Showing posts with label planned society. Show all posts

      The governments of the world are speaking of a sustainable future where consumption of goods and lifestyles within the society are controlled through governance. In the end it is theorized that there will have to be cities that can completely monitor efficiency of the machines and behavior of the citizens. The inevitable real world outcome of such a monitored society eventually becomes one of limited freedom among other side effects of a such techniques.

iPhone City: The 'smart' metropolis of the future will have an app for everything

• Portuguese tech company reveals Urban Operating System
• It will run the PlanIT Valley pioneer project due for completion next year

By Gavin Allen
When the cities of the future are portrayed on the big screen they usually present dystopian visions of urban decay.
But a city-building project underway in northern Portugal is out to overturn those concepts with a super-functional 'smart city' where the entire metropolis is run by one big computer system.
Imagine if a building could not only sense a fire, but use its lighting system to show residents a safe escape route and then interact with the traffic light grid to ensure fire engines have easier access as other traffic is directed away.
That is the reality of the Urban Operating System, which has been unveiled at the Machine-2-Machine conference in Rotterdam, Holland, by Portuguese technology company Living Plan IT.
The Urban OS will not be dissimilar to the type of OS that runs on Apple products - a common platform that enables new apps to be built and deployed quickly.
It is not for nothing that Steve Lewis, CEO of Living PlanIT, refers to this it as the iPhone model.
Via a system called PlaceApps, it will even allow for apps to be created and integrated into the larger system in order to control buildings, lighting or other facets of urban management.
It's hoped that eventually even our smartphones could interact with the Urban OS to operate household appliances and energy systems.
This can be done, the company says, while ensuring people’s security and privacy is protected.
Urban OS is to be tested in earnest as a management system for in PlanIT Valley, a futuristic new city which is already under construction in Paredes near Porto, Northern Portugal, in partnership with technology giants Cisco and Microsoft.
While there have already been many ideas for how 'smart cities' could look, the Urban OS is the first time anyone has produced a system capable of handling and managing the enormous volume of data that would be produced by an entire city - 50billion devices interacting.
But rather than being a prohibitively expensive project, full of cutting-edge technology, PlanIT Valley is designed to be a low cost innovation, making savings in both its construction and subsequent operation.
Living Plan IT expects to save 30-40 per cent on traditional building costs and construct buildings 30-50 per cent faster and to a much higher quality.
This will also lead to significant savings in operation costs for the buildings based on the use of new materials and designs.
To help run the Urban OS there will be around one million high-tech sensors throughout the city - one every square foot - that have been designed by McLaren Electronic Systems, modeled on their Formula 1 race car technology.
The various innovations from the project are sure to be examined closely by developers worldwide who are tasked with urban regeneration programmes.
Living Plan IT, which was recently selected by the World Economic Forum as one of its Technology Pioneers of 2012, expects the first residents to move into PlanIT Valley around the middle of next year.
It may be the case that the most exciting insights from PlanIT Valley will not be about how we build new cities, but how we make old ones fit for the 21st century.

"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."
- Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations

By James Delingpole

Former US secretary to the United Nations John Bolton once famously said: “The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” (H/T Milo)
But I’d say Bolton was being too modest in his aspirations. Far too modest. I’d suggest that if we lost all 38 stories the benefits to mankind would be almost incalculable. Right now, indeed, it’s likely that the United Nations poses a far greater threat to Western Civilisation and the world’s economic future than Al Qaeda does. Have a glance at its latest report World Economic And Social Survey 2011 – and you’ll see what I mean.
The report argues that over the next 40 years our governments must spend an annual minimum of $1.9 trillion – that’s an eyewatering $76 trillion – steering the global economy onto the path of “green growth.”
But “Green growth” – as the report more or less acknowledges – is an oxymoron. That’s why, even though it was supervised by an alleged economist, Dutchman Rob Vos, the report is not at all ashamed to advocate limiting economic growth through rationing, punitive taxation and other forms of government intervention. Why? To combat “Climate Change”, of course.
Here’s the kicker:

“Hence, if, for instance, emission reduction targets cannot be met through accelerated technological progress in energy efficiency and renewable energy generation, it may be necessary to impose caps on energy consumption itself in order to meet climate change mitigation in a timely manner. Proposals to put limits on economic growth can be viewed in this context.” (P.19)

And if shaving off $1.9 trillion from the world economy each year (that’s 3 per cent of the world gross product in 2010) results in further economic stagnation and a lower standard of living for our children and grandchildren, well what the hell. As the report primly tells us, none of us actually needs to earn more than $10,000 a year. Anything more is greedy:

“For example, taking life expectancy as an objective measure of the quality of life, it can be seen that life expectancy does not increase much beyond a per capita income of about $10,000. Similarly…cross-country evidence suggests that there are no significant additional gains in human development (as measured by the human development index) beyond the energy-use level of about 110 gigajoules (GJ) (or two tons of oil equivalent (toe) per capita.”

