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#4
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PROBLEMS / POSSIBILITIES
in the SOCIO-ENVIRO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM
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PROBLEMS
MANY ISSUES & EXISTENTIAL RISKS
SYSTEMIC FAILURES / HUNGER / POVERTY / HOPELESSNESS / DESTRUCTION
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INEQUALITY
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Top 1%
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The Bottom of the Pyramid
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Obscene Wealth
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Terrible Poverty
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Urban slums
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Malnutrition
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Starvation
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Genocide
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Corporate decision makers have eliminated many well paid middle class jobs
Many jobs were outsourced to places where wages were lower, working conditions dangerous and environmental impact uncontrolled. These places had positive economic growth at the expense of the workers who had lost their jobs! Corporate executives and stockholders also benefitted at the expense of those who had lost their jobs.
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FINANCIALIZATION
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Stock market
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Intangible value
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Money supply
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World GDP growth
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US GDP growth
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GDP v GPI
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A digital virtual world has taken over from the real world
Binary logic is so much easier than reality. Computers have little ability to do complex thinking, and substitute massive speed for thoughtfulness. There is a lot more data, but not much more understanding.
This has been aided and abetted by business schools that equate financial wealth with success. Money wealth has grown rapidly, but not so much happiness, and natural capital has been degraded and destroyed.
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CLIMATE CRISIS
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Cyclone
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Wind
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Eye of storm
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Hurricane
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Floods
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Floods
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Leaders have failed to address the crisis of climate change for many years
Leaders in business, banking, politics and academia, as well as consumers, have done little or nothing to change 'business as usual' even though the scientific concensus since the 1980s has been that climate change was being aggravated by modern industrial activities. There is now a climate crisis.
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EVIL LEADERSHIP / NO MORAL COMPASS
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Yemen
Ali Abdullah Saleh,
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Liberia
Charles Taylor,
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Syria
Bashar al-Assad
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Libya
Muammar Gaddafi
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Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe
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Uganda
Idi Amin
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Some very nasty national leaders
National leadership matters. There was a lot of criticism of the role of colonialism much of which was justified, but leadership in many nations around the world is deeply flawed with those in power enriching themselves at the expense of the people. International assistance has been minimally effective.
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MANY ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED
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INEQUALITY
A problem that has been growing for about 4 decades ... and ignored for all this time. Rich 'successful' people are responsible for this and will not do anything about it.
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Obscene Wealth
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Terrible Poverty
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Juxtaposed
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Inequality
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UNHAPPINESS
While many economic indicators have improved, many social indicators have deteriorated. Many people in rich countries are economically stressed and this is reflected in their behavior and state of health. For many things are getting worse not better.
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Unhappiness
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Suicide
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Stress
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Inequality
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STARVATION / MALNUTRITION
Mostly caused by war and violence, but increasingly also being caused by dysfunctional governing institutions and climate change.
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Africa
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North Korea
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Somalia
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Food-Insecurity
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WAR / DESTRUCTION
The value destruction associated with war is ignored in metrics like GDP ... though the production of the bombs that do the damage are included.
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Aleppo, Syria
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Sanaa, Yemen
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Mosul, Iraq
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-War
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DEATH ... WANTON KILLING
The horror of killing ... genocide ... is tough to witness. But too many world leaders have been responsible for this behavior in both the distant and recent past.
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Monrovia, Liberia
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Darfur, Sudan
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Rwanda
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Wanton-Killing
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URBAN DEGRADATION
The modern 'for profit' market driven economy does not result in quality affordable housing, but rather extreme opulance or derelict properties and slums.
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Detroit, USA
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Modern slums
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Kibera, Kenya
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Urban-Degradation
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POLLUTION
Products are important to improve standard of living and quality of life, but most products post use then become waste that in many cases pollutes the planets for a very long time.
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Air pollution
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Land fill
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Plastic
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Industrial-Pollution
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LAND DEGRADATION
Undeveloped natural land is very important for the operation of the global ecosystem, but more and more of natueral land is being developed either for agriculture or for industrial or urban development.
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Mining
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Deforestation
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Desertification
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Degraded-Land
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EXTREME WEATHER
Extreme weather events are getting more frequent and more ferocious. This is not suprising given the huge increase in the latent energy of the climate system that results from just a small increase in global temperatuve.
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Hurricanes
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Rain / Flooding
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Tropical depressions
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Climate-Change
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DROUGHT / WATER SHORTAGES
In a drought ... without water, vegetation dies, livestock die and eventually people die. Without water, life cannot be sustained.
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No water
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everything
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dies
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More ...
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Open L0700-XR-Drought-Water-Shortages
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PUBLIC FINANCE CRISIS
The world has more money today than at any time in history. Financial wealth is at historic records. But most of this wealth is concentrated in a few private hands and public finance is starved of needed resources.
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Investment bulls
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Stock Markets
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Money
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More ...
