A brave new world: La sociedad por venir

[wanderer]

Un extraordinario repaso a la actualidad de A brave new world. Mejor no le puede venir al hilo (es largo, pero merece la pena leerlo con detenimiento:

Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" - 2014 Redux

    Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense^*. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, published 1958

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/huxleys-brave-new-world-revisited-2014-redux

^*: Se diría que también anticipaba mi conceto de los PDM's (Puercos Demócratas de Mierda).

[Frommer]

A mi lo que me va costar mucho esfuerzo en el mundo por venir va a ser tener que hablar, interactuar con una máquina, tener que justificarte ante ella y que encima a veces tengas que darle dinero...

Ese drone que te multa por pasar de 90 en la circunvalación y tiene el mal gusto, heredado de sus ancestros, los parquímetros, de decirte "retire su ticket"...

Y mientras el castuzo de la gestora del servicio externalizado viajando en nave espacial a su adosado del otro lado de la galaxia, donde en una cena de quejara a sus semejantes de que con Franco esto no pasaba...

Que país por favor qué país!!!

[Starkiller]

No te creas; en España, nunca se automatizará tanto, y si se hace, será el final de la casta hispánica.

sin extenderme demasiado: ¿Porque la justicia no esta totalmente informatizada, y todos los itentos que parece que llegan a buen puerto, se los cargan desde dentro?

Porque no interesa. nadie quiere que sea imposible perder un papel, sin rastro, o que sea imposible que se pasen plazos, etc... Nadie quiere perder ese control "chanchullesco" sobre el sistema.

Un mundo en el que todo deja rastro y esta reglado es, también, su pesadilla.

[polov]

No se si se ha colgado, ni si este es el hilo adecuado, que se mueva si hace falta.

http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books/books-that-predicted-the-future

BOOKS THAT PREDICTED THE FUTURE



Me ha parecido interesante , aunque se hecha de menos a Asimov.


gracias por sus posts

[nora]

Si la gente que pierde años (algunos más de 5 y más de 10) estudiando oposiciones coránicas Best way to memorize the Quran you never gonna forget it. se dedicase a otros campos que avancen en el conocimiento, está claro que nos iría mucho mejor. Pero no puedes pedir más en un país donde la carrera con más titulados y la que más puertas te abre es Derecho, donde casi todos los políticos son funcionarios ("funcionarios" en el sentido en sí mismo, no que tengan una profesión regulada así, sino que son funcionarios puros) y donde la empresa privada es tan aberrante y esclavista que es mejor intentar aprobar una oposición coránica y decimonónica basada en recitar versos aprendidos de memoria.

Pues mire, al margen de dicusiones sobre los sistemas selectivos de la administración, no me extraña, coñe. Ahora mismo tengo a mi pareja pendiente de operarse y con lo que tiene el hombre encima lo que más le precocupa es que con una baja de no menos de 4 meses, lo más probable es que le larguen del curro, con una palmadita en la espalda y un "lo sentimos pero es una carga no asumible para la empresa" mientras el paillero y visillera jefa cargan el último coche o sus últimas vacaciones a cargo de esa empresa. Maravillas de las sucesivas reformas laborales.

[bluebeetle]

Asimov, ... y muchos otros autores o títulos. Sobre todo publicados en cómic. Lo único que pasa es que todavía no estamos en el año adecuado para pensar en ellos como aciertos, y todavía los consideramos CF.

(Y ahora estoy pensando en La Máquina del tiempo de Wells... 

[NosTrasladamus]

http://nuevastecsomamfyc.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/la-vida-en-50-anos/

La vida en 50 años
“La vida en 50 años“, es un documental producido por Discovery Channel en el año 2009, en el que un  grupo de científicos recrean lo que será el mundo dentro de medio siglo, en el 2057. Nos descubre de forma novelada los nuevos avances tecnológicos que vivirá la humanidad en los próximos años, los descubrimientos que podrán estar al servicio de la salud, la futura forma de vida en las grandes ciudades y las grandes transformaciones que experimentará el mundo.

Crea un mundo que se puede disfrutar en las películas de ficción con el rigor y la seriedad de un documental. El mundo de un futuro no tan lejano. ¿Cuáles de estos avances llegarán a formar parte de nuestras vidas? ¿Cómo viviremos y qué nos ofrecerá el mundo en el año 2057?.

