Never in history is such a question more important. Unfortunately, we live in a world of distractions.
In my previous post to this one, (THE HARDEST THING OF ALL TO SEE IS ALREADY THERE.) I attempted to say that the truth has no past.
By this, I meant that the truth is reality, and therefore religion and the state must be separated.
Only then can one hope for value with the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. A value is considered universal when it goes beyond laws and beliefs; rather, it is considered to have the same meaning for all people and does not vary according to the societies that have evolved.
In fact, cultural relativism is a belief that opposes the existence of universal values; proposes that a value can not be universal because it is perceived differently in each culture.
Given the ambiguity of the term, the existence of universal values can only be understood as the values that have to do with the basic requirements of the human being. Such as Fresh Air, Freshwater, Food, Clean Energy.
Now with AI infiltrating our lives, it seems that the faster we travel, the importance of there place is getting lost.
It seems because there are no universal moral values, our command of science simply can not coexist with morals, and our internet fed imaginations
We talk about the central issues of our times: A universal pandemic, an economic depression, continuing wars, climate change, migration, artificial intelligence, rising inequalities, erosion of the power of the vote, loss of individualism, loss of connection to ecosystems, to mention just a few of the problems to define any values that are universal.
We have many governments doubling down on the blame game and brinkmanship.
We have bioengineering which alone is now much greater danger than a nuclear war.
We have the maldistribution of wealth.
We have world leaders unwilling to see beyond the next election.
We have the extinction rebellion.
We have non-transparent digital data.
We have 10.000 to 130,000 species going extinct each year.
We have a population of 7.7 billion
We have extreme weather and biodiversity loss.
I ask myself why is it that with so many of us tryin’ to improve society, not that much changes but I hope that we don’t make changes to satisfy the noisemakers.
Rather than separating one problem from another, we need to connect them.
i.e. Climate changes to war and war to climate changes.
The question remains.
> How do we the current guardians of the planet achieve a balance between living our lives and the life of the planet, that allows us to live them in the first place.
It is no longer that logic alone will solve the problems, nor protests, or political will but within functional societies, we do still have the ultimate weapon – VIEWING AND BUY POWER and both are available in every type and form of human culture.
They must be added to the deep emotions of religion if we are to achieve change.
The life of now economies and pay later must come to an end if we are to avoid the hazards of the future.
If Extinction Rebellion wants to be heard, it will not do so on top of bamboo towers stopping newspapers to be deliveries, or sticking themselves to windows.
It must use social media digital platforms to encourage its supporters to use their buying power to attack profit for profit sake.
Certain human characteristics as valuable – life regardless of whether or not it is believed in said characteristic.
PROFIT WITHOUT CONTRIBUTION TO UNIVERSAL VALUES IS THE ENEMY.
With these weapons, we can effect change and avoid the hazards to come.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In an interconnected world where there is no such thing as sovereignty because globalization means that nation-states submit themselves to international treaties and international agreements that are not always in their best interests.
The recent economic crisis that started in 2007 and now the coming economic depression and the continuing pandemic will prove that sovereignty of nations being subsumed by international bodies cuts both ways as the global economy is tightly interconnected and hence, cannot be regulated by nations in isolation.
Here is a country that on 30 June 1997, the final embers of its empire came to an end with the 99- years lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Never before has a country passed a colony directly to a communist regime that does not even pretend to respect conventional democratic values.
However the British Empire – for all its messy crimes and misdemeanors – was equally praiseworthy.
The empire was and is not just a story of domination and subjection but something more complicated: the creation of novel or hybrid societies in which notions of governance, economic assumptions, religious values and morals, ideas about property, and conceptions of justice, conflicted and mingled, to be reinvented, refashioned, tried out or abandoned.
The question is are we now to witnessing the final act.
The non-recognition of England is already being used by its national broadcasting company the BBC referring to England as the four nations.
In fact, England is already fragmented.
English nationalists if such a thing exists appear to be blind to the breakup of England.
Today, a hundred years on, the world is witnessing remarkable self-destruction in England.
An uneasy transition has or is taking place, from a decaying colonial legacy to a country that sees life through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram lies, manipulation, in every area…..with a global crisis forming, which is not just a Pandemic but an Economic depression with mass unemployment.
The question now is whether British people can continue to play their part in the development of the modern world.
It has to pump trillions of quantitative easing money into its banks at the cost of ten years of Austerity. Dumping the EU its largest market on the results of a non-legally- totally false informed non legally binding referendum while building two Aircraft carriers and replacing worthless nuclear submarines, while 8.4 million its people alone are living in sub-standard housing with 400,000 people are either homeless or at risk of being homeless relying on foodbanks.
The people themselves – about half who no longer give a rat’s a— about England, who are now hellbent on their smartphones, Ipads, creating an unrealistic, relativistic, melting pot utopia.
These people will be living on the English purse for some time, not the stuff of which national pride is made. They have other priorities dedicated to its demise.
One would have to wonder why migrants risking life and limb to get here.
Perhaps it because all the servants are leaving.
These are the strange things happening, that demonstrate quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world, both devotion to business and profit, not people.
“We convinced many countries, many countries – and I did this myself for the most part – not to use Huawei because we think it’s an unsafe security risk,” the US president Donald Dump said.
(This is a man who seems to wake up every morning wondering what controversy he can provoke, what headlines he can create.
Diplomacy, or the lack of it, can be a complicated business. We’ve learned that from observing Donald Trump.
Both his campaign and presidency is marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.
This is a man far more consumed with himself than with the nation’s well-being.
From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics.)
With the UK now becoming the US junior partner, (one of the most unreliable partners for any country) who cares when a phenomenal’ trade deal beyond Nigel Farage is promised, providing it sends its new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth to the South China Seas with American warplanes, and supplies the Arabs with bombs to finish off Yeham.
It’s one thing to get rid of the Chinese firm Huawei and its 5G infrastructure and in return to sour the world’s second-largest economy behind the US, which has more money in the bank than any other country.
Indeed three of the world’s 10 biggest sovereign wealth funds are Chinese, together holding more than $1.5tn (£988bn) in assets.
Not too long ago the UK was one of China’s favorite places to invest – not anymore.
Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, warned: “China wants to be UK’s friend and partner. But if you treat China as a hostile country, you would have to bear the consequences.”
China operates an Authoritarian form of capitalism against Anglo – American capitalism which is the root of the problem. Global supremacy.
China’s investments may well be subordinate to its National Development and reform commission, but the staggering truth of Huawei is that the US does not want China to be a superpower when it comes to technology.
With the pandemic being used to push the protection of businesses the world population will eventually be tracked.
Both the US and England might well end up as viewed as failed states due to the handling of the COVID-19 with both countries ending up with up distant and withdrawn people far from enhanced by COVID-19.
