Category Archives: Democracy.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS IT TIME TO STOP ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET.?

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom, Freedom of Speech, How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Ten-minute read) 

Since the internet was in its infancy, the rights of users to use it to express their opinions were sacrosanct.

However, there is a price for “free” internet, and that we’ve given up more of ourselves than we ever intended to.

Concern already exists that Facebook and similar social media platforms act as echo chambers that validate opinions we already hold – fuelling precisely the type of extreme views that Facebook says it has a right to edit.

Might this new position simply result in more fake news?

The Internet has and is empowering masses of people by access to world-wide information sources, education, and communication but what is now considered permissible and acceptable online is shifting.

The question is with this newfound freedom, that is influencing every aspect of our lives for good or bad, should we be requiring people to register their identity when using the internet.?

If so how.

It would be true to say as we have become constantly connected, none of us are as anonymous as we think.

George Orwell presciently realized that if citizens don’t know what is true and what is false, they can’t make a judgment about what to object to in their lives.

Is it time to introduce an online digital passport to eradicate individual desires, such as credulity, abuse, gender-swapping, exploration, radicalizing, hacking, trolling, spreading false news, promoting popularism groups, bullying, racism, the list is endless? 

( Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says. 

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give internet users the right to privacy and the right to withhold their personal details.

The Malicious Communication Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 make it possible to prosecute “trolling” – and many other forms of online harassment are also now covered by the legislation. )

Platforms on the internet avoided liability by claiming they were “mere conduits” of these views and not “publishers” of them.  The argument goes that this includes protection for freedom of expression by the right to remain anonymous online.

So which should remain enshrined: freedom of speech or freedom from abuse?

The world feels smaller and we’ve celebrated this but in any human population, there will be people with irreconcilably different understandings of the truth.

Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it.

The world, however, has changed, and many of us may be in the time warp of old values. Human beings are poor witnesses, easily misled by a personal bias, profoundly influenced by their social environment.

As products of their society, social media and journalists are no exceptions. 

The world is now a much more dangerous place, not because of Covid -19 which is plunging it into a Depression with social media exposing a system of governance corseted by greed – profit before the people. Then, on the other hand, social media is like cancer at the heart of societies spreading the news, not what the facts are, but what men wish to see.

The press once seemed to have a conscience, thanks to history’s painful social conflicts and questions of war and peace.

Social media is not concerned with any historical lessons it being a wildfire of the short-term reactions of unfounded populism without any in-depth investigative journalism.      

It is becoming impossible to distinguish between paid news and actual, unbiased news.

You could say that the world has more pressing problems.

However, our current and future problems, like the internet, are all interconnected.

Shifting trends and the advancement in communication technology require a re-examination of the underlying principle and its application in new contexts.

There are attempts to get some control.

Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal.

Because like several other precious freedoms, free speech must be placed outside the reach of political exigency.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is impossible to pass binding regulations or laws that don’t restrict the sanctity of free speech.

Free speech or the freedom of expression is the modern civilization’s most precious gift to human society but it can’t be reaffirmed by drowning out its opponents.

                                                         ————

The issuing of Digital Passports could not be left to the whim of Facebook or any other internet providers.

Also “Digital identity solutions leave us open to data exploitation with the valuable data from these solutions (being) used for other purposes, so governments could not be involved in their issuing other than making supporting laws with large fines. 

The most obvious hitch in this plan is that not everyone has a smartphone,

With the current Pandemic and vacations, there will be an attempt to introduce Covid-19 free digital health certification (Of course, this would only be applicable to people with smartphones.) and they could become a prerequisite for some activities.

But for now, we’re many steps removed from that kind of streamlined process even becoming possible. Widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of any country’s response to COVID-19 so far.

So here is the challenge. 

Is it possible to create a Digital Passport that is unhackable, that can be applied for online, that would combine your present Passport information, that you could use to vote, to register an internet identity, and carry your medical history. 

People would only accept such a thing if it commands public trust.

