A common complaint about representative democracy is that it creates a distant class of lawmakers who will often collude with vested interests, or become so detached from the lives of the general public, that they will make decisions that the public does not support. By contrast, in a Direct Democracy system, such corruption of decision-making is impossible if every citizen is an equally powerful participant in the process.
However, it does not make any sense to think that direct democracy is somehow ideologically predisposed in any particular direction.
Direct democracy is simply a median-reverting institution.
It pushes policy back toward the center of public opinion when legislatures move too far to the right or left or is it, in fact, an opportunity to organize a kind of socio-ecological revolution to break away from the western development model of politics.
We know that every political system man has invented is open to corruption.
It is obvious that modern western democracies are now confronted with a change in culture mainly due to the integration of migrants, globalization, terrorism, and artificial intelligence.
Direct Democracy is presented as a solution to these challenges mainly by Social Media with its partitions and manipulation of voters with false news and software bots that amplify specific conversations on Twitter and Facebook by posting videos, photos, and biased statements targeting particular hashtags and wordings.
Resulting in phony debates, nurtured by cliches and prejudices that are destabilizing the political systems we have had for hundreds of years.
At what cost?
One of the obvious cost is Brexit and the not so obvious Donald Trump.
It is simply impossible to have direct democracy as the common Googlefied smartphone citizen does not have a grasp of political understanding nor the cognitive capacities to achieve direct democracy.
However, this view cuts against democracy in general.
As it implies that politicians always know better than the average citizen.
This is far from the truth when one looks at the current state of the world that is crying for some common action.
Politicians don’t necessarily show expertise and interest and certainly don’t know all the issues and are not always well informed.
They depend on shortcuts and have to ask other politicians and experts.
This morning I received an email from John Taylo in response to my last post ( The Beady Eye ask’s: Does anyone really know what quantum chips will do.)
He sums up the situation by saying and I quote
” We have yet to invent a political system that will harness the knowledge of mankind. if AI can be used for the benefit of all to reduce poverty and increase living standers of all without wrecking the planet it will be ……. Only dreaming”
I replied “What a dream”
Perhaps I should have said ” Where do dreams come from. Look around you. That is where dreams come from. The only planet we know. ”
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all know that the world we live in is constantly in a state of transformation.
The wealth created from business for its most part in the history of humanity has always been blamed for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, for poisoning the earth with effluent from its factories.
YET BUSINESS, PRODUCES FOOD, CURE DISEASE, CONTROL POPULATION, EMPLOY PEOPLE AND UP TO NOW GENERALLY ENRICHED OUR LIVES.
While we live our lives with what is left of our free-thinking brains SOCIAL MEDIA is undermining what we call Democracy and its Institutions.
We are now all subject to what I call perpetual mental MEDIA TORTURE, driven by algorithms which are owned by platforms that are all about making money without any regulation driving instability and unsustainable.
Social media is fueling anger, fear, and false news, resulting in the rise of right-wing political parties, led by political leaders of less and less talent.
We are rapidly coming to a threshold where we all have to reach a level of civilization in which we think about our selves and our existence on earth.
Once wealth is concentrated in the hand of few it undermines democracy by obvious means making democracy much less functional.
It is true to say attitudes to a lot of things have changed, HOWEVER, WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY OFF reaching a level of culture in which we can ask ourselves some really simple questions?
Like: Are we killing democracy? The answer is yes.
Like: How do we start a grass root movement to really tackle Climate change.
Like: How to Tax Carbon Emissions?
Like: How do we stop artificial intelligence widening the inequality gap.
Like: How do we reset the global pay gap.
Like: How do we reset human rights on an equal footing with the rights of shareholders.
Like: How do we transform the EU project from grey bureaucracy into a bright arena.
One of the most obvious results of the Artificial Intelligence revolution is the ongoing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few and as a result, we are now seeing profit without a soul.
THESE MEGA MONOPOLIES LIKE GOOGLE ALONG WITH FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (that do nothing for the economy of a country other than probably harm it have created the very that are overthrowing Capitalism.
ALL POWER ENDS UP AS FINANCE.
THIS POWER SHOULD BE TAXED TO THE HILT TO TACKLE CO2 EMISSION, along with any other form of business commodities that generate profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)
INSTEAD:
WHILE WE WATCH OUR WORLD FRY OUR POLITICIANS ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS TALENTED, INCAPABLE OF INSPIRING ANY LONG TERM ASPIRATIONS.
WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING IS I AM ALRIGHT JACK POPULOUS POLICIES.
TRADE WARS, BREXIT, SABER RATTLING.
It is however within our power to change things.
ELECTIONS MIGHT NOT CHANGE ECONOMICS BUT THEY CAN CHANGE THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE ELECTED.
RATHER THAN major de-funding of free education, we need to go back to mass public free education like Finland, Germany.
IF WE DON’T HAVE EDUCATION BEYOND THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE WE CAN KISS OUR SWEET ASSES TILL WE ARE BLUE IN THE FACE.
Surely we are not all so dumb that we think its OK to carry on regardless.
Maybe we are so dumb that it will require an AI robot to tell us so.
Hail to the algorithm.
WHAT HAPPENS BEYOND THIS POINT WE HAVE NO IDEA. BY THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE.
ITS TIME TO STOP THE DISHARMONY ON EARTH.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT.
DEMOCRACY COMES IN DIFFERENT COLORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA APPEALS TO BASIC EMOTIONS OF ANXIETY AND TRIBAL SOLIDARITY THAT MAKES IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A TRUE PUBLIC SPACE A SENSE OF COMMON INTEREST.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
The problem is that the concept of “artificial intelligence” is way too potent for its own good.
Ai, Machine learning, Deep learning neural networks have no obvious ways of performing logical inferences all are still a long way from integrating abstract knowledge, such as information about what objects are, what they are for, and how they are typically used.
These are the three terms you’re most likely to have heard lately, and, to be as simple as possible, we can think of them in layers. Neural networks are at the bottom — they’re a type of computer architecture on to which artificial intelligence is built.
Machine learning is next — it’s a program you might run on a neural network, training computers to look for certain answers in pots of data; and
Deep learning is on top — it’s a particular type of machine learning that’s only become popular over the past decade, largely thanks to two new resources: cheap processing power and abundant data (otherwise known as the internet).
The concept of neural networks goes all the way back to the ‘50s and the beginning of AI as a field of research.
In a nutshell, these networks are a way of structuring a computer so that it looks like a cartoon of the brain, comprised of neuron-like nodes connected together in a web. Individually these nodes are dumb, answering extremely basic questions, but collectively they can tackle difficult problems. More importantly, with the right algorithms, they can be taught.
In other words, they don’t have any common sense.
BUT WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVER DEVELOP IMAGINATION.
In most cases, the systems making claims to artificial intelligence aren’t sentient, self-aware, volitional, or even surprising. They’re just software.
AI platforms should do more than answer simple questions. They should be able to learn at scale, reason with purpose, and naturally, interact with humans TO BE CALLED INTELLIGENT.
THERE IS PRESENTLY A GREAT MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE TERM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AMONG THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS WHEN IT COMES TO NOT ONLY IDENTIFYING AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
With Artificial intelligence poised to disrupt everything, it’s time we get on the same page as to what AI is, and perhaps more importantly, what we want it to be so that we can regulate and control the technology.
IF WE DON’T ANYONE LOOKING TO DRAW BUZZ TO THEIR PRODUCTS WILL CONTINUE TO CO-OPT THE PHRASE.
If we don’t we won’t NOTICE WHEN A TRUE REVOLUTIONARY AI SYSTEM DOES ARRIVE.
AND HOW PROBLEMATIC THAT WILL BE.
NOW IS THE TIME THAT WE MUST FULLY ALIGN THE GOAL’S OF AI WITH OURS WHICH IS ALREADY STRICKLING DIFFICULT WITHOUT AN OVERALL GOVERNING WORLD BODY.
IT IS PARAMOUNT FOR WORLD PEACE NOT TO MENTION IN THE COMING YEARS TO REDUCE THE INCREASING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR THAT EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE VETTED NOT JUST FOR A SUREFIRE WAY OF PREDICTING HOW IT WILL BEHAVE BUT TO ENSURE IT COMPLIES WITH OUR COMMON HUMAN VALUES.
FOR TRANSPARENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY EVERY AI PROGRAM SHOULD BE REGISTERED WITH THIS WORLD BODY WITH A SHUTDOWN PROGRAM.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
It is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have at least one Irish grandparent (around 10% of the UK population.)
BREXIT JUST LIKE THE FAMINE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO WILL BE A WATERSHED IN THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.