Not too long ago, the UK did a 79 million deal to import pig semen from China for stemcell research.
Its not stemcell research it needs. It needs a lot of fixing but isn’t that what the next four years are going to be about?
What is needs is some Face Recognition and a written constitution. All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Because there is no point any longer carry on claiming that we are a victim of world events…Climate change, Artificial intelligence, Capitalist greed etc.
If Everyone’s Finger–Pointing, Who’s to Blame?
The answer, it seems, is someone else.
We think blaming means we get away with it.
Getaway with what?
If we stop it may become evident that this blame game is getting us nowhere and maybe, we need to look deeper at that word RESPONSIBILITY.
Could it be possible that our choices got us in the mess and our new responsible choices could get us out of the blame game forever?
The issue at hand is a vicious circle. Greed versus Common sense.
It is important that the leadership of countries are responsible for governing but does anyone remember the last time that a government actually took responsibility for their own actions?
No.
Politicians — hostage to the tyranny of short election cycles — instead wooed voters seeking instant gratification, the protection of unsustainable entitlements, and shortcuts to continued prosperity they pander to popularism.
Its no wonder we use blame like an auto-pilot switch?
At no point do we want to think that our choices may be contributing to what is going on in our life.
The media changed our perception of so many things preventing us from coming to a consensus not only on how to dig ourselves out of this mess but also on how to prevent it from happening again.
All that has been positive is slowly being replaced with only more negative.
And so no goes the endless, useless recriminations.
The blame game, however, is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. This never-ending cycle not only diverts responsibility but distracts from coherent responses.
That has two immediate consequences.
First, it is virtually impossible to generate a sense of shared responsibility that must underpin any sustainable, effective solution.
Second, the temptation increases for each country to turn inward, significantly raising the risk of protectionism.
As the species that have taken over the planet.
The world is looking for bold leadership, and in the absence of it, dysfunction that will make 2019 merely a flesh wound risks is becoming an ever more likely reality.
There is the possibility that our struggle to halt destructive climate change is going to make most of the people around the world very conscious of changes on the planetary level that need to be stopped, and species extinction is in that category. . . .However, unless humanity learns a great deal more about global biodiversity we will soon lose most of the species composing life on Earth.
WHY?
Because we need to do one big thing that people could get together on that would solve the problem and it needs to happen politically, globally in order to fulfil this vision?
We might have achieved many small victories in a losing war but what is immediately relevant at the present time is our collective inability to act as one. If not what we will see soon—it is on the horizon—is a second great environmental crisis, and that’s a shortage of freshwater.
It’s a shortage of fresh water that is rapidly growing, that’s causing some of the most tragic humanitarian problems . . . and it’s going to get worse and worse.
We the grownups we have to start somewhere.
The era that we have to create ahead of us is going to have to include action and research in multiplicity.
I mean, lots and lots of people involved in order to keep the whole planet and all the plants and animals in it, in order to understand how the living world works….where life came from, where we came from, and what we need to be preserving in order to make Earth a livable, habitable place—a planet to be our home.
Billion of us live in our technologic bubble called cities, indifference to what is taking place outside our own worlds thanks to the Smartphone. If that remains true for the next decade what is left won’t be worth saving.
Where to start?
We now face a substantial possibility of seeing a complete collapse of the ecosystem which will have an irreversible impact of human activity.
The slide toward extinction with all our efforts around the world has not slowed, nor will it in the near future.
Like conservation efforts around the world had consisted of targeted procedures to save a species here or there or to save a habitat here or there.
Rather than point the finger of blame here a few things we could change.
Hope is after all one of the great attributes we are all ushered towards…
Profit-seeking Algorithms. Regulation
Technology leapfrogging. Transparency.
Currency manipulator. Emerging economies gained a competitive advantage by manipulating their currencies, weakening labour standards, degrading the environment, or engaging in various forms of implicit protectionism. Unsustainable national policies.
Consumption. Ban Media/TV Advertising that is promoting consumption for consumption.
Multilateral institutions. The UN are only as strong as our member nations let it be. When push came to shove, these institutions shie away from their duties, hindered by widespread representation and legitimacy deficits. Remove the Veto.
Bogus blame: Remove False News from Social media
All those things together intrinsic, to human instinctive behaviour?
They could go long way to helping us remain in the game.
Politicians, of course, will say: “It’s not our fault. They are right as to do not hold them to account.
Education. Stop educating for the market place. Children have to take out of the classroom and learn where fresh air, fresh water, fresh vegetables, fresh everything comes from. To learn true human instinct are not a Tweet, a Like, a Smartphone, a Virtual game.
And trust me — no one will want to take the blame for that tragedy.
Our evolution now is a competition, greed against all of us.
Everyone can get it eventually, if they just think.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We all recognize that there are many problems in our world, which with our collective intelligence could be address if we did not turn them into profit-making.
The dire warnings about climate change are on the top of the list, but as we have seen the recent UN Climate Conference in Madrid shows that we once again are unable to act collectively. Instead, we opt for blindness and continue as if nothing can change the inevitable disaster awaiting us all.
Why aren’t we interested?
Because it is abstract happing over there, impossible to describe – the Amazon is burning, California is on fire, Australia is covering New Zeland with smoke.
Half the world might not believe in the science, but it’s no longer acceptable to hind the truth behind rhetoric that is saying one thing and feeling another as if deny it.
We know that there are climate refugees, that the Arctic is melting, that there is flooding, extreme weather events, droughts, famines, but the story is too complicated we do not feel immersed in it.
Because we don’t believe it we are incapable of believing, we can do something about it even if it is a solid scientific fact.
What is knowledge when our brains are unprepared to receive it?
Most of us can’t explain how our individual and collective behaviour is boosting hurricane winds.
On one hand, we have to feel it, believe it, but our brains find it difficult to imagine ourselves in the future and to plan for that future.
Therefore the question to be addressed by all of us is.
Are we even capable of believing what the scientist are telling us?
What, then, is to be done?
Greta Thunberg might be the figurehead for change, but the emphasis should be on doing.
The change required is not to wait for feeling or belief, but to act.
Some now argue that the focus should be on the personal shifts taking the responsibility away from Governments. In my mind governments have a responsibility to oversee the conversion to green energy by ensuring that Climate Change does not become a product to be sold for a profit,
We have a colossal opportunity with climate change to do one or the other, turn it into profit-making or save what left of our planet.
The problem with profit is already here to see.
In fact, that’s exactly what Big Oil firms have just started doing. Relying on oil alone simply won’t be enough for the oil supermajors to sustain their profits.
Bio this Bio that, Wall Street Carbon Credit, Green bonds. When you some of the biggest companies on the planet decide to start spending money, we’re more than happy to get in on the action.
This is just the beginning of the trend.
Sadly externality costs of fossil fuels are shouldered not by fossil fuel producers, but rather by wider society.
