Monthly Archives: September 2014

Are there reasonable and legal limits to free expression ?

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

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Now this is an interesting and complex question.

Far too big a subject to be addressed by my comparatively little brain or written about in a few hundred words. However we all know that stifling free expression is counterproductive.

So is Freedom of expression still a universal human right?

Is it the 
lynch pin
 of
 democracy?

The Internet is by its very nature border less, but it is still intimately connected to the physical world, and as such to the territories of sovereign nation states.

Therefore, states can significantly influence the free flow of information, expression and free speech.

An open and free Internet is a key means by which individuals can exercise their right to freedom of opinion, expression, association and assembly. However, these freedoms in our present world cannot on one hand be absolute and on the other they have to be absolute.

Freedom of information is a fundamental element of freedom of expression, with the Internet a key instrument for the exercise of the right to freedom of expression.

This is the Quandary.

Because when you turn to Google with a question, the search engine must decide, at that moment, what “answers” to give, and in what order to put those answers.

Is it commercializes something that is not commerceable? And if so is there a compelling argument that computerized decisions should be considered speech?

Computers as you know make trillions of invisible decisions each day.

Gone are the days of waiting for the evening news to present events occurring on the battlefield. Gone are the days of relying on professional journalists, or embedded reporters, to paint the day-to-day picture of the world.

Gone are the days that the Internet was merely an alternative communicative channel.

What will its impact be on free speech?

I believe in the long run it is going to be the down fall of free speech and expression.

Cyberspace today is an important part of living as a private and public individual in the modern world. It is a way of speaking and listening; an essential part of being human, but is it turning into a privatized “wild west”, where individuals’ expressions and information retrieval is not subject to arbitrary restrictions with no judicial review or democratic legitimacy.

Should non human or automated choices be granted the full protection of Free Speech?

Is it time for states to grant these expressions the same protection, which we apply to expressions in the physical world ?

Self-regulation is a dangerous path when applied to public sphere communication.

My answer is –  No Cyberspace should not be allocated such a high status.

Why?

Because Extremists –often claim to speak for whole communities.

Because if we are not careful the potential result is that we get a homogenised, sanitised universal culture that either gives offense to none or is controlled by the most vocal and powerful group whatever the rest of the populace may want or believe.

In July 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Committee confirmed the central role of freedom of expression in human rights, making it clear that it can only be limited in the most exceptional circumstances, and calling for the first time for unrestricted public access to official information.

Now we all know that there cannot be a democratic society without the fundamental right to freedom of expression but the internet is allowing new means for humans to express themselves. Hong Kong as I write is expressing all over social net works its unwillingness to have Beijing puppets put up for election.

Because in today’s world, we have delegated many of our daily decisions to computers. On the drive to work, a GPS device suggests the best route; at your desk, Microsoft Word guesses at your misspellings, and Facebook recommends new friends.

In the past few years, the suggestion has been made that when computers make such choices they are “speaking,” and should enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. Free Speech.

Because the internet connectives which the internet provides to humans today makes it possible for soldiers in Iraq to post their thoughts and reflections regarding an upcoming or recently accomplished mission, to include pictures and video, on a blog in Iraq and within seconds this news from the front can be read by thousands if not millions of people world-wide.

Everyone has the right to associate freely through and on the Internet, for social, political, cultural or other purposes. There are efforts by a number of states including Russia, China and Iran to increase state control of the internet within their territories.

The Internet is a space for the promotion, protection and fulfillment of human rights and the advancement of social justice. While governments have an important obligation in protecting and furthering internet freedom, the very nature of the Internet means that civil society, the private sector and academia also need to be involved in discussions on internet governance not just Governments.

Free speech is essential to a free society because, when you deny people ‘an opportunity to act like normal political parties’, there’s nothing left for them to do but punch your lights out. Just look at what is happening with a culture like ISIS  that can’t bear a dissenting word on race or religion or gender fluidity. It is a barbarous society that will cease to innovate, and then stagnate, and then decline, very fast if left alone.

Another growing causes for concern is that diverse voices of the non-religious are either not being heard or are not equally valued: Religious voices are claiming their right to freedom of expression but at the cost of non-religious voices being silenced.

The ability to freely speak your mind is widely seen as a natural right, in other words a government (or any other institution) can’t grant you this right, only take it away. A liberal society is one which is content to call ‘true’ (or ‘right’ or ‘just’) whatever the outcome of undistorted communication happens to be, whatever view wins in a free and open encounter.

If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all.

We live, in ‘interesting’ times, from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage.

Within the EU,internet there is no specific (foreign) policy agenda for internet freedom.

So the question I started out with might sound like a fanciful question, a matter of philosophy or science fiction but a world where real, primal, universal rights — like freedom of expression is where I want to live.

Everyone has the duty to respect the human rights of all others in the online environment.

     How about You!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is your every day world.

29 Monday Sep 2014

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When you take time out from the bubble of your life you would have to be blind, deaf and a Pillock not to notice that the world you live in both Physically and Financially in an almighty mess, if not out of control.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html#

The Number of Countries involved in wars 64. The Number Militias-guerrillas and separatist groups involved 571.

The ongoing growth in population of roughly 10,026 people per hour or 240,624 people per day is unsustainable according to many sources. The internet states that our world population is growing at about 9,000 people per hour or 220,000 people per day, but if you go by the World Population’s Clock, World population right now is by the time you have read this.

http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/shocking

When I look around me here in France I see field upon field doing sweet fanny Adam ( due to Set aside a European Agricultural Policy called The Common Agricultural Policy CAP for Short which insures the highest prices for farmers), when it could be growing cheap food at a fair price, instead of expensive tomatoes to bombard Brussels with each year.

Every day I hear and see death and destruction in some part of the world.

Every day I hear appeals from the United Nations to do something about poverty, climate change, forests, fresh water, pollution, ocean warming, while 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

Every day according to UNICEF, 22,000 children die due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.

Every day around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Every day the world’s countries spent $1.7tn on their militaries.

Every day more than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening at an alarming rate.

Every day the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

Every day based on enrollment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.

Every day nearly a billion people unable to read a book or sign their names.

Every day there are 1.29 billion people were living in absolute poverty. Of these, about 400 million people in absolute poverty lived in India and 173 million people in China., 45.3 million in USA which is suppose to be the riches and most powerful.

World Government spending on space programs is in the region of 72,1 billion

India spent £45 million to orbit Mars, and China spent 7.33 trillion going nowhere, USA off the map- Man on the moon and Curiosity to find water.