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POSSIBILITIES
MANY GREAT IDEAS AND INITIATIVES
GOOD PEOPLE / AMAZING TECHNOLOGY / HUGE POSSIBILITIES
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MOST PEOPLE ARE GOOD PEOPLE
There are good nice people everywhere on the planet. They need to have ways to better themselves and to better the world. A relatively few bad actors make a better world very difficult to achieve.
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Arab Women
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Arab Men
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Indian family
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Nigerian Kids
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Vietnam worker
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US Worker
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... and some exceptional leaders
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Paul Polman
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Norm Chomsky
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Nelson Mandella
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Mike Bloomberg
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Martin Luther King
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John Glenn
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AMAZING TECHNOLOGY
Rapid technological development over past 200 years ... and accelerating
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The challenge that needs to be addressed is to ensure that technology is deployed in a way that does good, and not in ways that have detrimental impact.
There is ample evidence that an uncontrolled market based system does not ensure that detrimental impacts are avoided. This is not a new problem. However, it has become increasingly problematic in recent decades as the enterprise system has been financialized and dominated more and more by performance metrics for profits, without equally powerful metrics about impact on society and impact on the environment.
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AEROSPACE
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Passenger Aircraft
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Jet engines
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Satellites
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The Wright brothers made the first powered flight in 1903. The progress since then is amazing. Measured in time, the world is much smaller now with ubiquitous commercial flights, Jet engines have massive power, and satellites are able to watch our every move.
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MEDIA and COMMUNICATIONS
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Print Media
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Search
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Social Media
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Media and communications are an essential feature of a civilized society. News moves faster now than at any time in history, but the accuracy, objectivity and truthfulness of the news has dangerously degraded. There is power to communicate but little power to moderate!
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KNOWLEDGE
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Albert Einstein
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Print Media
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Internet / WWW
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The increase in raw knowledge during the past century has been amazing and is continuing to accelerate. At the same time there has also been an increase in the amount and speed of knowledge transmission. Unfortunately there has been a total absence of quality control related to the quality of the knowledge.
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COMPUTER SCIENCE
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Quantum computing
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Telephony
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Space technology
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All sorts of possibilities now exist because of advances in technology. The challenge is to encourage the good and stop the bad. The problem is that power and profit is the dominant force in decision making with social good and environmental responsibility almost totally ignored. This is dangerous.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
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Evolution of AI
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AI hardware
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Third Wave AI
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The algorithms that drive AI have the ability to sort through a lot of data very fast, draw some conclusions and then do another sort, and another and another getting more accurate answers the more they iterate. No question it can be helpful, but still not very good at understanding why!
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ELECTRONIC DATA PROCESSING (EDP)
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IBM
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Microsoft
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Oracle
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In the early days of electonic data processing (EDP) these were the companies that dominated the market ... IBM for mainframe computers, Microsoft for personal computer operating systems and Oracle for database technology.
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MATERIALS
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Concrete
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Plastics
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High strength steels
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Many modern engineering marvels have been made possible by the development of modern materials that are stronger and lighter than what has been available in the past.
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MEDICAL SCIENCE
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Genetic code / DNA
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Pharmaceuticals
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MRI technology
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The progress of medical science is impressive. Sadly the benefits of amazing science is not widely available to the general public because of the appalling disorganization and political decision making that gets in the way. Better is possible, but the reality is ongoing degadation of world health.
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FREIGHT TRANSPORT / LOGISTICS
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Freight rail
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Trucks
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Container Ships
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The movement of freight in the modern world is immense ... by truck, by rail, by sea and indeed by air. Big business has reduced costs by producing in low cost places and moving the goods to markets using the lowest cost logistics available. Much of this has been enabled by technology and business leaders and investors have done little to mitigate social and environmental concenrs.
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PASSENGER TRANSPORT
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Passenger Rail
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Passenger Car
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Passenger Bus
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It is not so long ago that horses were the power that moved people, and we now take for granted the role of modern technology in enabling our movement ... the train, the car and the bus, not to mention aircraft. We are increasingly spread out which has both advantages and disadvantages.
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PRODUCTION ENGINEERING / MATERIALS
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3D Printing
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Hot rolled steel
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Composites
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There has been huge progress in the engineering of materials over the past several decades. This has been an important factor in enabling improved production productivity and operational performance. Improved materials have enabled record profits in many industries.
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ROBOTICS
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Robotic welding
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Robotic assembly
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Robotic warehouse
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The use of 'robots' to do routine tasks has been emerging for many decades and progressing with the development of relevant technology ... especially digital control technology. The use of echnology to improve production performance is not new, but the manner in which all of wage savings has become incremental profit is as bad today as it has ever been!
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SOCIAL MEDIA
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Google
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Facebook
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Twitter
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The promise of social media has not been achieved ... rather the promise has been utterly compromised by greed and to a great extent incompetence. The potential for good is huge, but in practical terms the good has been overtaken by all sorts of bad.
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