After gods knows how many Climate summits and we are still unable and will remain so to agree on any practical solution or action other than rely on technology to come to the rescue.
Why is it not possible to cover every bit of unused land with Solar panels?
Because the problem is that we normally don’t use logic to make the decision which electricity source to use. We want it all.
When looking at sustainable electricity resources, we commonly identify four:
Solar, Wind, Hydro and Biomass.
Each of them is renewable, but that doesn’t necessarily make them sustainable.
Sustainability is determined by three different parameters:
Environmental sustainability, Social sustainability and Economic sustainability.
If producing a renewable energy device costs more energy than it produces during its lifetime, it’s not sustainable.
Mining coal is bad for the environment, but mining neodymium and other rare earth metals for wind turbines is equally polluting.
There’s one overarching aspect of social sustainability – we have one globe where we can provide enough food and energy for everyone. Using the planet’s effectively and efficiently is therefore crucial.
Economic sustainability seems easy enough to measure. If a technology can be sold without subsidies it is sustainable, right?
But in most countries, fossil fuels belong to the most heavily subsidized products.
According to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, fossil electricity is still subsidized for over $100 billion worldwide.
So, how do renewable energy technologies compete with that when subsidies for renewable sources are only one-sixth of that? And which of these can be called economically sustainable?
The one that can be purchased cheapest by consumers.
Sustainability is a very complex word and entails many aspects of which we’ve only scratched a few here to illustrate its diversity.
The question is:
How do we deal with all these aspects? Can we balance all the pros and cons? And how do we do that?
What we can do, is use the full matrix of available renewable electricity technologies and use them in the most sustainable way. Just by using logic.
Solar panels on sloped roofs that are otherwise not used,? Yes, please!
Solar panels on Dutch polders ( Low-lying land) instead of cattle to create an “energy landscape”? No!
Wind turbines on the North Sea with high impact on nature? No!
Wind turbines on abandoned land with limited impact on nature? Yes, please!
Hydropower with dams that submerge complete villages and arable land in Brazil?! Madness!
Corn production for energy while we could produce food or feed? Of course not!
Biomass residues for electricity production? Yes, please!
Electricity production from living plants while the plant grows while producing rice on the same surface? Yes, please.
We want electricity for the whole world, at low cost, at low environmental impact, as soon as possible, with high return for the companies, with large local economic growth, with high shareholder value, easy to use for consumers, available always and everywhere.
You know what? That’s not possible.
Let’s decide what’s most important and take that as a starting point.
Starting point 1: I want cheap electricity: Here’s your coal-fired power plant. It has all the advantages of cheap electricity, but don’t complain when the Earth dies and when you’ve run out of coal.
Starting point 2: I want renewable electricity at the lowest possible price: You’ve got the choice of hydropower, wind power, solar power or biomass.
Depending on local subsidies and providers, one or more of these options will be available to you. Some of the electricity companies will provide “green electricity” and you don’t even have to choose.
Please don’t ask about the exact sustainability of your renewable electricity. It’s cheap, it’s renewable, forget about the rest.
Starting point 3: I want sustainable electricity:Now we’re talking. You’ve got the choice of hydropower, wind power, solar panels and biomass.
Let’s check what can be combined with other applications at the same land and what has the lowest impact on nature and people in the long run. You might have to pay a bit more than you’re used to, but at least you’ll be assured of a long-term solution and availability of electricity without hampering the access to other resources for yourself or others.
If we all chose starting point 1 nothing will change, we won’t stop climate change and smog will be the number one death cause in large urban areas.
If we choose starting point 2, we’ll focus on low prices that will compete with the sustainability of the renewable energy source. We might end up using fossil resources to produce renewable technologies and not changing anything in the end.
I’ve chosen starting point three. If you do too, we might have a chance of moving towards a sustainable electricity matrix with minimal impact on nature and people.
In fact, we actually may get to a point where energy is abundant, cheap, sustainable and available to everyone everywhere.
Where are we at this point of any time?
At this point, it’s hard even to imagine what a planet that’s 3.6 degrees C hotter would be like. To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees C — enough to produce severe droughts around the world, trigger or intensify intense storms and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap, not to mention out of control fires.
Fires that will consume the parched forests of the temperate latitudes.
The wildfires in Australia are giving all of us preview that we can’t imagine today.
All the above might be true but it does not address the main problem.
Our usage of Energy.
Industry is increasingly seen as a solution to our global environmental problems, ignoring the role of major corporations in creating the current multiple crises.
Natural resources often lie at the heart of wars and civil strife and the estimated impact of greenhouse gas emissions varies widely due to uncertainties about the future.
We don’t know what the costs of climate change are, and health costs are highly uncertain.
Many scientists have ruled out arguments that market forces and technological changes can gradually lead to a sustainable energy future.
While the investment opportunities for renewable energy continue to grow, the question is to what extent the government ought to finance such investment.
Why?
Because it is no longer efficient for the government to invest in uneconomic technologies at an early stage. This why the political headwinds currently facing the renewables sector are immense.
However, these new energy sources did not simply emerge as the result of free-market forces. Rather, the government heavily subsidized each new energy source.
As the costs of PV technology, wind turbines, energy storage, and other clean energy technology have decreased over time, they have become competitive in their own right.
So here is your new year resolution.
If your community is like many others today, most people want to offset as close as possible to 100 per cent of their consumption.
It’s no longer necessary to have 32 acres of solar power panels to meet the demands of 1,000 homes.
The majority of solar panels are 250 watts, which means you’d need four panels to create a 1-kilowatt peak (1kWp) system, eight panels to create a 2kWp system, 12 panels to create a 3kWp system, and so on.
A large fixed-tilt photovoltaic solar power plant that produces 1,000 megawatt-hours per year requires, on average, 2.8 acres for the solar panels.
Concentrating solar power plants require an average 2.7 acres for solar collectors and other equipment per 1,000 megawatt-hours; 3.5 acres for all land enclosed within the project boundary.
A solar panel system for a family of three costs around £4,000-£6,000 in the UK. Solar panels could reduce your monthly energy bill by nearly 50%
So switching to solar energy is a smart decision that allows you to create your own power instead of buying it from the National Grid.
Energy bill savings from solar panels ultimately depend on two things: How much electricity your solar panels produce, and how much of this electricity you use.
More than half of all new electric power worldwide came from renewables last year.
Sounds too good to be true?
Prove me wrong by trying it.
Start your own research by forming an action group.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: Thinking ahead to 5 years from now, do you think Britain’s decision to leave the EU will have had a positive or negative impact on the UK?
Of course, as with all hypothetical questions, there is no correct answer.
Whether it will be a liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour party that will be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.
However, looking at the present state of England against the problems facing the world one would have to say the horizon is far from looking bright.
