Posted on 12/28/2014 12:37:52 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In the past, this season was marked by a greater interest in divinity, the family hearth and the joy of children. Increasingly our society has been turning away from such simple human pleasures, replacing them with those of technology.
Despite the annual holiday pageantry, in the West religion is on the decline, along with our society’s emphasis on human relationships. Atheism seems to be getting stronger, estimated at around 13 percent worldwide but much higher in such countries as Japan, Germany and China. “The world is going secular,” claims author Nigel Barber. “Nothing short of an ice age can stop it.”
In contrast, the religion of technology is gaining adherents. In a poll in the U.K., about as many said they believe Google to have their best interests at heart as God. Religious disbelief has been rising particularly among U.S. millennials, a group that, according to Pew, largely eschews traditional religion and embraces technology as a primary value. Some 26 percent profess no religious affiliation, twice the level of their boomer parents; they are twice as irreligious at their age as any previous generation.
For millennials, religion is increasingly a matter of personalized “self knowledge” that need not be pursued in church, or as part of their community. Computer scientist Allen Downey has done interesting research that shows that Internet use is a primary driver of declining interest in religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at newgeography.com ...
It bothers me as well. My younger siblings married before I did, I still had the first grandchildren in my family, all thanks in part to those younger siblings getting dogs first. Dogs never leave infant maturity, actual human babies usually do.
Consumers pay the price according to what meets their needs, in their own estimation. If a company does so, then they have succeeded with those customers. And so, the bottom line is that the customers (the market) either affirm or deny that product meets their needs according to their purchase.
Apple is a tremendous business success in regards to meeting those consumers’ needs!
I commend Apple for their success!
Same here.
I tell my siblings that their dammed dogs won’t grow our family tree, no matter how much they want it to.
Will they put gravestones for their pets in the cemetery alongside the rest of our deceased relatives? The whole thing is just stupid and destructive. That’s the sort of thing that people do that CAN’T have children.
They’ll regret the hell out of this when they’re 85 years old and don’t have anyone to care for them. Their Chihuahua sure as hell isn’t gonna be there to do it!
Well, this thread is not about manufacturing in China, but to answer your comment anyway, I’ll just say that from what I’ve been reading 3D Printing (and the entire industry that will grow up around it) will revolutionize manufacturing and shift that balance of power, for manufacturing, right back inside our country!
I believe China and the likes of companies like Samsung (from Korea) ... will be left in the dust.
I really like that.
I don't know if it will hold up under reflection, but I hope it does.
I was already scared enough of potty training my kids when I was in my 40s that in spite of being not so well off, my wife and I decided we would have kids shortly after we married. To each their own, but I want my children to be adults or graduating high school when I am in my 50s, get pets later.
It will hold up under scrutiny because it’s also a statement on “post-modernism” and why Christianity has difficulty in getting across to post-modernists of today, where there are no absolutes, that style is more important than substance, that “the message” really doesn’t count, but more the “presentation” counts and how you feel about it. That’s the difference between “the medium is the message” vs. “the message is the medium”. That’s why John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”
The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/07/23/the-end-of-chinese-manufacturing-and-rebirth-of-u-s-industry/
Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.
So China has many reasons to worry, and manufacturing will undoubtedly return to the U.S.—if not in this decade then early in the next. But the same jobs that left the U.S. won’t come back: they won’t exist. What will the new jobs be? We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. Look at the new types of jobs and multi-billion dollar businesses that the Internet and mobile industries created—these came out of nowhere and changed our lives, Bass says.
3-D Printing Will Change the World
https://hbr.org/2013/03/3-d-printing-will-change-the-world
It seems that the United States and other Western countries, almost in spite of themselves, will pull off the old judo technique of exploiting a competitor’s lack of balance and making its own massive weight instrumental in its fall.
China won’t be a loser in the new era; like every nation, it will have a domestic market to serve on a local basis, and its domestic market is huge. And not all products lend themselves to 3-D printing. But China will have to give up on being the mass-manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The strategy that has given it such political heft won’t serve it in the future.
The great transfer of wealth and jobs to the East over the past two decades may have seemed a decisive tipping point. But this new technology will change again how the world leans.
I take nothing away from Apple for being highly successful.
My comments refer to how stupid people have to be to be paying Apple’s premium prices for technology that can be had at much lower prices.
Simple, ain’t it?
The point here being ... that it’s the customer who determines if the manufacturer meets their needs and another manufacturer does not meet their needs.
And “that” is the true simplicity of it, and a simplicity that Apple has done so well with.
Boomers as young people moved away from Christianity, then after things settled down and they had families, they mostly returned to their roots.
The Left/Satan has had a field day in America for a few decades - uninterrupted. They are at the height of their psychosis. People will get sick of them. They have no meaning. But they do have power for now. And they do harm people who disagree with them.
I pod what i pod
We all know Mac users that are just a one step away from shouting....... Apple Akbar! .....and fly their simulator game into the Microsoft headquarters..
I always flew my plane into the World Trade Towers ... true story ... I lost count of how many times I crashed into the buildings ... :-) ...
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