Ireland is once more faced with the indifference of the English who when voting to leave the European Union had no consideration for its closes and biggest trading partner.
It would be fair to say like the Famine that Ireland will be once more the sacrificial lamb of the British political ambitions.
There are few democratic countries (where two out of its regions voted to stay and when combined with the two leave regions the overall majority was only a 3.8% majority.) that would act on a nonlegal binding referendum which was conducted against a background of lies.
One would think that a majority of at least 5% ON SUCH AN IMPORTANT ISSUE WOULD BE A REASONABLE REQUIREMENT.
If England looked after its people first rather than the glory of a past empire Brexit probably would have never happened. It was the dysfunctional economy of Britain that fueling the leave vote, not immigration.
On top of all of this when you see how different generations voted in the Brexit you realize that the relationship between different age groups in England is broken.
ONE WAY OR THE OTHER IT IS NOW HELL BENT ON DELIVERING THE WORST OF BOTH WORLD; IN OUR OUT. Big business versus the Nigel Farage’s of this world with a handful of Conservatives such as Micheal Gove, Boris Johnson a few Labour MPs.
At the moment dogs cats and ferrets can travel between the UK AND THE EU. Maybe after all of this, all UK citizens will be required to be micro-chipped against Brexit rabies.
SO WE ARE LEFT WITH THE REALITY THAT THE POST BREXIT TRADE DEAL IS GOING TO BE THE MOST COMPLEX PART OF ANY NEGOTIATED DEAL AS IT HAS TO BE UNANIMOUS APPROVED BY 30 NATIONAL AND REGIONAL PARLIAMENTS SOME OF WHICH WILL NO DOUBT HOLD THEIR OWN REFERENDUMS.
ALL OF WHICH POINTS TO NO DEAL, AND YEARS OF BATTLING IT OUT IN COURTS PROCEEDINGS WITH A MASSIVE DIVORCE BILL TO BOTH SIDES.
SO THE QUESTION IS; WILL THERE BE ANOTHER UK REFERENDUM.
Not likely.
To rejoin would mean starting from scratch, with no rebates, the lost of sterling with and all current member agreeing to the UK rejoining.
As for clout outside the EU.
A UK in disarray will have a much influence on the world stage as the DUP is willing to give it at a price.
Forming its own Trade area is an artificial intelligence algorithm yet to be invented.
However, there is a way out of all of this.
The UK abdicates its powers to NORTHERN IRELAND.
ITS CITIZENS BORN AND TO BE BORN HAVE THE ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO CARRY BOTH UK PASSPORTS AND IRISH – THUS FUTURE ENGLISH GENERATIONS CAN REMAIN IN THE THE EU.
ALL THEY WILL HAVE TO REMEMBER IS TO CARRY YOUR IRISH PASSPORT WHEN YOU ARE JOINING THE EU CITIZENS – ONLY QUEUE AT THE AIRPORT.
IT WOULD AVOID A HUGE LOSS OF FACE ON ALL SIDES.
One final observation;
The English don’t appear to understand that the European Union is governed by rules for a reason.
That reason is simple to understand.
The European Union is made up of countries that don’t quite trust each other. They need rules to function, with an independent court to settle any problems.
Whoever thought that Northern Ireland would unite not just Ireland but the whole of the UK.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
Right now one of the reasons our economies have to grow is because of debt.
The global economic system runs on money that is itself debt.
GDP (gross domestic product) has outlived its usefulness as a metric of economic size and is it stoking social and environmental crisis by encouraging growth at any cost.
The kind of statistics we’ve used in the past just isn’t working anymore.
With the planet warming and some resources already exploited to near-exhaustion, including many fisheries, with technology removing trade agreements, (as companies and customers increasingly transact their lives in the cloud not to mention blockchains) we need something that accounts for such factors.
GDP can no longer measure the distribution of wealth within a country.
Even where there is growth, disenchantment with how it is shared out can be seen vividly in Brexit-bound Britain. Notably, So, while its total value can go up, gains are all too often skewed to top earners. Those lower down the ladder can fall further behind in relative terms.
It does not encompass the black market, omitting a huge source of activity and income in many developing countries, including in Africa and Latin America.
We’ve got to find another mechanism to include much bigger parts of the population, and use different metrics to measure the success of a country.
So, what are the alternatives to GDP?
The WEF this week proposed a broader measure of growth called.
