Fascinating article by Peter Fingar on Cognitive Computing and the breakthroughs the new technology makes possible. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, just watch the second video with Rick Rashid of Microsoft doing a demo of computer-aided real-time translation into Chinese. Think of the possibilities for cross-cultural understanding and uniting humanity. Of course technology is value-neutral, it can be used for good or for evil, so we will also need to think about how to prevent destructive applications of Cognitive Computing, for example robotic warfare that could get out of hand and bring down humanity as a whole. Peter concludes that "We must evolve a fundamentally new economics, one not based on the 20th century reality of scarcity but on a new 21st century reality of abundance..."
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