The longer-term questions about the UK’s relationship with the EU will still need to be addressed no matter what the result of the current general election.
This very question itself will pale in comparison to the coming nexus environmental and energy problems facing us all.
Even if one was to ignore climate change it is truly impossible to overstate the havoc—financial, social, cultural—that could be brought about by peak oil if sufficient renewable energy is not in place to make up for declines in fossil fuels.
By the middle of the next decade or so, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically.
The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both.
The one thing we can be sure of is this:
No matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future. From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, will see technological change on an astonishing scale.
All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn’t drive us into caves.
With over 60% of global GDP will be digitized by 2022 it is a total waste of time for countries such as the UK to attempted to pull up the drawbridge, to increase national production and reducing reliance on imports. These world-changing technologies are already creating more interconnected, interdependent and rapid business networks.
How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection will develop due to a hard Brexit is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to see.
The question is, will Britain outside the EU be a more global, more deregulated, more free-trading country five years from now.
Presently nearly half of the UK’s total trade is with EU countries.
Leaving the biggest free trade area with over 500 million consumers won’t be cheap no matter what the divorce bill is. The EU has 53 trade deals worldwide the UK has zero.
The consequent rebalancing of the British economy will therefore take years and more than likely create a food underclass.
WHY?
Because it is as yet unclear when the UK will have the legal authority to begin negotiations; when the UK will leave the EU customs union; and what the trade arrangements between the UK and the EU will be after that point.
It is therefore difficult to see how third countries could engage seriously with the UK until these decisions have been taken. In addition, there are significant obstacles to meaningful trade deals with most of the countries.
The world will be more complicated even if these projections assume an orderly exit from the EU.
Only when we stand together can we secure our prosperity in a competitive world as the distinction between the country, town, will blur, with Artifical intelligence not to mention sea levels rising.
Why?
Because if I’d been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff but artificial intelligence is proving itself an unexpectedly difficult problem.
To describe EXACTLY what they will be doing in 1,820 days never mind that a second financial crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove not just to be the remaking of Britain but the whole of the EU.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Everyone sees the world in different ways however the greatest innovations of man are found in the most simple things:
Starting with Fire, Language, Tools, and Wheel writing has been the sole reason that mankind has been able to accumulate knowledge.
Since then the use of our inventions have taken us a long way, they’ve allowed us to land on the moon, travel over oceans, and even eliminate major health threats with various medicines.
You could not be blamed for asking what was actually gained by landing on the moon — a handful of rocks and a game of low-gravity golf — was of virtually no value and yet the act of the journey was invaluable beyond all measure as it personified our continuing evolution.
The same is true with technology today.
The development of it is mind-blowing but its application is almost entirely mindless – profit-seeking algorithms and weaponized drones.
Setting aside why do we exist and what is the purpose of life? (These are hard questions that demand answers) it is what we have not achieved that will be judged by future generations.
Karl Marx once famously observed that capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction but he was wrong. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s people.
The human race ended the 20th century in pretty good shape, at least comparatively speaking.
The first half of the 1900s was almost certainly the most bloody and brutal phase of humanity’s existence.
Now we have all the information in the world yet it has made us only more ideological and more ignorant; we have access to limitless opinions yet we seek to criminalise those who don’t agree with us. We are so advanced and yet so backward, so cynical and yet so stupid, that we can no longer even agree on what constitutes a fact.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Consider the internet itself, probably the most revolutionary invention in the history of humankind. Its potential to share information thus to accelerate the advancement of science and keep the world running in the event of a catastrophic disaster — the purpose for which it was first intended — is all but limitless.
And what do we use it for most? Porn.
Consider the smartphone, the match to the powder keg of the worldwide web. Almost everyone in every half-developed part of the world, even people living on the streets, has a device more powerful than supercomputers that once took up whole buildings. We can access virtually any image, any idea, any information from anywhere in the world.
And what do we overwhelmingly use it for? Taking pictures of ourselves.
Let’s look at medical technology — the smartest minds on the planet developing machines and medicines that keep the average person today alive for longer than was once ever dreamt of.
And what is the result?
We are fatter and lazier than ever, resulting in spiralling hospital costs that will send most Western governments broke in a matter of decades. It was once said that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes and yet now we are defying death and there aren’t enough taxes to pay for it.
We are too dumb to even know when to die.
It may well be impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, but over millions of years of evolution, we’ve picked up some less than ideal characteristics.
Why? Because of greed.
It will take the efforts of several scientific disciplines and sophisticated technology, probably over many years, to discover the underlying nature of our mental faculties, their neurological basis, and their development over time.
And it’s fair to say that we have little idea of what we’ll evolve to in the future, but there is one thing for certain, evolution is about adapting to your environment – Weaponized drones, Climate change, Algorithms.
Algorithms that are feeding Social media, are stripping us of a collective understanding of what is going on in the world.
People like to blame fake news on Facebook, and that is true enough.
But the far greater truth is far worse than that. Neither fake news nor Facebook emerged like Athena fully-formed from nothing. They were made by us. By us and for us and of us.
While the positive uses for technology are endless I marvel as I read Asimov to see the way in which he foresaw the ethical conundrum in which we now find ourselves embroiled.
Of course, when they (the future generations) look at our achievements the one thing they will not be able to comprehend is why we have not been able to stop killing each other.
Weaponized drones are now more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons.
It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings who could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed — well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn’t.
Just like those tried at Nuremberg who attempted to wash their hands of mass killings we have now developed weaponized drones to kill, with a Punches Pilot immunity, that is violating all existing international law.
So humans through the use of technology may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves.
Perhaps the result (if we are not already wiped out by Nuclear or a Weather bomb) will be that we’re no longer subject to the driving force of evolution – but unnatural selection by drones.
Now the question is, how accurate is this statement?
Is technological progress actually taking us backwards?
Are we advancing ourselves to death? At what point do many deaths become too many deaths?
This is the first problem with technology.
If it is accurate, we’re already screwed.
Of course, none of this is important given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we probably won’t have to worry about that for thousands of years.
Wrong.
We’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable.
But number-crunching algorithms are leading us perilously wrong. There’s something unsettling in the idea that, amid the vagaries of choice, chance, and circumstance, mathematics can tell us something about what it is to be human.
Who we are together, as a collective entity?
Despite the grand promises of Big Data, uncertainty remains so abundant that specific human lives remain boundlessly unpredictable. The more data that are collected, cross-referenced, and searched for correlations, the easier it becomes to reach false conclusions.
It might be true that in large groups, the natural variability among human beings cancels, however, if we end up with algorithms setting thresholds extremely unlikely outcomes are bound to arise eventually.
The gift is not a technology to enable us to realise evolution for the cruel being it is, but giving mankind the intelligence and tools to exclude ourselves from the other species on the planet and take a step back to interpret for ourselves where we as a race are going?
