Greeting from the Australian National University in Canberra, where the book "Protected Area Governance and Management" has been launched by the Ambassador
"The current fixation with the possibility of autonomous weapons attacking humans overlooks their current anti-material applications as well as usage domains with minimal chance of civilian casualties. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are not coming, they’re already here. Militaries have employed defensive autonomous weapon systems for decades, and are starting to utilize them in large numbers or swarms.
At the same time the international community has paused at a legal, ethical and moral precipice of utilizing offensive autonomous weapons systems, hyperbolically called ‘killer robots’. What may prove the catalyst in crossing this Rubicon is that the most effective way to attack a defence comprised of swarming autonomous defensive systems is with their offensive analog. And the advancements in defensive systems necessitating consideration of this decision will flow from the surge in commercial use of unmanned aerial systems beginning this year with the United States issuing regulations for their domestic use.
The employment of increasingly autonomous offensive systems will not be predicated on advancements in artificial intelligence but rather on a time honored principle of military technological advances – development of an effective measure inevitably leads to equally if not more effective counter measures."
Any suggestions as to what to do in Cambridge (UK) in July? I have visited twice before by bus and bicycle.E-learning techniques are usually classified into two broad categories: synchronous and synchronous. The core question of this research is how to combine synchronous and asynchronous techniques in e-learning software, so it can have a stronger connection with constructivist education. The benefits and drawbacks of existing e-learning software is looked at broadly. Three popular e-learning packages used at the Australian National University are investigated: Adobe Connect (synchronous), Moodle and edX (asynchronous). The results of a brief survey of edX students is reported. Using the results of this work a team of students at the ANU Research School of Computer Science is now implementing enhanced asynchronous software to be plugged into Moodle and other asynchronous e-learning packages.
Worthington, T. & Wu, H. (2015, July). Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 20152 10th International Conference on (accepted paper). Preprint: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/13554
"The new measures include $296 million to strengthen the capabilities of our intelligence agencies, including updating information technology systems. ...
New legislation requires telecommunication companies to retain metadata for two years. We are providing $131 million to assist the telecommunications industry to upgrade its systems to implement this policy." (Repeated in PDF version of "Protecting Australia - Budget").
"We will invest an initial $60 million to kick start the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation to upgrade the Department of Human Services’ (DHS) information technology to meet the demands of today’s digital world." (repeated in PDF version of "Overview - Budget").
"The Government will provide $4.0 million over two years from 2015‑16 to undertake a reform of Defence Housing Australia (DHA). This will include a review of DHA's accounting, information technology and business reporting systems to improve transparency of the cost of providing DHA's services, as well as a review of DHA's business plans to support the sustainable delivery of quality and accessible housing and accommodation services. "
Information technology security enhancements for Parliamentarians $6.0M
"The Government will provide $12.9 million over four years from 2015-16 to the Department of Finance to install more secure networking equipment and to provide additional capability for secure wireless infrastructure in electorate offices and Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices connecting to the Parliamentary Computing Network. The replacement of obsolete communications equipment will result in improved information technology security for electorate offices and parliamentary
systems in Parliament House. "
"Some of the overall reductions in staffing levels will be offset by temporary increases in particular areas to manage implementation of policy change or to build infrastructure required to achieve future automation and efficiencies. This includes investment in the information technology systems of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the first tranche of the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation Programme."
"The Government is delivering the National Broadband Network faster and at less cost, to enable all Australians to connect to transformative services online. ...
That is why the Government is investing $254.7 million in the Digital Transformation Agenda to transform government service delivery.
This includes the establishment of a Digital Transformation Office to drive the Agenda and ensure that Government services are simpler and easier to use and can be completed from start to finish online.
The first phase of the Agenda will include provisions to:
The Agenda will also include the implementation of a Streamlined Business Registration service announced in the Jobs and Small Business package. This will simplify the process of registering a business."
- implement a Digital Service Standard to apply to all Government agencies to make services simpler, faster and easier to use;
- design and deliver more myGov services with an improved digital inbox, ‘tell us once’ services, and a new digital account for businesses that can be accessed using myGov; and
- a simpler, more consistent and efficient grants administration process across government.
The provision for the "Stage One and establishment of the Digital Transformation Office" is a relatively modest $0.3M.
"The Government will invest $485 million to improve the electronic health record system for all Australians."This project has already cost many hundreds of millions of dollars for little result. I suggest it requires investigation by the Auditor-General, if not the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP).
"In 2008 the Australian Computer Society commissioned an e-leaning course on reducing greenhouse gas emissions using computers. The course is offered via the web using the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), through ACS Virtual College, from Open Universities Australia, the Australian National University and Athabasca University (Canada). The notes are available with the courses as a simple Moodle eBook, web pages, an Amazon Kindle eBook, ePub eBook, or an IMS Content Package. Using a subset of HTML to prepare the material allowed it to be easily ported before formats , as well as making it easier to download on a mobile device and on a slow link. The format also makes the content more accessible."There are also events on digital accessibility in Sydney and Melbourne on 20 July and an all day conference on digital accessibility in Sydney, 22 July.
"Christiana is in Australia to meet with the Australian government to talk about the upcoming climate change conference at the end of the year in Paris. Countries are currently developing a new legally binding agreement on climate change. It is hoped by many, that this new agreement will initiate new and decisive action to address climate change from 2020 onwards."
But rather than make a whole of nation calculation, can a single householder maintain their lifestyle and be carbon neutral? The back of my ActewAGL electricity bill indicates that a one person household uses about 10 kWh of electricity a month.
- "Ambitious energy efficiency improvements throughout the economy.
- Low carbon electricity supplied by either 100% renewables or a mixture of renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
- Electrification and fuel switching towards biofuels and gas.
- Reducing non-energy emissions through carbon farming and forestry, process improvements and CCS in energy intensive industrial applications."
Abstract for Professor Austin's Canberra Talk
China’s leaders want the country’s citizenry and other governments to believe that the Communist Party controls the ethical settings of the country’s participation in the global information society, especially in respect of the principle of “internet sovereignty” and state censorship. This is a propaganda claim that can be challenged on several levels. At the theoretical level, relying on philosophers of the information age, we can conclude that once China’s leaders made a commitment to transform it into an advanced information society, deeply integrated into a global information ecosystem, they became subject to new ethical realities.
A theoretical view of the information age as portending some sort of ethical transformation finds support among China’s ruling elite. These theoretical views are being reflected in public source analysis in China of the evolution of ethics in response to the dilemmas of the information age. On the basis of both theory and observed reality, one can argue that the macro-ethical settings for China’s participation in the information age are very different from what Chinese leaders want it to be and say it is. There are, simultaneously, powerful universalizing effects of the information age, for better and for worse, and powerful fragmenting forces, for better and for worse, that the Chinese leaders say they can contain but almost certainly cannot.