Wow, I thought this article is about the US-military.

Or did you just fancy a bit of a rant? Be honest now. :)

Why should god chosen king xy care wheter the work of slave xy is hard, or takes time.Just send more slaves, and punish them if they won’t work hard enough.

Higher technology was almost never invented solely by a single culture.

“Our Whispersync technology synchronizes your last page location, bookmarks, and annotations across all your devices so you can pick up exactly where you left off reading.”

So, you should (has to be tested) be able to do this if you have a second Kindle supporting audio, maybe even from your “old” 3g Kindle if the feature is implemented as e.g. meta tag alignment from last saved and recovered reading profile from your Amazon account.

This is also one of my gripes with intelligent life on other planets: They can have human level intelligence, yet never invent the radio. We have no idea what the chances of an intelligence to develop our current technological society are.

The situation our race currently finds itself in is more likely the result of many complex happenings, interactions, and strokes of luck (and bad luck).

The world as a whole does show increasing complexity, I’m not arguing that, nor the exponential nature of it. And specific people definitely aren’t the only ones who could have made certain discoveries. But complete cultures, with the resources, insights and pressures that they have, are.

Technological development is the next step in our evolutionary continuum, but I’d dare say that we have no reason to assume it’s an inevitable result of life. It’s more likely we’re the product of a lot more randomness and chance than we’re comfortable with.

I think most people assume that everyone in the transhumanist movement will share similar opinions on most issues. Abortion, guns, taxes, recreational drugs. Maybe assisted suicide (wink-wink)? I believe that shared mindset is unlikely in the near term. And I don’t know how long the “near term” will last.

Technological progress will probably keep moving at an ever more accelerated rate and many of us– perhaps even the commentators on these boards– will have a tough time keeping up. In the meantime, we’re all still human and that means we have potential for good or evil. And some of us can be easily manipulated.

To quickly put this counter-intuitive view into focus, would you not agree that the following statement has a sound basis?

We would have geometry without Euclid, calculus without Newton or Liebnitz, the camera without Johann Zahn, the cathode ray tube without JJ Thomson, relativity (and quantum mechanics) without Einstein, the digital computer without Turin, the Internet without Vinton Cerf.
The list can. of course be extended indefinitely.

Rather, it is time to recognize that the technological development is part of an evolutionary continuum that can be traced from the formation of the chemical elements in stars and supernovae. And projected forward to the next phase of the”life” process which is at present in gestation in wnat we now call the Internet.
This mode is informally outlined in l”The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website

And the new Google Nexus 7 is putting Google in this same or a very similar camp as Amazon, Apple, B&N.

A tech offering by a corporation is a push to the future, regardless of its viability, its competitive essence, or its motivation. This site should be reporting the offerings and innovations, not editorializing them; leave that for the comments section.

“Evil” is a subjective label, and reduces intelligent discourse to name-calling. It completely undermines the author’s point, which, ironically, is proportedly pro-scientific and pro-education. There is nothing “evil” or even offensive about the product reported here, merely the author’s personal distaste for it. I realize that it was filed under the more op-ed style “blog” section, but it represents a fundamental disregard for the very engine that drives the acceleration of technology.

I didn’t write on Apple because yesterday was Amazon time. For an appropriate Apple treatment, wait for their iPhone 5 and iPad mini (if any) press conference ;-)

This whole rant just sounds like the confused ramblings of an occupier railing against “mega corporations”.

As for me, I was already deep in Amazon services, including Prime, Instant Video, and Kindle. I passed on the first Kindle Fire, but with the screen and price of the HD version, I think I’ll dumb myself down and get one.

As for your second reaction, actually Both Amazon and B&N are chasing the big elephant: Apple, the iPad and the App store.
IMHO, Apple really pioneered this SSS marketing model with iTunes.

And you know what? The end result is that Apple has the highest market cap in history, 50% more than Exxon or more than Google and IBM combined!

YES, I did often think about this. A self taught genius from a remote country, and preferably a girl!

Second reaction: Amazon and B&N are both playing the SSS game, and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out, but I think it is a real stretch to declare that society is no longer “empowered by technological advances”. At the very least, you have two competitors who will be forced to keep offering more to the public, and that is a good thing.

Amazon’s ecosystem is ‘the evil part.’

Strange that another company that locks down its devices in a similar way doesn’t obviously get mentioned as ‘evil’ by, oh, let’s see,

http://www.kurzweilai.net/apple-granted-patent-for-head-mounted-display

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ipad-helps-5-year-old-find-his-voice

http://www.kurzweilai.net/stanfords-free-online-iphone-ipad-course-is-baaack-with-peer-to-peer-help

My experience (as a niche publisher) is that Amazon is just as easy to deal with, if not more so, than Apple…