As evidence with the recent election in the USA entrusting your democracy to a black-box proprietary system that is subject to hacking, glitches, and errors, but NOT subject to scrutiny, analysis, or independent verification, is the surest and quickest way to lose your democracy. 

However, creating an internet user register could be possible not only authenticating the user but making it more transparent and ensure that users have the right to remedy when wrong decisions are made.

As for platforms, they know what they need to do because civil society has told them for years.

Just in case they have not got the message they should ensure that the decisions they make about speech are in line with global human rights standards, rather than making the rules up as they go.

 

 All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : Where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Poverty, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy., World Organisations., World Politics

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( An essential twenty-minute read) 



It all depends on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

As we know COVID-19 is highlighting serious deficiencies in our existing system. 

Hopefully, we will use this crisis to rebuild, produce something better and more humane. But we may slide into something worse.

My focuses on this post are on the fundamentals of the modern economy: global supply chains, wages, and productivity.

I argue that we will need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.

In the face of COVID-19, this has never been more obvious.

——————————————————————————————–

The COVID-19 pandemic is simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises: The prioritisation of one type of value over others. 

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, and a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid.

Coronavirus, like climate change, is partly a problem of our economic structure. Although both appear to be “environmental” or “natural” problems, they are socially driven.

Yes, climate change is caused by certain gases absorbing heat. But that’s a very shallow explanation. To really understand climate change, we need to understand the social reasons that keep us emitting greenhouse gases.

Likewise with COVID-19. Yes, the direct cause is the virus. But managing its effects requires us to understand human behaviour and its wider economic context.

Tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

The epidemiology of COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. But the core logic is similarly simple. People mix together and spread infections.

We can see from Wuhan that social distancing and lockdown measures like this are effective.

Political economy is useful in helping us understand why they weren’t introduced earlier in European countries and the US.

We are now facing a serious recession and we are living with an economic system that will threaten collapse at the next sign of pandemic.

The economics of collapse is fairly straightforward.

Businesses exist to make a profit.

If they can’t produce, they can’t sell things. This means they won’t make profits, which means they are less able to employ you.

Businesses can and do (over short time periods) hold on to workers that they don’t need immediately: They want to be able to meet demand when the economy picks back up again. But, if things start to look really bad, then they won’t. So, more people lose their jobs or fear to lose their jobs. So they buy less. And the whole cycle starts again, and we spiral into an economic depression.

In a normal crisis, the prescription for solving this is simple.

The government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again.

This pressure has led some world leaders to call for an easing of lockdown measures.

But normal interventions won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). The whole point of the lockdown is to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.

If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood.

At its core, the economy is the way we take our resources and turn them into the things we need to live.

Looked at this way, we can start to see more opportunities for living differently that allow us to produce less stuff without increasing misery.

So how do you reduce the amount of stuff you make while keeping people in work?

You have to reduce people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

Currently, the primary aim of the global economy is to facilitate exchanges of money. The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that exchange value is the same thing as use-value.

This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up productive capacity with use-value.

What COVID-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let’s take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services-key workers low-paid employee. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people – automation.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges; to make money.

People are compelled to work pointless jobs (they serve no wider purpose to society: ie. consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector) because, in a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets.

This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

While state-capitalist society continues to pursue exchange value as the guiding light of the economy. It also enacts a massive Keynesian stimulus by extending credit and making direct payments to businesses.

The expectation here is that this is will be for a short period.

Could this be a successful scenario?

Possibly, but only if COVID-19 proves controllable over a short period.

Limited state intervention will become increasingly hard to maintain if death tolls rise.

Increased illness and death will provoke unrest and deepen economic impacts, forcing the state to take more and more radical actions to try to maintain market functioning.

Barbarism is the future if we continue to rely on exchange value as our guiding principle and yet refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment. It describes a situation that we have not yet seen.

Could this happen?

The concern is that either it could happen by mistake during the pandemic, or by intention after the pandemic peaks.