Presentado por el físico de la Universidad de la ciudad de Nueva York, Michio Kaku, el documental  viaja al futuro basándose en las investigaciones de reconocidos expertos. En ella participan científicos del Instituto tecnológico de Massachussets (MIT), del instituto Max Planck, del laboratorio nacional de Los Álamos, de la universidad Brown también en EEUU, del Fraunhofer Gesselshaft, en Alemania, etc. Cuenta además con los testimonios de expertos de la NASA, de científicos de Honda, Audi, Siemens, etc.

Las hipótesis que plantea se basan en desarrollos científicos e investigaciones que se están llevando a cabo en estos momentos para mostrar como afectarán a nuestras vidas y los plantea con espectaculares recreaciones en 3D.

Discovery Channel La Vida Dentro De 50 Años

[wanderer]

Los US, convertidos en un estado policial, y al beneficio de las clases extractivas, que lo promueven y se benefician:

The Stealing Of America By The Cops, The Courts, The Corporations And Congress

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.” —Author Tom Clancy

Call it what you will—taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc.—but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft.

We’re operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, you’ve got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich. In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.

What Americans don’t seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights. You’re nothing more than a serf or a slave.

In this way, the police state with all of its trappings—from surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray guns, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conduct—is little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of corporations.

The rationalizations for the American police state are many. There’s the so-called threat of terrorism, the ongoing Drug War, the influx of illegal immigrants, the threat of civil unrest in the face of economic collapse, etc. However, these rationalizations are merely excuses for the growth of a government behemoth, one which works hand in hand with corporations to profit from a society kept under lockdown and in fear at all times.

Indeed, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the real motivating factor behind erecting a police state is not to protect the people, but to further enrich the powerful. Consider the following costly line items, all part of the government’s so-called quest to keep us safe and fight terrorism while entrenching the police state, enriching the elite, and further shredding our constitutional rights:

    $4.2 billion for militarized police. Almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participate in a military “recycling” program which allows the Defense Department to transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. In 2012 alone, $546 million worth of military equipment was distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

     

    $34 billion for police departments to add to their arsenals of weapons and equipment. Since President Obama took office, police departments across the country “have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” While police departments like to frame the acquisition of military surplus as a money-saving method, in a twisted sort of double jeopardy, the taxpayer ends up footing a bigger bill. First, taxpayers are forced to pay millions of dollars for equipment which the Defense Department purchases from megacorporations only to abandon after a few years. Then taxpayers find themselves footing the bill to maintain the costly equipment once it has been acquired by the local police.

     

    $6 billion in assets seized by the federal government in one year alone. Relying on the topsy-turvy legal theory that one’s property can not only be guilty of a crime but is also guilty until proven innocent, government agencies have eagerly cashed in on the civil asset forfeiture revenue scheme, which allows police to seize private property they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the cops keeps the citizen’s property. Eighty percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner. Some states are actually considering expanding the use of asset forfeiture laws to include petty misdemeanors. This would mean that property could be seized in cases of minor crimes such as harassment, possession of small amounts of marijuana, and trespassing in a public park after dark.

     

    $11,000 per hour for a SWAT team raid on a government dissident. The raid was carried out against Terry Porter, a Maryland resident who runs a welding business, is married with three kids, is outspoken about his views of the government, and has been labeled a prepper because he has an underground bunker and food supplies in case things turn apocalyptic. The raiding team included “150 Maryland State Police, FBI, State Fire Marshal’s bomb squad and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat ‘special response’ vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.”

     

    $3.8 billion requested by the Obama administration to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention camps and add border patrol agents. Border Patrol agents are already allowed to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. As one journalist put it, “The surveillance apparatus is in your face. The high-powered cameras are pointed at you; the drones are above you; you’re stopped regularly at checkpoints and interrogated.” For example, an American citizen entering the U.S. from Mexico was subjected to a full-body cavity search in which she was subjected to a variety of invasive procedures, including an observed bowel movement and a CT scan, all because a drug dog jumped on her when she was going through border security. Physicians found no drugs hidden in her body.

     

    $61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most notoriously bloated government agencies ever created. The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHS—with its 240,000 full-time workers and sub-agencies—has been aptly dubbed a “runaway train.”

     

    $80 billion spent on incarceration by the states and the federal government in 2010. While providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, it’s a gold mine to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have to maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years. This has led to the phenomenon of overcriminalization of everyday activities, in which mundane activities such as growing vegetables in your yard or collecting rainwater on your property are criminalized, resulting in jail sentences for individuals who might otherwise have never seen the inside of a jail cell.

