robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.

“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.

Civilians will be at greater risk, people in Mr. Wallach’s camp argue, because of the challenges in distinguishing between fighters and innocent bystanders. That job is maddeningly difficult for human beings on the ground. It only becomes more difficult when a device is remotely operated.

This problem has already arisen with Predator aircraft, which find their targets with the aid of soldiers on the ground but are operated from the United States. Because civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died as a result of collateral damage or mistaken identities, Predators have generated international opposition and prompted accusations of war crimes.

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician who developed the field of fractal geometry and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields, died on Thursday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 85.

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Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press
Benoît B. Mandelbrot, left, and James A. Yorke, sharing a Japan Prize in 2003 for their pioneering work in chaos theory.
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Wolfgang Beyer
Graphic representations of the Mandelbrot set have been implanted in popular culture, gracing T-shirts and album covers.

TechGenie

TechGenie

Case No 20100531871070 for Computer ID W100340320
I just bought an acer aspire one.
The webcam comes on. pictures can be taken. There are no controls for video however. The video works fine. I can watch myself. The last tech was going to download an applet, but I wasn't on this machine. I was on another one. So what do you think?

Harold Jarche » Complexity and Collaboration

Harold Jarche » Complexity and Collaboration: "Posted on April 16th, 2010 by Harold Jarche

Some of the things I learned on Twitter this past week:

@jonathanfields: “The day you say “that SOB stole my idea” is the day you need to face your own inability to execute.” via @moehlert

@barbarosa1: “There are an increasing number of world problems that can’t be solved by hierarchy. Collaboration is the only chance for a solution.” via @sifowler

@timkastelle Nice post from @EskoKilpi: Complexity. The new world between chance and choice

The Internet changes the patterns of connectivity and makes possible new enriching variety in interaction. The changed dynamics we experience every day through social media have the very characteristics of the edge of chaos.

The sciences of complexity change our perspective and thinking. Perhaps, as a result we should, especially in management, focus more attention on what we are doing than what we should be doing. Following the thinking presented by the most advanced scientific researchers, the important question to answer is not what should happen in the future, but what is happening now?"

What will the net do to institutions in the next 10 years? - Boing Boing

What will the net do to institutions in the next 10 years? - Boing Boing

Clay Shirky, Esther Dyson, Doc Searls, Nicholas Carr, Susan Crawford, David Clark, Jamais Cascio, Peter Norvig, Craig Newmark, Hal Varian, Howard Rheingold, Andreas Kluth, Jeff Jarvis, Andy Oram, Kevin Werbach, David Sifry, Dan Gillmor, Marc Rotenberg, Stowe Boyd, John Pike, Andrew Nachison, Anthony Townsend, Ethan Zuckerman, Tom Wolzien, Stephen Downes, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jim Warren, Sandra Brahman, Barry Wellman, Seth Finkelstein, Jerry Berman, Tiffany Shlain, and Stewart Baker