Every day we destroy ecosystems of other species to find dwindling resources.

Every day people who practice asceticism intentionally live in economic poverty so as to attain spiritual wealth.

Every day world hunger is the result of greedy and inept leadership in individual country.

Every day the supply of basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government services such as corruption, debt and loan conditionality and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals.

Every day  there is more demand for space to live and more resources being used which in turn generates more waste to be dealt with.

Every day we need more space to live on there is also the need for more space to grow the food, be it crops and/or livestock to meet the ever-increasing demand. The only way we can meet these needs is to encroach on our ecosystem and reduce it each time we do so. Every time we take natural land for building.

Every day we hear strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable and to eradicate Inequities.

Every day I hear Exploitation in the form of child labor, modern day slavery, rampant corruption, drug wars, murders by the dozens, child molestation, ethnic and racial cleansing.

Every day  the Economy. While Sovereignty Funds privatize the world, and computer soft ware rip us all off every second.

Every day we witness poverty on your own doorstep. The “silent” day-to-day hunger that occurs all over the world. Poverty can be understood simply as a lack of money, or more broadly in terms of barriers to everyday life. Not famine hunger when typically we feel compelled to send money or even volunteer. The worst type of hunger because it is the result of some form of natural disaster.

The list goes on and on. So you don’t need to be a rocket scientists to figure out why it is that we are in such a mess.

If you have nothing you have nothing to lose. Why not fly a plane into the World Trade Center, why not don a new uniform and get a free gun with some status whether it be good or evil. Who cares life not worth living anyway.

What can be done about it?  Not much till every nation has an equal footing in the United Nations, till there is no need for NATO, till we get rid of the IMF and the World Bank, till Climate Changes make us all change. ( see previous Postings )

Feel free to suggest what you see every day. Every day we have choices.

We live today in an age sustainababble* ( correct me if it not a word) a cacophonous profusion of uses of the word sustainable to mean anything from environmentally better, to cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as western powers intervene into Arab affairs.

27 Saturday Sep 2014

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Now I am no Historian so the Biblical and Historical Origins of the Problems in the Middle East are to say the least some what beyond me.

Anyway for what its worth here is my stab at explaining the Middle East.

Tell me if I am wrong.

In light of the attacks of 9/11 the big question to answer was why.

Why do these people hate us so much.?

So much that they are willing to give their own lives simply to kill, to start a war, or make a statement.

The answer to this question truly lies in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and the utter failure that Westernization has been in the Middle East.

As far as I can see the present day situation in Israel may be the most difficult political situation in world history.

It alone dates back to thousands of years before Christ when the Israelites left Egypt after two hundred years of bondage they began forty years of wandering the desert in which they encountered many enemy tribes such as their sworn enemies, the Amalekites.

While these days, the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes place at a domestic level, its roots, as well as the frequent failed attempts at peace that spanned the 20th century, stemmed from international interference and mismanagement.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been one of the defining political issues in the Middle East for decades.

Since its inception the State of Israel has been at war with the Arab countries surrounding it.

The ethnic conflict theory explains that it is not territory, politics, or economics that prevents the achievement of peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people’s, instead, it is a deep-seated hatred of one another that neither group can overcome.

Unless they do so by some miracle and form one nation (which will be the saving of the Middle East) there will be no coming back from a full scale perhaps nuclear war.

It is simplistic and self serving for political leaders in the West to tell us that the terrorists attacks happen because they “hate freedom,” or “hate our democratic values” or “they despise our love of liberty.” Many, in fact, hate what they perceive as materialistic Western values, but this is not what leads them to kill themselves in suicide bombings, or to murder thousands of innocent civilians it is the paranoid rhetoric about Western attacks against Islam elsewhere that is spreading from the religious fringe to the mainstream and now ISIS.

Indeed, the events of the past few years have broken the precarious old Middle East order without replacing it with a new order. And although rival
external and regional players have been pushing their own agendas for a new
regional order, none of them has prevailed. The competition among these rival visions and forces appears destined to continue in the years ahead.

So what is the middle east?  It would be easy to describe it as an area of the world, a simply a breeding ground for turmoil, and has been for centuries.

Now, however, the region can expansively be said to contain “the area from Libya E to Afghanistan, usually including Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries of the Arabian peninsula”so the Middle East can only be loosely defined, and it is important to know that these countries are separate and do not truly form one cooperative unit.

Within this vast area there are many different nationalities within their population including Arabians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, and many more.

The most common religion found in the Middle East is Muslim. However not every Middle Easterner is Muslim, there are also other religions just as in any country such as Christian and Jewish.

So here is no set definition for the area known as the Middle East since shifts in global power over the years have affected the topography.

Many dynasties and kingdoms have ruled the area of what we now call the Middle East.

In almost all of the societies, it is the wealthier, educated, and a particular race or ethnicity that ruled. These positions were usually acquired through power, either by a civil war or an overthrow of the previous government.

Not every country mentioned above has the same access to the water sources, which will naturally cause problems. …. (Water Issues in the Middle East One would think there are enough conflicts to be had in the Middle East.)

Of the many conflicts that revolve around the area’s history, politics, religion, territory or ethnicity, one more can be added to the group: Water.

These societies all need water, but not all have the same resources to get to that water.

This is a hotbed of vice in this area as only a few of the countries in the Middle East have total control over their own water, leaving most of the others to depend on the graces of those few countries to manage their water magnanimously enough to supply them with what they need.

For example, Israel has control of the Golan, and Egypt of the Nile, and Kuwait of the Persian Gulf. Oil is in abundance, but only to a limited number of countries in the Middle East causing great economic disparity between those who have, and those who do not. Kuwait, having access to the Persian Gulf, produces a large supply of oil to international players. Given its high value internationally, and its worth.

But this is not the main reason behind the difficulties of bringing Peace to the Middle East.

A major source of conflict in the Middle East during the last fifty years has been the dispute between Arabs and Jews over Palestine.

For hundreds of years, the great majority of the people living in Palestine were Arabs. But at the end of the nineteenth century some Jews in Europe were becoming increasingly bitter about growing anti-Semitism. They started to talk about setting up a state of their own where they would be free from persecution. The conflict itself can be dated to 1948, when the state of Israel established independence, but the underlying problems responsible for the creation of Israel, and as a result, the conflict, can be traced back as far as the 19th century.

