EU Governments aware of the machine rise

This article is mostly about what the BT (British Telecom) manager said about the importance of women in the future. But there's this interresting quote :

"The government is aware of this trend," he insists. "The EU is looking into it, not just in terms of machine intelligence, but as a problem of globalisation and machine intelligence leading to a surplus of men. It doesn't want large numbers of unemployed men standing around on street corners. We will see lots of demonstrations"

It surely is the biggest challenge of the coming decade. A whole new/different society to build, based on new values (or just the good old money...).

Big Brother is the future (and vice versa)

A nice article about Vernon Vinge's views on the future. And especially about security and privacy. It's clear that people will want more privacy, but technology will also allow to monitor people more efficiently on whatever they do. It's hard to know where the thin limit will be, and nobody has really started to work on that among politicians...

An interresting quote too about the real economic power :

The leaders of most powerful countries are coming to realise that the most important natural resources are not factories or the size of armies. Economic power is in the size of the population that is well-educated, creative and generally happy enough to be optimistic enough to want to do something creative.