Leaving the brutality of evolution behind is not a gift given to us by evolution.
We have evolved to the point whereby we stand on the threshold of controlling our genetic and ultimately evolutionary destiny. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is, whenever we encounter a problem we have evolved to the point where we think that we can overcome it with technology.
Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn’t just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation.
External aids could be entirely responsible for our survival.
All of this relies on earth’s natural resources which are supposedly gonna be gone by 2050!
The problems in this world are manmade therefore man can solve them.
The sad truth is that we have Governments and World Organisations that pay lip service when the real debate is a knowledge- and research-based exchange of argument and counterargument that should be focused at the analysis of a specific question, our survival.
Passion and competition, yes, but, more than anything else, debate is an exercise in critical thinking! The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself.
Technology has already affected the way our memory works.
AI. After all, natural evolution wouldn’t be able to mould and program devices to a point of sophistication that may lead to sentience, but we may be able to and maybe at that point even though its not natural, it is an evolution born of natural origins and most likely would go on to create newer better versions of itself.
In theory, humans are exercising their judgement in the process, but in reality, the computer system is viewed as too “smart” to be second-guessed by a human being.
So . . . what do we need to be more afraid of?
Robots with a compulsion to out-think humans? or humans that are afraid to second-guess the robots?
We must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of “pre-emptive violence” – front-loaded with a bias to kill, with little impetus to contradict that bias.
At present drones are the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.
So are we at the peak of human evolution?
Certainly not. Certainly not as long as there are humans, there will be human evolution.
We are not even close to the peak of evolution.
Just look at wthat werecently found > The Higgs Boson, Mapped the Human Genome, Cloned a sheep, built the International Space Station, discovery the Double Helix Structure of DNA, Split the Atom, invented the Internet, we’re revisiting the theories of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.
We have Created Nuclear Weapons, the Periodic Table of the Elements, Created the Internet Developed Vaccines, Created Music, Created Photography, Flight, Electronic Devices, Traveled to the Moon, Eradicated Small Pox, Created the Television, Discovered Mathematics, Invented the Printing Press, The Phone, Discovery and Control of Electricity, Cars, Invented Zero, Created of United Nations, Discovered World is Round.
AND STILL, WE ARE UNABLE TO ACT TOGETHER.
Why?
Because you know the downfall of civilisation has really passed the point of no return when even a rich white guy can’t get anything done.
Humans are the only organism that can alter their environment to suit them (instead of the other way around)
Finally, people must take into account that nature will commence exerting its own controls LONG BEFORE the human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.
With our increasing reliance on technology – and in particular machinery – to do our dirty (but muscle-enhancing) work. The less each generation depends on physical strength, the more likely it is that the whole species will grow weaker to the point of stagnation.
As evolution relies on the survival of the fittest, evolution itself will evolve everything else in all our lives will be transitory and every other artificial intelligent goodwill application will become visionary.
Only when we’ll be able to repair and augment our children’s DNA. Then we really will have triumphed over evolution. Race” will no longer be an issue. Perhaps we will stop killing each other.
Yet we’ve got our problems. A lot of them but the very things we invented to sustain us will destroy us.
The exact nature of our evolutionary relationships with the planet and AI will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future.
It doesn’t matter if we’re uncovering evidence for climate change or deciding whether a drug has an effect: the concept is identical.
By setting an arbitrary threshold, and agreeing that anything beyond that point gives you grounds for suspicion with greed this is the evolutionary path we are setting our selves.
Mentally the world appears to be de-evolving with smartphones and social media platforms.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The beady eye is far from the first voice to ask this question and it certainly will not be the last.
We might even come to “question whether we still have free will.
There is no doubting that the social web has created amazing opportunities to learn, discover, connect, but its downside as it penetrates our daily lives is becoming more and more prevalent in the creation of our future lives and the societies we live in.
If the public discussion is shifting increasingly to online fora, and those fora are having more and more influence over democracy it becomes increasingly important to apply principles to them.
Honest political debate is essential for the health of a democracy.
If discussions of import move into space where they can be readily censored, then we will simply no longer live in a society with a free exchange of ideas, because the playing field will always be tilted.
One only has to look at how social media platforms are amplifying what is wrong with the world.
While we all reveal a huge amount of personal information online we are losing the ability to determine honest facts that democracy depends.
Basically, companies that run social media platforms are monopolies or near-monopolies in their areas of operation, and the only way we can achieve the desired outcomes is through clear, effective legal regulations.
We can’t always control how others use their platforms but we can apply the same regulations that govern all other forms of Media.
The public cannot rely on these company’s self-regulation, because self-regulation raises more questions than it answers.
The fact is that the formation of a platform takes place in a vacuum, whereas the formation of any competitors do not, so they cannot be considered parallels in any way.
If we take companies like Facebook and Google they both derive most of their revenue from advertising. They essentially constitute a duopoly because they have access to the best data about individuals. Every memory, picture, emoji, song, video, link, gripe, fear, hope, want, dream and bad political opinion posted is mined and monetized as data.
As a result of their algorithms, they are creating and reinforcing divided and insular online communities that do not interact with people or information with which they disagreed.
At the end of the day, how Facebook and Google conduct their businesses undermines privacy and raises questions about ethical behaviour in the uses of our information and their role in society.
The Internet is a “utility” like water or electricity. It is essential to modern life, not an optional subscription service.
Determining how to regulate Facebook or any other platform may first require some kind of definition of what it is.
Facebook brags about connecting us to our family and friends — but it also about directly influencing the outcomes of elections across the globe.
It sits on top of industries including journalism, where it, together with Google, essentially controls the distribution channels for online news and, in effect, the way people discover information about politics, government and society.
They ( Google, Facebook, Twitter,etc) have figured out how to take advantage of this dynamic to distribute false information about political candidates and hot-button political issues in order to drive up traffic and advertising revenue.
Protecting our community is more important than maximizing their profits.
They are given protections that no one can sue them for any reason — that is Google and Facebook nither are responsible for the fake news that appears on their sites.
They are completely shielded from any responsibility for the content that appears on their service.
Changes to legal protection (which has been interpreted by judges to provide a safe harbour for online platforms even when they pay to distribute others’ content and decline the option to impose editorial oversight) would likely be devastating to online platforms like Google and Facebook and would transform the way people interact across the entire internet.
However, with legal protection, sites like these could be held responsible for libellous comments posted by readers, Google could lose lawsuits over potentially false or defamatory information surfacing in search results, and Facebook could be sued for any potentially libellous comment made by anyone on its platform against any other person.
The legal bills to defend against libel and defamation claims would be enormous.
We all need protection and the ability to request platforms to provide us with control over online information by making it accessible and removable at an individual’s request.
The government, on the other hand, has a regulatory intent to protect citizens from content that is obscene or violent.