Now it far too difficult to track back through the centuries the History to the sorry state of the Middle East.

Lets just say its full of stories of betrayal. If you want one just look at what the British did with caretaker of Mecca Sharif Husayn in 1914.

Anyway its water under the bridge, but for any serious understanding it will have to be swum in.

We will put our toe in.  At the end of world war one when the Allies had secretly carved up most of the Middle East among themselves in what came to be known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 which I am sure you have all heard about.

No. Not surprised. It was a secret agreement between the British and French involving the partition of the ottoman empire.

It effectively handed over the control of Syria, Lebanon and Turkish Cilicia to the French and Plalestine, Jordon and areas around the Persian Gulf and Baghdad to the British. It was never completely fulfilled because Valdimir Lenin who was to have influence in Turkish Armenia and Northern Kurdistan took the hump and released it to the press.

Moving on.

The Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha said this statement below on September 16, 1947, eight months before the state of Israel was established.

” But it’s too late to talk of peaceful solutions”

The Arabs held this mentality in a time when Israel was not yet a fact.

To Day there can be no solution to the Middle East until the Israelites and  Palestinian people come together. If they form separated states the war will go on and on.

At the moment we have numerous conflicts that have the potential to join up into a WAR.

Conflict: A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.  War: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties“

To stop this happening  America should set a time-table to withdraw its financial and military aid to Israel unless it offers a one nation solution giving equal right to all. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage.

There are more than seven million Muslims living in America what has Israel to fear.

I know that this is a very simplistic solution’s to a problem that has been festered for centuries and has now burst like a boil into a Barbaric group called ISIS.

Bombs and guns (which will swap hands) will no doubt change frontiers and kill many but they will not and can not eradicate ethnic conflicts that are well rooted in the world’s history and perhaps inherent in human nature.

Come on Israel extend the hand of peace and tear down the walls of occupation.

PS. You might wonder why I HAVE LEFT OUT recent Invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and all other recent developments. It seems to me that there is little point in highlighting the mistakes that have contributed to worsening of the present day state of play.  We will all have different fingers of blame to point whether they are pointed at Osama bin Laden, Bush, Blair, Bush, Saddam Hussein, Obama , Bashar al-Assad, Hamid Karzi, over the centuries we HAVE ALL CONTRIBUTED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knowing how to Google something is not enough.

26 Friday Sep 2014

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Like me I am sure you look at our world and wonder how has it got its self in such a mess.

If anything, the amount of knowledge one needs to know to make sense of today’s issues is staggering.

Putting inequality and greed aside, the lack togetherness has to be one of the main problems. We with our interconnected world have little if any appreciation or understanding of other cultures in the world.

So has technology plunged the world into its present day state?

”You can look anything up on you iPad, so you don’t have to know anything (“factual mastery is become less and less important.”)

Real knowledge and understanding is going out the door. In order to have a conversation, or to contemplate or invent something, you must have the information in your head, so that you can combine it with other information that is also in your head. There’s no time to “look it up. You can only work with what’s in your head. That’s why computers don’t just have hard disks, they also have “working memory.

Or is the Internet making us more skilled at asking questions, or is it more important that it is parroting answers to someone else’s questions.

I can’t help wondering what will happen if we rely mainly on electronic devices to provide information…..and then there’s a blackout.

Then who has the floor?

The person who actually KNOWS something and can articulate it. The guy looking it upon the iphone plays second fiddle.  Who do you think would win? The guy with the knowledge, and therefore, quick retorts in his head, or the one fumbling with the Ipad?

Unfortunately, this is the road we are going down. I don’t see how present days technologist are creating knowledge to improve the world. This can only be true when a microchip can be implanted in my head so that my brain can draw on all the knowledge it needs to reason and think creatively. We can’t fix a human problem with a pure technological solution. I am also afraid to tell you that technology is no replacement for caring.

Education is a dance. A theatrical moving-about. It requires more than a dump of information and a hologram or computer or Smart Phone to be Intelligent.

You might think I am talking unadulterated crap but the best educated of most of us learned was what we did it with a pencil, some paper, an adult teacher and some chalk in a classroom. Miraculously such people got a man on the moon. The very idea of computers was invented by such people (Bill Gates and the late Stephen Jobs were in their middle 50s).

Humans have always worked in collaboration for important achievements. Unfortunately these days factual mastery is becoming less and less important.

We are into a hodgepodge of moment-driven quantitative analyses.

We now have Teenagers who have a great knowledge of math and science but no capability to understand what the value of it is beyond a paycheck they might earn.

Why learn a foreign language when there is Google Translate?  We persist in using skin color as a way of defining individuals.

The capability of the human mind to keep knowledge does not increase at the same rate as the expansion of knowledge. Learning is never done and there is no arbitrary point where we are ready for the real world.

At least becoming proficient, in another language is key to global integration, not the reverse.

In this computer-driven age more and more exams in many subjects are multiple choice guessing contests graded by computer – and even math exams require one to enter the problem’s solution in an exact and strictly timed format, making it possible to get all the right answers and still fail for lack of ability to perform data entry with sufficient dexterity and speed.

You hear these day with the current terrorism in the world that young people are being radicalized. Why?

