Oh! The whole ado about the potential of AI is produced to get the money off the investors and to get consumers to use it. They're trying to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never looked at it that way, I feel naive!
The talk of abundance tries to calm people down so they won't fear loosing their jobs (or become luddites). As if abundance in a capitalist framework ever lead to people having access to stuff they need.
It's a bit like the ideology that keeps people from asking to tax the rich because they fell for the myth that they might be rich themselves at some point, right?
There is nothing that is made by humans, that is made without a fire. Everything, cloth, nails, computers, coffee mugs... everything! Requires fire in its manufacture. It has always been so, and in the Industrial Age, it is even more so. Even in times past, before the invention of the internal combustion engine, the fires were metabolic, but that is still a fire, still the oxidation of carbon and hydrogen to release energy. Everything that is produced must be produced with fire. And most of that fire is produced from the rapid oxidation (flame) of carbon and hydrogen. Machines burn hydrocarbons, animals burn carbohydrates. It's all fire.
Hi Loch - yes true but we can do a lot more to minimise the energy we need and find ways to minimise the carbon emissions of that energy - so i feel we can probably find a better way to do less of these things....
Thanks, Alistair. I love this line: It’s remarkable how many people think the cost of renewable energies is a far more important metric for assessing our progress on fighting climate change than actual carbon emissions. Are we all at the mercy of (marketing) forces beyond our control? Or do we keep writing, as you do, to inform the public about manufacturing's realities?
hi Katie - thanks, - I certainly feel we are kind of locked into a trajectory, and its stats like this that are used to justify it - to convince us that everything's still under control, that we can solve this whole climate issue with a bit of political will... there are still far too many peope who chose to believe thses stats because not believing them is simply too troubling to contemplate...so we continue bumbling on, hoping for the best.
but i think the prevailing narrative is becoming hard and harder to maintain.... its like a vast wall - and when we see the cracks open up in it we have to chip away at them...
and i feel the cracks are getting bigger and more frequent
Oh! The whole ado about the potential of AI is produced to get the money off the investors and to get consumers to use it. They're trying to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Never looked at it that way, I feel naive!
The talk of abundance tries to calm people down so they won't fear loosing their jobs (or become luddites). As if abundance in a capitalist framework ever lead to people having access to stuff they need.
It's a bit like the ideology that keeps people from asking to tax the rich because they fell for the myth that they might be rich themselves at some point, right?
There is nothing that is made by humans, that is made without a fire. Everything, cloth, nails, computers, coffee mugs... everything! Requires fire in its manufacture. It has always been so, and in the Industrial Age, it is even more so. Even in times past, before the invention of the internal combustion engine, the fires were metabolic, but that is still a fire, still the oxidation of carbon and hydrogen to release energy. Everything that is produced must be produced with fire. And most of that fire is produced from the rapid oxidation (flame) of carbon and hydrogen. Machines burn hydrocarbons, animals burn carbohydrates. It's all fire.
Hi Loch - yes true but we can do a lot more to minimise the energy we need and find ways to minimise the carbon emissions of that energy - so i feel we can probably find a better way to do less of these things....
Thanks, Alistair. I love this line: It’s remarkable how many people think the cost of renewable energies is a far more important metric for assessing our progress on fighting climate change than actual carbon emissions. Are we all at the mercy of (marketing) forces beyond our control? Or do we keep writing, as you do, to inform the public about manufacturing's realities?
hi Katie - thanks, - I certainly feel we are kind of locked into a trajectory, and its stats like this that are used to justify it - to convince us that everything's still under control, that we can solve this whole climate issue with a bit of political will... there are still far too many peope who chose to believe thses stats because not believing them is simply too troubling to contemplate...so we continue bumbling on, hoping for the best.
but i think the prevailing narrative is becoming hard and harder to maintain.... its like a vast wall - and when we see the cracks open up in it we have to chip away at them...
and i feel the cracks are getting bigger and more frequent
..... but that could be wishful thinking....