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Jul 30 15 7:46 AM
It’s rare that a single chart can can be so simple and yet so horrifying. Such is the case with a chart put together by widely-respected Kleiner Perkins Internet analyst Mary Meeker for her annual presentation on Internet trends. The chart above, shared by Quartz, shows the average number of minutes people spend each day staring at screens. Data is separated by country, and it also shows a breakdown revealing how long our faces are glued to TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets each day. In the United States, people spend an average of 444 minutes every day looking at screens, or 7.4 hours. That breaks down to 147 minutes spent watching TV, 103 minutes in front of a computer, 151 minutes on a smartphones and 43 minutes with a tablet. As sad as those numbers might be, the U.S. is only the sixth worst nation when it comes to staring at screens. At the top of the list is Indonesia, where people spend an average of 540 minutes, or 9 hours each day, looking at their TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step outside for a moment and enjoy some fresh air.
It’s rare that a single chart can can be so simple and yet so horrifying. Such is the case with a chart put together by widely-respected Kleiner Perkins Internet analyst Mary Meeker for her annual presentation on Internet trends.
The chart above, shared by Quartz, shows the average number of minutes people spend each day staring at screens. Data is separated by country, and it also shows a breakdown revealing how long our faces are glued to TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets each day.
In the United States, people spend an average of 444 minutes every day looking at screens, or 7.4 hours. That breaks down to 147 minutes spent watching TV, 103 minutes in front of a computer, 151 minutes on a smartphones and 43 minutes with a tablet.
As sad as those numbers might be, the U.S. is only the sixth worst nation when it comes to staring at screens. At the top of the list is Indonesia, where people spend an average of 540 minutes, or 9 hours each day, looking at their TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step outside for a moment and enjoy some fresh air.
Source http://bgr.com/2014/05/29/smartphone-computer-usage-study-chart/
Maybe we should take the warnings of RoboCop more seriously. Famous scientists, engineers, and businessmen are banding together to call for a ban on autonomous weapons development. In an open letter published today by the Future of Life Institute—a research group concerned with making sure humanity stays in charge of our technological future—Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak, along with hundreds of other researchers, signed on to the idea that “starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea.” The letter questions the idea of researching technology that can be used to remotely kill humans without anyone telling the weapon to do so. While we have aerial technology today that lets us kill someone in the Middle East from a shipping container outside of Las Vegas, this is not what the Institute is concerning itself with. The letter says its focus is not on “cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions.” Rather, the institute is worried about easily replicable technology that could search and kill humans based on “pre-defined criteria.” Unlike nuclear weapons, [autonomous weapons] require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. While current autonomous technologies are struggling to stand on their own two feet and learn defensive driving techniques, the institute says military technology that could lead to robots killing humans could be “feasible within years, not decades.”
Maybe we should take the warnings of RoboCop more seriously. Famous scientists, engineers, and businessmen are banding together to call for a ban on autonomous weapons development.
In an open letter published today by the Future of Life Institute—a research group concerned with making sure humanity stays in charge of our technological future—Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak, along with hundreds of other researchers, signed on to the idea that “starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea.”
The letter questions the idea of researching technology that can be used to remotely kill humans without anyone telling the weapon to do so. While we have aerial technology today that lets us kill someone in the Middle East from a shipping container outside of Las Vegas, this is not what the Institute is concerning itself with. The letter says its focus is not on “cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions.”
Rather, the institute is worried about easily replicable technology that could search and kill humans based on “pre-defined criteria.”
Unlike nuclear weapons, [autonomous weapons] require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
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