The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is an annual assessment of 103 countries’ economic performance that measures how countries perform on eleven dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP. It has 3 pillars; growth and development; inclusion and; intergenerational equity – sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources.
However for this to truly work countries would need to be liberated from the pressures to exploit their citizens in the hunt for income to repay debts and we would need to remove the creation of debt- based money.
Another word we would have to cancel the debt of sovereign nations and move the creation of money away from the state.
Of course in a capitalist world, this is unrealistic.
China alone owns– $1.168 trillion as of January 2018 of U.S. debt.
However, the European Union which is in need of reform could do a lot to liberate its members from the tyranny of growth.
Some creative long-term thinking is needed.
It could actively downgrade consumption, by banning advertising on mobile phones, I pads and Public place, all of which use manipulation of emotions.
It could write off a reasonable chunk of the Greek debt by spread it among its members in return for solar power.
It could turn the euro into real money by insisting that all banks in the European Union hold at least 50% reserves against money lent. 90% of the money circulating in our economies is created out of thin air. Banks lend it into existence.
It could create a basic minimum income by taxing all profit-seeking Algorithms.
It could tax plastic and sugar.
It could stop the farcical traveling circus which sees the European Parliament move between Brussels and Strasbourg every month.
It could set an example for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, we are all to busy with I am alright Jack isolation syndrome – its grow or collapse.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
When we look at the world it is important to recognize that we are looking at the history of different civilizations, however, we all have a common story.
We are born and we die.
Today the story is the same but with more mobility in-between, however, we’ve not changed a dot and it is certain that we will go on making things that will change or existence.
With to days technology, we are on the threshold of not just a new Industrial revolution but changing how we exist and where we exist.
The outline of a mobile phone as we know has changed not just rural Africa and Asia – putting communities in touch, giving access to information and money it is now also creating Social media platforms which are in the process of disconnecting us from reality.
This week Facebook, Google, and Twitter appeared in front of Congress. After which it is obvious, that we are not asking the right questions yet, or we have not found any good answers just yet as to why our world is getting sicker and sicker and it’s not Einstine science as to why.
When it comes to the world we can not cure just one aspect of the sickness, we must address an array of inherited illness.
Our new technological world is removing the need to think, to read, to imagine, to function, to communicate, to earn respect, to know why is true or a false pleasure, to plan long-term.
In other words, the internet has been infected by the problems that we all suffer.
What is need is that we need to take our existence back, whether it be as consumers, as citizens, and say we actually want to have some say over how all of this technology works, because we’ve really given that over to the tech companies ( outside of China, for the rest of the world, there are five big tech companies who really run everything) that have little or no ethical interest in other than profit
Why?
Because before we become the product for internet service providers, no longer just customers. we need a social movement around this issues to stop us all being run by the same algorithms brains driven by different programs that are incapable of acting for the common good.
Greed, inequality, you name it, our political affiliation, based upon the top-level domain information of websites you visit, your sexual orientation, where you like to shop, your financial status, race, gender can now be figured out based on the information that they collect and use.
If we didn’t have the bullshit movies, TV shows and sports pumping fake feel-good emotions into our systems, we would all feel the great weight of our inaction in an era where we need to get off our fucking asses and take a stand.
All the world’s problems are not on the internet.
We’re not supposed to watch a screen that pumps fake feel-good emotions into us.
It is quite plausible in the not so distant future we will have nothing serious to contribute when the hype – intelligent software supersedes humanity with genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics. New computer chips specialized for AI will power how we engineer genes, proteins, materials. Quantum computing a million times quicker than present-day computers will change the fields of drug development, manufacturing, and material science.
It will all be very murky but the potential is truly staggering.
Its now or never that we harness all this technology for if a day comes that the final decision is left to a Robotic brain rest assured that,Hal 9000 VS Dave will come true.
How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?
Not as much as you might think.
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.
You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.
There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.
However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.
The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.
Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:
Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.
More than half the world’s population is still offline.
Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.
By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.
Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.
The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)
Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.
Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.
Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.
When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!
Technology is not destiny, education is.
Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.
If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.
MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.
It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..
Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.
The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.
Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.
But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself. According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.
Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.
The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).
So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).
Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.
The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.) Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.
You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.
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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’
What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’
Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.
It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.
UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.
Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.
Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?
I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.
Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.
Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.
UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.
It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.
UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.
There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.
So why is it not being done?
Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
I can hear you saying where will the money come from?
Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.
It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly.
As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin>
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
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So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
bobdillon33blog 