5 September 2017 (2021 • 3 years ago)
274-the-age-of-the-algorithm
https://soundcloud.com/roman-mars/274-the-age-of-the-algorithm
23:15
Computer algorithms now shape our world in profound and mostly invisible ways. They predict if we’ll be valuable customers and whether we’re likely to repay a loan. They filter what we see on social media, sort through resumes, and evaluate job performance. They inform prison sentences and monitor our health. Most of these algorithms have been created with good intentions. The goal is to replace subjective judgments with objective measurements. But it doesn’t always work out like that.
Cathy O’Neil, author of the book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, 2016.
“I don’t think mathematical models are inherently evil — I think it’s the way they’re used that are evil,” says mathematician Cathy O’Neil, author of the book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. She has studied number theory, worked as a data scientist at start-ups, and built predictive algorithms for various private enterprises. Through her work, she’s become critical about the influence of poorly-designed algorithms.
# public radio
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" . . many systems in society are basically poorly designed algorithms . . ."
~ Bill Gates
“There’s certainly a level of complex, symbolic thinking that is valuable to be exposed to. Personally, I might put statistics in instead of geometry. I’d put statistics in before calculus,”
“I do find that people who have computer science backgrounds, when given a problem from another domain, the idea that they take the system and they look at the size of various elements, they look at the rate-limiting steps for various elements, and they can say, ‘OK, we need to optimize here,’ that type of thinking is like—uh, yeah,” Gates said. “And what other domain gives you that type of systems thinking? Maybe some parts of science and engineering, but the basic notion of what’s an algorithm, and that many systems in society are basically poorly designed algorithms, I think that’s very worthwhile.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm
Algorithm - the general meaning - is a method for solving a class of number problems toward a goal. Algorithm is directly linked with Hindu-Arabic numbering system, math (mathematic, arithmetic) and, has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects.
As an example, the algorithm (recipe, instruction, method) for cooking, and/or preparing a food dish, a drink, soup, or vegetable salad. As an other example, the method (algorithm) children are taught to count from one to five would be to use the fingers attached to your hand, first with your hand close, and then as you count: one, you would open your thumb; two, you would open the index finger; three, you would open the middle finger; four, you would open the ring finger; five, you would open the pinky. As most children have a hand and five fingers, this would be a method (algorithm) that should work for most children.
In the learning, the studying, the doing, the work, the research, and the development of mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an ordered list of implementable instructions, to solve a category of problems or to perform a math (arithmetic) operation. Generally, Algorithms are unambiguous and are used as a detail step-by-step instruction to be followed exactly without deviation or mistake for performing calculations, data processing, automated reasoning, and other tasks. Should there be a high-rate of failure in the algorithm (instruction) execution, then the algorithm (instruction) should be re-examined and work on. For example, putting in error checking, and, error correction steps along the different elements of the algorithmic instruction.
The word 'algorithm' has its roots in Latinizing the nisba, indicating his geographic origin, of the name of Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi to algorismus.[17][18] Al-Khwārizmī (Arabized Persian الخوارزمی c. 780–850) was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad,[11] whose name means 'the native of Khwarazm', a region that was part of Greater Iran and is now in Uzbekistan.[19][20] About 825, al-Khwarizmi wrote an Arabic language treatise on the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, which was translated into Latin during the 12th century. The manuscript starts with the phrase Dixit Algorizmi ('Thus spake Al-Khwarizmi'), where "Algorizmi" was the translator's Latinization of Al-Khwarizmi's name.[21] Al-Khwarizmi was the most widely read mathematician in Europe in the late Middle Ages, primarily through another of his books, the Algebra.[22] In late medieval Latin, algorismus, English 'algorism', the corruption of his name, simply meant the "decimal number system".[23] In the 15th century, under the influence of the Greek word ἀριθμός (arithmos), 'number' (cf. 'arithmetic'), the Latin word was altered to algorithmus, and the corresponding English term 'algorithm' is first attested in the 17th century; the modern sense was introduced in the 19th century.[24]
In English, it was first used in about 1230 and then by Chaucer in 1391. English adopted the French term, but it wasn't until the late 19th century that "algorithm" took on the meaning that it has in modern English.[25]
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction
Weapons of Math Destruction is a 2016 American book about the societal impact of algorithms, written by Cathy O'Neil. It explores how some big data algorithms are increasingly used in ways that reinforce preexisting inequality. It was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction,[1][2][3] has been widely reviewed,[4] and won the Euler Book Prize.
how the use of big data and algorithms in a variety of fields, including insurance, advertising, education, and policing, can lead to decisions that harm the poor, reinforce racism, and amplify inequality.
She [Cathy O'Neil] posits that these problematic mathematical tools share three key features: they are opaque, unregulated, and difficult to contest. They are also scalable, thereby amplifying any inherent biases to affect increasingly larger populations.
In 2019, the book won the Euler Book Prize of the Mathematical Association of America.[7]
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction
► https://www.c-span.org/video/?414440-1/cathy-oneil-discusses-weapons-math-destruction
► https://duckduckgo.com/?q=youtube+weapon+of+math+destruction
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James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
p.84
This invention was itself a species of number, given the name logarithm.
It was number as tool.
p.84
Henry Briggs explained:
Logarithmes are Numbers invented for the more easie working of questions in Arithmetike and Geometrie. The name is derived of Logos, which signifies Reason, and Arithmos, signifying Numbers.
By them all troublesome Multiplication and Divisions in Arithmetike are avoided, and performed onely by Addition in stead of Multiplication, and by Subtraction in stead of Division.
p.85
new book
The author was a wealthy Scotsman, John Napier
John Napier (or Napper, Nepair, Naper, of Neper), the eighth laird of Merchiston castle,
p.86
a useful table of logarithms
p.87
Knowledge has a value and a discovery cost, each to be counted and weighed.
p.87
table of logarithms
Even this exciting discovery took several years to travel as far as Johannes Kepler, who employed it in perfecting his celestial tables in 1627, based on the laboriously acquired data of Tycho Brahe.
James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
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James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
p.89
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Fundamentally, there was only one calculus. Newton and Leibniz knew how similar their work was──enough that each accused the other of plagiarism. But they had devised incompatible systems of notation ── different languages ── an in practice these surface differences mattered more than the underlying sameness.
p.89
Symbols and operators were what a mathematician had to work with, after all.
pp.90-91
Never mind if it seemed French.
He declared, “We have now to re-import the exotic, with nearly a century of foreign improvement, and to render it once more indigenous among us.”
p.91
Yet their evangelism worked: the new methods spread from the bottom up, students learning faster than their teachers.
p.91
The dots of Newton faded from the scene, his fluxions replaced by the notation and language of Leibniz.
p.91
But the Analytical Society was serious.
Babbage and Herschel and Peacock, resolved to “do their best to leave the world a wiser place than they found it.”
James Gleick., The information : a history, a theory, a flood, 2011
•
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Kranzberg’s Six Laws of Technology, a Metaphor, and a Story
August 25, 2011 ~ L. M. Sacasas
In 1985, he [Melvin Kranzberg] delivered the presidential address at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in which he explained what had already come to be known as Kranzberg’s Laws — “a series of truisms,” according to Kranzberg, “deriving from a longtime immersion in the study of the development of technology and its interactions with sociocultural change.”
First Law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” By which he means that,
“technology’s interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.”
Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity. “Every technical innovation seems to require additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective.”
Third Law: Technology comes in packages, big and small. “The fact is that today’s complex mechanisms usually involve several processes and components.”
Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions. “… many complicated sociocultural factors, especially human elements, are involved, even in what might seem to be ‘purely technical’ decisions.” “Technologically ‘sweet’ solutions do not always triumph over political and social forces.”
Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant. “Although historians might write loftily of the importance of historical understanding by civilized people and citizens, many of today’s students simply do not see the relevance of history to the present or to their future. I suggest that this is because most history, as it is currently taught, ignores the technological element.”
Sixth Law: Technology is a very human activity-and so is the history of technology. “Behind every machine, I see a face–indeed, many faces: the engineer, the worker, the businessman or businesswoman, and, sometimes, the general and admiral. Furthermore, the function of the technology is its use by human beings–and sometimes, alas, its abuse and misuse.”
A story recounted by Kranzberg to good effect:
A lady came up to the great violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and gushed, “Maestro, your violin makes such beautiful music.” Kreisler held his violin up to his ear and said, “I don’t hear any music coming out of it.” You see, the instrument, the hardware, the violin itself, was of no use without the human element. But then again, without the instrument, Kreisler would not have been able to make music.
source:
► https://thefrailestthing.com/2011/08/25/kranzbergs-six-laws-of-technology-a-metaphor-and-a-story/
► https://ecologise.in/2018/02/25/melvin-kranzbergs-six-laws-technology-metaphor-story/
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Kranzberg's laws of technology
Melvin Kranzberg's six laws of technology[4] state:
1. Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
2. Invention is the mother of necessity
3. Technology comes in packages, big and small.
4. Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
5. All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
6. Technology is a very human activity – and so is the history of technology.[5]
Melvin Kranzberg's six laws of [algorithm][4] state:
1. [Algorithm] is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
2. Invention is the mother of necessity
3. [Algorithm] comes in packages, big and small.