  1. Because the wheels of commerce are supercharged by the electricity of a million of Hippocratic hand shakes. USA-Iran,Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestinian.
  2. Because the alternative of the ignorant is to rely on some talking head.
  3. Because New technologies are profoundly altering the way knowledge is conveyed.
  4. Because the pursuit of knowledge and skills is too expensive.
  5. Because we don’t educate our young to gain a full range of basic intellectual skills. Value, Curiosity, Tolerance, Respect, Creativity.
  6. Because ethical thinking which is crucial for individuals and societies to better address and deal with public policy issues is a forgotten as a moral philosophy, leaving a void to radicalization, away from the materialistic world.
  7. Because we have forgotten that Education will be more about how to process and use information and less about imparting it.  It has degenerated over the last two generations from a reflective science that gave value to life through the deep thinking of individuals and the careful review of their peers into I am all right Jack syndrome.
  8. Because we rely almost entirely on passive learning.  To follow in over-trodden paths of conventionalism. If the goal is to turn students into robot-like performers they’ll certainly accomplish it, but how much can you expect the many problems in the real world to be solved by robots?
  9. Because a big part of stopping radicalization and having students thrive is to give them people to emulate, and people who support their dreams. At the rate and direction we are headed I wonder if students will be able to answer what is 13 squared without a calculator or recall who fought in WWI or II.
  10. Because we should pay for students to spend a semester or more abroad.  An educational experience worth every penny of its extra cost. To Master  A Language. would be far more beneficial than; mastering, or rethinking how to more effectively prepare.
  11. Because we need to do away the basic notion that you have to learn something in order to be able to move toward higher level skills of thinking and analysis. So it can go down more easily with students who were raised on the internet.
  12. Because the current system of grouping pupils by age across all subjects by force is archaic.
  13. Because the idea that data and collaboration are “coming” is absurd. We need an education system the is flexible enough to be custom tailored to each student without the necessity to change any part of the system itself. The capability of the human mind to keep knowledge does not increase at the same rate as the expansion of knowledge.”It’s a common error to believe language exists in a vacuum, that by simply sharing a common lexicon the world’s social, economic and political barriers will fall like leaves in an autumn wind.
  14. Because Specialization is for insects.
  15. Because teaching Mandarin to the next generation wouldn’t be a bad idea, as a one-way communication of English will otherwise lead to global misunderstanding.
  16. Because naked greed, willful ignorance, and incompetence – are as common as daylight. Let’s also deliver thoughtfulness.
  17. Because  A good example is the concept of our living in a heliocentric system rather than a earth-centric system.
  18. Because it was impossible to think seriously about the future many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.
  19. Because there is a huge difference between sheer memorization of a tremendous amount of data and actually knowing how to use that data.

Do people leave college with an accurate robust knowledge of probability?

No. It is only attained.

Most things are as untrue as they are true.

“A human being should be able to change a nappy, plan an invasion, butcher a pig, steer a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

The purpose of public education is to teach students to think, give students real skills, and give students experiences that require use of both.

University is a preserver of the past in terms of values and outlooks and shared “facts.”

Those who do not know history and have not thought about it, repeat its mistakes use Google, Safari Library or externalized knowledge stores.

.The initial development of revolutionary ideas come from individuals.

Isn’t this the way we should be handing the reins of government, over and over, to the “best and brightest”

That one expert will, one hopes, teach the controversies about the war, rather than simply teaching their own opinions as fact, but there’s still a real danger of creating an intellectual mono culture that might, like genetically modified crops, have a shared vulnerability.

We’ve already got this  (think Tea Party and climate change or evolution).

Educators have a huge problem on their hands as to how to offload their brain empower students to be creators, rather than mere consumers.

Da Vinci today alone cannot build an jet-airplane. The people who designed the microchips, wrote the operative system, made the special glass, and so on weren’t specialists?

Let me tell you the first time as a young man I went to see the Eiffel Tower it was surrounded by pigeons now it’s surrounded by machine guns.

Its time we taught values not just our values, values that we all share and need to live on this plant in Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISIS will merely disperse and conceal their forces.

25 Thursday Sep 2014

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A couple of jihadists approach the dead prisoners and finish off any survivors from point-blank range

In response to airstrikes this is exactly what ISIS will try to do.

The lessons in regard to this have been demonstrated over and over. You can flatten a place from the air, cause untold (as they like to call it collateral destruction) deaths and suffering, and recruitment’s to the flag of those being Bombed.

Since 9/11 the hornets nest we are now witnessing as Obama recently pointed out is a Net work of Death.

It is not my purpose here to attribute blame but to ask why in this modern age do we see fanatical, killers, on a mission, to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari’ah law.?

A complicated question to say the least.

  1. Who helped these psychopaths rise to power?
  2. Who armed them, funded them and trained them?
  3. Why are ISIS very happy to show their atrocities? They post it on Twitter. They put it on YouTube.
  4. Is there any kind of constructive role the US can play in this nightmare scenario, military or otherwise, or should the Obama administration stay as far away from the situation as possible?
  5. What’s playing out across the Arab world?

The Taliban’s goals have always been nationalistic, in the sense that they claim to be fighting on behalf of Afghans against a foreign occupier. The things that propel them to fight are very local, very parochial.

These jihadist militants from Iraq were part of what national security analysts commonly referred to as Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Remember Al-Qaeda in Iraq was ISIS before it was re-branded.

We’ve had 30, 40, 50 years of dictatorship, secular dictatorship across the Arab world, in which you’ve had very weak left forces that can articulate a vision of social justice that’s also secular.

After the Arab Spring, the secular dictatorships have been overthrown for the most part, or they’ve been attempted to be overthrown, and there’s nobody else to fill that vacuum except for the Islamists.

We need to really think about what are the social origins, what are the political roots of ISIS.

What are the conditions in Iraq, particularly after 2008 and 2009, that led to the feelings of disillusionment and disenfranchisement on behalf of Sunni populations and the anger toward the Maliki government that allowed a group like ISIS to become strong in the first place?

While it’s important to keep in mind that the US and its Allies are indirectly responsible for the very existence of ISIS because of their invasion. The chaos that was sowed by the invasion and the resulting civil war were ultimately caused by the United States’ invasion and then its early withdrawal.

Was it Obama pulling out in 2010–2011 is what caused ISIS to grow and become strong, or the arming of Syrian rebels is what allowed ISIS to grow and become strong?

To think of ISIS as purely evil is a mistake. We wont get very far by thinking of them as purely evil because Jihadi Islam originates in Islam itself.

Are they more bloodthirsty than the Assad regime, or the Taliban, or al Qaeda?

Not by much, except that they try to minimize their atrocities; they don’t want the world to know about them. They hide their atrocities.

What’s different about ISIS is that they are harking back to the caliphate days of the Ottoman Turkish sultans until it was abolished by Kemal Ataturk in 1924.

This is an era of Islam’s ascendancy from the death of Mohammed until the 13th century. Some Moslems still maintain that the Moslem world must have a calif ( a representative of Allah on earth ) as head of the community.

So Isis believes that a Khalifah ( Allah representative )will unite all Islamic lands and people and subjugate the rest of the world.  

In doing so ISIS reject  international order altogether. This is why we must stand up and be counted.

As monstrous as the Islamic State may be, its success is fueled by legitimate grievances on the part of a Sunni population that has been relegated to second-class status by the Maliki government, a government that came into power as a result of the United States’ recklessly short-sighted invasion and occupation of the country, which is now supposed to be ironed out (yet to be seen) by the election of a new inclusive Government that is asking for help.

Now we’re essentially being dared by IS to intervene again in what has become a three-way civil war.

