Social credit in China
You may have seen the intriguing Foreign Correspondent program on ABC 18 Sept. China is undertaking the most ambitious social engineering program the world has ever seen. Their ‘social credit’ system is designed to engineer better individual behaviour. By 2020 China’s 1.4 billion citizens will get a personal digital scorecard, with good behaviour rewarded and bad behaviour punished. Some say it is the world’s first digital dictatorship.
Excellent article with video. Looks at a young woman with a good social credit score and a journalist who lost his social credit and had his access to various services disabled: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278
Foreign Correspondent ABC 18 Sept: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/foreign-correspondent
Black Mirror in China?: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2018/04/no-china-isn-t-black-mirror-social-credit-scores-are-more-complex-and-sinister
Women in physics
The new HSC physics syllabus for NSW will contain no mention of the contributions of female physicists to the field. The syllabus has 25 scientists mentioned 56 times and focuses completely on male physicists and their work. It is also believed that the gender gap in the science workforce will persist for generations, particularly in surgery, computer science, physics and maths. The gender gap was measured using data on 36 million authors of 10 million articles in 6000 scientific journals published since 2003. Globally in science and medicine, women make up 40% of the workforce, but some fields will take many years before the gender gap disappears.
URLs – is it time for something new?
Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee regrets developing the double slash after ‘http’. A growing group now think the URL is increasingly complicated and too easily compromised. Google said they are rethinking URLs as they are hard to read and hard to know if they can be trusted. Even the ‘https with a padlock symbol’ doesn’t mean much as both good and bad sites can be encrypted.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-16/google-time-to-reinvent-the-url-web-browser/10238296
Phenomenal success of Fortnite
Launched in Sept 2017, the online video game Fortnite now has over 125 million players and has made $1.6 billion for Epic Games. It has also been linked to 200 divorces. Fortnite’s success is due to 3 principles: accessibility (it’s free with in-app purchases, on all platforms and simple to play); sociality (players can express themselves and play with others) and spectacle (failure is fun and a spectator sport). Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, a gamer on YouTube and Twitch, has made up to $500 000 a month streaming Fortnite sessions from his bedroom.
Could playing Fortnite lead to ‘gaming disorder’ (video game addiction)? The World Health Organisation says yes, others disagree.
3 things we can learn from people who don’t use smartphones or social media
They spent more face-to-face time with others – connecting, talking, touching and supporting. They know that switching off is not missing out – it is exhausting to sustain numerous online connections, endless exchanges of trivial information and keep up with the overwhelming flow of information and tasks. They enjoyed new-found vitality because they connected with the world around them, helping them to reset and relax. They also had more free time.
Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2018
Winner announced 16 Oct 2018. Includes previous winners.
Man Booker Prize – best of the rest
The bestselling shortlisted titles that didn’t win from 50 years of the Booker Prize. Includes The handmaid’s tale; A fine balance; Cloud atlas; The secret river; Atonement; Empire of the sun; Dirt music; Notes on a scandal….