     

    $6.4 billion a year for the Bureau of Prisons and $30,000 a year to house an inmate. There are over 3,000 people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes. These include theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check. Most of the non-violent offenses which triggered life sentences were drug crimes involving trace amounts of heroin and cocaine. One person imprisoned for life was merely a go-between for an undercover officer buying ten dollars’ worth of marijuana. California has more money devoted to its prison system than its system of education. State spending on incarceration is the fastest growing budget item besides Medicaid.

     

    93 cents an hour for forced, prison labor in service to for-profit corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. What this forced labor scheme has created, indirectly or not, is a financial incentive for both the corporations and government agencies to keep the prisons full to capacity. A good portion of the 2 million prisoners in public facilities are forced to work for corporations, making products on the cheap, undermining free laborers, and increasing the bottom line for many of America’s most popular brands. “Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonald's uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporations—Microsoft, Victoria's Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmart—also benefit from prison labor.”

     

    $2.6 million pocketed by Pennsylvania judges who were paid to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, paid off by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings.

     

    $1.4 billion per year reportedly lost to truancy by California school districts, which receive government funding based on student attendance. The so-called “solution” to student absences from school has proven to be a financial windfall for cash-strapped schools, enabling them to rake in millions, fine parents up to $500 for each unexcused absence, with the potential for jail time, and has given rise to a whole new track in the criminal justice system devoted to creating new revenue streams for communities. For example, Eileen DiNino, a woman serving a two-day jail sentence for her children’s truancy violations, died while in custody. She is one of hundreds of people jailed in Pennsylvania over their inability to pay fines related to truancy, which include a variety of arbitrary fees meant to rack up money for the courts. For example, “[DiNino’s] bill included a laundry list of routine fees: $8 for a “judicial computer project”; $60 for Berks constables; $40 for “summary costs” for several court offices; and $10 for postage.” So even if one is charged with a $20 fine, they may end up finding themselves on the hook for $150 in court fees.

     

    $84.9 million collected in one year by the District of Columbia as a result of tickets issued by speeding and traffic light cameras stationed around the city. Multiply that income hundreds of times over to account for the growing number of localities latching onto these revenue-generating, photo-enforced camera schemes, and you’ll understand why community governments and police agencies are lining up in droves to install them, despite reports of wide scale corruption by the companies operating the cameras. Although nine states have banned the cameras, they’re in 24 states already and rising.

     

    $1.4 billion for fusion centers. These fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance and intelligence efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, have proven to be exercises in incompetence, often producing irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence, while spending millions of dollars on “flat-screen televisions, sport utility vehicles, hidden cameras and other gadgets.”

In sum, the American police state is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle, meant to keep the property and the resources of the American people flowing into corrupt government agencies and their corporate partners. For those with any accounting ability, it’s clear that the total sum of the expenses being charged to the American taxpayer’s account by the government add up to only one thing: the loss of our freedoms. It’s time to seriously consider a plan to begin de-funding this beast and keeping our resources where they belong: in our communities, working for us.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-22/stealing-america-cops-courts-corporations-and-congress

[Dan]

Tremenda la homologa lituana de Mato:

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/11071

     

Euthanasia could be option for poor, says Lithuanian health minister

by Michael Cook | 26 Jul 2014 | (29)

tags: euthanasia, Lithuania

The new Lithuanian Health Minister, Rimantė Šalaševičiūtė

Euthanasia might be needed for poor people who cannot access palliative care, the new Lithuanian Health Minister has suggested. Rimantė Šalaševičiūtė was sworn earlier this month, but already she has made waves by backing an open discussion of the legalisation of euthanasia.

Without making any specific proposals, she told local media that Lithuania was not a welfare state with palliative care available for all and that euthanasia might be an option for people who did not want to torment relatives with the spectacle of their suffering. 

The minister has also raised the idea of euthanasia for children. She noted that this option had been approved for Belgian children after a long public debate. It was an option which might be appropriate in Lithuania as well after public debate.

Ms Šalaševičiūtė will face an uphill battle in her campaign to introduce Lithuanians to euthanasia. Many doctors and the Catholic Church oppose it. Dr Andrius Narbekovas, who is both a priest and a doctor, and a member of the Health Ministry’s bioethics commission, told the media:

    “The Ministry of Health should protect health and life, instead of looking for ways to take life away. It goes without saying that it is … profitable and cost effective … But a democratic society should very clearly understand that we have to take care of the sick, not kill them."