Potentially just as consequential is the possibility of massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked and governments seek to return to “normal”.

This would be disastrous. The subsequent failure of the economy and society would trigger political and stable unrest, leading to a failed state and the collapse of both state and community welfare systems.

Then there is the possibility that we could see with a cultural shift that places a different kind of value at the heart of the economy.

The state steps in to protect the parts of the economy that are essential to life: so that the basic provisions of life are no longer at the whim of the market. The state nationalises hospitals and makes housing freely available. Finally, it provides all citizens with a means of accessing various goods – both basics and any consumer goods we are able to produce with a reduced workforce.

Citizens no longer rely on employers as intermediaries between them and the basic materials of life.

Payments are made to everyone directly and are not related to the exchange value they create.

Instead, payments are the same to all (on the basis that we deserve to be able to live, simply because we are alive), or they are based on the usefulness of the work.

A Basic Universal Income.

Supermarket workers, delivery drivers, warehouse stackers, nurses, teachers, and doctors are the new CEOs.

If deep recessions happen and there is a disruption in supply chains such that demand cannot be rescued by the kind of standard Keynesian policies we are seeing now (printing money, making loans easier to get and so on), the state may take overproduction.

There are risks to this approach – we must be careful to avoid authoritarianism. But done well, this may be our best hope against an extreme COVID-19 outbreak.

Mutual aid is the second future in which we adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. But, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities.

The most ambitious form of this future sees new democratic structures arise. Groupings of communities that are able to mobilise substantial resources with relative speed. People coming together to plan regional responses to stop disease spread and (if they have the skills) to treat patients.

This kind of scenario could emerge from any of the others.

What hopefully is clear is that all these scenarios leave some grounds for fear, but also some for hope.

The upside of this is the possibility that we build a more humane system that leaves us more resilient in the face of future pandemics and other impending crises like climate change. 

A key task for us all is demanding that emerging social forms come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy.

The central political task in this time of crisis is living and (virtually) organising around those values.

Not low-paid workers or National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage because their work is so vital.

Successive governments had failed to reduce inequality between rich and poor despite two decades of interventions.

We must now with an uncertain future focus more on the journey, rather than the ultimate destination.

But be no doubt that we are at a crossroad where the low pay culture that has trapped people in poorly jobs is coming to an end. 

Capitalism Inequality can not be allowed to continue. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: ARE GOVERNMENTS BECOMING OBSOLETE.

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Cyberocracy., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political voting systems., Politics., Robot citizenship., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

In terms of almost everything, no one can be sure what the next fifty years will hold nor can anyone be sure just what a government will be doing fifty years from now, never mind next year.

As history has repeatedly shown, political systems come and go.

Given our rapid technological and social advances, (a trend we can expect to continue) we will be looking at many different possible futures because there is a new kind of creature that has entered the world.

When we change the way we communicate, in today’s increasingly interconnected world we change society, creating entirely new systems of thought to deal with complex issues like climate change, and by whom/what and how we are governed.  

We are in the throes of the digital age with all of its unknown consequences and it along with Climate Change is ushering in a new phase of the world. Perhaps we are looking at democracy being replaced by Cyberocracy. (Computer(s) make the decisions.)

A precise definition of cyberocracy is not possible at present as it is still hypothetical in form, but it may bring a new emphasis on ‘soft’ symbolic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of policymaking and public opinion.

It will be however a product of the information revolution and it may place a premium on gaining information from any source, public or private, radically affect who rules, how and why.

(That is, information and its control will become a dominant source of power, as a natural next step in political evolution.)

In essence, a smartphone could show us how and can train us in the latest developments to increase effectivity, while making sure a human or a group of people are not directly interacting with the information.

In theory a great idea for efficiency but in practice, those in charge will probably use the information to crush dissent and sell the information off to private companies.

Ideally, the point of cyberocracy would be to ultimately overcome the faults that lie in typical bureaucratic systems, effectively creating an artificially intelligent head of state.

