TVNZ was nice enough to re-screen what must surely be one of the very best
science-fiction (or could it be fact yet to come?) films ever made on New
Year's Day -- 2001 A Space odyssey.
It seems that the message delivered by this powerful tale of the future has
lodged in more than a few big brains over the years and now
some bright-spark "expert" has come out and
warned us
to beware of the HAL9000 syndrome --
a situation where we lose control of the computers we've been developing.
How very 2001.
He believes that we are at growing risk of having our technology overtake
our ability to control it -- but you only have to ask anyone who struggled
with CP/M or MSDOS in the 1970s and 80s to discover that this phase of
our technological evolution already happened about 20 years ago!
Who Killed The Kumara?
Regular Aardvark readers will recall that I mentioned a satirical site
called
TheKumara.com a few
months ago. This site was a rather "close to the edge" look at New Zealand,
using a style that has clearly offended someone -- because over the holiday
break the normal content was removed and replaced with
this.
I've tried to contact the operators of the site to get some background
information on what's happened but so far -- no response.
Where Are All The Brains Going?
NZ's brain drain received a lot of media coverage a few months ago
when it became apparent that our best and brightest were fleeing the
country for better prospects overseas.
Australia and the UK were listed as some of the key destinations for
our scientists and technology workers -- but it seems these countries
are not without their own brain drains.
This story
indicates that the UK is so worried about its bright-flight that government has
set aside more than NZ$12 million to top up the pay-packets of key scientists
and researchers.
Aardvark Weekly, Have You Got Yours?
Yes, it's still trickling out -- but the Aardvark Weekly subscription list
has grown enormously over the past two weeks which has required a bit of a
change to the back-end here so there's still going to be a few who haven't
received the latest edition. My apologies.
If you want to subscribe, just
drop me a note and I'll put you on the list.
As always, your feedback is welcomed and...
Did you tell someone else about this website today? If not then do it
now!
