Amandla Awethu, Africa!

Instead of building durable computers and computer monitors that can last at least ten years or so, manufacturers make e-machines with an eye on recurring profits, doing what they did with automobiles until people decided enough was enough.

'...manufacturers make e-machines with an eye on recurring profits'

computer monitors, iphones (pretty notorious for not being durable despite their high price tag), etc., then they're only fooling themselves. Capitalism, from where planned obsolescence is born, is what's killing us and the planet.

Makes you wonder if the uber-wealthy even consider themselves part of the human race? Or have they fooled themselves into believing that they have some sort of protective bubble around them wherever they go? Don't they understand that they, too, will be eradicated along with everyone else??

their exalted lives indefinitely.

Nancy Pelosi was exasperated with the Republicans and one day and said with this awful look on her face in a video (wish I'd saved it) that they were crazy, that 'they literally believe they will live forever.'

I remembered about that time of reading about the post human era as it's called. And transhumanism, that is what it is. Michio Kaku of other powerful people talking about the future in a seminar. When his time came to speak, he told a room full of starry eyed, up and coming young adults in the scientific world who saw themselves as a coming elite, how it would be done.

How human consciousness would be transferred to robotic bodies and thus they'd live forever. His eyes got kind of crazed at that point, s not what I expected. I don't remember what it was called, but I saved it somewhere, it could have been a TED talk.

That's why some don't care about people or the environment. They intend not to be living in others' memory or from the rememberance of their deeds, but literally live inside of cyberbodies that will enable them to keep going. Of course, this will require to possess undreamed of wealth ot achieve this goal and be part of that group.

I considered what this scientific development meant, as what he described didn't need food, or very little of it, but would have to have power. I realized that such a being would have no connection in the emotional realm to the rest of us regular humans and animals or the Earth's ecosystem, except as means of raw materials. Their needs would be much different, for their great plans, such as space exploration and the ultimate in knowledge, I guess.

The collapse of our ecosystem was predicted in very old writings, but laid out by the Pentagon in the 1970s. Everything in that paper on climate change and how government would fall, populations move and social systems fail was in iit. Since then it's been a game of diversion, most of it entertainment, through which we are desensitized and excited about that kind of world. Sadly, most of us will never live to see it, we are just tools for them, but we think we are part of it. We aren't.

Carl Sagan predicted this, but he felt that mankind might pull itself back from the age of ignorance for many and a technocracy which does have scientific power through education and expertise, and they will survive.

The ideal of equality of suffering is religious and or spiritual myth as it deals in intangibles. It's a much hated idea, but I think it's likely that space programs are no longer as they once were, in the hands of government, to increase the quality of all human life. They have been privatized to serve the elite to escape from catastrophe.

I think capitalism has a part in this, that the rich have a part in this, but the rest of us are not innocent lambs, either. At least not in the more well off parts of the world, and maybe in the poorer regions as well. Have they been fooled by tradition or leaders or something to take advantage of their ignorance?

Was it racism or an honest attempt to solve the problems of poverty that attempted to bring about global family planning? Or did the egos of all involved, rich and poor, sabotage reasonable approaches, which have come from having more women in control of their lives that ameliorate the problems of reproduction and the devastation of resources?

Or shall we play exceptionalism and claim this is all our doing? This was going on long before electronic waste was a problem.

Ah, I have to go to sleep. Just a few ideas for you to play with.

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so controversial and interesting that I'll need to read and reread it at least a few times! lol

But you've brought up some interesting food-for-thought, freshwest.

With my limited intelligence, I'll say this much, however...those scenarios mentioned earlier in your post does require one important thing for those elites to successfully survive transplanting their consciousness into an artificial body: a "soul" that survives the death of the human body. I don't believe that. I believe the same as Jewish and original Christians believe (before they absorbed Greek belief of an immortal soul): the spirit (many call it the immortal soul but what's clearly defined as our life force) dies when the body dies.

But I guess if someone has billions of dollars and has been treated by everyone as if they're gods, they'll begin to believe they're gods. I guess that's where that arrogance stems from. After all, judging by how people, such as the Kochs and Sheldons, act, these people believe they can walk on clouds. They've lost all sense of humanity and see the rest of us as no more than how plantation owners saw their slaves: born and alive solely to serve and enrich them.

So that's about 45 years of use.

We had the service guy and he kept it going for us until it finally needed parts that were simply not available.

kitchen stove is 38 as well, and my TeeVee is 28 years old.

All still going strong. I have NO plans to change them until they give up the ghost.

No such luck with my computers, I'm afraid. Nor my micro-waves.

Are energy hogs. Half a dozen or six.

They are all very small appliances intended for a small apartment, one/two person occupancy.

No humongous two-door fridge à l'americaine.

No multi-burner monster cooker.

No 84" flat-screen behemouth. (21" artifact)

I'll pit my carbon footprint against anybody's!

(I don't own a car...)

I still have them in the house. I guess I am guilty of throwing away appliances when the company takes it after replacing a new one. Never asked where my old appliance went. Guess I know now.

Here is story of man who builds 3d printers out of 'waste'-




Ingenuity and elbow grease

Kodjo Afate Gnikou is a 33 years old inventor from Togo, in West Africa. Using mostly e-waste that he found in a scrap yard, he built a functioning 3D printer that he calls W.AFATE ("W" for WoeLab, the first hackerpace in west Africa, and Afate from his name). It's the first 3D printer built from e-waste, and even NASA is impressed: Kodjo Afate Gnikou has been rewarded with the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in Paris.
He says: "My dream is to give young people hope and to show that Africa, too, has its place on the global market when it comes to technology. We are able to create things. Why is Africa always lagging behind when it comes to technology?"





http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/african-inventor-makes-3d-printer-e-waste-video.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/west-african-teen-invents-gadgets-scrap-metal-visits/story?id=17877827





He's made a transistor radio, powered his community's FM youth radio station with homemade batteries, and, most recently, built a larger studio generator — all by using materials he found in the trash.

At the age of 16, Kelvin Doe, also known as DJ Focus, has been called a prodigy and a genius. He's the most prolific inventor in his West African village of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Doe is the youngest of five children and says he's been inventing gadgets since the age of four. He gathers scrap metal and other materials to create electronic solutions for his town. His inventions have caught the eye of university professors and scientists at academic institutions in the U.S., including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

"The exceptional thing about Kelvin is he's a very poor kid with very little infrastructure. He's been able to harvest that talent with virtually nothing," said Laura Sampath, manager of MIT's International Development Initiative. "He takes apart and then learns by what he's seeing and can rebuild it, often better than what he's seen in the first place."

he hasn't been irreversibly poisoned in the process.

Indians have been stunted and poisoned by Western greed.

And Victorian "Dust Sifters".

The history of recycling is incredibly fascinating, IMO. In Victorian times the very poor would sift dust, collect debris from river sides (including corpses) etc. with each person having their territory.


?w=500&h=340

?w=500&h=318

I would be in favor of what is done with tires. You get new tires on your car, you are charged a disposal fee for each old tire.

No reason why we could not do the same thing with electronics.

and then giving a rebate when defunct machine is turned in?

You turn in the old battery, they subtract the core charge. The lead and battery case can actually be recycled into new batteries so it is a win for the consumer, the manufacturer and the environment.

Not to mention lithium in the batteries. The trick is to get it out without polluting the environment and/or endangering people's health.

that is used for, among other things, recycling old cell phones.

300,000 cell phones can yield 10kg of gold.