There is no solution but to accept the Bait and get rid of the blood thirsty LUNATICS, ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Brutal: Other captives are shot before being tied to makeshift crucifixes    image

I’m so speechless… there is no need for any more photos. 

As anticipated – Our World Leaders Excelled themselves once more.

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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oil refinery moon

They say that Sarcasm is the lowest for of wit.

Well if so, we should all be showering large doses of it on the recent UN Climate Change Summit in New York the first such meeting on climate in five years.

The World leaders held back on making new commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions or to give significant climate finance to developing countries, leaving it to business, cities and campaign groups to produce the real action on climate.

Why?

Because our world leaders who were present at the Summit once again showed their in dept knowledge of the Defining problem facing the world. Climate Change.

Those who were not present obviously had more pressing engagements.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi India and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the heads of the world’s two most populous nations. In empirical terms, it’s hard to think of two more important leaders in the world right now: Together they lead more than 2.5 billion people, more than a third of the world’s population. They also were the first- and third-biggest producers of carbon dioxide emissions (the United States holds the No. 2 spot).

Wanted Poster.

 President Vladimir Putin the veto man. Russia is the 10th-most-populous country in the world and the fourth-largest producers of carbon dioxide emissions.

Wanted Poster.

 Both Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, two leaders known for their relative skepticism about climate change not in attendance.

Wanted Poster.

              

So what happened in response to thousands of world citizens marching. Not much according to reports I have read.

The oceans which cover 73% of the planet’s surface, was not on the agenda.

China, which has surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter, said it would also do its bit, by curbing emissions “as soon as possible”

The UK prime minister, David Cameron, also touted his government’s environmental policies. “As prime minister I pledged to lead the greenest government ever and I believe we have kept that promise.”

The president of France  François Hollande, who obviously need to go to speck savers told an investors’ event on the sidelines of the summit.

“We can’t just limit ourselves to words, expressions of regret and exercises in stock-taking,” “What will come out of Paris is a new economy,”

France went on to commit to providing $1bn to a climate change fund for poor countries – the first significant contribution since Germany threw in $1bn last July.

Sweden has also contributed.

South Korea and Switzerland went on to pledge $100m each.

Denmark pledged $70m.

Norway pledged $33m.

Mexico said it would give $10m.

But the total of $2.3bn pledged for the Green Climate Fund so far fell short of the $10bn to $15bn that UN officials and developing country said was needed to show rich countries were committed to acting on climate change.

It also was unclear whether Tuesday’s pledges represented new money. A lot of “climate financing” is just existing aid repackaged under a new name.

More than 400 companies from 60 countries all signed on to support putting a price on carbon.Some of the world’s biggest palm oil and paper producers committed to stop destructive logging by 2030, and restore an area of forest equivalent to the size of India.

But Brazil, despite its critical role protecting the Amazon rain forest, said it had been left out of the negotiations. It refused to sign an anti-deforestation pledge, dealing a blow to the Climate Change summit in New York.

“The lungs of the planet”

A number of campaign groups did not sign the agreement, saying it did not go far enough to protect the rights of indigenous people who rely on the forest, or to hold the big forestry companies to account.

So where are we?

This Summit was not a formal negotiation on climate change but an “extraordinary meeting to try to jump-start the whole thing and get it back on the rails.” to lay the groundwork ahead of a UN climate conference in Lima, Peru, this December.

Does that sound drearily familiar? It should. The world’s leaders have been hammering out various climate agreements for decades now.

There was the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord.

But despite all these talks, global greenhouse-gas emissions have kept rising, putting the world on track for more warming in the years ahead.

So why should this newest round of climate diplomacy be any different?

UNDER THE 1992 CLIMATE TREATY, COUNTRIES AGREED TO TAKE ACTION — BUT NEVER SPECIFIED WHAT, EXACTLY.

They certainly haven’t achieved the goal of stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions in the atmosphere. The world is burning more fossil fuels than ever, and carbon-dioxide emissions keep rising each year: THE CURRENT PLEDGES ARE INADEQUATE TO PREVENT 2°C OF WARMING.

THE US AND EUROPE HAVE HAD THEIR FOSSIL FUEL PARTY, NOW INDIA AND CHINA WANT THEIRS EMISSIONS.

Why are emissions FROM WEALTHY NATIONS DECLINING.

Because rich nations are “outsourcing” their carbon

By the end of 2015, they hope to hammer out an agreement with “legal force”

Believe that, you believe anything.

Here are two suggestions that would make a difference. One world wide the other Country wide.

1. If the earth is going to fry why not convert the sun-rich deserts of the world into energy producing and storage Units. 90 percent of the world’s population lives within 3,000 km of deserts.

Think of the employment it would create, not to mention the Energy and the resulting reduction in Co2.

2) Create tax cuts of the use of clean Energy.

 

 

Adam and Eve were black. They lived in Africa at the same time – but probably never met.

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Where did we come from?

The conventional evolutionary lineage is a simple one:shambling simian stands upright, evolves into bipedal hairy brute, then slouching hairy brute with hand Axe and finally into hairless human with Smart Phone.

If you have opened this post I wont pay you the disrespect of not knowing the Darwin & Human evolution theory but did you know that he saw his first Ape at London Zoo.

So before we go any further there is no point in reading this post with a closed Darwin mind. The evidence is so sparse that people are free to frame a favorite hypothesis about what it was that made humans different.

To have a chance of understanding evolution we must think in much larger units of time and possibilities than those that we use to define our lives.

Lets ask some questions.

For instance,

  1. Can we say what direction human evolution will take in the future?
  2. Are we generically engineered or did we really descend from Apes.?
  3. Why do we still only use 10% of our brain power.?
  4. Do we have a natural place on earth?
  5. We are all supposed to be connected, to what?
  6. To what extend did our humans forebears interbreed with their closest relatives?
  7. How did humans get from thinking about food-gathering strategies to thinking about taxonomy, tax-avoidance and Twitter?
  8. Did early humans start to develop even bigger brains because they became increasingly efficient endurance runners that could get to a carcass before the hyenas and vultures, and strip away a nourishing meal of meat, fat and marrow?
  9. Did humans begin to stand upright by taking to the water – and to nourish bigger brains with high-protein deliveries of fish and shellfish?
  10. Somehow, out of this million-year-mix of food, fear and hunter-gatherer companionship in Africa, complex language emerged.
  11. The African chimpanzee is an endangered species, down to perhaps 150,000, while the human population is about to tip seven billion. What was it that we left behind in those two Chromosomes?

