Les nouvelles technologies façonnent un marché du travail à deux vitesses
Alors que la France est dans une phase de croissance molle ou quasi-nulle, deux visions économiques s’affrontent. Pour l’une, celle du gouvernement français notamment, le retour de la compétitivité ramènera la croissance, qui ramènera le plus important: l’emploi. Christopher Mims, qui publie un article sur Quartz, serait sans doute en désaccord avec ce schéma. Les travailleurs routiniers de l’économie tertiaire («routine cognitive jobs») risquent d’être les grands perdants de la transformation. Car pour les travailleurs les plus compétents et les plus diplômés, ces changements technologiques sont au contraire une aubaine. C’est le principe du winner takes all, ou comme l’écrit l’auteur de Race Against the machine, Erik Brynjolfsson, le biais de compétence du changement technologique. Ce qui fait dire à l’investisseur de la Silicon Valley Marc Andreessen, sur ABC News, que le marché du travail va se scinder en deux parties: Andreessen va jusqu’à dire que la classe moyenne n’existe plus.
Capital Magazine Pretenders Talking
Capital Magazine in France asserted the importance of credible objective reporting in “The Pretenders”, a print advertising campaign launched in 2009. The campaign shows men who speak from a biased point of view. A fishmonger tells us that fish are becoming overpriced. Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD) Credits The Pretenders campaign was developed at Y&R Paris by creative directors Les Six, copywriter Josselin Pacreau, art director Sebastien Guinet, photographer Sylvain Bardin, art buyers Claire Nicaise-Schindler and Sandrine Bellanger. Location France
Real Humans revu par les chercheurs (1)
Qu'est ce qui est réel dans la série Real Humans ? Quand nos robots seront-ils aussi doués ? CNRS le journal fait le point dans une série d'articles. Surdoués, les hubots (human robots) de la série télévisée Real Humans ? Mais depuis ces classiques, notre technologie galopante a fait du chemin. Il est en effet devenu banal de communiquer avec son ordinateur ou son smartphone grâce aux assistants personnels intelligents, comme le fameux Siri d’Apple et d’autres applications parlantes. Dans Real Humans, les hubots s’expriment pratiquement comme vous et moi. Cela semble plutôt bien marcher… Qu’est-ce que les hubots ont de plus ? Les ambiguïtés de langage ne posent pas de problème à un humain doté de sens commun. Dans quel domaine de la linguistique nos systèmes sont-ils encore trop peu performants ? Mais il existe des bases de données qui peuvent offrir aux robots cette indispensable connaissance du monde, non ? Existe-t-il des approches plus fiables ?
How Star Trek artists imagined the iPad... 23 years ago
One interesting characteristic of Star Trek: The Next Generation—one that separated it from the original series and most of the early films—was its widespread use of smooth, flat, touch-based control panels throughout the Enterprise-D. This touch interface was also used for numerous portable devices known as PADDs, or Personal Access Display Devices. These mobile computing terminals bear a striking resemblance to Apple's iPad—a mobile computing device largely defined by its smooth, flat touchscreen interface. To understand the thinking that led to the design of the Star Trek PADD, we spoke to some of the people involved in production of ST:TNG (as well as other Star Trek TV series and films), including Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Doug Drexler. From "electronic clipboard" to PADD The Star Trek films, beginning with 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, had sizable budgets for set design, props, and special effects. "The initial motivation for that was in fact cost," Okuda explained.
10 Futuristic Materials
Lifeboat Foundation Safeguarding Humanity Skip to content Switch to White Special Report 10 Futuristic Materials by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Michael Anissimov. 1. Aerogel protecting crayons from a blowtorch. This tiny block of transparent aerogel is supporting a brick weighing 2.5 kg. Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material. Carbon nanotubes are long chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp2 bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond. “Metamaterial” refers to any material that gains its properties from structure rather than composition. We’re starting to lay down thick layers of diamond in CVD machines, hinting towards a future of bulk diamond machinery. Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (what I call amorphous fullerene) are stronger. Transparent alumina is three times stronger than steel and transparent. inShare28 Materials
10 Interesting Futuristic Materials
1. Aerogel Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, including "best insulator", and "lowest-density solid". Sometimes called "frozen smoke", aerogel is made by the supercritical drying of liquid gels of alumina, chromia, tin oxide, or carbon. It's 99.8% empty space, which makes it look semi-transparent. Aerogel is a fantastic insulator -- if you had a shield of aerogel, you could easily defend yourself from a flamethrower. 2. Carbon nanotubes are chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp2 bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond. 3. "Metamaterial" refers to any material that gains its properties from its microscopic structure rather than bulk composition. 4. We're starting to lay down thick layers of diamond in CVD machines, hinting towards a future of bulk diamond machinery. 5. Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (ADNRs) are stronger. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Noam Chomsky on human extinction: The corporate elite are actively courting disaster
By Travis GettysWednesday, June 18, 2014 14:08 EDT Climate change poses an imminent threat to human life, said political philosopher Noam Chomsky – and humans are drawing their own doom ever closer. “This is the first time in human history that we have the capacity to destroy the conditions for decent survival, (and) it is already happening,” Chomsky told journalist Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig. Hedges was accused last week by the New Republic of plagiarizing some of his work in Harper’s Magazine and other publications. Chomsky said species destruction had reached the same level as 65 million years ago – when an asteroid hit the earth, ending the period of dinosaurs and wiping up many other species. “It is the same level today, and we are the asteroid,” he said. “Who is accelerating it?” “Mayr argued that the adaptive value of what is called ‘higher intelligence’ is very low,” Chomsky said. “In the 1920s the labor movement had been practically destroyed,” he said.
Pearl River Tower : la tour la plus écologique du monde en Chine
Le cabinet d’architectes SOM inaugurera fin 2010 le gratte ciel le plus écologique de la planète, alors qu’ils viennent à peine d’achever la célèbre tour Burj Khalifa à Dubai, la plus haute tour du monde livrée le 04 janvier 2010 (article ici). Crédits images : SOM Cette tour écolo est en construction en Chine depuis 2006, on la nomme Pearl River Tower : La tour de la rivière des perles. Basé à Chicago, le cabinet d’architectes américain Skidmore, Owings et Merrill (SOM) enchaîne définitivement les records. C’est assez original de constater que cette tour hyper-écolo accueillera bientôt les bureaux de la filiale cantonaise de l’énorme groupe China National Tobacco Corporation, premier vendeur de cigarettes en Chine, surtout qu’au premier abord gratte ciel et écologie ne font pas bon ménage. Les caractéristiques de la Pearl River Tower Hauteur: 310 mètres Nombre d’étages: 71 Surface construite: 214 100 m² Durée des travaux: 2006-2010 Voir plus d’articles sur les tours et gratte ciel