[Republik]

No sabía que se llegaba a ese extremo pero sí es visible que en general en España existe un núcleo de formadores de opinión (y que tiene su "core" identificable pero también antenas en varios otros) tan sumamente pro-estadounidense que solamente por afinidad político/intelectual no va a ser.

Claro que hay más cosas, porque también se detectan inquietantes ausencias en la crítica hacia los usos e invasiones de la vida civil por parte de algunas religiones, etc. Y ese dinero "oleoso" ya sabemos de dónde viene y su enorme capacidad corruptora (más en el día después de Boyer, que tanto tuvo que ver con KIO).

La prensa sí que necesita un profundo ejercicio de autocrítica y vuelta a los principios o acabarán los medios tradicionales perdidos en un rinconcito preguntándose por qué ya no les llueve el dinero como antes.

[visillófilas pepitófagas]

La prensa sí que necesita un profundo ejercicio de autocrítica y vuelta a los principios o acabarán los medios tradicionales perdidos en un rinconcito preguntándose por qué ya no les llueve el dinero como antes.

Ya están así desde hace un tiempo.

[wanderer]

La prensa sí que necesita un profundo ejercicio de autocrítica y vuelta a los principios o acabarán los medios tradicionales perdidos en un rinconcito preguntándose por qué ya no les llueve el dinero como antes.

Ya están así desde hace un tiempo.

Primero les dejó de llover el dinero (empezando por el corte de publicidad institucional, y por dejarlos en manos de sus bancos acreedores, como en el caso de PRISA).

Después sufren una pérdida de lectores lenta pero persistente, y últimamente ya ni tan lenta.

Intentan reciclarse como medios de Internet, pero entonces o bien son de pago y las versiones de pago no las lee ni el Tato, o son gratuitas, pero con muchísima competencia de otros medios.

A llorar, cobardes, que no merecéis que se derrame ni una lágrima por vosotros.

[Маркс]

Primero les dejó de llover el dinero (empezando por el corte de publicidad institucional, y por dejarlos en manos de sus bancos acreedores, como en el caso de PRISA).

Después sufren una pérdida de lectores lenta pero persistente, y últimamente ya ni tan lenta.

Intentan reciclarse como medios de Internet, pero entonces o bien son de pago y las versiones de pago no las lee ni el Tato, o son gratuitas, pero con muchísima competencia de otros medios.

A llorar, cobardes, que no merecéis que se derrame ni una lágrima por vosotros.

Aquí sí, a estos sí. Con toda la carga causante y manifiesta en su acusación hacia este colectivo.

Lo mismo que con los educadores, exactamente lo mismo.

Tienen una prerrogativa, y es cumplir con sus códigos deontológicos, que para eso se les ha formado y para eso cumplen con una función social.

A saco.

[Dan]

La prensa hace tiempo que "la torcieron", estan mas que controlados. En cuanto al codigo deontologico, en una coyuntura asi son mas utiles y manejables los precarios, muchos de ellos ademas reclutados o que no se plantean de donde salen las "lineas editoriales".

Mejor que intentar explicarlo yo: este podcast compilatorio de La Linterna de Diogenes es extremadamente interesante, bien enfocado y exhausivo sobre el control de la informacion y la prensa. Acaba con una extension sobre publicidad y politica y publicidad.

Son dos horas y media pero no le sobra ni un minuto. Muy recomendable.

http://www.ivoox.com/ldd-capitalismo-medios-comunicacion-ciclo-audios-mp3_rf_3553053_1.html

[Маркс]

La prensa hace tiempo que "la torcieron", estan mas que controlados. En cuanto al codigo deontologico, en una coyuntura asi son mas utiles y manejables los precarios, muchos de ellos ademas reclutados o que no se plantean de donde salen las "lineas editoriales".

Mejor que intentar explicarlo yo: este podcast compilatorio de La Linterna de Diogenes es extremadamente interesante, bien enfocado y exhausivo sobre el control de la informacion y la prensa. Acaba con una extension sobre publicidad y politica y publicidad.

Son dos horas y media pero no le sobra ni un minuto. Muy recomendable.

http://www.ivoox.com/ldd-capitalismo-medios-comunicacion-ciclo-audios-mp3_rf_3553053_1.html

Los bancos en los consejos de administración de los medios... 

Ante eso ni código deontológico ni la madre que lo parió. Imposible.

Lo de la publicidad cojonudo.