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"With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay

"Third, the ad does not adequately acknowledge the degree to which some of the institutions it defends are in fact a source of much of the trouble we now face. NATO was an important and valuable institution during the Cold War, for example, and it clearly magnified U.S. influence. But a good case can be made that NATO has been a disruptive force since then, mostly by pursuing an open-ended and ill-conceived eastward expansion. Similarly, the creation of the WTO and the headlong pursuit of what my colleague Dani Rodrik calls "hyper-globalization" has clearly had deleterious economic effects for millions and played no small part in the populist avalanche that has been reshaping politics throughout the Western world and beyond."

The Forum's perspective on present and future technological and societal changes is captured in their 'Principled Framework for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.' Philbeck explained the four principles that characterize the Fourth Industrial Revolution. * Think systems, not technologies. Individual technologies are interesting, but it is their systemic impact that matters. Emerging technologies challenge our societal values and norms, sometimes for good, but sometimes also in negative ways; the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have civilization-changing impact-on species, on the planet, on geopolitics, and on the global economy. Philbeck suggested that wealth creation and aggregation supported by this phase of technological innovation may challenge societal commitments to accessibility, inclusivity, and fairness and create the need for relentless worker re-education. As Philbeck stated, "The costs for greater productivity are often externalized to stakeholders who are not involved in a particular technology's development." * Empowering, not determining. The Forum urges an approach to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that honors existing social principles. "We need to take a stance toward technology and technological systems that empowers society and acts counter to fatalistic and deterministic views, so that society and its agency is not nullified," said Philbeck. "Technologies are not forces; we have the ability to shape them and decide on how they are applied." * Future by design, and not by default. Seeking a future by design requires active governance. There are many types of governance-by individuals, by governments, by civic society, and by companies. Philbeck argued that failure to pay attention to critical governance questions in consideration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution means societies are likely to allow undemocratic, random, and potentially malicious forces to shape the future of technological systems and th

This article traces the travel of biometric data of Syrian refugees in Jordan through a hastily evolving political economy characterized by a pervasive craving for the extraction, storage and brokering of displacement data. It analyzes iris-enrollment as problematic acts of quasi-citizenship for the displaced requiring the performance of social and economic docility in order to attain identity, cash and service provision. Quasi-objects in the form of digital footprints are fashioned through infrastructures that simultaneously seek to model, yet fail to capture, socioeconomic existence in displacement contexts. Discourses of anti-fraud, donor dictates, upward accountability and strategies of financial inclusion of 'the unbanked', facilitate the marketization of the creation of data-doubles in laboratories of displacement and loopholes for externalization. Driven by increasingly blurred lines between technological, humanitarian and financial interests, this development has transformative effects on both those displaced, and on a humanitarian sector tasked with safeguarding their rights.

Many books have been written about our cosmic origins: the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago; the Big Bang and all that followed. The denouement, presumably tens of billions of years away, remains comparatively mysterious. How does it all end? For that matter, does it all end, or can we keep on in our merry way indefinitely? In "The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)," Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University, attempts to answer what might seem the most remote of scientific questions.

team of scientists from ASU and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) led by Hao Yan, ASU's Milton Glick Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences, and director of the ASU Biodesign Institute's Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics, has just announced the creation of a new type of meta-DNA structures that will open up the fields of optoelectronics (including information storage and encryption) as well as synthetic biology.