Our species of humans first began to evolve nearly 200,000 years ago in association with technologies not unlike those of the early Neanderthals.

There is no reliable evidence of modern humans elsewhere in the Old World until 60,000-40,000 years ago, during a short temperate period in the midst of the last ice age.

Some of them migrated out of Africa into the rest of the Old World replacing all of the Neanderthals and other late archaic humans, beginning around 60,000-40,000 years ago or somewhat earlier.

So current data suggest that modern humans evolved from archaic humans primarily in East Africa. Supporters of this model believe that the ultimate common ancestor of all modern people was an early Homo erectus in Africa who lived at least 1.8 million years ago.

Our DNA now says we appeared some 200,50 thousand years ago not 1.8 million.

So the first modern humans did evolve in Africa, but when they migrated into other regions they did not simply replace existing human populations. Rather, they interbred to a limited degree with late archaic humans resulting in hybrid populations.

If so why to we have 46 Chromosomes while Apes have 48. Where did other two go? 

It is further suggested that since then there was sufficient gene flow between Europe, Africa, and Asia to prevent long-term reproductive isolation and the subsequent evolution of distinct regional species.  It is argued that intermittent contact between people of these distant areas would have kept the human line a single species at any one time.  However, regional varieties, or subspecies, of humans are expected to have existed.

It is now clear that early Homo sapiens, or modern humans, did not come after the Neanderthals but were their contemporaries.  However, it is likely that both modern humans and Neanderthals descended from Homo Heidelbergensis or Homo Rhodesiensis. 

Evolution Of Man – What is it?

The modern theory concerning the evolution of man proposes that humans and apes derive from an ape like ancestor that lived on earth a few million years ago.

The theory states that man, through a combination of environmental and genetic factors, emerged as species to produce the variety of ethnicities seen today, while modern apes evolved on a separate evolutionary pathway. Nevertheless, a closer examination of the evidence reveals evolution to be increasingly less scientific and more reliant upon beliefs, not proof.

The Running man Theory: 

Six million years ago our ancestors began walking on two feet. In that six million years the foot evolved from the flat-footed knuckle walking like that of a chimpanzee, to what it is today, an arched foot perfect for upright, high-speed running.

Scientists now know the missing link for what enabled humans to survive through periods that many other species went extinct, it’s called Persistence Hunting. And the human body perfected the equipment for such high endurance running:

Humans are primates Theory.

Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species,Homo sapiens, has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa — chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas — share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.

Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. At one point in human history, around 40,000 years ago, modern humans must have shared the planet with at least four other human cousins:

The DNA Theory.

Evolution occurs when there is change in the genetic material — the chemical molecule, DNA — which is inherited from the parents, and especially in the proportions of different genes in a population.

Genes represent the segments of DNA that provide the chemical code for producing proteins. Information contained in the DNA can change by a process known as mutation. The way particular genes are expressed – that is, how they influence the body or behavior of an organism — can also change.

Genes affect how the body and behavior of an organism develop during its life, and this is why genetically inherited characteristics can influence the likelihood of an organism’s survival and reproduction.

Our most common male ancestor, ‘Adam’, has finally got his original birth date – and its 9,000 years earlier than scientists believed.

UK researchers claim that ‘Adam’ walked the earth 209,000 years ago, contradicting a recent study that suggested the Y chromosome predated humanity.

Adam’ walked the Earth between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed.

Their findings put ‘Adam’ within the time frame of his other half ‘Eve’, the genetic maternal ancestor of mankind.

Here is worth mentioning. The Big Bang Theory. Life not Us.

A concept which seeks to explain the origin of the universe, claiming that billions of years ago all the matter and energy in the universe was condensed into a particle no bigger than a pin-head.

No one knows where it came from and why for some unknown reason it exploded.

So there you have it without the Religious Theories, thank God.

Democracy – Is it just Political Ignorance that is exercising the Vote.

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

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Democracy is supposed to be rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But is it ?

The public often does a poor job of evaluating the political information they do know and this state of affairs has persisted despite rising education levels, increased availability of information thanks to modern technology, which is mostly the result of rational behavior, not stupidity. ( Recent Referendum In Scotland)

But it is striking that knowledge levels have risen very little, if at all, despite rising educational attainment and the increased availability of information through the internet, cable news, and other modern technologies.

Voters still overvalue anything that supports their preexisting views, and to undervalue or ignore new data that cuts against them, even to the extent of misinterpreting simple data that they could easily interpret correctly in other contexts.

Moreover, those most interested in politics are also particularly prone to discuss it only with others who agree with their views, and to follow politics only through like-minded media.

A truth-seeker should actively seek out defenders of views opposed to their own.

The results of the Scottish Referendum strengthens the case for limiting and decentralizing the power of government.

Why?

BECAUSE:  When it comes to General elections without a clear choice there is a small turn out, compared to the Scottish Referendum which had a clear and precise question to be voted on TURNED OUT 85% of its population.

In General Elections most of the public has very little idea of how the basic structure of government and how it operates down to such ignorance and confusion as to which government officials are responsible for which issues.

Why?

For several reasons,

BECAUSE: Public ignorance is not limited to information about specific policies.

The problems of political ignorance and irrationality are accentuated by the enormous size and scope of modern governments.

BECAUSE: Voters routinely reward and punish political leaders for events they have little control over, particularly short-term economic trends. Incumbents also get rewarded or blamed for such things as droughts, shark attacks, and victories by local sports teams.

Some people react to data like the above by thinking that the voters must be stupid. But political ignorance is actually rational for most of the public, including most smart people.

BECAUSE: We vote with our feet in the private sector, by choosing which products to buy or which civil society organizations to join.

BECAUSE: Most people don’t precisely calculate the odds that their vote will make a difference.

BECAUSE: Moreover, political leaders and influential interest groups often use public education to indoctrinate students in their own preferred ideology rather than increase knowledge.

BECAUSE: Information shortcuts are small bits of information that we can use as proxies for larger bodies of knowledge of which we may be ignorant. The major flaws are that shortcuts often require preexisting knowledge to use effectively, and many people choose information shortcuts for reasons unrelated to truth-seeking.

BECAUSE: For most of us, it is rational to devote very little time to learning about politics, and instead focus on other activities that are more interesting or more likely to be useful.

BECAUSE: For many, it is rational to take the time to vote, but without learning much about the issues at stake.

