Dumb or Dumber?

Chris Anderson asks, in the July 2008 edition of Wired magazine. if the emergence of the Petabyte era - the ability to amass and analyze massive amounts of data - obsoletes scientific theory. A computer cloud and programs like Google's MapReduce, can brute force analyze raw real world data to uncover trends that once required scientific models and limited testing to unravel.

Nicolas Carr asks in the July/Aug 2008 Atlantic magazine if "Google is making us stupid" - by simplifying an individuals need to think. The ability to focus and engage the brain in cognitive activties, like reading an in-depth article, have been replaced with scanning "wiki facts" on a computer screen or iphone. The imminent death of journalism threatening newspapers and magazines like the Atlantic is one validation point.

Scientists no longer need to think. Individuals no longer need to think. What will we think of next?

Tags: Google "Map Reduce" "Cloud Computing"

World Wide Will

The food, energy and environmental problems facing the world are extra-national in scope. In many countries, the impact is a "perfect storm" of rising cost food and energy imports with catastrophic weather damaging domestic agriculture. Human suffering begets social and political upheaval.
These problems are global and complex. Dealing with them requires a new level of global cooperation. The United Nations is a 20th century concept. The true world-wide-web of the 21st century is a global decision making, and action-taking entity led by the major world markets in N. America, S. America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.