Should Facebook and their like be regulated?
A question that is never going to end.
However, until we recognize that there is no fool-proof safeguard to keep horrific content away from the eyes of children we rely on huge fines to the detriment of us all.
Till then with all internet platforms deflecting criticism, social media will be more psychologically damaging than anyone expected.
We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people.
It is beyond comprehension that we tolerate the present position.
Or is it? When you see the below.
Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?
This question is increasingly put to politicians as some kind of virility test.
The subtext is that to be a credible political leader, you must be willing to use an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.
We should be baulking at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed which is politically unacceptable and morally despicable.
If a mainstream politician unblinkingly said that they would use chemical weapons against civilians there would be uproar. If a self-proclaimed candidate for prime minister boasted that they would commit war crimes, it would be a national scandal. Nuclear weapons should be seen no differently.
It’s time that nuclear advocates spelt out the reality of what their position means.
The human race is so good at speaking, it’s lost the art of listening.
It might be easy to brush away the febrile atmosphere online as a nasty byproduct of free expression: I don’t want Facebook having everyone’s verified identities. I do want their platform and other platforms to be held responsible legally for content that is false, racest, hateful, rightwing fascist propaganda.
I do know that if the big platforms, as they already do in part, forced some verifiable information to back up use, we could tame this wild west with legal requirements
I’ll give up on the consensus-building when I can open a platform knowing who to hold legally responsible.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The degree of choice on the web can be overwhelming, but who, exactly, is making the “Choice”
Has The web has been highjacked by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Social Media and their like?
Why?
Besause they are absorbing their users’ personal data and feeding greedy algrithms who in the end are disempowered by isolation from the wider web.
(By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:)
Greedy algorithms can be characterized as being ‘short-sighted’, and also as ‘non-recoverable’. The choice made by a greedy algorithm may depend on choices made so far, but not on future choices or all the solutions to the subproblem.
It is important, however, to note that the greedy algorithm can be used as a selection algorithm to prioritize options within a search, or branch-and-bound algorithm. They iteratively make one greedy choice after another, reducing each given problem into a smaller one.
They can make commitments to certain choices too early which prevent them from finding the best overall solution later.
Without any accountability, they are drastically changing the ways we conduct our daily lives.
There are a few variations to the greedy algorithm:
Pure greedy algorithms.
Orthogonal greedy algorithms.
Relaxed greedy algorithms.
It’s no wonder that Berners-Lee isn’t particularly pleased with the way things have gone with his creation.
With Social networks, slowly algorithms are growing more and more powerful and their predictions growing more accurate. It won’t be long before we could see living, breathing, as the choices of a greedy algorithm.
In other words, a greedy algorithm never reconsiders its choices.
The web is cleaving into the haves and have-nots of news readership. Wealthy readers will pay to opt-out of advertising; less privileged readers will have to stick with news that’s ad-supported.
For example, take Google, one of the leaders in using big data and algorithms to support human decision-making. Google has developed both a hiring algorithm and a retention algorithm it analyzes candidates against this profile to make hiring decisions.
Algorithms to develop lists of “flight risks” — that is, people who are likely to leave their jobs soon.
Amazon’s Choice” algorithm, which leverages a machine learning model to discern what products a customer most likely wants. Amazon Alexa and other voice assistants are drastically changing the ways consumers encounter products.
Customers are no longer putting themselves in front of physical products before purchasing them.
As more users are turning to voice ordering through the Amazon Alexa platform and its competitors we are losing control over our personal data.
Hopefully, Amazon’s algorithms are capable of remaining unbiased.
(We can make whatever choice seems best at the moment and then solve the subproblems that arise later.)
On top of all of this, we have all become blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy. Brexit/ USA.
It might be true that around the world, social media is making it easier for people to have a voice in government — to discuss issues, organize around causes, and hold leaders accountable, but these governments are winning elections by false news, echo chambers where people only see viewpoints they agree with — further driving us apart.
Social media can distort policymakers’ perception of public opinion.
If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad.
Unprecedented numbers of people channel their political energy through this medium, it’s being used in unforeseen ways with societal repercussions that were never anticipated.
So it is inevitable that Facebook to influence public sentiment — essentially using social media as an information weapon.
Some 87% of governments around the world have a presence on Facebook.
And they’re listening — and responding — to what they hear.
Misinformation campaigns are not amateur operations.
Increasingly the web will become profoundly useless unless we demand the Web we want from Governments and the Monomorphic platforms that dominate it today.
We are all part of the web so what we endorse must be questioned as to the transparency as to where the information comes from in the first place.
Today the bulk of people who are or not doing this are isolated from each other by Apps.
The like button is not a public metric for the popularity of content. It is a flattener of credibility.
There is no point waking in the morning with Alexa telling you what to do, where to go and what it has bought and who to vote for.
Even if social media could be cured of its outrage -enhancing effects it is undermining democracy.
Even though we have unprecedented access to all that was ever written and digitized we are less familiar with the accumulated wisdom of humanity becoming more and more misguided.
The Web is now a global experiment that will test the very foundation of our global communities
There can not be self -governance for the web.
Fake news, Racism, Pornographic content and unfounded crap should be removed by not allowing anything to be posted without a traceable verified name or source.
Are you sure you want to post this? It is your choice and your choice alone.
Perhaps its time we all franchise our data as we are entering into a continuous partnership so both parties need to be confident it’s the right fit. It’s all a choice. Just do something about it- YOU CAN, what is true technology integration?
How we are going to learn content is one of the ways forward.
In fact, everywhere we look we are starting to be presented with more choices.
Resolve to avoid false comparisons on the web is not possible so the future of the web is all about choice but it is important to understand the paradox of choice.
Choice without education or choice with education.
you ultimately do have to choose. so be the difference that
makes the difference.
Events change our perception and our perspective changes
with experience but at least let our choices about Our lives
which are constantly in flux be our choices.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The concept of “time” is a weird one and it is getting weirder.
Isn’t it possible that kazillions of years ago, there wasn’t anything at all, not even time?
Of course, this is the question that defies an answer, as it requires the answer to what time is.
There is no other concept that captures the imagination more than the idea of time travel – the ability to travel to any point in the past or future.
But the future is constantly being transformed into the past with the present only lasting for a fleeting moment. Everything that you are doing right now is quickly moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time.
Time has direction, always advances. Time has an order, one thing after another. Time has duration, a quantifiable period between events. Time has a privileged present, only now is real. Time seems to be the universal background through which all events proceed, such that order can be sequenced and durations measured.
You cannot literally see or touch time, but you can see its effects.
Up to now, this appears to be true.
Then along came Quantum Mathematics.
Quantum Mathematics says our choice in the present moment affected what had already happened in the past…. Quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance but also, influences future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.
Reality does not exist unless we are looking at it.
