote rigging that has taken place. The public must be assured that the power to count the votes -- and to recount them, if necessary -- will not be ceded to for-profit corporations with a vested interest in superseding the will of the people. America's elections are the most fundamental element of our democracy -- not a market to be privatized by companies like Diebold."

Let's hope this gets the ball rolling with the electorate (since the politicians have been too afraid of the issue) to find out what really is happening to our democracy. Before it is too late.

URL: http://www.personalbee.com/bee_article.php?grpno=1211&artno=2591867

Transportation Metaphor for Media

An essay on the future of media, using a transpportation metaphor (and comparison...)

Summary: From the perspective of mobility, the automobile is the mass-customization post-industrial technology. Railroads are industrial transportation -- they follow specific fixed paths and travel on time s...

URL: http://www.personalbee.com/bee_article.php?grpno=1211&artno=2526386

Google Building AI

Could Google co-founder Larry Page be right (read this report from London) in saying that Google can succeed in building true artificial intelligence "within a few years?"? Late last year I wrote about an excellent speech by George Dyson republished at Edge.org (and still worth reading if you haven't already). To excerpt just one comment again:

"When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain."

The development of strong artificial intelligence by anyone - country or company - will be a worldchanging event. It seems that Google really is hard at work on this task. Assuming that such an effort succeeds in developing a system which works for the betterment of its creators, one can appreciate why Google doesn't worry much about competition from Microsoft or Yahoo. Google is playing an entirely different game.

Where everyone else in the tech industry is pursuing linear technical development strategies, Google is pursuing a corner-cutting strategy of building a better tool -- a tool that (if successful) will change the entire basis for competition. How can any group of engineers at Microsoft hope to compete against the development resources of a world-wide artificial intelligence?

Time to buy Google stock?