The range of cutting edge digital technologies - 3-D printing, machine intelligence, the internet of things, cloud computing, big data etc. - is already affecting our lives, from leisure to work, from identity to statistics.
The catch-all term, also known as "Industry 4.0," ties together a wide range of cutting-edge digital technologies - such as 3-D printing, machine intelligence, the internet of things, cloud computing, and big data - into a vision of a future world of work.
That rosy belief might be undercut when even Larry Summers, as big an architect of the system as they come, plainly asserts that Piketty's grim predictions of the future fail to take in the "devastating consequences of robots, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and the like for those who perform routine tasks".
Beirich oversees the group's Hatewatch blog and its print periodical, the Intelligence Report, which, each spring, publishes a comprehensive list of active hate groups.
Last September, the Defense Department spent $47,300 to buy and destroy the entire first printing of an intelligence officer's Afghanistan war memoir, saying it contained secrets.
Several former spies have gone to court to fight redactions to their books, and the Defense Department spent nearly $50,000 last year to buy and destroy the entire first printing of an intelligence officer's book, which it said contained secrets.
In the 1930's, it was the Nazis who were applying military pressure and supporting local political parties in the Balkans with money, intelligence, printing presses and other aid.
But, as many coding supporters point out, what is the damage of teaching the skill to students if in fact the predictions that we are on the edge of a new machine age dominated by 3D printing and artificial intelligence come true?
"With new tools such as 3D printing, genomics, machine intelligence, software, synthetic biology and others, we can now make in days, weeks or months things that previous innovators couldn't possibly create in a lifetime," Johnson wrote when he unveiled the OS Fund last October.
Some "key" technologies are more the stuff of TED Talk buzz (3D printing and artificial intelligence, to name two).