4. Although [algorithm] might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in [algorithmic]-policy decisions.
5. All history is relevant, but the history of [algorithm] is the most relevant.
6. [Algorithm] is a very human activity – and so is the history of [algorithm].[5]
source:
► https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Kranzberg
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1:25:12
College Lecture Series - Neil Postman - "The Surrender of Culture to Technology"
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=173
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=173
College of DuPage
Published on Jun 3, 2013
A lecture delivered by Neil Postman on Mar. 11, 1997 in the Arts Center. Based on the author's book of the same title. Neil Postman notes the dependence of Americans on technological advances for their own security. Americans have come to expect technological innovations to solve the larger problems of mankind. Technology itself has become a national "religion" which people take on faith as the solution to their problems.
// ctrl-H
// technology => [algorithm]
7 questions
1. what is the problem to which this [algorithm] is a solution?
2. whose problem is it?
3. suppose we solve this problem, and solve it decisively, what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?
4. which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution
5. what changes in language are being enforced by new technologies?
what is being gained and what is being lost by such changes?
6. what sort of people and institution acquire special economic and political power, because of technological change?
this question needs to be asked, because the transformation of a [algorithm] into medium always results in a realignment of economic and political power.
7. what alternative uses might be made of an [algorithm] the one proceeds here by assuming that any medium we have created is not necessarily the only one we might make of a particular [algorithm]
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1035
1. what is the problem to which this [algorithm] is a solution?
now this question needs to be asked, because there are technologies that are not solution to any problem that a normal person would regard as significant
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1440
2. whose problem is it?
but this question, whose problem is it, needs to be applied to any technologies. most technologies do solve some problem, but the problem may not be everybody's problem or even most people's problem. we need to be very careful in determining who will benefit from a [algorithm], and who will pay for it. they are not always the same people.
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1521
3. suppose we solve this problem, and solve it decisively, what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?
the automobile solves some very important problems for most people
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1740
4. which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2259
5. what changes in language are being enforced by new technologies?
what is being gained and what is being lost by such changes?
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2746
6. what sort of people and institution acquire special economic and political power, because of technological change?
this question needs to be asked, because the transformation of an [algorithm] into medium always results in a realignment of economic and political power.
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=2925
7. what alternative uses might be made of a [algorithm] the one proceeds here by assuming that any medium we have created is not necessarily the only one we might make of a particular [algorithm]
https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=3037
1. what is the problem to which a [algorithm] claims to be the solution
2. whose problem is it
3. what new problems will be created because of solving an old one
4. which people in institutions will be most harmed
5. what changes in language are being promoted
6. what shifts in economic and political power are likely to result
7. what alternative media might be made from a [algorithm]
automobile, television, computer, [algorithm]
the same blindness, no one is asking anything worth asking
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Brooks, Frederick P., Jr. (Frederick Phillips)
The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering / Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed.
includes biliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-201-83595-9
1. Software engineering
© 1985
representation (mmm)
pp.102-103
Representation Is the Essence of Programming.
. . . Sometimes strategic breakthrough will be a new algorithm, such as the Cooley-Tukey Fast Fourier Transform or the substitution of n log n sort for an n^2 set of comparisons.
Much more often, strategic breakthrough will come from redoing the representation of the data or tables. This is where the heart of the program lies. Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll obvious.
It is easy to multiply examples of the power of representations. I recall a young man undertaking to build an elaborate console interpreter for an IBM 650. He ended up packing it onto an incredible small amount of space by building an interpreter for the interpreter, recognizing that human interactions are slow and infrequent, but space was dear. Digitek's elegant little Fortran compiler uses a very dense, specialized representation for the compiler code itself, so that external storage is not needed. That time lost in decoding this representation is gained back tenfold by avoiding input-output. (The exercises at the end of Chapter 6 in Brooks and Iverson, Automatic Data Processing [1] include a collection of such examples, as do many of Knuth's exercises.[2])
The programmer at wit's end for lack of space can often do best by disentengling himself from his code, rearing back, and contemplating his data. Representation is the essence of programming.
(The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, pp.102-103 )
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p.182
The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: data sets, relationships among data items, algorithms, and invocation of functions. This essence is abstract, in that the conceptual construct is the same under many different representations. It is nonetheless highly precise and richly detailed.
I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation. We still make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared to the conceptual errors in most systems.
(The mythical man-month : essays on software engineering, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- Anniversary ed., © 1985, Software engineering, p.182)
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A View of the Parallel Computing Landscape
Krste Asanovic, Rastislav Bodík, James Demmel, Tony Keaveny, Kurt Keutzer,
John Kubiatowicz, Nelson Morgan, David Patterson, Koushik Sen,
John Wawrzynek, David Wessel, and Katherine Yelick
© 2010 Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Reprinted by permission. This work originally appeared as “A view of the parallel computing landscape” by Krste Asanovic, Rastislav Bodík, James Demmel, Tony Keaveny, Kurt Keutzer, John Kubiatowicz, Nelson Morgan, David Patterson, Koushik Sen, John Wawrzynek, David Wessel, and Katherine Yelick in the Communications of the ACM, Volume 52, Issue 10, pages 56-67, October 2009.
The best-designed network processor is arguably the Cisco Silicon Packet Processor, also known as Metro, which has 188 five-stage RISC cores, plus four spares to help yield, and dissipates just 35 Watts.
One notable challenge for the hardware tower is that it takes four to five years [4 to 5 years] to design and build chips and to port software to evaluate them. Given this lengthy cycle, how can researchers innovate more quickly?
... ... ...
A second challenge is that two critical pieces of system software—compilers and operating systems—have grown large and unwieldy and hence resistant to change. One estimate is that it takes a decade [10-years] for a new compiler optimization to become part of production compilers. How can researchers innovate rapidly if compilers and operating systems evolve glacially?
... ... ...
Convention holds that truly useful patterns are not invented but mined from successful software applications.
... ... ...
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“A Design Pattern Language for Engineering (Parallel) Software”
Kurt Keutzer and Tim Mattson
© 2010 Intel corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. This work originally appeared as “A Design Pattern Language for Engineering (Parallel) Software” by Kurt Keutzer and Tim Mattson, in the Intel Technology Journal 13 (2010): 4.
OPL (Our Pattern Language)
Figure 1: the structure of OPL and the 5 categories of design patterns
Applications
Structural patterns
pipe-and-filter
agent-and-repository
process-control
event-based/ implicit-invocation
arbitrary-static-task-graph
model-view-controller
iterative-refinement
map-reduce
layered-systems
puppeteer
Computational patterns
graph-algorthms
dynamic-programming
dense-linear-algebra
sparse-linear-algebra
unstructured-grids
structured-grids
graphical-models
finite-state-machines
backtrack-branch-and-bound
N-body-methods
circuits
spectral-methods
monte-carlo
Parallel algorithm strategy patterns
task-parallelism
divide and conquer
data-parallelism
pipeline
discrete-event
geometric-decomposition
speculation
Implementation strategy patterns
program structure
SPMD
fork/join
kernel-par.
loop-par.
vector-par.
actors
work-pile
Implementation strategy patterns
work-pile
Implementation strategy patterns
data structure
shared-queue
shared-map
shared-data
partitioned-array
partitioned-graph
Parallel execution patterns
coordinating processes
stream processing
shared address space threads
task driven execution
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pp.61—62
the trap of mind-set
In problem solving, search patterns of even the most intelligent people can be bound by prior experience and successes.3 In fact, people fall into habits of thought precluding innovative problem solving with amazing ease and speed——even for the most minor of tasks. In experiments conducted a generation ago, researchers discovered what they dubbed "functional fixedness"——i.e., the tendency for people to be quite fixed in their perception of how objects could be used once that use was suggested. For example, two groups of people were given identical supplies (a stack of papers, a stapler, and a paper clip) and a simple task——to fasten the papers to each other and to the wall. The experimental group's papers were fastened together with the clip, whereas the control group received its clip in an envelope. This seemingly small difference created a mind-set among the members of the experimental group: they were significantly slower to think of unbending the paper clip into a wire hook to fasten the papers to the wall.4 A number of researchers replicated this experiment in various ways, demonstrating that even slight prior experience with an object negatively affected people's ability to think creatively about it use.5 As one pair of early researchers concluded, "[F]unctional fixedness . . . interferes with problem solving."6
The phenomenon underlying the development of such mind-sets as functional fixedness seems to be the brain's natural tendency to store, process, and retrieve information in related blocks. Without some way of bundling information for parsimonious handling, we could not manage its continual flow from the environment. These blocks constitute mental models, or schema, against which we calibrate information and that we use to solve problems.7 Mind-sets, therefore, are higly useful in routine activities. In fact, if the technique toward which prior experience biases us provides the best solution to a particular problem, applying that solution is both efficient and effective.8 In an organization, when such techniques are reinforced over time by success, the patterns of thought fall into well-worn grooves 9 and become part of a business capability. The problem is that, as we have already seen, the limited range of problem-solving responses developed can become dysfunctional and contribute to core rigidities.10
(Leonard-Barton, Dorothy, copyright © 1995, HD30.2.L46 1995, 658.4'038——dc20)
(Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1. information technology——management, 2. information resources management, 3. management information systems, )
(pp.61—62)
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Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990
pp.41-42
Problem solving
A problem does not have to be presented in a formal manner nor is it a matter for pencil and paper working out. A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants. It may be a matter of avoiding something, of getting something, of getting rid of something, of getting to know what one wants.
There are three-types of problem:
• The first type of problem requires for its solution more information or better techniques for handling information.
• The second type of problem requires no new information but a rearrangement of information already available: an insight restructuring.
