Re: [xml-dev] [OT] What are the key technical problems of our era?

[Adam Saltiel <adam.saltiel@gmail.com>]

This IS interesting.
I'm pretty much with Jim's pessimism on this.
It's true:a lot of money goes into silly war games of various types.
That does seem to be the other side of the coin of this very evasive concept called identity.
And where nation speak to nation they are, in some way and like it or not, speaking on our behalf relying on that most evasive notion.
Meanwhile there are more apparent things (highlighted in a Rowntree Trust funded report into the state of democracy in the UK), e.g. that of the power of corporations which is one that seems relevant and tractable in the sense that it could change. (There is, of course, an economic dimension to this:corporations are vehicles of wealth creation - earning a living, having a pension - that huge numbers of people are invested in.)
Is there anything here for technical and scientific input?
Coming back to this area of expertise, this example problem is intimately connected with how knowledge is disseminated, accumulated, owned and acted upon, something that XML and Semantic technologies will play an increasing part in.

Though, on the part of pessimism, I think we have a hell of a long way to go to 'stabilise the system'.
And a lot of unavoidable collective pain, for which I feel sorry.

Adam

On 9 Jul 2012, at 09:08, James Fuller wrote:

> back in the 14th/15th century a lot of the problems were cast in the
> light of 'unbounded systems' ... we could not imagine in terms of the
> human race surviving, so my initial list is related to the fact that
> we now need to review entropy of the entire system ;
> 
> * evolving civilisation so we spend less time wasting energy on
> war/defenses with each other
> * asteroid deflection
> * water extraction
> * food production
> 
> w/o sounding too pessimistic, many of the todays technical challenges
> revolve around 'things that dont matter' e.g. but if pressed I would
> say;
> 
> * replacement of currency system to give individual control of taxation
> * creation of low power internet w/o wires (or satellites) to give
> individual control over acces, anonymity, privacy
> * creation of truthful non corruptable global voting systems to
> underpin democracy
> * someone needs to write a new '1984', because that book only shows
> .0001% of what may happen with technology direction we are going
> (think drones in terms of foreign policy, playing video games)  ...
> 
> I am sure other folks can come up with more classical 'problems'
> probably related to space exploration and new frontiers though I can't
> help to think that we have a lot more militarisation of space going on
> then most people realise.
> 
> nice interesting question to start a monday!
> 
> Jim Fuller
> 
> On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 11:27 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>> 
>> In the 15th and 16th century a key problem was that there were no accurate clocks. Accurate clocks were needed by ships at sea to determine their position. Smart individuals, such as the Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christian Huygens, worked and solved this problem with the creation of the pendulum clock along with its mathematical underpinnings.
>> 
>> What are the key technical problems of our time?
>> 
>> What waters can we not sail today because we do not have the technology and the math and science underpinnings to enable it?
>> 
>> /Roger
>> 
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