So matter is a derivative from consciousness.
Another words the present can only be defined by the process of becoming correlated with our surroundings.
It suggests that we are living in a holographic-type of universe with no time.
Time is now a prime conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics.
In quantum language, they say energy disperses and objects equilibrate, because of the way elementary particles become intertwined when they interact — a strange effect called “quantum entanglement.”
Therefore the backdrop for the steady growth of entanglement throughout the universe is, of course, time itself.
So is time irreducible, fundamental, an ultimate descriptor of bedrock reality?
Apparently not.
Or is it our subjective sense of flowing time, generated by our brains that evolved for other purposes, an illusion?
Why am I relevant or an Illusion? Time may not be what time seems, so are giving false importance to the present moment?
Is time really a second picture, then change really. Its an illusion, because there’s nothing that’s changing; it’s all just there — past, present, future.
Quantum physicists are unmasking a more fundamental source for the arrow of time and many assert that time is an illusion.
We all have the illusions, at any given moment, that the past already happened and the future doesn’t yet exist, and that things are changing.
But all I’m ever aware of is my brain state right now.
I’m looking at you; you’re nodding your head. Without that change, we wouldn’t have any notion of time.” Change is real, but time is not.
Confused yet?
At the deepest foundations of nature, time is not a primitive, irreducible element or concept required to construct reality but what reality depends on what time is.
Time is like space, in that every event has its own coordinates, or address, in space-time.
Time is tenseless, all points equally “real,” so that future and past are no less real than the present.
When you try to discuss time in the context of the universe, you need the simple idea that you isolate part of the universe and call it your clock, and time evolution is only about the relationship between some parts of the universe and that thing you called your clock.”
If the new line of quantum research is correct, then the story of time’s arrow begins with the quantum mechanical idea that, deep down, nature is inherently uncertain.
But how can a single piece of matter exist and express itself in multiple states, without any physical properties other than time?
There is no “true” state of the particle; the probabilities are the only reality that can be ascribed to it. (A particle is a minute fragment or quantity of matter.)
Quantum uncertainty then gives rise to entanglement, the putative source of the arrow of time this could replace human uncertainty in the old classical proofs as the true source of the arrow of time. The system as a whole is in a pure state, but the state of each individual particle is “mixed” with that of its acquaintance. The two could travel light-years apart, and the spin of each would remain correlated with that of the other.
Entanglement.
The essence of relativity is that there is no absolute time, no absolute space everything is relative. Absolutely nothing existed but we are all bound by time and space.
To be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all.
Because no observer has knowledge of a distant event, or the simultaneity of different events until they are unambiguously in that observer’s past something else exists.
Something that exists outside of time and space. Invisible but needs an environment to exist in, but what?
Some kind of untranscendence is essential.
Is this possible?
No observer has ever witnessed nothing if it had, there would still be absolutely nothing now.
Time by itself doesn’t do anything. Why would anything just “show up”
Therefore absolutely nothing existed. Why? Because, if absolutely nothing ever existed, there would still be absolutely nothing!
What did exist?
No gravity, no dark matter, no atoms, not a particle of anything. No air at all. No dust at all. No light at all.No elements, No molecules.
A “wave” of potentials, that does not take up a part of space, expressing itself in the form of multiple possibilities collapsing into one single path.
A void.
Because the beginning must have been able to exist without depending on anything else.
Something has no beginning. The eternal something is eternal. It has always existed independent of another. More importantly, It alone has always existed. If this something has any needs it can fulfil those needs for itself.
But how does it choose which path, out of multiple possibilities, it will take?
Eternal something must choose to change things.
What does that mean?
It means that no event can take place without the say-so of the Eternal something.
There is nothing in existence that can arbitrarily, by chance, influence it to produce something else.
Chance does not even exist. Chance itself cannot be produced by chance.
Chance is a force that must be produced by the Eternal something, or it does not exist.
It would have to be produced by the will of the Eternal something and to produce Something Else — out of nothing — requires an incredible amount of power.
So there was always a time when there was something in existence.
Time cannot exist without space, and likewise, space cannot exist without time so the universe as a whole is in a pure state.
Time emerges out of something more fundamental — something nontemporal, something altogether different.
But time is not transparent with no material substance that can be measured or observed. It has no end or beginning, it’s eternal and therefore does not exist.
We cannot and will not ever establish the reality of the awaiting future as time’s arrow is not steered by human ignorance.
According to the quantum mathetics, a“wave” is a wave until it is “measured” or “observed.” as with a spin or for that matter anything else.
If we look at the most recent pictures from Hubble which has helped to refine estimates of the universe’s age down to roughly 13.75 billion years, we are looking at light emitted some 13 billion years in the past.
This is calculated by the constant speed of light to convert time to distance.
Time = distance / speed. = 299,792,458 metres per second.
Is this true?
As we never observed the velocity of light in vacuum propagating at a different velocity it is deemed to be right and the mainstream scientific community carried on believing in the fallacy that the speed of light is always constant.
But according to Quantum light from any observer’s perspective cannot always be measured to be constant.
Therefore the time interval between two events is not equal for all observers.
Since we cannot travel at relativistic speeds at or close to the speed of light, we have no points of reference to compare the nature of light to.
Because the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time (to an outside observer this is flawed.) it is causing time dilation.
This conversion factor is not constant,
The best we can say is that the invariance of the speed of light is dependant on the nature of space-time. Its planet-bound behaviour must be different than light emitted in other parts of the known universe.
It is simply a conversion factor between space and time.
Our concept of motion only comes from gravity and friction and acceleration, not time.
If we were made up of nothing but photons of light, how would that being see the universe?
The being would see everything at a standstill, nothing would be moving not even light itself nor time.
Where do the property of ‘mass’ come from?
If we manage to discover the above we will discover where time comes from because the source light is travelling at our speed, no matter how fast you go.
Back to the beginning.
The beginning must have the ability to produce something other than itself.
The arrow of time does not seem to follow from the underlying laws of physics, which work the same going forward in time as in reverse. This is one aspect of time’s arrow that remains unsolved. The nature of time itself or why it seems different (both perceptually and in the equations of quantum mechanics) is outside the three dimensions of space.
Sometimes you have to have the idea at the right time.
Even what we perceive as solid objects all are manifestations of wave energy forms entanglement, with information becoming increasingly diffuse, but it never disappears completely. Like all energy consciousness is never gained or lost, it simply changes form.
The arrow of time is an arrow of increasing correlations between the void and consciousness energy.
It is known that outer extremities of the universe are expanding technically faster than the speed of light.
Technology may end up creating a new race…cloning, other forms of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc but avoid is avoid.
This is bound to be of massive interest to any future societies for nothing matters … only humans make it so.
We don’t live in the universe, we are part of it.
Every molecule we move, everyone we touch, every penny we spend impacts others.