• The third type of problem is the problem of no problem. One is blocked by the adequacy of the present arrangement from moving to a much better one. There is no point at which one can focus one's efforts to reach the better arrangement because one is not even aware that there is a better arrangement. The problem is to realize that ‘there is a problem’ to realize that ‘things can be improved’ and to define ‘this realization as a problem’.
(Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990, )
goal as to “not merely show a man how to better gain his goals. It also estimates for him what [are] his goals really - something he may not be aware of at all.” (Churchman 1961, p.207)
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Antony C. Sutton and Viktor Suvorov on Technology Transfer from the West to the Soviet Union
by Peter Myers
Date October 14, 2003; update July 8, 2019.
•••• ••• ••••
As a further indicator of Soviet technical backwardness, it may be noted that some Western firms selling to the Soviet Union have found "so many gaps in the control schemes proposed" that a two-phase quotation format has been adopted: first a feasibility study is conducted (for which the Western company is paid), and then the actual quotation is determined for a complete system based on the feasibility study. In other words, technical inadequacy is such that the Soviets have not been able to specify exactly what is wanted. What this reflects is not a lack of scientific skill; it shows a lack of information on the technical constituents of a modern industrial system.
•••• ••• ••••
I am saying that Sutton is historically accurate, in documenting Soviet adopting of Western technology, but wrong in his conclusion - which is really his starting-point, his ideological assumption - that the state should stay out of the economy.
I added those remarks as an outcome of discussions with Phil Eversoul, who was using Sutton to buttress his "Austrian school" laissez-faire economic philosophy.
The demise of Russia & associated states since the fall of the USSR is evidence of this. The rise of Japan, and of China - now following the Japan model - is another.
The Soviets did obtain Western technology, but one must not draw the wrong conclusions from this. Many countries copy each other's technology. Japan, too, in the early days of its postwar miracle, cloned many Western industrial products. Japan has been reluctant about supplying high-tech products to China, because it knows that China (of similar mind to itself) will clone them too.
Further, the Cold War was an unequal struggle, in technological terms. The Soviet block was competing versus the US, Japan, West Germany, France, and Britain, all leading industrial countries.
The Soviets did have their own triumphs - eg the Sputnik, putting Gagarin in orbit, and their space program.
source:
http://mailstar.net/sutton.html
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Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983
p.59
According to Creighton, Morgan later confessed that he had known about Stern's work a the time. But, as he explained (about a year after his intervention), he was also aware of the fact that, even though Creighton and McClintock had begun the summer before, it would have been a simple matter for Stern to overtake them. With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days. Creighton recalls Morgan's saying, “I thought it was about time that corn got a chance to beat Drosophila!”
pp.59-60
6th International Congress of Genetics convened in Ithaca, New York.
836 members from thirty-six countries,
The meeting open on August 24, 1932, with 536 geneticists registered (many of the European delegates had been unable to attend).
p.60
By way of summary, he concluded with a list of the five most important problems for geneticists in the immediate future. First was an understanding of “the physical and physiological processes involved in the growth of genes and their duplication”; second, “an interpretation in physical terms of the changes that take place during and after the conjugation of the chromosomes”; third, “the relation of genes to characters”; fourth, “the nature of the mutation process”; fifth, “the application of genetics to horticulture and to animal husbandry.”9
(A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock./ Evelyn Fox Keller., 1. McClintock, Barbara, 1902- ., 2. geneticists──united states──biography., QH439.2.M38K44 1983, 575.1'092'4, 10th anniversary edition, 1983, )
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Taiichi Ohno, Taiichi Ohno's workplace management, 2013 [ ]
English translation by Jon Miller
pp.175―178
SELECTED SAYINGS OF TAIICHI OHNO
On Understanding the Numbers
People who can't understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.
p.178
On Taking His Advice
You are fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don't do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
( Taiichi Ohno's workplace management: special 100th birthday edition, English translation by Jon Miller, copyright © 2013 by the macgraw-hill companies, inc., pp.175―178 )
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Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
p.246
The industrial revolution, beginning in Great Britain in the last third of the 18th century, had at its center a rapidly expanding armamentarium of new technologies involving new power sources, new techniques of metallury and machine making, a new modes of transportation. These new technologies, when successfully organized and administered, brought immense improvements in the productivity that transformed the lives of all participants.
p.246
The separate innovations - in metallury, power generation, and transportation - were, in significant ways, interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Often, one innovation could not be extensively exploited in the absence of others or the introduction of one innovation made others more effective. Metallurgical improvements, for example, were absolutely indispensable to the construction of more efficient steam engines. The steam engine, in turn, was utilized for introducting a hot blast of air into the blast furnace. The hot blast, by improving the efficiency of the combustion process, lowered fuel requirements and thereby reduced th price of iron. Thus, cheaper metal meant cheaper power, and cheaper power was translated into even cheaper metal. Similarly, the availability of cheap iron was essential to the construction of railroads. Once in place, however, the railroads reduced the considerable cost of transporting coal and iron ore to a single location. In this fashion, railroads reduced the cost of making iron. But cheaper iron, in turn, meant cheaper rails; this involved a further lowering of transportation costs, which again decreased the cost of producing iron. Thus, part of the secret of the vast productivity improvements associated with the new industrial technology was the the separate innovations were often interrelated and mutually reinforcing.
Although this transformation, which we call the industrial revolution, began in Britian, there was never any doubt that such new technologies would spread and be adopted elsewhere when the circumstances and surrounding condition permitted (or were created).
p.126
In addition, the behavior of metals after prolonged use or with aging is still very difficult to analyze. Metal fatigue remains a nemesis in the design and construction of aircraft. Simulation methods for studying aging, methods that, for example, are supposed to accelerate the aging process of certain alloys, have not proven to be a reliable guide in the recent past.9
p.126
9 “Steiner pointed out that ‘accelerated aging’ tests have not proved accurate in the past. He cited the case of certain alloys that ‘aged in a most peculiar manner’ a few years ago. In five to ten years, these alloys ─ utilized on the Boeing 707 and other transports ─ developed inter-granular corrosion, requiring expensive inspection procedures and replacement.” “Greater Government R&D Urged to Spur Advances”, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 12 September 1977, p. 35. Steiner was a Boeing vice-president in charge of production evaluation at the time.
p.126
The performance of new engines remains notoriously uncertain in the development process; problems much be dealt with essentially by trial and error. Thus, onemust not exaggerate the extent to which, even today, the design of aircraft can draw upon precise scientific methodology.10 Much of the essential knowledge in th aircraft design and construction can still be derived only from in-flight learning.11
(Inside the black box./ Nathan Rosenberg, 1. technological innovations., 2. technology─social aspects., HC79.T4R673 1982, 338'.06, first published 1982, )
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[SAIF 2019] day 1: towards compositional understanding of the world by deep learning - Yoshua Bengio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLFrvC03AQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLFrvC03AQ
samsung
Feb 5, 2020
47:50
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Braudel
The Perspective of the World
Civilization & Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Volume 3
translation from the French
by Siân Reynolds
pp.86-87
Without perhaps making it sufficiently clear, I have consistently been stressing progress or decline at the highest level of social life: in culture (the culture of the elite), social order (that of the most privileged at the top of the pyramid), the state (at government level), and economic production (in the sector of circulation and exchange, which in fact means only a part of production, that of the most developed areas). Like all historians and without meaning to, I have automatically been neglecting the lot of the great mass of mankind, and the huge majority of the living beings. What happened in the broad terms to these masses during the ebbs and flow of the secular trend?
Paradoxically, things were worse for them when all the indicators of the economy were set fair, when increased production was making its effects felt, increasing the number of people, but laying a heavier burden on the various worlds of action and labour. A gap open up, as Earl J. Hamilton141 has shown, between prices and wages - which lagged behind.
p.32
When Amsterdam replaced Antwerp, when London took over from Amsterdam, or when in about 1929, New York overtook London, it always meant a massive historical shift of forces, revealing the precariousness of the previous equilibrium and the strengths of the one which was replacing it.
p.32
When in 1421 the Ming rulers of China changed their capital city - leaving Nanking, and moving to Peking, in order to face the dangers of the Manchu and Mongol frontier - the massive world-economy of China swung round for good, turning its back on a form of economic activity based on ease of access to sea-borne trade. A new landlocked metropolis was now established deep in the interior and began to draw everything towards it. Whether conscious or unconscious, this choice was decisive. In the race for world dominion, this was the moment when China lost her position in a contest she had entered without fully realizing it, when she had launched the first maritime expeditions from Nanking in the early 15th century.
p.38
Any means that worked were used, in particular the granting of judicious credit: this was how the English gained supremacy over Portugal after Lord Methuen's treaty of 1703, and it was also the method by which the Americans drove the British out of South America after World War Two.
p.45
However plentiful the evidence of economic subordination, and whatever its consequences, it would be a mistake to imagine that the order of the world-economy governed the whole of society, determining the shape of other orders of society. For other orders existed. An economy never exists in isolation.
