BBC News: Rare earth elements may affect future global relations →

‘Wars have been fought over oil and water. But are the future global tensions going to be over access to Scandium, Neodymium or Dysprosium?

Or could conflicts be fought over any other of the 17 rare earth elements, which, week by week, are becoming more and more important in developing the latest high-tech products?

Tucked onto the periodic table of the elements, in a little section once ignored by chemistry teachers, rare earths are now everywhere. They are in your iPod or tablet computer, are vital for the red colour in your TV screen whatever make you have and allow your headphones to be small enough to fit into your ears. They are in hybrid cars - both in the batteries and the fuel - and in new generation wind turbines, missile defence systems, solar panels and even F-16 fighter jets.

At the moment China provides 97% of the world’s rare earth elements, which is making America nervous from both an economic and a security perspective. Their price has gone up 1000% in just a year, which is making mining them in the US worthwhile once again.’

— Salva Kiir, the President of the freshly declared Republic of South Sudan, waves to supporters (AP Photo/Pete Muller)

"I suspect there’s a kind of tacit deal, here, whether explicitly stated or not: the Chinese government periodically pretends to get all worked up over the US debt, even though they don’t care, and in exchange, the US only pretends to get worked up over their constant pirating of intellectual property rights and technology transfers, but in fact, lets them get away with it. The result: we get Walmart, and they get nanotechnology, superfast trains, and a space program."

David Graeber

(Source: CNN)

The Economist: India's Guangdong →

‘With a long coastline and too little rain for decent farming, Gujarat has always been famous for its traders. When it was hived off from Bombay to form a separate state in 1960, “the question was how Gujarat would survive,” says Narendra Modi, who has been chief minister since 2001. These days Gujarat accounts for 5% of India’s population but 16% of its industrial output and 22% of its exports. Its growth has outpaced India’s (see chart) and it wins accolades from business people. A recent comparison of Indian states by McKinsey, a consultancy, waxed lyrical about Gujarat. It might yet play the role of industrial locomotive for the country, as Guangdong province did for China in the 1990s. There is lots of excited talk about exporters switching from China to India. Sanjay Lalbhai, the chairman of Arvind, a textiles maker and clothing retailer based in Ahmedabad, says such a move is “imminent” in his industry.

Chinese-style, big-ticket projects are part of Gujarat’s formula, including refineries and ports, but so are networks of smaller firms and foreign companies which have now achieved critical mass in industries such as cars and pharmaceuticals. The state government uses the usual tricks to try to jump-start growth, including special economic zones. But more important, it has provided the bog-standard things that businesses pray for across India but often do not get—less onerous labour laws, passable roads, reliable electricity and effective bureaucracy.’

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‘In contrast to a Minority Report future of aggressive messages competing for a conspicuously finite attention, these sketches show a landscape of ignorable surfaces capitalising on their context, timing and your history to quietly play and present in the corners of our lives.’ — Jack Schulze

openDemocracy: Somalia — one country, three systems? →

‘A “Chinese” approach to Somalia would be three-pronged: emphasize Somalia’s territorial integrity but confine conflict mediation to south-central issues; promote good governance in Puntland; and lastly Taiwanize Somaliland by promoting trade missions in major capitals, stopping short of recognizing its independence. This would not be easy, least of all for donor countries which would have to manage programs ranging from life saving food aid to trade delegations.

The long term objective would be to bring these three entities together, politically and economically. In the meantime, acknowledging that they face different security and developmental challenges would be embracing a reality that Somalis already live with. It would also change the broad brush perception of Somalia as the land of Black Hawk Down – which has penalized Somalis for far too long. This is not a risk-free strategy, as Somalis have in the past equated financial rewards to local authorities as reason for further partition of the country. Yet over a few years, development in the north might be an incentive for peace in the south. In other words, economic reform before political reform. Something China also knows a thing or two about.’

russell davies: secondary attention and the coming super abundance of screens →

‘Our default habit is to design media that trys to grab all the available attention. (Normally meaning all the optical attention.) And that’s getting us into trouble. It’s why Dentsu/BERG’s work here is so clever -it’s designed to be respectful of our primary attention, offering something quick, quiet, useful or rewarding in the moments we can spare it some mind. That’s why it offers such an attractive alternative to the Blade Runner/Cillit Bang scenario.

Those of us with backgrounds in advertising should already be thinking about this because we’ve all read Robert Heath on Low Attention Processing and should have realised how much we can communicate with someone who’s not really watching. But, it seems, we can’t learn those lessons, we refuse to be humble and quiet. We want all the attention, for as long as possible.

And, Kevin’s presentation here, made me wonder if that’s part of the problem with AR. It’s trying to insert itself right in the middle of your primary attention when a lot of the stuff it’s trying to deliver is only worthy of being around the edges.

So maybe what’s actually interesting now is experimenting with secondary attention, in various different ways, playing with modes like glancing rather than staring.’

