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Setting up technology this morning for TOK as part of the CLC #ibtok #YIS

In the last few years, it's become increasingly clear that food companies engineer hyperprocessed foods in ways precisely geared to most appeal to our tastes. This technologically advanced engineering is done, of course, with the goal of maximizing profits, regardless of the effects of the resulting foods on consumer health, natural resources, the environment or anything else. But the issues go way beyond food, as the City University of New York professor Nicholas Freudenberg discusses in his new book, "Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health." Freudenberg's case is that the food industry is but one example of the threat to public health posed by what he calls "the corporate consumption complex," an alliance of corporations, banks, marketers and others that essentially promote and benefit from unhealthy lifestyles.

"New research from Allen Downey, a computer scientist at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, shows a startling correlation between the rise of the Internet and the decline of religious affiliation in the United States. According to MIT Technology Review, back in 1990 only eight percent of the U.S. population did not have a religious affiliation. Twenty years later in 2010 that number was up to 18 percent. That is a jump of 25 million people. Americans seem to be losing their religion, and from Downey's research we may have an answer."

"That panicked feeling we get when the family pet goes missing is the same when we misplace our mobile phone" http://j.mp/mJ4VZH #tech

"We live in a hyper-rational, data-driven time; geeks are our kings and queens. When something inexplicable happens, we are in awe, suddenly, of concepts that the ancients took for granted: the suffering of innocents, supernatural causes, and twists of fate."

"It uses an "emotional engine" and a cloud-based artificial intelligence system that allows it to analyse gestures, expressions and voice tones. The firm said people could communicate with it "just like they would with friends and family" and it could perform various tasks. It will go on sale to the public next year for 198,000 yen ($1,930; £1,150). "People describe others as being robots because they have no emotions, no heart," Masayoshi Son, chief executive of Softbank, said at a press conference. "For the first time in human history, we're giving a robot a heart, emotions.""