Are they seriously suggesting that developed economies should ration their people’s energy use? They surely are:

“The Survey estimates that the emissions cap would be equivalent to primary energy consumer consumption of 70 gigajoules per capita per year, which means that the average European would have to cut his or her energy consumption by about half and the average resident of the US by about three quarters.”

So, instead of being able to enjoy a hot shower every day all you Americans, you’ll now confine your warm ablutions to weekends only. Same goes for air-con in summer. And heating in winter. Welcome to the New Green World Order.
What’s amazing about this stuff – and believe me, there’s plenty more where this came from – is the unblushing shamelessness with which it advocates this economic insanity. Here is the world’s most powerful intergovernmental institution essentially arguing for the destruction of the global economy, enforced rationing, Marxist wealth redistribution, greater regulation, the erosion of property rights and global governance by a new world order of technocrats and bureacrats. And being so upfront about it they actually issue press releases, telling us what they’re planning to do and encouraging us to write about it.
This is the thing that amazed while I was researching my book Watermelons. If the global green movement is any kind of conspiracy, then it’s a conspiracy in plain sight. The people in power who are advancing its agenda – be it President Obama’s house eco-activists John Holdren and Carol Browner, Green MP Caroline Lucas, and all those faceless apparatchiks at the UN and the EU – make absolutely no bones about what it is that they want to do to save the world from the peril of “Climate Change”: the end of Industrial Civilisation.
Which might be just about understandable if the crisis we were facing were so great that only the most extreme measures would suffice. But the crisis they describe is non-existent. As I argue in the second half of my book, economic growth and true environmentalism – as opposed to the sick, bastardised, warped, hair-shirt perversion of it currently being dumped on us by the Greenies – go hand in hand.
As economies grow richer, so they have more money to set aside for cleaner rivers, fresher air, as well as to invest in R & D projects for ever more eco-friendly forms of energy. It’s no coincidence that quite the worst environmental damage in the last century was done in those countries behind the Iron Curtain. Free market economies tend naturally to be cleaner and healthier because clean and healthy is what people choose anyway if they can afford it. They don’t need government to step in and take their money in order to spend it inefficiently trying to achieve something which would have happened quite naturally anyway.
What this ludicrous UN report is advocating is the exact opposite of what the world needs if it is to become genuinely greener. All those people in the developing world, if they’re to live healthier, less environmentally damaging lives the very last thing they need is hand-outs from richer economies. What they need is property rights and free trade and the chance to grow their economy to the point where – cf the Kuznets Curve – they can afford the luxury of having to breed fewer children and to heat and light their homes without having to chop down the nearest trees. What they also need for us in the rich West to have thriving economies in order that we can import more of their produce.
Rationing and limits to growth are not the answer. The UN is a menace and we listen to its eco-fascist ravings at our peril.

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as people ‘who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’ ” -Ron Suskind, The New York Times, 17 October 2004.

This is from an article where the journalist was speaking to a Republican party aide to then President Bush. Just realize that people like this do not make mistakes like this. Their job is to speak and advise the president's on how to communicate his message. This was obviously a thought out message and not a slip of the tongue. If you can understand that also understand what it means to be an Empire. This word is no accident either. He is not at a loss for terms to make this message sound more wholesome. To be an aide part of your job is spin. This being said, in an Empire there is no room for political party bickering. Those at the top of the parties are these actors as this aide says. They are putting on the play for you to study and gripe about. Only until you can bring yourself up to the point of seeing how the play is directed you will always be playing this game of catch up.

Scheherazade has taught these people well. Just as in that story if we would only snap out of the constant spin and story telling the people would be back in control again ruling our own lives (I in no way endorse the killing of numerous consecutive virgin wives, if you understand the allusion). This creation of reality for the plebs are the skills they keep locked up for themselves behind their ivy coated walls and columned facades. Rise up to their level and begin analyzing and seeing the path before us instead of reacting and stumbling from one prescribed path or solution to the next. Otherwise we continue to be merely props in their play and pawns for the sacrificing.

*Read Plato's Republic! This is exactly what he explains.