Looking ahead, the researchers observe, “The perception system is fixed, so in certain situations, ADAM will not be able to detect specific parts of the environment. The bimanipulation capabilities of ADAM are not fully developed, and the arms configuration is not optimized.” In addition to focusing on improvements in these areas, they write that “new task and motion planning strategies will be implemented to deal with more complex home tasks, which will make ADAM a much more complete robot companion for elderly care.”
Examines the evolution of multinational corporations, from the military-industrial complex of the postwar period to the present world economic crisis, and evaluates the economic and political impact of such entities on the American and international economic systems
The other book is Cory Doctorow’s The Internet Con. which you can get at various places:
The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships. We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.
Cory has more of a solution to the problem than Fuller, which at this is more historical than something you could use in this era,and the book is highly recommended.
I’ve given you links to 2 versions of the books that you can get as EPubs. Some of you may not know how to read these on a kindle. Well it’s fairly easy, here’s the page on Amazon that explains it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/
That’s it for me this week. Don’t forget to put pants on when you go outside.
The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints.
Maintenance isn’t a program. It’s a practice. Melvin Kranzberg, the former president of the Society for the History of Technology, once wrote that “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral,” which is to say that its value is always contingent, even as certain technologies have their own internal logic that must be accounted for. The same goes for maintenance or sustainability, or any mental framework. Climate change and resource scarcity are real phenomena, but they must be addressed in the full context of other social aims, such as a given standard of living — or in the case of maintenance, a state of repair
I embedded the audio of this below (it’s from All Things Considered) but here’s a link to the article: The Affluent Homeless. Could this be our distributed, sharing future? I find it interesting that not everyone needs to own things. I would love to see an in depth article on this trend.
Need a little tension relief for those sore muscles, etc? Want a handy dandy personal vibrator that doesn’t look out of place in your purse, or pocket, and also keeps you in touch with the world? There’s and app for that.
Of course that reminded me of this:
