Category Archives: DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP.

THE BEADY EYE : LOOKS AT WHAT IS NOW BEEN CALLED THE NEW NORM.

26 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, POST COVID-19., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Viruses., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

While the pandemic continues to turn the world upside down, new realizations are beginning to dawn on us, there’s no going back to normality.

There is no doubt that we are getting close to the “new abnormal”.

We are all in this together and no one really knows what the future holds but you only have to look at the advertising industry to see what is coming. 

We are now in a digital dance in which the use of surveillance and testing to find and control outbreaks will eventually determine who gets to make or earn a living or not.

Under the cloak of preventing the virus from spreading governments are either already deploying, or actively considering, surveillance technology of such intrusiveness that it would have caused outrage and furious protests even a month ago. 

As the human and economic impact unfold, how massive this change will become is still unclear.

Indeed, it is a real question as to whether normal or abnormal can be sensibly used at all, given their tremendous baggage and built-in biases and the general confusion they create.

However, there are a few new norms becoming clearer.

The current devastating pandemic is likely to happen again and again and the digital dance to avoid the next outbreak will not be to the tune of governments, but two powerful global corporations laying down the law to territorial sovereigns and restructuring the economic order. 

Whole industries grossing billions of dollars are built on the words “normal” and “abnormal” and on the ideas of “well” and “disordered.”

It is therefore inconceivable that the right thing can be done and that the situation can change. Given that even the best and the brightest in the field of advertising are attached to an illegitimate naming game, from Bio this and Bio that there is probably no hope for change other than COVID free. 

Add the coming World economic depression, with unemployment and climate migration one thing is clear, slowing the pace of climate change and adapting to its impacts, must become a central organizing principle of society at all levels, from local to global through national and regional.

The declarations of climate emergency must start meaning that, rather than being just an additional agenda item for busy executives and politicians.

Why? 

Because climate change and the erosion of wildlife habitats will ensure a ready supply of zoonotic viruses.

Up to now, the emphasis is on lifting the lockdown has centered solely on the necessity of bringing the economy out of its cryogenic chamber to take in the world it has inherited.

We’re all online now, new conformity which is developing a serious digital divide between the young and older generations. And if the impact of Covid19 is another step in the collapse of modern societies, then it is likely it will have been another climate-driven step in that collapse.

The new normal, in other words, change what was wrong but keeps what was right with the old normal.

But if the old normal was wrong, then why did we call it normal?

The word “normal” appears straightforward enough it possesses a certain kind of authority or “power to divide and distinguish things” since a person’s mental model of “what is normal?” is tremendously influenced by how society and its institutions define “normal.”

But like many of our words, as soon as we begin thinking about it, it starts to fall apart at the seams. The fact with which we started our process of categorization becomes the standard or norm, and everything that diverges from that norm is not just different but abnormal and therefore less than normal.

Our concept of normal pulls double duty; it tells us that what is, ought to be.

Nor can it mean “free of discomfort,” as if “normal” were the equivalent of oblivious.

Normality forces upon us are that “in most cases, no formal rules or standards indicate what conditions are normal” In the absence of such rules, those who wish to identify normality will normally turn to one of three different definitions.

The first is the statistical view, “where ‘the normal’ is whatever trait most people in a group display”. Normal is what is typical, what most people do – which means it is impossible for any individual to be normal.

Second, the norm provided a concrete standard that, if followed, allowed the user to reproduce a specific pattern. Normal-as-ideal, then, might be in harmony with normal-as-ubiquitous, but it might be quite different.

What is normal for a human being, then, are all those behaviors that make it fit to thrive in its particular niche. The capacity to feel shame when betraying a loved one is normal in this scheme, as is the desire for one’s offspring to survive.

When it comes to defining normality, we start with what we think is normal before even considering what is abnormal with all three above end up sliding into each.

The new normal will mean that most of us will go back to most of what we were doing before the pandemic struck (1), but that our societies will make changes for the better (2), which will end up being good for the survival of our communities (3).

The question, then, is why would you use the word “normal” at all? 

Normal is safe. It’s familiar. In the face of fear, people long to go back to a time before the fear set in.

Covid-19 causes us to experience a great deal of anxiety, and then we imagine a carefree time before these feelings set in. We don’t begin with normality and then categorize those instances where it is transgressed.

If we begin with all of those things that we instinctively feel are “abnormal” and then try to find comfort by erecting a norm that resolves our anxieties. We then locate this norm “in the past”, which gives us the benefit of claiming the norm as our own. This, after all, may seem easier to attain than one that requires all the hard work of creation.

It is not something we need to build from scratch; all that is necessary is that we return home to it.

We will all continue to face daunting challenges for which we are not prepared. Modern medicine, as advanced as it is, is still, in the grand scheme of things, relatively young.

We’re not sure what exactly the future will look like – which is why we prefer to discuss it in the familiar terms of the good ole’ days – but we know that it’s coming to greet us.

Bergson used the term élan vital to describe the mysterious impulse toward an open future that seems to animate all life. In fact, this impulse is what life is. Life, says Bergson, “since its origins, has been the continuation of one and the same impetus which separates itself into diverging lines of evolution”.

If we are careful two huge tech companies that control mobile phone technology will enable governments to build and deploy proximity-tracking apps on every smartphone in the world.

 Your online appointments for everything IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.  

Here is a shortlist of Normal abnormalities in the world. 

  • 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
  • 750 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
  • 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
  • In developing countries, some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuelwood.
  • The wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%. In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets
  • A quarter of humanity — live without electricity.
  • 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.

A strong economy in a nation doesn’t mean much when a significant percentage (even a majority) of the population is struggling to survive.

THE NEW NORM.

Thinking about it, I much prefer the new COVID-19 normal, as I am certain you do too. After all, it has, in some bizarre way, opened our eyes to the infinite treasures that lie within us and in front of us, that we may have been too numb to notice until now.

What was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.

We can make the new normal any way we want providing we make it GREEN. 

If “the new normal” means giving up to technology then THE NEW NORMAL MUST BE REJECTED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.

These temporary measures are just that; temporary. They need to be observed, but NOT FOREVER. New normal or not, every day really is a miracle.

The new normal that activity tracks your steps, whether you are black or white, rich or poor, left or right-wing, gay or straight, Muslim or other, Facebook or Twitter, contaminated or not, is irrelevant to living life and appreciating the world we all live on. 

It’s the powerful combination of humanity and values that count. We are living in a world of continuous change “Technology Rules The World.”

The new norm requires that we consider our systems as a platform for scaling value.

An investment that needs to be made by leadership. The time has passed for small commitments, hyperbole, and delays in embracing sustainable investing.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : WE KNOW THE RIGHT WAY TO GO BUT WHY IS IT SO HARD? IS IT BECAUSE IMAGINATION IS DISAPPEARING.

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Freedom, GPS-Tracking., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Tracking apps., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

If ever there was a need for imagination when this pandemic is over or is eventually under control, hopefully, imagination is going to play a massive role in redesigning not just our societies but the way we live and die on this planet.

The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.

If we have learned anything from Covid-19 is that global problems require global solutions, whether it is a pandemic, hunger, or access to quality education, reversing climate change, poverty, and inequality, you name it.

Imagination allows us to engage in thinking about alternatives and there is no doubt that we will need some radical changes.

Here I am referring to creative imagination the role it plays in our thinking.

The key point is that in using a term such as ‘imagining’, I am not just referring to some mental activity, but also evaluating that activity in some way, with all its relations and ramifications.

So here is your chance to submit you imagine creative ideas.

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

Where to start? 

Unfortunately, this pandemic is a present-day dystopia.

It’s not the stuff of science fiction set in some distant future or on another planet it’s damage is ongoing and will only get worse as it continues.

To understand the “real world” one has to experience it not imagine it.

At the moment there is a lot of rhetoric about using a tracking App to monitor the spread of COVID_19. In other words, unregulated squealing Apps (that are owned by private corporations) that Id people that have or had the virus. 

 We recently celebrated VE day that won us freedom at the cost of millions of lives. 

In my view, such a tracking proposition is not far removed from what the Nazis did in identify Jews by marking them with a yellow star. 

It is imperative that we in their honor that we now don’t rubbish there sacrifice by becoming Data slaves. 

(As I have said in the previous post, to ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19. Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it.)

When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely.

Imagine living under a Chines automatism system run by a Donal Dump.

Such techniques violate some of the core values of liberal democratic regimes.)

Up to now, we thought that Capitalist Globalization was the bee’s knees when in fact it increased inequalities and undermined democracy.

Now we realize that ecological transition IS more than NECESSARY with a bottom-up economy to protect the world and not the top-down begging world we have a the moment.  

However, the big problem remains the same.

How to distribute the gains of any economy. and now the losses.  

Technology will treat people as units and as such the relentless growth and accumulation of wealth and power for the few, will continue to grow. 

Cutting-edge technologies are now powered by artificial intelligence and are fundamentally shifting the distribution of power between people who provide data and entities that can make sense and use of these data.

It will become a battle between protecting individual rights and confronting an existential threat to our collective right to health, to a basic living wage. 

Of course, all of this data helps epidemiologists model the movement and the future of the virus but beyond the privacy and data rights, there are questions of biases and discrimination built into the algorithms that power the technology. 

Machines will never be made to think like people.

We have for decades underpaid the people that we now call essential workers as interchangeable units.

Currently, the AI field is mostly controlled by corporate interests. 

As global COVID-19 cases continue to rise, the unmatched connectivity that defines our era serves as both bane and blessing. 

Let’s ask the question one more time, in taking advantage of big data to create databases to track and predict infectious risk, should we be enforcing social- distancing by squealing on each other?

If you are at risk, the odds change rapidly, you become in favor of sharing or donating data.

There’s really no way to stop the movement of microbes and we need to realize that now our citizens really need to realize that.

Mapping potential carriers with big data notwithstanding privacy concerns, analysis of personal, travel, and other data like clinical data allow accurate predictive modeling.

Imagine if we created a society where everything is predicted and determined by big data. Its presence depends on “symbolic function”, the ability to pretend that one object is another thing entirely.

It will be a massive mistake.

So is technology an imaginary friend or foe?

Will we lose that human touch?

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has changed daily life.

But what changes will last? How will we live when it’s all over? 

Even now, when we’re seeing a massive, rapid change in most walks of life — inspired by a push in science or technology, or nudged by a freak, global health emergency — it’s hard to find sound prophecy. And that’s despite access to mountains of data.

Who would have imagined that global consumerism could be crushed by the wheels of its own industry … quite so suddenly.

But perhaps this is the kind of tipping point that we secretly crave — a slowing of society.

Many people will struggle to deal with an increasing rate of change and, as a result, suffer a social or personal shock. Whether we survive the shock depends on how well we adapt.

What complicates things is that no two societies are ever fully the same.

We’re seeing that friction today, between so-called “forces” and “anti-forces.” The push and pull of people and places adapting this way or that way. But it’s nigh impossible to predict how much of that change, and its effect on daily life, will remain, and how much — or what — will change back.

Whatever happens, it won’t be on a massive scale because our regular behavior will start to reemerge.

Who will benefit more?

We might discover that work is not really part of your life or something you like to do, but something you must do exactly seven hours and 42 minutes a day. And then your real life starts.

This Pandemic will not be a ‘one-off’ event. 

Now is the time to start investing in spare capacity, in people and equipment, to cope with such events. 

( See post on setting up World Aid Depots)  

We must envision a path that allows humans to flourish by asking: how can we protect people financially, should widespread technological unemployment happen even sooner than we anticipated?

A realization among some that the dominant ways of knowing and organizing, which characterize our modern techno-industrial cultures, cannot handle the realities of living, complex, relational, human, and non-human systems.

This may help bring into focus the need to update the conceptual foundations of our cultures.

But can tech solve everything?

That raises the question of whether privacy isn’t just a cultural construct.

If your health depended on it, wouldn’t you share your data willingly?

So we need to say goodbye to our concepts of data security.

Data security is something for healthy people.

On the other hand fear of infection is limiting “in-person” interactions, forcing us deeper into an “increasingly chilling use of online systems and all-electronic communication.

Change depends on how we see ourselves as individuals and groups living through the now.

The internet might just be facilitating.

But it’s still about the real world and a reminder that you can’t eat anything on your computer screen.

In the next Pandemic and the forthcoming Depression, there will be nowhere to hide” from economic collapse in our networked world. 

Take video conferencing.

It’s fine as an exception, but as a rule, it fails to fully translate subtle forms of communication — body language below the head and shoulders. All sound is normalized, mics get muted, along with nervous hands or a lost, downward gaze.

In the end, previous pandemics have profoundly re-shaped society and despite huge advances in medical knowledge, we are once again forced to respond in much the same ways as we did to previous pandemics.

Until a worldwide vaccine we’re really back to what our ancestors would have had in terms of dealing with this kind of disease – just stay away from each other in an effort to slow down its spread.

What we’re doing now is keeping it running at any cost.

However, it is obvious that the right path in tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

There is now an opportunity to change course, the earth must be respected.

So imagination without reality is the osmotic membrane between matter and mind, the antechamber between outside and inside, the free zone between the laws of nature and the requirements of reason.

Without, it indicates a lack of commitment to the truth or existence of what is thought of by the person or persons who invented big data. Thinking of something that is not present to the senses without commitment to its truth or falsity a Digital prison. 

Up to now, we live in a world of the short-term profit-driven corporate world, with the support of the trillion-dollar advertising industry and complicit governments who have fetishized economic growth.

If technology dominates us, not only is the whole struggle to imagine a world of equal opportunities betrayed but the opportunity is lost.

So it’ll only be when it’s all over that we’ll have the luxury of telling the story as a neatly bound series of logical events.

The impacts we’ll see from this is going to be far greater than what happened before. Whether imagery is a form of imagination, and whether supposition is a form of imagination as quick as you can imagine there is a depression of historic proportions coming.

Imagination makes our world an even more spectacular place.

We imagine even when we don’t think that we are imagining.

Everything that humans have achieved has started with the glimmer of imagination.

It is, in sum, the pivotal power in which are centered those mediating, elevating, transforming functions that are so indispensable to the cognitive process that philosophers are reluctant to press them very closely.

Why does it seem to diminish over time for all but the most creative among us?

My own ability to imagine up a story or new world seems far weaker than it used to be. Or is it?

It fails to exclude such things as remembering.

We can leave a legacy worthwhile.   So comment. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: EVERYBODY SHOULD WATCH THE BELOW VIDEOS, BECAUSE THE INTRODUCTION OF TRACKING UNDER THE CLOAK OF PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 WILL TURN INTO MORE THAN WHAT YOU THINK.

05 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GPS-Tracking., Human values., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, WiFi communication., World Economy., World Leaders

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(Two-minute depressing read)

This is a very dangerous situation.

With the economies melting all around the world, countries nearing bankruptcy, the world is becoming ripe for a one-world currency, controlled by unregulated AI tracking.

We are still living as if nothing is going to happen and losing sight of what is important.

If we are not vigilant COVID -19 is going to turn us all into trackable slaves with no recourse as to who, what, or how, any of this collected information is used.

We have been so conditioned by television, the internet, smartphone, magazines, billboards, etc, we are inclined to just take things for granted.

Of course, we still have a right to our own opinions. 

However, with a blink of an eye, our world is changing.

Are we about to see the end of the covetous age when people thought about ME, ME, ME!.

Because tracking data is going to create a world of the Have and Have not.

Why?

Whatever about you I don’t want to live in a world of Social Stratification. In a society that is categorized into groups of people depending on whether they are COVID_19 free or not.

IT IS BAD ENOUGH AS IT IS WITH RACISM, RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY, WALL BUILDING, ETC.

We have for years listened to the current rhetoric that deals with wealth alone creating preconceived notions surrounding those of lower socioeconomic class.

We hear about wealth inequality, and lawmakers push policies designed to redistribute wealth, usually by increasing taxes on the successful to support programs for those that have less. Redistributing that wealth doesn’t help solve the issue because it destroys the very thing you are trying to preserve, the focus should be the equality of ability and opportunity. 

The 1 percent vs. the 99 percent.

Either way, the theme is simple: Someone has something, and others don’t. 

All of this is going to get worse if we allow unregulated tracking which will result in a world where everyone is afraid of commitment.

With the coming, economic depression I don’t want to live in a world of ignorance before the Next Pandemic arrives. 

What is needed is more transparency not less so we can know that the second coming is ‘at the door.’

So what if anything should we be doing. What is needed is a de stimulating package to secure the future. 

We should as it is obvious to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We should be preparing for the impacts of climate change.

We should be restoring the vitality of natural systems

We should be increasing local, regional, and national self-sufficiency.

We should be developing a circular economy.

We should be more socially responsible.

We should be all working together. 

We should be achieving all of them at the same time.

We should not have a mindset of we’ll do whatever it takes. 

We should not allow the introduction of unregulated tracking. 

I can hear you saying that we are all already tracked. 