An [algorithm] never exists in isolation.
p.47
Social forms too had their differential geography. How far for instance did slavery, serfdom or feudal society actually extend in area? Over distance, society could completely change. When Dupont de Nemours agreed to be tutor to the son of Prince Czartoryski, he discovered in Poland to his stupefaction what selfdom was like, and that there could be peasants who were ignorant of the state and knew only their overlord, or princes who remained like peasants in their everyday lives; Prince Radziwill, who 'ruled 'over a domain greater than Lorraine', slept on an earthen floor.70
p.61 War waged without mercy
War waged without mercy would only come with Frederick II of Prussia or with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
p.61 English society
English society which visitors from continental Europe found as astonishing in the 18th century as non-British historians still do today (and I speak from experience) began to take shape after the Wars of the Roses, 300 years earlier. Slavery, which Europe re-created in colonial America, was only abolished in the United States in 1865, and in Brazil in 1888 - a mere century ago.
p.63
For there are no societies from which conflicting forces are absent. And there are no societies without some form of hierarchy, that is in general without the reduction of the masses which compose them to labour and obedience. Slavery, serfdom and wage labour are historically and socially different solutions to a universal problem, which remains fundamentally the same.
p.65
This confirms me in an opinion which has gradually imposed itself on me: capitalism implies above all hierarchy, and it takes up a position at the top of the hierarchy, whether or not this was created by itself.
p.79
Similarly the Mexican silver mines, the hope and envy of Europe, were dealt a severe blow by the 1810 revolution and if they did not immediately begin producing again afterwards, the general conjuncture is partly to blame. Europe and the world ran short of silver. What was now happening was a shift in the economic order of the whole world from China to the Americas. England lay at the heart of this world, and suffered, despite her victory, taking many years to recover. But she succeeded in taking the leading position which no other country was able to wrest from her (Holland having long since disappeared over the horizon).
p.82
And how is one to explain other types of cycle, not only those of price history but those concerning industrial production (see Hoffman's curves) or the Brazilian gold cycle in the 18th century, or the 200-year Mexican silver cycle (1696-1900), or the fluctuations of the traffic in the port of Seville in the days when it commanded the entire economy of the Atlantic?
p.108
'Built in the sea and totally without vines and cultivated fields', was how the doge Giovanni Soranzo described his city in 1327.75 Is this an example of the town reduced to bare essentials, stripped of everything from trade: wheat or millet, rye, meat on the hoof, cheese, vegetables, wine, oil, timber, stone - and even drinking water? Venice's entire population lived outside the 'primary' sector, usually so well represented even inside pre-industrial cities. Venice's activities all fell into the sectors which economists would nowaday describe as secondary and tertiary: industry, commerce, services - sectors where labour was more profitably employed than in rural activities. This meant leaving the less profitable tasks to others, creating that imbalance which all great cities would experience: Florence, although rich in farmland, was importing grain from Sicily by the 14th and 15th centuries and planting her nearby hills with vines and olives; Amsterdam was by 17th century eating wheat and rye from the Baltic, meat from Denmark and herrings from the deep-sea catches off the Dogger Bank. But towns like Venice, Amalfi and Genoa - none of which had any real territory - were condemned to live like this from the start: they had no choice.
p.110
Christian states were settled in the Holy Land, opening a gateway to the East and its precious merchandise: pepper, spices, silk and drugs.86
p.110
But all the Italian cities benefited from the collapse of Byzantium; similarly they all benefited from the Mongol invasion which after about 1240 opened up for a century or so a continental route from the Black Sea to China and India, one that had the inestimable advantage of by-passing the Islamic barrier.88
p.110
The minting of gold currencies90 in Florence in 1250, in Genoa even earlier and in Venice in 1284, marked the achievement of Italian economic emancipation from the dinars of Islam: this was a sign of strength.
p.110
The coveted prize was access to the pepper and spices of the Levant, a privilege with consequences going far beyond the Mediterranean, ...
p.114
We know that on account of the role silver played in the Levant trade, the Italian cities were extremely interested in the German silver mines. And there was very soon a thriving network of money-changers throughout the towns of High Germany and the Rhineland, playing the same role as the merchant bankers of Bruges or Champange.114
p.126
The galere da mercato
Venice's communications with the Levant and Europe, even in her heyday, caused certain problems, in particular that of transport over the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, since she redistributed precious goods to the whole of Europe. In prosperous times, communication took care of themselves. When the economic sky darkened, ways and means had to be devised.
The system of the galere da mercato was one of these interventionist measures by the Venetian state, inspired by hard times. Invented in the 14th century to meet a persistent crisis, as a 'method of dumping' as Gino Luzzatto has described it, this system was a combination of state enterprise and private association, the latter being a kind of consortium of export merchants156 anxious to reduce their transport costs and to remain competitive (in practice unbeatable) as against foreign rivals. The Signoria itself, probably as early as 1314 and certainly by 1328, was having the Arsenal build the galere da mercato, merchant vessels (originally of 100 tons and later as much as 300) capable of carrying in their holds the equivalent of 50 cartloads of goods. On the way into or out of port, the galere used oars; the rest of the time they sailed like ordinary round ships. They were certainly not the largest merchantmen in their day, since the Genoese carracks of the 15th century reached and even exceed 1000 tons.157 but they were safe ships, which sailed in convoy and were defended by archers and slingsmen. Later they would have cannon hoisted aboard. Among the slingsmen (ballestieri) were a number of impoverished aristocrats to whom the Signoria thus offered a lifeline.
The chartering of these state vessels was adjudicated by an annual auction. The patrician who was successful at the incanto could in turn collect charters from other merchants, the freight charges corresponding to the volume of goods loaded. Thus the 'private' sector was able to make use of facilities built by the 'public' sector. Whether the clients travelled by pooling their resources 'ad unum denarium', or whether they formed a company for the freighting and return of a single galley, the Signoria encouraged all such practices, which in theory offered equal opportunities to all participants. Similar 'pools' open to any merchant were commonly organized for the purchase of cotton in Syria or even pepper in Alexandria. On the other hand, the Venetian authorities stepped in to disband any cartel which appeared to be tending towards creating a monopoly for an exclusive group.
p.174
It was symptomatic that when Genoa lost control of the finances of Europe and ceased to be the centre of the world-economy, that centre should have shifted to Amsterdam, a city which had made its recent fortune - another sign of the times - out of commodity trading. Amsterdam would have its moment as a financial centre too, but only later; and curiously enough the problems raised by the Genoese experience would crop up here too.
p.175
The emergence of Amsterdam, prolonging the old pattern, too place, logically enough, according to the old rules: the cities of Antwerp and Genoa were succeeded by another city, Amsterdam.
p.187
Among the stream of refugees - French Protestants, Antwerpers, Jews from Spain and Portugal - were many merchants, often in possession of substantial capital. The Sephardic Jews59 in particular contributed to Holland's fortune. Werner Sombart60 claims that they brought with them to Amsterdam capitalism, no less, which is going rather too far. But they certainly gave the city valuable aid, in the sphere of currency exchange for instance and even more in stock exchange transactions. In these domains they were masters, indeed pioneers. They were also good advisers, and were instrumental in setting up commercial links between Holland and the New World and the Mediterranean.61 A 17th-century English pamphleteer even suspected that the merchants of Amsterdam had lured them to the city out of commercial interest, 'the Jews and other foreigners having opened their own world-wide commerce to them'.62 It would perhaps be nearer to the truth to say that the Jews, being experienced businessmen, naturally gravitated towards prosperous economies. Their arrival in a country generally meant that business was good there or improving. If they withdrew, it did not always mean that business was bad, but it was probably not so good. Did the Jews begin to leave Amsterdam in about 1653?63 30 years later, at any rate, they followed William of Orange to England. Does this mean that, appearances to the contrary, Amsterdam was actually less prosperous then than during the first decades of the century?
The Jews were in any case not the only people who 'made' Amsterdam what it was.
p.188
But it was the rise of Holland in the first place which had created the original demand and provided the conditions for success.
p.205
During the War of the Spanish Succession, payments to the French troops fighting in Italy were made through Amsterdam, to the infuriation of the English who were allied to the Dutch against France. In short, for the Dutch, commerce was king, and in Holland commercial interests effectively replaced raison d'état: 'Commerce desires to be free', wrote Pieter de la Court in 1662.146
p.218
'No lover is as jealous of his mistress', wrote a Frenchman in 1697,222 'as the Dutch are of their trade in spices.'
p.221
In Asia, the spice monopoly, authoritarian price control, and supervision of the quantities marketed (with excess goods being destroyed if necessary)230 had for many years given the Dutch the advantage over their European rivals.
p.552
But why did this happen to England, when all the major innovations of the period - I am thinking for example of the blast furnaces, the various apparatus used for underground mining: tunnels, ventilation systems, pumps and winding gear - were all borrowing, demonstrated to the English by German miners hired for the purpose? Why England, when it was the craftsmen and workers of more technically advanced countries - Germany, the Netherlands, but also Italy (for glass) and France (wool and silk textiles) - who contributed the necessary techniques and skills for the establishment of a series of industries quite new to Britain - paper-mills, powder-mills, glass, mirrors, cannon-founding, alum and copperas (green vitriol), sugar refining, saltpetre, and so on?
p.566
Technology: a necessary but probably not sufficient condition
If there is one factor which has lost ground as a key explaination of the industrial revolution, it is technology. Marx believed it was crucial; recent historiography has put forward some solid argument against seeing it as a primum mobile or even a pump-primer, to use Paul Bairoch's expression. And yet inventions often occur before industrial capacity - but for that very reason they may often occur in a vacuum. The efficient application of technology lags, by definition, behind the general movement of the economy; it has to wait to be called on, sometimes several times, to meet a precise and persistent demand.
p.567
The handloom was not in the end displaced until after the Napoleonic Wars and then only slowly, despite the technical improvement introduced by the Roberts power-looms in about 1825. The reason was that until about 1840 it was neither essential nor indeed advantageous (given the sharp drop in weavers' wages resulting from competition from machines and the unemployed) to replace it with the power-loom.96
Paul Bairoch is therefore right when he says: 'During the first decades of the industrial revolution, technology was to a much greater extent a factor governed by the economy than one governing the economy'. Innovations were quite clearly dependent on the state of the market: they were introduced only when they met persistent demand from consumers.
p.570
Watt himself was unable to construct an airtight cylinder in the Carron works in Scotland. Eventually it was Wilkinson who solved this problem, thanks to a boring-machine of his own invention.108
p.570
In 1769, John Smeaton had built the first hydraulic wheel with a cast-iron axle for the Carron ironworks. It was a failure; the porous cast-iron did not stand up to sub-zero temperatures. The wide diameter wheels which had gone into operation on London Bridge the year before, 1768, were still made of wood - but in 1817, they were replaced by iron wheels.110
p.593
The power-loom, driven by steam, was not operational until the 1820s or so.
p.595
Shortly before this, another far more disastrous process of disruption had begun with the coming of the power-loom. This time it was the handloom weavers who were doomed to disappear. The power-loom, 'with which a child can produce as much as two or three men',198 was truly a social catastrophe, on top of so many others. Thousands of weavers were thrown on to the streets. Wages collapsed so drastically that the starvation rates at which labour could be bought kept some wretched handloom weavers in work longer than would rationally have been expected.
p.595
Living in towns, deprived of the traditional resources of kitchen garden, cow, and farmyard fowls, working in great factories under the stern gaze of the overseers, being forced to obey, ... . It meant changing a whole way of life and view of the world, to the point of alienation from one's own existence. It meant changing diet - eating poor food and less of it.
p.596
Never before had social discontent in England been so severe as in the years 1815-45 which saw the rise in turn of Luddite machine-breakers, of political radicals, who would have liked to break down the structures of society, of trade unionism and of Utopian socialism.203
p.613
England, like France, was paying the price for the fantastic efforts and money expended on the American war.
p.613
As a rule the result of an abnormally long depression acts as a severe test of business concerns, in which those which adapt and stand up to attack will survive, while those too weak to survive go to the wall. It was England's good fortune to have entered these rough waters just as the 'second generation' of invention was coming into being: the spinning jenny (1768); the water-powered frame (1769); the powered drill (1775); the rotary steam-engine (1776-81); iron puddling (1784); the first usable threshing machine (1786); the perfected form of the lathe (1794) - cumulatively a huge technical investment paving the way for recovery.
In 1791, the skies cleared: prices rose, business picked up, there was a greater division of labour, resulting in greater productivity.
p.614
... which combined the catastrophic effects of wretched housing, unhealthy and even contaminated food (for lack of sufficient means of transport), with the social upheaval which tore individuals away from their family roots and the resources of the village community.
p.614
'Two generations were sacrificed to the creation of an industrial base.'
p.615
French commander and mestre-de-camp Pillet
In Glasgow in 1812, he observed271 that 'the wages of the cotton workers ... are no more than a quarter what they were 19 years ago, although everything has doubled in price in the meantime'.
p.618
I believe in them so firmly that since the beginning of our present difficulties, in 1972-4, I have often asked myself: is this the downward slope of a Kondratieff cycle? Or are we indeed embarking upon a much longer slide, a reversal of the secular trend? If so, are the day-to-day remedies proposed to meet the crisis completely illusory? For the reversal of the secular trend is a structural crisis which could only be resolved by thorough-going structural demolition and reconstruction.
p.621
The whole panoply of forms of capitalism - commercial, industrial, banking - was already deployed in 13th-century Florence, in 17th-century Amsterdam, in London before the 18th century. It it undoubtedly the case that in the early 19th century, the coming of machines made industrial production a high-profit sector and capitalism went over to it on a massive scale. But it was by no means confined to this sector. When the first fantastic profits of the cotton boom in Britain fell, in the face of competition, to 2 or 3%, the accumulated capital was diverted to other industries, steel and railways for instance; to an even greater extent though, there was a return to finance capitalism, to banking, to more speculation than ever on the Stock Exchange, to major international trade, to the profits derived from exploitation of the colonies, to government loans etc.
p.621
It has simply taken on new forms, ...
p.622
Accused of taking jobs away from workers in their own country by setting up subsidiaries abroad, of contributing to the trade deficit and of playing a disastrous role in the international money markets, including speculation against the dollar, they were the object of inquiries by the American Senate for several years - but seem to be none the worse for it today. The multinationals too have a finger in every pie - in industry of course (since they invest in low-wage countries); in finance inevitably, given the size of their short-term disposable funds ('more than twice the reserves of the central banks and the international monetary institutions', so that a 2% shift in their liquidities would be enough to provoke an acute monetary crisis anywhere in the world, according to a US Senate committee); ...
p.628
'Tradition and previous generations', Marx wrote, 'weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living' - and not only on the minds, on the very existence of the living too, one might add. Jean-Paul Sartre may have dreamed of a society from which inequality would have disappeared, where one man would not exploit another. But no society in the world has yet given up tradition and the use of privilege. If this is ever to be achieved, all the social hierarchies will have to be overthrown, not merely those of money or state power, not only social privilege but the uneven weight of the past and of culture. The experience of the socialist countries proves that the disappearance of a single hierarchy - the economic hierarchy - raises scores of new problems and is not enough on its own to establish equality, liberty or even plenty. A clear-sighted revolution, if such a thing is even possible - and if it were, would the paralysing weight of circumstances allow it to remain so for long? - would find it very difficult to demolish what should be demolished, while retaining what should be retained: freedom for ordinary people, cultural indepedence, a market economy with no loaded dice, and a little fraternity.
English translation copyright © 1984 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
(The perspective of the world, 909.08 Braudel, )
(Fernand Braudel, civilization and capitalism, 15th - 18th century, volume III, the perspective of the world, translation from the French, by Siân Reynolds, 909.08 Braudel, )
(Braudel, Fernand. [Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme. English], Civilization and capitalism, 15th - 18th century / Fernand Braudel --1st University of California Press ed., Translation of : Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme.', 1. economic history., 2. social history - modern, 1500 -, 3. civilization, modern - history, English translation © 1984, translation from the French by Siân Reynolds, 1992, )
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Charles Perrow, Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies, 1999 [ ]
p.310
Baruch Fischhoff, in a thoughtful examination of cost-benefit analysis (the article has the engaging title, “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”), notes another consequence of the monetarization of social good by economists.14 Cost-benefit analysis is “mute with regard to distribution of wealth in society”, he notes. “Therefore, a project designed solely to redistribute a society's resources would, if analyzed, be found to be all costs (those involved in the transfer) and no benefits (since the total wealth remains unchanged).” Risks from risky technologies are not borne equally by the different social classes; risk assessments ignore the social class distribution of risk.
shared-queue
shared-map
shared-data
partitioned-array
partitioned-graph
Parallel execution patterns
coordinating processes
stream processing
shared address space threads
task driven execution
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pp.61—62
the trap of mind-set
In problem solving, search patterns of even the most intelligent people can be bound by prior experience and successes.3 In fact, people fall into habits of thought precluding innovative problem solving with amazing ease and speed——even for the most minor of tasks. In experiments conducted a generation ago, researchers discovered what they dubbed "functional fixedness"——i.e., the tendency for people to be quite fixed in their perception of how objects could be used once that use was suggested. For example, two groups of people were given identical supplies (a stack of papers, a stapler, and a paper clip) and a simple task——to fasten the papers to each other and to the wall. The experimental group's papers were fastened together with the clip, whereas the control group received its clip in an envelope. This seemingly small difference created a mind-set among the members of the experimental group: they were significantly slower to think of unbending the paper clip into a wire hook to fasten the papers to the wall.4 A number of researchers replicated this experiment in various ways, demonstrating that even slight prior experience with an object negatively affected people's ability to think creatively about it use.5 As one pair of early researchers concluded, "[F]unctional fixedness . . . interferes with problem solving."6
The phenomenon underlying the development of such mind-sets as functional fixedness seems to be the brain's natural tendency to store, process, and retrieve information in related blocks. Without some way of bundling information for parsimonious handling, we could not manage its continual flow from the environment. These blocks constitute mental models, or schema, against which we calibrate information and that we use to solve problems.7 Mind-sets, therefore, are higly useful in routine activities. In fact, if the technique toward which prior experience biases us provides the best solution to a particular problem, applying that solution is both efficient and effective.8 In an organization, when such techniques are reinforced over time by success, the patterns of thought fall into well-worn grooves 9 and become part of a business capability. The problem is that, as we have already seen, the limited range of problem-solving responses developed can become dysfunctional and contribute to core rigidities.10
(Leonard-Barton, Dorothy, copyright © 1995, HD30.2.L46 1995, 658.4'038——dc20)
(Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1. information technology——management, 2. information resources management, 3. management information systems, )
(pp.61—62)
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Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990
pp.41-42
Problem solving
A problem does not have to be presented in a formal manner nor is it a matter for pencil and paper working out. A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants. It may be a matter of avoiding something, of getting something, of getting rid of something, of getting to know what one wants.
There are three-types of problem:
• The first type of problem requires for its solution more information or better techniques for handling information.
• The second type of problem requires no new information but a rearrangement of information already available: an insight restructuring.
• The third type of problem is the problem of no problem. One is blocked by the adequacy of the present arrangement from moving to a much better one. There is no point at which one can focus one's efforts to reach the better arrangement because one is not even aware that there is a better arrangement. The problem is to realize that ‘there is a problem’ to realize that ‘things can be improved’ and to define ‘this realization as a problem’.
(Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking: a textbook of creativity, 1970, 1977, 1990, )
goal as to “not merely show a man how to better gain his goals. It also estimates for him what [are] his goals really - something he may not be aware of at all.” (Churchman 1961, p.207)
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Antony C. Sutton and Viktor Suvorov on Technology Transfer from the West to the Soviet Union
by Peter Myers
Date October 14, 2003; update July 8, 2019.
•••• ••• ••••
As a further indicator of Soviet technical backwardness, it may be noted that some Western firms selling to the Soviet Union have found "so many gaps in the control schemes proposed" that a two-phase quotation format has been adopted: first a feasibility study is conducted (for which the Western company is paid), and then the actual quotation is determined for a complete system based on the feasibility study. In other words, technical inadequacy is such that the Soviets have not been able to specify exactly what is wanted. What this reflects is not a lack of scientific skill; it shows a lack of information on the technical constituents of a modern industrial system.
•••• ••• ••••
I am saying that Sutton is historically accurate, in documenting Soviet adopting of Western technology, but wrong in his conclusion - which is really his starting-point, his ideological assumption - that the state should stay out of the economy.
I added those remarks as an outcome of discussions with Phil Eversoul, who was using Sutton to buttress his "Austrian school" laissez-faire economic philosophy.
The demise of Russia & associated states since the fall of the USSR is evidence of this. The rise of Japan, and of China - now following the Japan model - is another.
The Soviets did obtain Western technology, but one must not draw the wrong conclusions from this. Many countries copy each other's technology. Japan, too, in the early days of its postwar miracle, cloned many Western industrial products. Japan has been reluctant about supplying high-tech products to China, because it knows that China (of similar mind to itself) will clone them too.
Further, the Cold War was an unequal struggle, in technological terms. The Soviet block was competing versus the US, Japan, West Germany, France, and Britain, all leading industrial countries.
The Soviets did have their own triumphs - eg the Sputnik, putting Gagarin in orbit, and their space program.
source:
http://mailstar.net/sutton.html
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Evelyn Fox Keller, A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock, 1983
p.59
According to Creighton, Morgan later confessed that he had known about Stern's work a the time. But, as he explained (about a year after his intervention), he was also aware of the fact that, even though Creighton and McClintock had begun the summer before, it would have been a simple matter for Stern to overtake them. With Drosophila [fruit flies], one need not wait for entire growing season to learn the results of genetic crosses; one can get a new generation every ten days. Creighton recalls Morgan's saying, “I thought it was about time that corn got a chance to beat Drosophila!”
pp.59-60
6th International Congress of Genetics convened in Ithaca, New York.
836 members from thirty-six countries,
The meeting open on August 24, 1932, with 536 geneticists registered (many of the European delegates had been unable to attend).
p.60
By way of summary, he concluded with a list of the five most important problems for geneticists in the immediate future. First was an understanding of “the physical and physiological processes involved in the growth of genes and their duplication”; second, “an interpretation in physical terms of the changes that take place during and after the conjugation of the chromosomes”; third, “the relation of genes to characters”; fourth, “the nature of the mutation process”; fifth, “the application of genetics to horticulture and to animal husbandry.”9
(A feeling for the organism : the life and work of Barbara McClintock./ Evelyn Fox Keller., 1. McClintock, Barbara, 1902- ., 2. geneticists──united states──biography., QH439.2.M38K44 1983, 575.1'092'4, 10th anniversary edition, 1983, )
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Taiichi Ohno, Taiichi Ohno's workplace management, 2013 [ ]
English translation by Jon Miller
pp.175―178
SELECTED SAYINGS OF TAIICHI OHNO
On Understanding the Numbers
People who can't understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.
p.178
On Taking His Advice
You are fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don't do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
( Taiichi Ohno's workplace management: special 100th birthday edition, English translation by Jon Miller, copyright © 2013 by the macgraw-hill companies, inc., pp.175―178 )
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Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the black box: technology and economics, 1982
p.246
The industrial revolution, beginning in Great Britain in the last third of the 18th century, had at its center a rapidly expanding armamentarium of new technologies involving new power sources, new techniques of metallury and machine making, a new modes of transportation. These new technologies, when successfully organized and administered, brought immense improvements in the productivity that transformed the lives of all participants.
p.246
The separate innovations - in metallury, power generation, and transportation - were, in significant ways, interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Often, one innovation could not be extensively exploited in the absence of others or the introduction of one innovation made others more effective. Metallurgical improvements, for example, were absolutely indispensable to the construction of more efficient steam engines. The steam engine, in turn, was utilized for introducting a hot blast of air into the blast furnace. The hot blast, by improving the efficiency of the combustion process, lowered fuel requirements and thereby reduced th price of iron. Thus, cheaper metal meant cheaper power, and cheaper power was translated into even cheaper metal. Similarly, the availability of cheap iron was essential to the construction of railroads. Once in place, however, the railroads reduced the considerable cost of transporting coal and iron ore to a single location. In this fashion, railroads reduced the cost of making iron. But cheaper iron, in turn, meant cheaper rails; this involved a further lowering of transportation costs, which again decreased the cost of producing iron. Thus, part of the secret of the vast productivity improvements associated with the new industrial technology was the the separate innovations were often interrelated and mutually reinforcing.
Although this transformation, which we call the industrial revolution, began in Britian, there was never any doubt that such new technologies would spread and be adopted elsewhere when the circumstances and surrounding condition permitted (or were created).
p.126
In addition, the behavior of metals after prolonged use or with aging is still very difficult to analyze. Metal fatigue remains a nemesis in the design and construction of aircraft. Simulation methods for studying aging, methods that, for example, are supposed to accelerate the aging process of certain alloys, have not proven to be a reliable guide in the recent past.9
p.126
9 “Steiner pointed out that ‘accelerated aging’ tests have not proved accurate in the past. He cited the case of certain alloys that ‘aged in a most peculiar manner’ a few years ago. In five to ten years, these alloys ─ utilized on the Boeing 707 and other transports ─ developed inter-granular corrosion, requiring expensive inspection procedures and replacement.” “Greater Government R&D Urged to Spur Advances”, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 12 September 1977, p. 35. Steiner was a Boeing vice-president in charge of production evaluation at the time.
p.126
The performance of new engines remains notoriously uncertain in the development process; problems much be dealt with essentially by trial and error. Thus, onemust not exaggerate the extent to which, even today, the design of aircraft can draw upon precise scientific methodology.10 Much of the essential knowledge in th aircraft design and construction can still be derived only from in-flight learning.11
(Inside the black box./ Nathan Rosenberg, 1. technological innovations., 2. technology─social aspects., HC79.T4R673 1982, 338'.06, first published 1982, )
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[SAIF 2019] day 1: towards compositional understanding of the world by deep learning - Yoshua Bengio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLFrvC03AQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLFrvC03AQ
samsung
Feb 5, 2020
47:50
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Braudel
The Perspective of the World
Civilization & Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Volume 3
translation from the French
by Siân Reynolds
pp.86-87
Without perhaps making it sufficiently clear, I have consistently been stressing progress or decline at the highest level of social life: in culture (the culture of the elite), social order (that of the most privileged at the top of the pyramid), the state (at government level), and economic production (in the sector of circulation and exchange, which in fact means only a part of production, that of the most developed areas). Like all historians and without meaning to, I have automatically been neglecting the lot of the great mass of mankind, and the huge majority of the living beings. What happened in the broad terms to these masses during the ebbs and flow of the secular trend?
Paradoxically, things were worse for them when all the indicators of the economy were set fair, when increased production was making its effects felt, increasing the number of people, but laying a heavier burden on the various worlds of action and labour. A gap open up, as Earl J. Hamilton141 has shown, between prices and wages - which lagged behind.
p.32
When Amsterdam replaced Antwerp, when London took over from Amsterdam, or when in about 1929, New York overtook London, it always meant a massive historical shift of forces, revealing the precariousness of the previous equilibrium and the strengths of the one which was replacing it.
p.32
When in 1421 the Ming rulers of China changed their capital city - leaving Nanking, and moving to Peking, in order to face the dangers of the Manchu and Mongol frontier - the massive world-economy of China swung round for good, turning its back on a form of economic activity based on ease of access to sea-borne trade. A new landlocked metropolis was now established deep in the interior and began to draw everything towards it. Whether conscious or unconscious, this choice was decisive. In the race for world dominion, this was the moment when China lost her position in a contest she had entered without fully realizing it, when she had launched the first maritime expeditions from Nanking in the early 15th century.
p.38
Any means that worked were used, in particular the granting of judicious credit: this was how the English gained supremacy over Portugal after Lord Methuen's treaty of 1703, and it was also the method by which the Americans drove the British out of South America after World War Two.
p.45
However plentiful the evidence of economic subordination, and whatever its consequences, it would be a mistake to imagine that the order of the world-economy governed the whole of society, determining the shape of other orders of society. For other orders existed. An economy never exists in isolation.
An [algorithm] never exists in isolation.
p.47
Social forms too had their differential geography. How far for instance did slavery, serfdom or feudal society actually extend in area? Over distance, society could completely change. When Dupont de Nemours agreed to be tutor to the son of Prince Czartoryski, he discovered in Poland to his stupefaction what selfdom was like, and that there could be peasants who were ignorant of the state and knew only their overlord, or princes who remained like peasants in their everyday lives; Prince Radziwill, who 'ruled 'over a domain greater than Lorraine', slept on an earthen floor.70
p.61 War waged without mercy
War waged without mercy would only come with Frederick II of Prussia or with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
p.61 English society
English society which visitors from continental Europe found as astonishing in the 18th century as non-British historians still do today (and I speak from experience) began to take shape after the Wars of the Roses, 300 years earlier. Slavery, which Europe re-created in colonial America, was only abolished in the United States in 1865, and in Brazil in 1888 - a mere century ago.
p.63
For there are no societies from which conflicting forces are absent. And there are no societies without some form of hierarchy, that is in general without the reduction of the masses which compose them to labour and obedience. Slavery, serfdom and wage labour are historically and socially different solutions to a universal problem, which remains fundamentally the same.
p.65
This confirms me in an opinion which has gradually imposed itself on me: capitalism implies above all hierarchy, and it takes up a position at the top of the hierarchy, whether or not this was created by itself.
p.79
Similarly the Mexican silver mines, the hope and envy of Europe, were dealt a severe blow by the 1810 revolution and if they did not immediately begin producing again afterwards, the general conjuncture is partly to blame. Europe and the world ran short of silver. What was now happening was a shift in the economic order of the whole world from China to the Americas. England lay at the heart of this world, and suffered, despite her victory, taking many years to recover. But she succeeded in taking the leading position which no other country was able to wrest from her (Holland having long since disappeared over the horizon).
p.82
And how is one to explain other types of cycle, not only those of price history but those concerning industrial production (see Hoffman's curves) or the Brazilian gold cycle in the 18th century, or the 200-year Mexican silver cycle (1696-1900), or the fluctuations of the traffic in the port of Seville in the days when it commanded the entire economy of the Atlantic?
p.108
'Built in the sea and totally without vines and cultivated fields', was how the doge Giovanni Soranzo described his city in 1327.75 Is this an example of the town reduced to bare essentials, stripped of everything from trade: wheat or millet, rye, meat on the hoof, cheese, vegetables, wine, oil, timber, stone - and even drinking water? Venice's entire population lived outside the 'primary' sector, usually so well represented even inside pre-industrial cities. Venice's activities all fell into the sectors which economists would nowaday describe as secondary and tertiary: industry, commerce, services - sectors where labour was more profitably employed than in rural activities. This meant leaving the less profitable tasks to others, creating that imbalance which all great cities would experience: Florence, although rich in farmland, was importing grain from Sicily by the 14th and 15th centuries and planting her nearby hills with vines and olives; Amsterdam was by 17th century eating wheat and rye from the Baltic, meat from Denmark and herrings from the deep-sea catches off the Dogger Bank. But towns like Venice, Amalfi and Genoa - none of which had any real territory - were condemned to live like this from the start: they had no choice.
p.110
Christian states were settled in the Holy Land, opening a gateway to the East and its precious merchandise: pepper, spices, silk and drugs.86
p.110
But all the Italian cities benefited from the collapse of Byzantium; similarly they all benefited from the Mongol invasion which after about 1240 opened up for a century or so a continental route from the Black Sea to China and India, one that had the inestimable advantage of by-passing the Islamic barrier.88
p.110
The minting of gold currencies90 in Florence in 1250, in Genoa even earlier and in Venice in 1284, marked the achievement of Italian economic emancipation from the dinars of Islam: this was a sign of strength.
p.110
The coveted prize was access to the pepper and spices of the Levant, a privilege with consequences going far beyond the Mediterranean, ...
p.114
We know that on account of the role silver played in the Levant trade, the Italian cities were extremely interested in the German silver mines. And there was very soon a thriving network of money-changers throughout the towns of High Germany and the Rhineland, playing the same role as the merchant bankers of Bruges or Champange.114
p.126
The galere da mercato
Venice's communications with the Levant and Europe, even in her heyday, caused certain problems, in particular that of transport over the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, since she redistributed precious goods to the whole of Europe. In prosperous times, communication took care of themselves. When the economic sky darkened, ways and means had to be devised.
The system of the galere da mercato was one of these interventionist measures by the Venetian state, inspired by hard times. Invented in the 14th century to meet a persistent crisis, as a 'method of dumping' as Gino Luzzatto has described it, this system was a combination of state enterprise and private association, the latter being a kind of consortium of export merchants156 anxious to reduce their transport costs and to remain competitive (in practice unbeatable) as against foreign rivals. The Signoria itself, probably as early as 1314 and certainly by 1328, was having the Arsenal build the galere da mercato, merchant vessels (originally of 100 tons and later as much as 300) capable of carrying in their holds the equivalent of 50 cartloads of goods. On the way into or out of port, the galere used oars; the rest of the time they sailed like ordinary round ships. They were certainly not the largest merchantmen in their day, since the Genoese carracks of the 15th century reached and even exceed 1000 tons.157 but they were safe ships, which sailed in convoy and were defended by archers and slingsmen. Later they would have cannon hoisted aboard. Among the slingsmen (ballestieri) were a number of impoverished aristocrats to whom the Signoria thus offered a lifeline.
The chartering of these state vessels was adjudicated by an annual auction. The patrician who was successful at the incanto could in turn collect charters from other merchants, the freight charges corresponding to the volume of goods loaded. Thus the 'private' sector was able to make use of facilities built by the 'public' sector. Whether the clients travelled by pooling their resources 'ad unum denarium', or whether they formed a company for the freighting and return of a single galley, the Signoria encouraged all such practices, which in theory offered equal opportunities to all participants. Similar 'pools' open to any merchant were commonly organized for the purchase of cotton in Syria or even pepper in Alexandria. On the other hand, the Venetian authorities stepped in to disband any cartel which appeared to be tending towards creating a monopoly for an exclusive group.
p.174
It was symptomatic that when Genoa lost control of the finances of Europe and ceased to be the centre of the world-economy, that centre should have shifted to Amsterdam, a city which had made its recent fortune - another sign of the times - out of commodity trading. Amsterdam would have its moment as a financial centre too, but only later; and curiously enough the problems raised by the Genoese experience would crop up here too.
p.175
The emergence of Amsterdam, prolonging the old pattern, too place, logically enough, according to the old rules: the cities of Antwerp and Genoa were succeeded by another city, Amsterdam.
p.187
Among the stream of refugees - French Protestants, Antwerpers, Jews from Spain and Portugal - were many merchants, often in possession of substantial capital. The Sephardic Jews59 in particular contributed to Holland's fortune. Werner Sombart60 claims that they brought with them to Amsterdam capitalism, no less, which is going rather too far. But they certainly gave the city valuable aid, in the sphere of currency exchange for instance and even more in stock exchange transactions. In these domains they were masters, indeed pioneers. They were also good advisers, and were instrumental in setting up commercial links between Holland and the New World and the Mediterranean.61 A 17th-century English pamphleteer even suspected that the merchants of Amsterdam had lured them to the city out of commercial interest, 'the Jews and other foreigners having opened their own world-wide commerce to them'.62 It would perhaps be nearer to the truth to say that the Jews, being experienced businessmen, naturally gravitated towards prosperous economies. Their arrival in a country generally meant that business was good there or improving. If they withdrew, it did not always mean that business was bad, but it was probably not so good. Did the Jews begin to leave Amsterdam in about 1653?63 30 years later, at any rate, they followed William of Orange to England. Does this mean that, appearances to the contrary, Amsterdam was actually less prosperous then than during the first decades of the century?
The Jews were in any case not the only people who 'made' Amsterdam what it was.
p.188
But it was the rise of Holland in the first place which had created the original demand and provided the conditions for success.
p.205
During the War of the Spanish Succession, payments to the French troops fighting in Italy were made through Amsterdam, to the infuriation of the English who were allied to the Dutch against France. In short, for the Dutch, commerce was king, and in Holland commercial interests effectively replaced raison d'état: 'Commerce desires to be free', wrote Pieter de la Court in 1662.146
p.218
'No lover is as jealous of his mistress', wrote a Frenchman in 1697,222 'as the Dutch are of their trade in spices.'
p.221
In Asia, the spice monopoly, authoritarian price control, and supervision of the quantities marketed (with excess goods being destroyed if necessary)230 had for many years given the Dutch the advantage over their European rivals.
p.552
But why did this happen to England, when all the major innovations of the period - I am thinking for example of the blast furnaces, the various apparatus used for underground mining: tunnels, ventilation systems, pumps and winding gear - were all borrowing, demonstrated to the English by German miners hired for the purpose? Why England, when it was the craftsmen and workers of more technically advanced countries - Germany, the Netherlands, but also Italy (for glass) and France (wool and silk textiles) - who contributed the necessary techniques and skills for the establishment of a series of industries quite new to Britain - paper-mills, powder-mills, glass, mirrors, cannon-founding, alum and copperas (green vitriol), sugar refining, saltpetre, and so on?
p.566
Technology: a necessary but probably not sufficient condition
If there is one factor which has lost ground as a key explaination of the industrial revolution, it is technology. Marx believed it was crucial; recent historiography has put forward some solid argument against seeing it as a primum mobile or even a pump-primer, to use Paul Bairoch's expression. And yet inventions often occur before industrial capacity - but for that very reason they may often occur in a vacuum. The efficient application of technology lags, by definition, behind the general movement of the economy; it has to wait to be called on, sometimes several times, to meet a precise and persistent demand.