Luckily there is a pitfall, in that the control of all gathered information would then ultimately lie in the proverbial hands of a machine, wherein true humanity becomes lost to the legislative and governmental processes.

The consequence of the information revolution may thus mean “greater inequalities. speeding the collapse of closed societies and favouring the spread of open ones.

Algorithms are already undermining the power base of old monarchies and governments, and these same technologies will subsequently “turned into tools of propaganda, surveillance, and subjugation that enabled dictators to seize power and develop totalitarian regimes.

New modes of multiorganizational collaboration are taking shape, and progress toward networked governance is occurring to enable hybrid systems to take the form that do not fit standard distinctions between democracy and totalitarianism.

A double-edged sword that revolves around symbolic politics and media savvy with governments straining to adapt.

For example vast new sensory apparatuses for watching what is happening in societies and around the world. Of all the uses to which the new technologies are being put, this may become one of the most important for the future of the state and its relationship to society.

Each generation must address its own challenges even though it is not yet clear which future will emerge with the current climate crisis.

Policy problems have become so complex and intractable, crossing so many jurisdictions and involving so many actors, that governments should evolve beyond the traditional bureaucratic model of the state.

Only time will tell.

We now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordination activities that take advantage of that change.

Setting priorities among government’s current endeavours need to  involve at least four decisions:

Which endeavours should be continued or stopped; Which are most important; Which are the government’s greatest responsibility; and which should have the highest priority?

Back to the present with climate change.

There is one thing for certain that with climate change there will be tragedies not yet imagined. It will drive people into compact groups and we know that if a group of humans get together without some sort of organised leadership they end up killing each other.

So for the good of all humankind, in fact, all life on earth and the earth itself, we need to push ahead in this area. Or else go back to pre-industrial times and abandon modern life as we know it. Staying the course we are on will lead only to ruin.

Government’s greatest priorities of the next fifty years can be found in their greatest disappointments of the past.

My point is, the government doesn’t remind us of the good things in life, not often. When it works, we barely notice, but when things go wrong, the glaring deficiencies of the system present themselves everywhere.

As a result, the Government used to be for the lack of a better word the parent of the group/ nation hated some days and loved other days.

Should they now be limited to the implementation of certain social norms desirable for holding the structure of society in place?

I want to see some politicians with the forethought and imagination to understand this.

That’s because I need to be reminded of what I’m living for, not an Algorithm of everything, not a government elected on lies, false news, predictive algorithms which is a two-way relationship manipulated by social media platforms, owned by monopolies that are no longer trusted by the citizens they represent.

Without knowing how decisions are taken or who the decision-makers are, and without knowing how decisions are implemented or to what end, citizens feel undervalued and disenfranchised.  They do not believe that the government is listening to their concerns.

So where are we?

The freedom that we see emerging from the networked environment allows people to reach across national or social boundaries, across space and political division. It allows people to solve problems together in new associations that are outside the boundaries of formal, legal-political association like governments. 

If the past is prologue, however, the government will continue to the extent that a society is measured by what it asks its government to do.

Sure the information revolution will foster more open and closed systems; more decentralization and centralization; more inclusionary and exclusionary communities; more privacy and surveillance; more freedom and authority; more democracy and new forms of totalitarianism.

Yet setting priorities is not just about addressing past failures. It is also about protecting past achievements.

To solve the problems and understand the role and limitations of government, will require a new way of thinking and working and a new level of trust and understanding of people.

The revolution in global communications thus forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.

A longer view of history provides little assurance that the new technology favours democracy.

Firstly, governments must be seen as capable and effective in carrying out their activities. Secondly, the government must be seen as treating all people equally and impartially, without favouritism or discrimination.

And thirdly, the dimension of human concern and personal connectedness: government must be seen to be sincerely caring about each person’s welfare.

Digital is offering a great way to respond to this at a service level but is only part of the answer when it comes to mending and building relationships with people.

Even in the best of times, delivery is hard for governments: objectives are not always clear; they change in response to events or leadership transitions.

