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Weekend Thoughts - 1.13.18

Image by Engin_Akyurt, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Image by Engin_Akyurt, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection searched 60 percent more electronic devices in 2017 than it did during the previous year. That has led to concern from privacy advocates who worry that the rise in searches may indicate something nefarious about the administration's stance on immigration and surveillance. However, the good news to come out of this is that customs agents will now need to have "reasonable suspicion" before they can perform a thorough search on devices. The real question now though is, "What constitutes reasonable suspicion?" It's quite possible that even with this change, the number of searches will not decrease in the near future.

2. President Trump has signed an executive order that could make it easier for Internet Service Providers to install high-speed broadband networks in rural areas. This move may help bring reliable and powerful Internet access to these areas, where 39 percent of people do not have access to broadband speeds. However, Trump's latest order will not offer any federal funding to promote broadband in those areas; instead it will expedite federal permitting requirements, which theoretically would make it easier for broadband companies to install and operate wireless towers. And of course he had to follow up this move by saying, "Those towers are going to go up, and you're going to have great, great broadband."

3. The concept of humans having sex with robots is still fairly new (and foreign) to most people, but the technology continues to get more sophisticated and advanced as time marches on. It's worth thinking about the pros and cons of sex robots and how it may affect individuals as well as the species as a whole. All in all, this is a fascinating area of technology that has several layers of complexity, and you may find it worth learning about while it is still relatively unknown to the general public.

4. Brick-and-mortar stores have been having a tough time competing against online retailers recently, and some have begun to turn to automation technology solutions to replace human workers. Think of the self checkout register, for example. Now a six-foot tall robot that is capable of moving about a store, performing inventory tasks for its employer, is beginning to make its way to stores. This machine is able to take photographs of store shelves and determine when items need to be restocked—a job that is still done by a human. For the time being, anyway. So when you see a towering robot in your local brick-and-mortar store, it's probably wise to leave it alone and let it do its job.

5. And for one last piece of news, also related to automation technology—GM plans to release a car without a steering wheel or pedals in 2019. In fact, the car will not have any manual controls or buttons for the passengers (remember, there is no human driver in this vehicle!) to push at all. This release will be dependent on whether or not the U.S. Department of Transportation approves some regulation, but it is exciting to think that there might be a fully autonomous consumer-grade vehicle on the road just next year.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 12.19.15

Image by Jutta M. Jenning, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Image by Jutta M. Jenning, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. As a followup to last week's news article about the identity of Bitcoin's founder, it seems that it may have been a hoax after all. Not surprising, really. Andrea Castillo, writing for Reason, argues that we should entirely halt the hunt to identify the cryptocurrency's creator, because "The entire purpose of the Bitcoin project is to facilitate a way for humans to access financial channels regardless of personal circumstances. That its leader would be pseudonymous and impersonal is therefore appropriate, even necessary". I really enjoyed reading Castillo's take on it, and have to agree—why does the mainstream media feel the need to know who the founder of Bitcoin is (or was) in the first place!?

2. There is yet another followup from last week's Weekend Thoughts, when I published a link to #GOPDildos, an art project that takes photos featuring them Republicans holding guns and replaces the weapons with dildos. The project's creator wrote an article that discusses the motivation behind it and the artist's personal opinion on the issue of gun control. It's definitely worth reading for anyone interested in politics, Republicans, guns, and/or dildos.

3. I enjoyed this 2015 edition of the Voight-Kampff Empathy Test, from science fiction author Philip K Dick's seminal novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was made into the hit film Blade Runner. The 2015 version includes a satirical political spin, mentioning the movements #blacklivesmatter and #alllivesmatter in a fairly humorous (depending on your take, I suppose) way.

4. An article written by a well-known YouTuber made the rounds this week, pointing out the economic difficulties that online content creators face. Many people who have tens (or even hundreds!) of thousands of followers have trouble affording to pay for their basic bills like rent or groceries. It is essentially necessary for them to publish company-sponsored videos/posts or ask their followers to sponsor them with a service like Patreon. The catch-22 for many creators is that they are seen as too big to ask for money from their followers but too small for advertisers to consider working with. It's an interesting article, and it brings up something that I wanted to mention about Think Wilder—as of now, I haven't made a single penny off of this website. So far, all of this content that I have created has been not only free for my followers, but it has actually costed me money (in hosting and domain name registration fees). I consider this project to be a labor of love, so for the time being I don't mind paying to share my work. In the future, I may consider instituting a sponsorship program for readers to chip in or running sponsored posts from time to time, but I haven't made a decision on that yet. However, I'm lucky in that I have a steady day job and don't rely on an inconsistent income source, so my situation is simply different from the ones that are described in the article. At any rate, give the article a read, and if you have any input on whether or not I should attempt to make money off of this website, feel free to contact me using one of the social share icons below!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.