p.567
The handloom was not in the end displaced until after the Napoleonic Wars and then only slowly, despite the technical improvement introduced by the Roberts power-looms in about 1825. The reason was that until about 1840 it was neither essential nor indeed advantageous (given the sharp drop in weavers' wages resulting from competition from machines and the unemployed) to replace it with the power-loom.96
Paul Bairoch is therefore right when he says: 'During the first decades of the industrial revolution, technology was to a much greater extent a factor governed by the economy than one governing the economy'. Innovations were quite clearly dependent on the state of the market: they were introduced only when they met persistent demand from consumers.
p.570
Watt himself was unable to construct an airtight cylinder in the Carron works in Scotland. Eventually it was Wilkinson who solved this problem, thanks to a boring-machine of his own invention.108
p.570
In 1769, John Smeaton had built the first hydraulic wheel with a cast-iron axle for the Carron ironworks. It was a failure; the porous cast-iron did not stand up to sub-zero temperatures. The wide diameter wheels which had gone into operation on London Bridge the year before, 1768, were still made of wood - but in 1817, they were replaced by iron wheels.110
p.593
The power-loom, driven by steam, was not operational until the 1820s or so.
p.595
Shortly before this, another far more disastrous process of disruption had begun with the coming of the power-loom. This time it was the handloom weavers who were doomed to disappear. The power-loom, 'with which a child can produce as much as two or three men',198 was truly a social catastrophe, on top of so many others. Thousands of weavers were thrown on to the streets. Wages collapsed so drastically that the starvation rates at which labour could be bought kept some wretched handloom weavers in work longer than would rationally have been expected.
p.595
Living in towns, deprived of the traditional resources of kitchen garden, cow, and farmyard fowls, working in great factories under the stern gaze of the overseers, being forced to obey, ... . It meant changing a whole way of life and view of the world, to the point of alienation from one's own existence. It meant changing diet - eating poor food and less of it.
p.596
Never before had social discontent in England been so severe as in the years 1815-45 which saw the rise in turn of Luddite machine-breakers, of political radicals, who would have liked to break down the structures of society, of trade unionism and of Utopian socialism.203
p.613
England, like France, was paying the price for the fantastic efforts and money expended on the American war.
p.613
As a rule the result of an abnormally long depression acts as a severe test of business concerns, in which those which adapt and stand up to attack will survive, while those too weak to survive go to the wall. It was England's good fortune to have entered these rough waters just as the 'second generation' of invention was coming into being: the spinning jenny (1768); the water-powered frame (1769); the powered drill (1775); the rotary steam-engine (1776-81); iron puddling (1784); the first usable threshing machine (1786); the perfected form of the lathe (1794) - cumulatively a huge technical investment paving the way for recovery.
In 1791, the skies cleared: prices rose, business picked up, there was a greater division of labour, resulting in greater productivity.
p.614
... which combined the catastrophic effects of wretched housing, unhealthy and even contaminated food (for lack of sufficient means of transport), with the social upheaval which tore individuals away from their family roots and the resources of the village community.
p.614
'Two generations were sacrificed to the creation of an industrial base.'
p.615
French commander and mestre-de-camp Pillet
In Glasgow in 1812, he observed271 that 'the wages of the cotton workers ... are no more than a quarter what they were 19 years ago, although everything has doubled in price in the meantime'.
p.618
I believe in them so firmly that since the beginning of our present difficulties, in 1972-4, I have often asked myself: is this the downward slope of a Kondratieff cycle? Or are we indeed embarking upon a much longer slide, a reversal of the secular trend? If so, are the day-to-day remedies proposed to meet the crisis completely illusory? For the reversal of the secular trend is a structural crisis which could only be resolved by thorough-going structural demolition and reconstruction.
p.621
The whole panoply of forms of capitalism - commercial, industrial, banking - was already deployed in 13th-century Florence, in 17th-century Amsterdam, in London before the 18th century. It it undoubtedly the case that in the early 19th century, the coming of machines made industrial production a high-profit sector and capitalism went over to it on a massive scale. But it was by no means confined to this sector. When the first fantastic profits of the cotton boom in Britain fell, in the face of competition, to 2 or 3%, the accumulated capital was diverted to other industries, steel and railways for instance; to an even greater extent though, there was a return to finance capitalism, to banking, to more speculation than ever on the Stock Exchange, to major international trade, to the profits derived from exploitation of the colonies, to government loans etc.
p.621
It has simply taken on new forms, ...
p.622
Accused of taking jobs away from workers in their own country by setting up subsidiaries abroad, of contributing to the trade deficit and of playing a disastrous role in the international money markets, including speculation against the dollar, they were the object of inquiries by the American Senate for several years - but seem to be none the worse for it today. The multinationals too have a finger in every pie - in industry of course (since they invest in low-wage countries); in finance inevitably, given the size of their short-term disposable funds ('more than twice the reserves of the central banks and the international monetary institutions', so that a 2% shift in their liquidities would be enough to provoke an acute monetary crisis anywhere in the world, according to a US Senate committee); ...
p.628
'Tradition and previous generations', Marx wrote, 'weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living' - and not only on the minds, on the very existence of the living too, one might add. Jean-Paul Sartre may have dreamed of a society from which inequality would have disappeared, where one man would not exploit another. But no society in the world has yet given up tradition and the use of privilege. If this is ever to be achieved, all the social hierarchies will have to be overthrown, not merely those of money or state power, not only social privilege but the uneven weight of the past and of culture. The experience of the socialist countries proves that the disappearance of a single hierarchy - the economic hierarchy - raises scores of new problems and is not enough on its own to establish equality, liberty or even plenty. A clear-sighted revolution, if such a thing is even possible - and if it were, would the paralysing weight of circumstances allow it to remain so for long? - would find it very difficult to demolish what should be demolished, while retaining what should be retained: freedom for ordinary people, cultural indepedence, a market economy with no loaded dice, and a little fraternity.
English translation copyright © 1984 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
(The perspective of the world, 909.08 Braudel, )
(Fernand Braudel, civilization and capitalism, 15th - 18th century, volume III, the perspective of the world, translation from the French, by Siân Reynolds, 909.08 Braudel, )
(Braudel, Fernand. [Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme. English], Civilization and capitalism, 15th - 18th century / Fernand Braudel --1st University of California Press ed., Translation of : Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme.', 1. economic history., 2. social history - modern, 1500 -, 3. civilization, modern - history, English translation © 1984, translation from the French by Siân Reynolds, 1992, )
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Charles Perrow, Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies, 1999 [ ]
p.310
Baruch Fischhoff, in a thoughtful examination of cost-benefit analysis (the article has the engaging title, “Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”), notes another consequence of the monetarization of social good by economists.14 Cost-benefit analysis is “mute with regard to distribution of wealth in society”, he notes. “Therefore, a project designed solely to redistribute a society's resources would, if analyzed, be found to be all costs (those involved in the transfer) and no benefits (since the total wealth remains unchanged).” Risks from risky technologies are not borne equally by the different social classes; risk assessments ignore the social class distribution of risk.
https://www.cmu.edu/epp/people/faculty/research/PS-F-CBAandMM.pdf
( Normal accidents : living with high-risk technologies / Charles Perrow, 1. industrial accidents., 2. technology--risk assessment., 3. accident., HD7262 P55 1999, 363.1--dc21, 1999, )
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“My purpose is to raise conscious mental defenses against the subconscious attitudes.”;--Fred Brooks, acceptance lecture delivered at SIGGRAPH 94, Communication of the ACM, March 1996/Vol. 39, No. 3,
“My purpose is to raise conscious mental defenses against the subconscious attitudes.”;--Fred Brooks, acceptance lecture delivered at SIGGRAPH 94, Communication of the ACM, March 1996/Vol. 39, No. 3,
filename: Toolsmith-CACM.pdf
“My purpose is to raise conscious mental defenses against the subconscious attitudes. The most important of these defenses are a continual focus on our users and a continual evaluation of our progress by their successes.”;--Fred Brooks, acceptance lecture delivered at SIGGRAPH 94, Communication of the ACM, March 1996/Vol. 39, No. 3,
“My purpose is to raise conscious mental defenses against the subconscious attitudes. The most important of these defenses are a continual focus on our users and a continual evaluation of our progress by their successes.”;--Fred Brooks, acceptance lecture delivered at SIGGRAPH 94, Communication of the ACM, March 1996/Vol. 39, No. 3,
filename: Toolsmith-CACM.pdf
“What comes out of a human imagination can be achingly beautiful or painfully ugly, deeply true or deeply false, wonderfully good or horribly evil.
“As Jesus said, what comes out depends upon the condition of the heart itself [Matthew 15:18]. If we would have our creation be true, beautiful, and good, we have to attend to our hearts.
“Fill your minds with those things that are good and ... [worthy of] praise; things that are
• true,
• noble,
• right,
• pure,
• lovely, and,
• honourable [Philippians 4:8].”;--Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
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“What comes out of a human imagination can be achingly beautiful or painfully ugly, deeply true or deeply false, wonderfully good or horribly evil.
“As Jesus said, what comes out depends upon the condition of the heart itself [Matthew 15:18]. If we would have our creation be true, beautiful, and good, we have to attend to our hearts.
“Fill your minds with those things that are good and ... [worthy of] praise; things that are
• true,
• noble,
• right,
• pure,
• lovely, and,
• honourable [Philippians 4:8].”;--Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
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