From an everyday point of view, our minds perceive that an object should behave like a wave or a particle, quite independently of how it is measured.
It has nothing to do with the question of “Why are we here?”, as one person has suggested, it’s more a case of “Where are we going?”
Unfortunately one would have to outlive the universe to witness it.
Particles arrived at a state of equilibrium, and their states stopped changing.
If we could change the past, it would create an infinite number of paradoxes.
The only reason I feel like I have a past is that my brain contains memories lost in time.
It is only when one unifies the concepts of science and spirituality that one begins to see the real nature of the universe. It is this consciousness and through the interference pattern of energy waves that gives rise to us, all that we perceive and that which we do not.
Has anyone travelled in the future?
Astronauts can travel a few nanoseconds into the future.
Think about that for a moment, the observer caused the wave function, which generates an interference pattern.
If we are, to be honest with ourselves, we had better think twice before dismissing the possibility that the void had a visitor called time.
Imagine going back in time 3000 years and encountering people convinced that the world is really a flat disc. When you hear this you tell them that they are mistaken, that the world is really round. But you become quite embarrassed when they ask you to prove it to them and you find that you can not.
After all, their experience conforms to the idea that the earth is really flat.
Its time to stop.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The dawning of the digital age has not just changed communication, facilitating individual and group interaction in previously unimaginable ways it has fundamentally changed human relationships, or more specifically, the establishment of fraternity amongst people?
The internet has made it so you don’t need to physically see people feel close to them.
I miss those days of pre-digital friendship.
Thirty years ago we asked what we would use computers for.
Technology promises to let us do anything from anywhere with anyone and the introduction of social media platforms has changed the “friendship playing field”.
The way friendships are played out in the digital world is changing how young people express themselves, how they define ‘good’ friendships and interact with each other.
Now, through technology, we create, navigate, and perform our emotional lives.
In a surprising twist, relentless connection leads to a new solitude.
We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. At the threshold of “the robotic moment,” our devices prompt us to recall that we have human purposes and, perhaps, to rediscover what they are.
The huge role that technology plays in supporting young people’s friendships, with over half (55%) saying they interact online with their closest friends several times an hour and 63% saying they are closer to their friends because of the internet.
The basic components of friendship USE TO BE interdependence and voluntary participation but technology is now embedded throughout our relationships.
So the question is. Has friendship changed because technology changed it? Or both?
The popular platforms 8-17-year-olds are using to chat to their friends on a daily basis are YouTube (41%), WhatsApp (32%), Snapchat (29%), Instagram (27%) and Facebook or Facebook Messenger (26%)
Technology provides an important way for them to support their peers who are going through difficult times with Social media providing a vehicle of self-promotion, a means of fixing an idea of yourself in the social sphere, without people actually knowing you at all.
Has it made friendship less personal, less connective, less real?
The distinction in the online world is that the effort it takes to present ourselves in a certain way is much less.
Not to mention the fact that technology has allowed us to maintain friendships that might have otherwise waned when time, distance, and the constant demands of parenting take hold.
The lines between real friendships and fleeting acquaintances have become
blurred in the virtual world, not just but also because of many Social media
users showcase more than 1000 friends on their profiles, while the realistic
maximum number of people we are able to maintain relationships with lies at
150 people.
Our brains are just not wired to cope with.
——————
True friendships are hallmarked by each member’s desire to engage with the other – it’s about a mutual interest in one another’s experiences and thoughts, as well as a sense of ‘belongingness’ and connection, there’s no telling when and where a friendship will develop.
The cornerstone of friendship isn’t the public nature of the relationship, but the private connection of it and that private uniqueness hasn’t been eliminated; it just looks different now.
The Internet is undoubtedly an invaluable link between people separated by distance. But this link must be built on a stronger foundation of intimacy and familiarity and a balance of online and offline interactions will pave the way to better relationships in the world.
We “met” through a mutual friend on Twitter.
(Posts Tagged With friendship in the digital age,
“I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” is number five.)
Sexual online meetings themselves may be a replacement for deeper longings in couples. It may be an extension of particular needs not being met within the relationship.
They find that the relationship to their primary partner is more undervalued than in the past and that traditional definitions of intimacy are vaguer. They explain that couples who once experienced a secure relationship now struggle with the new –often ambiguous– rubrics surrounding agreed-upon Internet conduct.
Young people also need to be empowered to take control of their digital wellbeing, by recognising their emotions and the way that their use of digital technology can impact on their self-esteem and mood so that they are able to implement strategies to achieve a healthy relationship with technology.
Social exclusion can have just as much of a damaging impact on young
people but may not be easy to detect and manage in digital spaces.
Facebook has completely redefined the definition of a friend.
It wont be long before we could be seeing the following.
“We’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ every time you recommend a friend to us by rewarding you with a retail shopping voucher £250 will be paid for a friend.
Two in five adults (40%) first look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, climbing to 65% of those aged under 35. Similarly, 37% of adults check their phones five minutes before lights out, again rising to 60% of under-35s.
The average amount of time spent online on a smartphone is 2 hours 28 minutes a day. This rises to 3 hours 14 minutes among 18-24s.
A decade of change in digital communications.
It is said that in the course of a normal life one is lucky to have a handfull of friends.
Now its social mobile, analytics, and cloud all want to be your friend.
When we think about social, the key is to consider why social is happening, rather than think of it as just a set of tools.
For example, Facebook, Twitter, and so on are tools, but why people use them is much more important. The same was true with the internet when we first started using that — that was a tool, but what it did to the lives of normal people in terms of access to information, increased freedom, etc., was much more important.
Mobile is a similar shape to social in that it’s the why as to why people use mobile devices as opposed to anything structural about the devices themselves.
The idea behind big data is that you can derive understanding about behaviour through statistical analysis of clumps of data. You can then take that understanding and implement some form of control to either get more of what you want, or get less of what you don’t want.
Finally, we come to the cloud. This is really about how companies buy. There are all sorts of reasons to like outsourcing IT functions to the cloud, whether it’s just outsourcing compute power into a load of servers that you run as if they were your own, or buying functionality on an SaaS basis ( Software as a service)
Is cloud necessary for digital?
To an extent, it likely does not. However, as a fashion/trend, it’s clearly important, and a lot of the tools and services involved in digital are unlocked as part of a cloud-based approach, hence it’s likely important.
It’s a sociological change, rather than a technical one.
You can see that by the fact that this is generally all about the “why” this is happening — why are customers using social, why are they using mobile, why big data is showing the trends that it is, why are companies able to buy and use consumer products, and why is running systems in the cloud easier.
Because they all your Friend without you knowing and couldn’t care less who or how they share that friendship with or what they do with it. Google it.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
It’s all a choice. Just do something about it- YOU CAN, what is true technology integration? 
bobdillon33blog 