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Book Review: Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth To defeat the machine, the West must be superseded. This is not a book for the faint of heart, as Paul Kingsnorth presents in well researched detail how the Technocracy casts disruptive innovation in a sort of secular faith, which promises freedom …
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Book Review: How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World by Deb Chachra The subtitle of this book, referring to systems that shape our world, describes the understated significance of infrastructure. Deb Chachra takes material that is fascinating from an engineering perspective alone, and presents it in its essential societal significance. Infrastructure drives …
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Book Review: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie This is a refreshingly adult conversation, in which doomsayers and climate change deniers alike are effectively refuted. In this book, Hannah Ritchie presents a strategic plan for an environmentally healthy Earth—it can …
The original vision for the public Internet that some may assume still applies was that of an open commons of free information exchange on the World Wide Web. As personal expression became further possible through popular hosting services, that expression became a reality for increasing numbers of people who at the time didn’t have and …
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Book Review: The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley by Marietje Schaake The lives of most people worldwide are dominated by information technology in an inescapable way—even the poorest people (or perhaps especially the poorest people) need their smart phones to survive. Beyond just the end devices, the back end processing and …
Book review: Building a Sustainable Home: Practical Green Design Choices for Your Health, Wealth, and Soul by Melissa Rappaport Schifman The point at which current methods of housing construction are no longer sustainable is clearly in view—it’s actually been within sight for some time. In this book Melissa Rappaport Schifman describes her actual experiences in …
This is the fourth of four articles to suggest solutions to the problems that would be caused on Earth from the loss of satellite services. I briefly describe the situation in a previous posting at Impending Space Junk Disaster. This article discusses the use of lesser known terrestrial communications systems to provide connectivity to replace …
Continue reading “Lesser Known Terrestrial Communications Means (4 of 4)”
This is the third of four articles to suggest solutions to the problems that would be caused on Earth from the loss of satellite services. I briefly describe the situation in a previous posting at Impending Space Junk Disaster. This article discusses the use of terrestrial microwave to provide connectivity to replace that which is …
Continue reading “Revisiting Terrestrial Microwave (3 of 4)”
This is the second of four articles to suggest solutions to the problems that would be caused on Earth from the loss of satellite services. I briefly describe the situation in a previous posting at Impending Space Junk Disaster. This article discusses the use of High Frequency (HF) radio to provide connectivity to replace that …
Continue reading “HF Radio to Mitigate Loss of Satellites (2 of 4)”
This is the first of four articles to suggest solutions to the problems that would be caused on Earth from the loss of satellite services. I briefly describe the situation in a previous posting at Impending Space Junk Disaster. This article discusses the use of mesh networks to provide connectivity to replace that which is …
Continue reading “Mesh Networks to Mitigate Loss of Satellites (1 of 4)”