An endeavour cannot be a top priority, or a priority of any kind if it is not worth pursuing at all. The term “greatest” does not mean either “most successful,” or “most important,” or even “most appropriate.” Rather, the greatest endeavours of the present are the ones in which the government has made the greatest investment.

This fact base speaks for itself.

The first step, then, is to choose three to six priority outcomes—any more will be too many. They can’t all be equally important.

These priorities must be written into the constitution of a nation so they cannot be tampered with.

And establishing the right metric for each priority to ensure it does not yield unintended, negative consequences must be set by citizens assemblies rather than relying on leaders political instincts.

People must feel ownership of the plan by agreeing on criteria for continuation funding.

Communicating is only the beginning.

Stakeholders must be engaged all the way through to delivery of the promised outcomes. Accountability is established,outcome-based budgeting, so that funding is directly linked to and contingent on the delivery of key outcomes.

This, as we know, is notoriously difficult to pull off in a world of silos, disparate agendas, and competition for funding. But a small number of priorities will go a long way toward securing the support required.

Government achievement ebbs and flows with changing economic, social, and political circumstances, with the mere passage of time.

The worst form of government is the tyrannical form, where all power is with one man, a leader who rises from the chaos of democracy, thirsting for power but not having the wisdom or learning to use it wisely.

With the issue of government Citizens, bonds targeting citizens funding will resolve this problem. They could unite as a human race and get our priorities in check so we can find out what’s really out there and perhaps where we really came from.

Their performance should be measured against agreed international benchmarks a portfolio of targets at varying levels of ambition.

Who would set the levels?

The U.N. is essentially an incredibly weak confederacy it should be disbanded, and a new, better UN made, with a written Constitution. All member countries hereby agree to uphold and abide by all constitutional clauses upon entry to the United Nations and any violation of any of the several clauses herein will be punished with the full force of each member state.

And finally, here are a few endeavours.

Reduce Carbon emissions.

Continue reducing nuclear weapons.

Reduce discrimination, pollution, poverty, and inequality.

Expand health care.

Devolve digitally responsibility to promote and protect democracy with the right to vote by electronic voting.

Create a Digital government performance platform.

As to which type of government is the best for mankind, well, if only we had the answer to that…Hierarchy does not end. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WITH THE SATURATION OF THE WEB BY GREEDY ALGORITHMS ARE WE SEEING THE END OF CHOICE.

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital Friendship., Education, Elections/ Voting, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Seven-minute read) 

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 BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE NEED A NEW WAY TO REFLECT DEMOCRACY, WHICH IS GREATLY LAGGING BEHIND DEMOGRAPHIC, CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC SHIFTS.

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Democracy.

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( A Fifteen-minute read)

 

If we are to discuss the best model for democracy we should first look at the British system as it is the longest established.

Questions arise however when you consider its relevance to the modern world.

The Houses of Parliament have long been known as ‘the mother of parliaments’ and historically form the basis for democratic government across the world. Much of the British system, however, is seen as outdated.

The UK is said to have a democracy with power resting with the people but granted to their elected representatives but this only applies to the House of Commons. The other parts of the Constitution – the Crown and the House of Lords – are hereditary and appointed.

It’s not surprising that a system so outdated, and so stilted by generations of gerrymandering and ever-increasing campaign spending, results in public policies that do little to address the fundamental interests of most citizens.

Anyone can see when looking at the referendum (that voted by a small majority to leave the European Union) that direct democracy was stimulated by stagnant wages, rising inequality and unaccountable elites benefiting from repeated government bailouts all functions of a larger and more systemic problem.

However, the current crop of populist leaders and parties may be the forerunner to even more worrying politics — but they could also be the spark for a much-needed overhaul of the basic architecture of democratic government.

So let’s ask the question why and should we be worried about democracy?

Do we need a reset button not just in the Uk but throughout the whole of the democratic world?