— Stay away from the enclosed living of brass goggles or mirrored shades; enjoy media with your fellow humans… (Daniel Neville/Flickr)

Nevolution: The Eamespunk Manifesto →

‘Who needs brass goggles and mirror shades when you can have wall size projector screens in bucky domes? Overturn the individualist agenda and share in media together! Collective humanist action will unify us while we are amazed at still slides of interesting details! The great medium of the slide will return to its former glory and the rich colours will return us to a time of wonder at the world. We will return the suburban home to the great importance it once had. The focus on the family as a unit will return, and we will design for them and their needs. And they will have a multitude of things to sit in. And they will be vastly more comfortable than temper-foam or leather upholstery. Soft curved humanist wood, with modern curves will form to your body. Enjoy the comfort! And the modular shelving systems will enable them to display their books or typewriters and maybe even vases. Post War enthusiasm will return my friends. Pavilions and fairs demonstrating the latest in plastics and molded plywood will bring amazement back into your hearts. Who needs cyberspace or the great aether when we will have the house of cards. Interchangeable modules of information, slotting different electric modules of knowledge together. The great consensual hallucination will be made from card and be in your hands.’

Quiet Babylon: Computation, All the Way Down →

‘The dotcom boom and bust and the rise of the Internet was in some critical way dependent on an assumption that the virtual and the real, the digital and physical would remain fundamentally separated. The dotcom people even invented a derogatory term of art, a “brik and mortar” business. The thought was that the game was rigged agianst the slot and physical. It could not withstand the terrible changes of the virtual world. “Cyberspace” to distinguish it from real space.

But what happens when the bricks sing to each other? What happens when the mortar becomes a semi-sensate lattice, all connected along the surface of a wall? How can anything be the same? There are computers in our wires now.’

The Guardian: Fancy that - a computer bag which keeps the machine powered up →

‘Next time you meet someone who says that Britain’s textile industry is dead, please direct them to Bolton. Already noted for its pioneering auxetic bandages, which remarkably grow thicker when you stretch them, the local university has now invented a cloth which produces its own power.

The flexible fibre uses two forms of electric generator, slimmed down to such an extent that it can be woven into conventional fabrics used for anything from clothing or computer/phone-carriers to the sails of yachts. Its power production comes from minute photovoltaic cells, miniatures of the kind you get in solar panels, and their counterparts, piezoelectric fibres which generate electricity from movement.

In commercial production, the material has a fascinating range of potential uses: a light in handbags to stop, or at least shorten, that interminable fumbling for wallet or keys; a computer bag which keeps the machine powered up; sails on a schooner which provide electricity as well as catching the wind.’

On The Spiral: Unifying the Value Universe →

‘What is alternative currency?  What is a gift economy?  What is the attention economy?  How can we systematically explain the economic impact of user-generated content or peer-to-peer exchange?  The terms, ‘user generated’ and ‘peer-to-peer’ might as well be defined as ‘not professional’ and ‘not corporate’, respectively.

If we are to have any hope of understanding emerging economic relationships, we must begin defining them in terms of what they are, rather than what they are not.  Here is my attempt…call it public version: 1.0 (private version: countless).’

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‘In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this experiment sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech production technology.

Solar-sintering aims to raise questions about the future of manufacturing and trigger dreams of the full utilisation of the production potential of the world’s most efficient energy resource - the sun. Whilst not providing definitive answers this experiment aims to provide a point of departure for fresh thinking.’

(Source: vimeo.com)

Der Spiegel: The Growing Success of Seeing with Sound →

‘Two-and-a-half-year-old Juli merrily twirls around, holding a small white cane in her outstretched arm. Every so often, she makes a discreet clicking sound with her tongue. Doing so allows her to see with her ears, her parents say. She just needs more practice.

Four-and-a-half-year-old Frida already knows how it works. If someone holds out a pot lid at arm’s length, she can locate it with a fair degree of precision. Using subtle tongue clicks, she scans the space in front of her face. “There it is!” she says. With a few more clicks, she can even determine the contours of the lid. The edge lies where the echo cuts off and she no longer hears a response.

The two girls are learning a method of echolocation known as “flash sonar,” which resembles the type of active sonar used by bats. Both were born blind in Berlin, and both have parents who want to spare them from the typical life of a blind person.

“We spent a long time looking for a good replacement for vision,” says Steffen Zimmermann, Juli’s father. He believes that using flash sonar, blind people can get through life with a surprising degree of independence.’

The Guardian: Mao lives – how China keeps the new in touch with the old →

‘The CPC has plenty to celebrate. It began in 1921 when 13 men gathered on a boat in eastern China to create an illegal organisation. Today it is the world’s largest and most powerful political party, with more than 80 million members and control of the world’s second largest economy.

Despite this, it seems necessary to keep today’s members in awe of the glory of the past, hence a busy campaign complete with revolutionary tours, red song concerts and a new patriotic movie that sprinkles its account of the party’s creation with a host of star cameos aimed at younger viewers.

As the party moves ever further from its roots – the new film is co-sponsored by Cadilllac – it exploits them to bolster its relentless, Leninist grip on political power.’