I spent his morning trying to get the old stove to heat my small house at below freezing outdoor temps. I’ve never had the cash to bribe my way into plum contracts. You stinking fraud.

I hope some day soon you’re broke and living on handouts. Then I will believe in the depth of your enthusiasm and good spirits. Some road to an enthusiastic start to a new day you offer. Your homilies are fake and cheep shots and delivered by a liar and a bit of a con man.

As usual, your inability or unwillingness to “see” blinds your insight. I agree that “…Doctors can still make misdiagnoses and fail to use their own judgment. Vast amounts of “information”…also lead to vast amounts of disinformation.

So it is still YOUR responsibility to decide if the doctor YOU use is competent and has no malice towards YOU and YOU still have to sift through bulk “information” to separate the wheat from the chaff. That doesn’t change the fact that those capable and willing enjoy greater opportunities and longer lives even if YOU don’t.

Would you refuse a pacemaker because you fear someone may program it to fail? If so, maybe you should change your “ways”, or get help with your paranoia. “…vastly improved knowledge of how much is going wrong or can go wrong” is what allows “fly by wire” computer systems to make a fighter inherently unstable that is infinitely maneuverable controllable by the pilot and useful in battle. The cup half empty is also half full.

You “…can’t say that the quality of health care care for basic issues has improved at all. In fact, I’m sure it is worse.” Oh, really?

In just the last 80 years people in America don’t often die of appendicitis, don’t get smallpox or polio. Antibiotics cure conditions once fatal. Prosthesis have come a long way from the hook for a hand and wooden “peg” leg. At 70+ I still have every one of the teeth I was born with. We have flu, pneumonia and shingles shots.

“The cost of automobiles has still risen enormously.” That depends on how you look at “cost”. Governments routinely allow their currency to inflate, betraying those on fixed pensions. It takes 4.83 dollars today to buy what a dollar bought in 1970. I can’t change that, and neither can you. The age of the average car in service is now over ten years. Back then it was half that.

That 240Z Datsun I bought new for $3600 (added air conditioning later) would today cost $21,000. My 1999 Chevy Metro coupe, bought new for 11,000 came with air conditioning and averages 33 MPG in town or cruising at 70 mph. I get 40,000 miles from a set of Michelin tires and hope to enjoy it another ten plus years.

Life may be no longer worth living for you, but for those who still greet each new day with enthusiasm and anticipation it has never been better!

Such paradigm shifts lead to gaps in skills and displace individuals in the labor force, forcing them to adapt, learn new skills, and sometimes require relocation. To not understand this, to find it alarming that it occurs, and to suggest government intervention, so “societies…might have a chance,” is ignorance of the marketplace of the highest magnitude.

It is scary that Ms. Freeland may have a college education (multiple!) and does not realize that people “washing floors or wiping tables” will still be “washing floors or wiping tables,” and many other dirty jobs, whether they have an iPhone or not. No amount of technology or government intervention in the marketplace will ever remove the fact that in life there are always going to be, so called “lovely” jobs, and more importantly, “lousy” dirty jobs!!

It is obvious that Ms. Freeland has led a privileged life, according to her bio. Now, maybe, she might consider helping to close the gap by pushing away from the keyboard of her “lovely” job and try getting her hands dirty! Such arrogance! It is simply astonishing!

I suspect most of the points are meaningless and don’t add much to the designers ability to improve the car’s safety or reliability. It cost almost $1000 more to repair a failed chip in my car (that I was not permitted to even see let alone test) to have a disinterested test that it was at fault for the car’s failure to start even after it had made a 600 mile trip. That chip could have also been programmed to fail by the manufacturer when the manufacturer wanted it to. You might want to reconsider having chips implanted in your brain (OOTS). You would be forced to rely upon the scrupulous disinterested honesty of those who control you chip, remember?

The cost of automobiles has still risen enormously. The information may or may not be useful, just as so much of what the Library of Congress stores may be redundant, out of date and outright inaccurate. It is an archive of human knowledge but also of human error.

It may be a wild flight of fantasy to think that increased information is going to lead to an improved quality of life. It can also lead to a vastly improved knowledge of how much is going wrong or can go wrong.

The basics, like food, clean water, affordable energy and affordable health care seem to be inert to vast amounts of knowledge. But some simple means and the right application of human knowledge can work even better in some cases. In fact, technology seems to be contributing to the massive cost increases or those services. Somehow, all those technological goodies have to be paid for and using the technology or the product, inappropriately or unnecessarily, is a way to do that. And from personal experience, I can’t say that the quality of health care care for basic issues has improved at all. In fact, I’m sure it is worse. The Doctors can still make misdiagnoses and fail to use their own judgment. Vast amounts of “information” will also lead to vast amounts of disinformation.

It’s your personal perspective that is out of date”. The dramatically dropping cost of computing power, capability and storage combined with access to an ever-expanding internet are increasingly leveraged by both employed and private individuals to ever more rapidly expand human knowledge. Today information can be in the “cloud”.

Consumers will soon have eyeglasses with “heads up data” (HUD) displays and “steroscope-like” image capability to replace today’s flat-screen monitors. Existing earphone/headsets will increasingly be used for speech-based computer control interface.

People interested in the most esoteric subject now have a way to study, communicate and combine knowledge. While most discoveries originate with an individual whose understanding “stands on the shoulders of those who came before”, current conditions allow and encourage knowledge to expand almost immediately and to a much greater extent between an ever-increasing number of participants.

Such advances have made possible the sequencing of the human genome. Machines that can “do” an individual’s DNA sorting for about $1,000 are today available.

Custom genetic treatments that attack disease with the accuracy and effectiveness of a rifle as opposed to a shotgun are being engineered and tested. Medical knowledge and treatments are expanding at a rate much faster than our social system can pay for them.

It won’t be long before medical interfaces between our hearing and speech centers replace headsets and CPUs implanted between our eye and brain neural networks replace desktops, laptops, iPhones and iPads? The first person to live to 1000 may have already been born!

It’s been a long time since “big bucks”, Cobol, Fortran and DOS were keys necessary to meaningful human access to processing power. How do you pronounce Macintosh OSX and Windows?

Even then, issues of “information overload” were a concern to the designers and users of computerized displays in fighter aircraft.

Since then, the volume has increased over a thousand fold. Much has been done to consolidate and store these massive volumes of data. Also, Business Intelligence software has been applied to glean information and even knowledge from massive data bases. But,nothing particularly significant happened within the past two years that hasn’t been known for thirty years.

How do you pronounce DOS? Are you Ms Rip Vank Winkle?

However, if the “Big Data” concept means that accurate numerical information will be available to the masses and identifiable from the myriad sources of bogus data, that would allow statically astute citizens/investors to draw their own conclusions regarding the meaning of the data.

I am wholeheartedly in favor of that, but doubtful of a future where uncompromised, poignant data will be available for downloads at no cost or for a modest fee.