The turn to populism, the call for nonsensical direct democracy and the recourse to binary choices – whether in the form of referenda or general elections  – all come from the failure of party politics, which is nurtured everywhere by unrepresentative parliamentary democracy.

Representation democracy requires a filtering process and preselection of candidates by parties performed this role in today’s Elections which are geographically based for obvious practical reasons.

But people are no longer bound to – and are less inclined to – identify geographically within the borders of a nation-state.

Our institutions of democracy and government are simply not designed to deal with unfettered financial capital flows across national borders and the tolerance, if not active encouragement, of the free mass movement and migration of people.

With technology such as electronic voting the individual you want to see elected might be based in the next county or the other end of the country, and then you cannot (now) vote for them. Or your vote goes wasted because of the make-up of the constituency you are resident in.

It is now perfectly feasible, in principle, for everyone to vote for an individual they believe in, rather than for the least bad candidate, and for no vote ever to go wasted.

This is possible without recourse not just to political parties, but though citizens group-think tanks that could retain a subsidiary role to analyze what is being presented and remove social media that is clogging up the political processes with falshoods.

Let there be separate assemblies for the several grand areas of political concern. For example, a citizens assembly to address ethical concerns.  A pressure group uniting people of religion and of no-religion in dialogue.

It could handle the beginning and the end of life; the wisdom or otherwise of tolerating drug abuse; the way we treat animals; which limits we may want to place on religious freedoms and parental rights, climate change

Using secure electronic voting one selects one’s choice candidate from the many thousands standing via a search function at the polling station.

Forget party lists.

Forget proportional representation (which serves party hacks rather than strong-minded individuals).

Forget alternative votes and second rounds.

For the election, a candidate needs a predetermined number of votes.

Those falling far short of the threshold hold a political power of attorney from their supporters to transfer their contingent to a like-minded candidate closer to the threshold.

What is surprising is that the people whose interests have been so clearly neglected for so long feel they have no choice but to back candidates who are so clearly flawed or conflicted.

What is needed in our democracies is a call to manage financial and people flows in ways that do not exceed our social political and economic systems capability to evolve on an even keel.

A call to not incentivise the separation of finance from real economies, or the short term hot trade, or governments and criminal gangs who profit from people trafficking.

A call to do away with just a lip service democracy.

A call to admit from the start our fallibility as human beings, which leads us to accept that a discussion can not reach a consensus, and we should use the vote as a force.

A call to use technology not just to enrich the rich but to enhance all our lives. We cant have both.

A call to get rid of the hypocrisy of the imbalance at the centre of our political systems which those who are empowered by the current system will not change.

The only thing that can change our political system is pressure from the outside.

We are all now living in a technological digital driven world

Nowadays, democracy is unfortunately seen as inevitable; in other words, it is the political system no one dares to question and even less making it publicly.

Democracy. (noun)

1. Rule by the people, especially as a form of government; either directly or through elected representatives (representative democracy).

2. A government under the direct or representative rule of the people of its jurisdiction.

3. Belief in political freedom and equality; the “spirit of democracy”.

The term democracy comes from the Greek language and means “rule by the (simple) people”.

The essential elements of democracy: separation of powers, basic civil rights / human rights, religious liberty and separation of church and state.

Brexiters tell us that the EU is run by faceless bureaucrats.

But the truth is that all EU laws can only be passed by the democratically elected European Parliament, in concert with the Council of Ministers, that comprise the ministers of democratically elected governments of EU member states.

In the age of the internet and biometrics that we could and should be able to vote directly on policies which shape are lives.

The representative system is antiquated.

The internet can be used to inform the all citizens of the issues, and collect all the votes.

Rebuilding the political system cannot be left to politicians – the public need to have a role .In a political environment where we’re told our only role is to vote every few years, directly engaging the public in redesigning our democracy is a radical step that must be taken before democracy disappears into an algorithm. 

Twitter is alive with political chat.

We can’t afford to take a chance on an undemocratic system that has failed us so greatly and so often.

https://youtu.be/OHxRj9JWQMs

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.