BECAUSE: If your only reason to follow politics is to be a better voter, that turns out not be much of a reason at all. The chances OF CHANGE are very small, and act accordingly.

BECAUSE:  The chances of effectively monitor more than a fraction of the activities of the modern state is all but impossible.

BECAUSE:  Voters If things are looking up, they will reward the incumbents at election time. If not, you can vote the bums out, and the new set of bums will have a strong incentive to adopt better policies, lest they be voted out in turn.

BECAUSE:  Voters choose their opinion leaders largely based on how entertaining they are, and whether they make us feel good about the views we already hold.

Add all the above up and it points to that the Current Democracy is too big, too complicated, too influenced by consumerism, untruest,  in a state of confusion with rampant political ignorance.

There is no easy solution to the problem.

The key difference between foot voting and ballot box voting is that foot voters don’t have the same incentive to be rationally ignorant as ballot box voters do.

In fact, ballot box voters have strong incentives to seek out useful information unlike political fans, foot voters who know they will pay a real price if they do a poor job of evaluating the information they get.

So the informational advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting strengthen the case for limiting and decentralizing government.

The more decentralized government is, the more issues can be decided through foot voting. 

It is usually much easier to vote with your feet against a local government than a state government, and much easier to do it against a state than against the federal government. Choosing among the former usually requires far less in the way of moving costs than choosing among the latter.

The other is choosing what state or local government to live under in a federal system – a decision often influenced by the quality of those jurisdictions’ public policy. 

It is also usually easier to foot vote in the private sector than the public. A given region is likely to have far more private planned communities and other private sector organizations than local governments.

Reducing the size of government could also alleviate the problem of ignorance by making it easier for rationally ignorant voters to monitor its activities.

moving costs can be reduced by decentralizing to lower levels of government or to the private sector, and such costs are in any case declining thanks to modern technology.

For example, some large-scale issues, such as global warming, are simply too big to be effectively addressed by lower-level governments or private organizations.

A smaller, less complicated government is easier to keep track of.

Political ignorance is far from the only factor that must be considered in deciding the appropriate size, scope, and centralization of government.

Democracy and Political Ignorance is not a complete theory of the proper role of government in society. But it does suggest that the problem of political ignorance should lead us to limit and decentralize government more than we would otherwise.

The likelihood that political decentralization might harm unpopular racial and ethnic minorities is a myth the opposite is what will happen.

moving costs can be reduced by decentralizing to lower levels of government or to the private sector, and such costs are in any case declining thanks to modern technology.

There are many different forms of democracy, but what makes a democracy different from all other forms of government is the participation of the people in decision-making. Putting power and decision-making in the hands of the people, not catering to the wishes of the wealthy or repressing freedoms.

Information is the currency of Democracy not,

The Vision is the real Democracy

This is what the Scottish Referendum taught us all.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Who do you think you are?

22 Monday Sep 2014

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If I was living some considerable time ago and was asked this question depending who I was I would have said I am Inuit named Bob. An Inuit was then a Inuit.

These days given the intense interest in identity and identities across a broad spectrum of disciplines your identity is under attack by whatever you, buy, eat, and view.

Since we all know how to employ the word one might initially expect it easy to find simple and clear statements of what people mean when that ask how are you and there would be need for explanations?

So why Bother? So that we don’t all end up Categorized as Consumers.

Identity is acquiring a highly successful life of its own in ordinary language and many social science disciplines.

In popular discourse identity is often treated as something ineffable and even sacred, while in the academy identity is often treated as something complex and even ineffable.

In our world of today’s Interconnections it is being ignored with your Identity being connected and linked to likes that are decided upon by computers.

Therefore it is not so surprising when ask the question one might answer the question“who are you?”entirely differently in different circumstances.

It has ceased to perform the function of a verbal sign of contact.

So what does this word mean as we use it now?

I argue below that the word “identity” as used today has two distinct but intertwined meanings.“social” and “personal” identity.“

Social – American,” “French,” “Muslim,” “father,” “homosexual,“worker,” “professor,” or “citizen” as identities.”

Personal identity is a set of attributes, beliefs, desires, or principles of action that a person thinks distinguish her in socially relevant ways and that (a) the person takes a special pride in; (b) the person takes no special pride in, but which so orient her behavior that she would be at a loss about how to act and what to do without them; or (c) the person feels she could not change even if she wanted to.

I will argue, the (a) meaning applies, so that for usage in ordinary language personal identity can typically be glossed as the aspects or attributes of a person that form the basis for his or her dignity or self-respect.

Used in this sense, “identity” has become a partial and indirect substitute for “dignity,” “honor,” and “pride.” 

This is perhaps not true.

Almost every one evokes a sense of recognition, depending on the context.

For example,

If asked by ISIS I would be inclined to say a Muslim to save my head, not my dignity honor or pride. In some situations I might even give my social security number.

So what is Identity these days.

Is it how I define who I am?

or

Is it how one answers the question “who are you?”

or

Is it the sameness of a person or thing at all times in all circumstances?

or

Is it the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something
else; individuality, personality,” “national identity” or “ethnic identity?

What ever it our present understanding of “identity” lie in the academy. 

A concept which is now quite common in popular discourse as our identities are going out the window into BIG Data.

So here is my first cut at a definition.

An identity is something that fits as X in the sentence “I am an X.”

In logical terms, an identity is a predicate that applies (or may apply) to a person, that is, a quality or property of a person.

Whoops that not good enough!

Since X allows things that clearly would not qualify as “legitimate” (that is, recognizable to usage) so identities, even take on a  broad sense of the word.

For example, consider X = a person with nine fingers, or X = a person with a moles on my right arm, or X = a person who saw the dentist last Tuesday.

So an identity must be a particular sort of predicate attachable to a person.

The same might be said of national identity, if I change national affiliations.

So I still need a qualification on the definition that says an identity is an X that
satisfies.

Lets try again.

One might have multiple identities, understood simply as answers to the question “who are you?”

In ordinary speech and most academic writing, “identity” means either (a) a social category, defined by membership rules and allegedly characteristic attributes or expected behaviors, or (b) a socially distinguishing feature that a person takes a special pride in or views as unchangeable but socially consequential (or, of course, both (a) and (b) at once).

This isn’t enough either.

For example, if you lose a finger we would say that you are the same person as before; if you suffer from an advanced state of Alzheimer’s, we might not.

