A multibillion-pound drive to “mainline AI into the veins” of the British economy is riddled with “phantom investments” and shaky accounting, a Guardian investigation has found.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
Very cool. I've got some book amidst my vast pile of stuff containing 100 interesting engineering principles/designs from about 100 years ago. It's ace. -
Absolutely, and also published at a time when breaking even was sufficient return so more eclectic titles could get published.
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....and could get them from public libraries without having to buy a subscription with some rent-seeking web publisher.
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Ha, brilliant!
It's always been about information. Data has been a huge distraction.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere @davep Yes. They do.
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All permanently available and copyable. It's a shame that so many companies and colleges dumped their hard copy for online subscriptions.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere @davep People should really pay more attention to the "post-apocalyptic marketability" of their skills and knowledge. You don't want to be the useless drain on resources that gets eaten first!
(Me, I have a printing press with movable type and a little paper-making kit and the know-how to use it, along with bookbinding. My partner has a loom and knows how to spin and weave.)
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Yep, and thanks to the economics of the day, digitising everything looked like a no-brainer.
Fifty years on, with the world's knowledge increasingly locked up behind corporate paywalls it could be considered to have been a trifle hasty.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
We've got vets and farmers here, it's the stuff like ram pumps that will be magic."Appropriate technology" as the last Keith Addison put it.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere @davep People should really pay more attention to the "post-apocalyptic marketability" of their skills and knowledge. You don't want to be the useless drain on resources that gets eaten first!
(Me, I have a printing press with movable type and a little paper-making kit and the know-how to use it, along with bookbinding. My partner has a loom and knows how to spin and weave.)
@heinragas @Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
Excellent stuff.I've got a reedbed wastewater system, solar panels with battery storage that will outlive me, an electric car, blackberries, walnuts and chestnuts, a freezer full of seeds, and stuff one doesn't talk about in polite company.
Looking at things like tents and sleeping bags etc too. We're in the boonies and I imagine "society" will go back to a more labour intensive/small scale food production model in the future.
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Weird that digital technology has still to come up with anything that matches paper and microfiche for long term preservation.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
I've been in IT for over 40 years (currently changing tack to batteries and heat pumps). I don't think it's built on obsolescence so much as information loss being an artifact of digitisation, especially when society crumbles. -
With the benefit of hindsight, I wonder whether the digital revolution was premised on replacing hard copy information, along with the archivists, registrars and librarians that managed it to create a new world in which human knowledge could be monopolised by tech corporates.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
@Lydie has a huge torrent archive by the way. -
With the benefit of hindsight, I wonder whether the digital revolution was premised on replacing hard copy information, along with the archivists, registrars and librarians that managed it to create a new world in which human knowledge could be monopolised by tech corporates.
I think that came later. The tech needed to exist first.
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@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
@Lydie has a huge torrent archive by the way.@davep @Thebratdragon @ReggieHere Sure do. Crowdfunded right here on Mastodon!
https://lydie.cc/data.html -
@Thebratdragon @ReggieHere
I've been in IT for over 40 years (currently changing tack to batteries and heat pumps). I don't think it's built on obsolescence so much as information loss being an artifact of digitisation, especially when society crumbles.Suspect information supremacy had a lot to do with it too, and in many respects digital information is still seen as the perfect capitalist 'product' because it's relatively easy to lock behind paywalls and eminently reproducible.
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I think that came later. The tech needed to exist first.
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@ReggieHere @kibcol1049
I bought myself a set of 1980s Encyclopaedia Brittanica a few months back for €100. Absolute bargain for post-apocalyptic reading materials.@davep @ReggieHere Make sure they stay dry stored in the bunker.