I might say that a crucial part of my identity is that I like to listen to rock, but if I stopped liking this music I would not think that I was literally a different person –I would not imagine that I ceased being Elvis even though I might understand my identity to have changed.

In this philosophical sense, personal identity is those predicates of a person such that if they are changed, it is no longer the same person, the properties that are essential to him or her being that person rather than being merely contingent.

Consider, then, a simple definition that says an identity is just a social category, and to have a particular identity means to assign oneself to a particular social category or perhaps just to be assigned to it by others.

Is that it?  No!

To begin with, a social category is a set of people designated by a label (or labels) commonly given to, or used by, a set of people.

Social categories have two distinguishing features.

First, they are defined and by implicit or explicit rules of membership, according to which individuals are assigned or not to the category.

Second, social categories are understood in terms of sets of characteristics – for example, beliefs, desires, moral commitments, or physical attributes – thought typical of members of the category, or behaviors expected or obliged of members in certain situations, as in the case of roles, such as a professor, student, or police officer.

”While identity-as-a-social-category captures much of what academics often mean by the term, this simple definition does not cover all that we mean by the word. In particular, “an identity is a social category” doesn’t work when we use identity in the sense of personal identity, which may be formulated in terms of a group affiliation but need not be.

So Social categories are socially constructed, but social categories change over time and are historically contingent.

Social categories generally are objective social facts beyond the reach of any one
individual to change.

Still don’t quite know who I am.

Even when the word does refer primarily to a social category – nation, gender, sexuality, for instance – it can mean somewhat more than just “social category” because of an implicit linkage with the idea of personal identity.

This is getting rather confusing. 

Because to ask about identities of such-and-such people is often to ask about the social categories in which they placed themselves (or were placed by others) and how they thought about their content or rules of membership.

In many cases it might be clearer and better to use “social category” rather than “identity.

The identity of a thing (not just a person) consists of those properties or qualities in virtue of which it is that thing. That is if you changed these properties or qualities, it would cease to be that thing and be something different.

Help!

I thought I knew who I was when I started this Post and who are you to say I am not what I am in the first place. Maybe I need a spliff  to find out, on the other hand you can rest assured that Doctor Livingston I presume is long gone. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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100 years from now Facebook is going to be full of dead people.

20 Saturday Sep 2014

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Lets ask the question?

Is Social Media going to turn out as the Ultimate Betrayal.

In a hundred years time there are going to be hundred of thousands on Facebook without any emotions, hundred of thousands of extinct Twitters, hundred of thousands of people linked to the dead, hundred of thousands Google searches never to be repeated, and billions and billions of e-mail that will never contribute to world history.

That’s BIG DATA: ( See previous blog)

Now it’s not possible here to cover all aspects of Social Media so I am going to concentrate on the most popular FACEBOOK.

The first and most important thing to make clear is that FACEBOOK is a Company, a public company for that matter and it has to find ways to become more profitable with each passing quarter.

What concerns me is the increased silence of what it will mean for a public who has no clue of what’s being done with their data.

I want to see users of Social Media have the ability to meaningfully influence what’s being done with their data.

I hate the fact that Facebook thinks it’s better than me at deciding which of my friends’ posts I should see or to suggest he or she wants to be a friend.

That Facebook algorithmically determines which of your friends’ posts you see.

That their everyday algorithms are meant to manipulate your emotions.

What factors go into this? We don’t know,  but it is obvious that they have some algorithm that show the content that people click on the most.

Anyone who clicks on a “like” button is considered to have “liked” all future content from that source. Anyone who “likes” a comment on a shared link is considered to “like” wherever that link points to.  

This is a form corrupt personalization.  They can be taught what to want.

Facebook is making these choices every day without oversight, transparency, or informed consent.

I hate that I have no meaningful mechanism of control on the site.

I also hate the fact that it is generating billions in profit without contributing ( other than taxes) to the relief of world poverty, to the environment problems, and any other Social problem you wish to name.

Yes of course it gives a platform to talk on these subjects only because Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook. It’s in Facebook’s better interest to leave people feeling happier.

The problem is that Facebook is a black box.

Here are a few of the questions to be answered when it comes to Social Media.

A ) Should we be worried that software tracks us through social media?

B) Should postings on social media be considered free speech?

C) How does social media facilitate mass demonstrations (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall street)?

D) Have social networks caused teens to become anti-social in the real world?

E) Should schools ban teachers from interacting with their students on social networks?

F) Does social media encourage democracy?

The term “social networking” does not exclusively belong to digital technology on the Web. On the contrary, social networks had been studied from the beginning of 20th century with the aim to comprehend how the members of a certain community interact and which mechanism can determine the interaction itself.

Social Media is a tool of direct marketing where the customers and consumers have the opportunity to participate in the process of exchange.

 It’s a blurring of work and private life 

Social Media is only just emerging, meaning that codification of acceptable and unacceptable practices has not yet taken place. The ability to collect and analyze information from the past as well as in real-time, as it is generated has far reaching consequences. 

Though it commonly is understood that conversations are generally public and open to viewing by almost anyone. It can have a profound effect on the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs of individuals who have no idea that they are under observation in the first place. 

This is what drives media entities to produce listicals, flashy headlines, and car crash news stories. To manipulate people’s emotions through the headlines they produce and the content they cover, regardless of the psychological toll on individuals or the society they represent.

You might say bull shit.

That technology companies can secretly influence our emotions?

Apparently so.“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”  The question is when does data science become human subjects research? 

”A social network proprietor can engineer emotions for the multitudes to a slight degree”

The Arab Spring as it was called. The recent Vote on Independence in Scotland, President Obama election,  ISIS one beheading. There’s no stable metaphor that people hold for what the news feed is. Emotions are being manipulated all the time, without informed consent, without debriefing. 

Information is being presented and it’s being manipulated [through social media interfaces] by definition.

The reality is, when it comes to studying human interaction or behavior (for profit or scientific glory), it is no more (or less) complicated whether we’re interviewing someone in their living room, watching them in a lab, testing them at the screen, or examining the content they post online.

So the answer the questions posed above:

 A)  YES.

B)   NO.

C)  BY manipulation of Emotions.

D)  YES&NO

E)  YES

F)   NO

 

What do you think? And O! just in case you think this was typed by one of our departed I want to be your friend.

If you e mail me your cannot be sure. The only way is living human contact.

Remember Like me at some point you will be the next person on earth to die.

Then Who or What will own your data? and what’s Social about that.?

 

 

 

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