This is true and perhaps a well-designed tool could offer public health benefits, but a poorly designed one could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. 

For there to be trust.

The tool must protect privacy, be voluntary, and store data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository.

Even then there will still need to be strict policies to mitigate against overreach and abuse.

The data should not be used for purposes other than public health — not for advertising and especially not for any punitive or law enforcement purposes.

Rather than identify the people who own the phones, apps based on the protocol could use identifiers that cannot easily be traced back to phone owners. 

Then how does the tool define an epidemiologically relevant “contact”?

The public needs to know if it is a good technological approximation of what public health professionals believe is a concern. Otherwise, the tool could be collecting far more personal information than is warranted by the crisis or could cause too many false alarms.

Another issue is whether phone users control when to submit their proximity logs for publication to the exposure database.

Also, when users share their proximity logs, what will they reveal?

Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure the deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it. To ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19.

When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely.

In the coming weeks and months, we are going to see a push to reopen the economy — an effort that will rely heavily on public health measures that include contact tracing.

Obviously, you’d have absolutely no civil liberties, freedoms, or powers, if you are deceased.

The COVID-19, however, has set in motion a paradigm shift in how nations prioritize and conceptualize personal freedom. So if the virus weren’t scary enough, its potential ramifications for privacy and civil liberties make it even scarier.

We all live here because Earth is the only planet known to humans that sustain life.

The signs of the end are prevalent.

I think it’s time that more people open their eyes to the problems of our society and acknowledge that we do, in fact, have a problem.

Yet these impacts will be trivial compared to the likely economic and social disruption if we continue to destroy the environment.

Short term thinking is prevailing. The sort of thinking that will condemn us to a very risky future. 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. ARE WE LOOSING OUR WORKING MEMORY OR IS GOOGLE DESTROYING THEM.

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disasters., Disconnection., Environment, Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

Post COVID-19 this will become a question that we will all have to ask yourselves. 

Coronavirus came after a series of wake-up calls.

Perhaps the COVID-19 outbreak is the wake-up call the world needs to get people accustomed to the fact that because of climate change, we all now need to change our lifestyles to protect our lives. 

The COVID-19 outbreak should be a wake-up call that the economic and social costs of climate change will likely be so catastrophic – potentially many times worse than what we’re currently witnessing – that as a nation and the community of nations, we can’t afford not to take massive measures to combat and mitigate the dangers.

Confronting climate change will take a global effort far beyond any that’s been on the table so far, and far beyond the voluntary commitments in the Paris Climate accord.

We don’t yet know how long the COVID-19 outbreak will last, how many people will get sick or die, or the ultimate cost to global wealth and to people’s jobs and homes.

However, it seems obvious to say that, if we can transform the economy for a virus, we can also do so to prevent climate change.

Acres of column inches have already been written about how the Coronavirus is going to change our economies, politics, and societies forever. 

We can choose to prioritize something – in this case, human life – above the maximization of profit and even our individual freedom.

Unchecked, climate change will wreak far greater damage on our ability to live safe, profitable, happy, and free lives than COVID-19.

Despite the brief dip in emissions due to COVID-19, there is a risk that the pandemic – which is likely to dominate politics for months or even years to come – will overshadow environmental concerns. 

Mortimer Adler Said ” To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It is this fact that the liberal arts acquire their name.”

For most of human history, the only other reliable sources of information were other people.

We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. If we know that a fact is only a Google away, then we’re not going to waste precious synaptic space on it. Better to let a server remember.

Or is it?

Feel like you’re losing grip of your memory. Google it.

Every time we recall a memory we also remake it, subtly tweaking the neuronal details. (This is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.) Although we like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them, they aren’t.

A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it.

The brain has no interest immaculate recall – it’s only interested in the past to the extent it helps us make sense of the future.

By having memories that constantly change, we ensure that the memories stored inside our mental file cabinets are most relevant.

Although our memories always feel true – as a literal recording of the past – they’re mostly not, since they’re always being edited and bent by what we think now. And now. And now. 

And this is where the internet comes in. One of the virtues of transactive memory is that it acts like a fact-check, helping ensure we don’t all descend into selfish solipsism. ( Solipsism: The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified)

By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven’t disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our own reconsolidations.

I don’t think it’s a sign that technology is rotting our cortex – I think it shows that we’re wise enough to outsource a skill we’re not very good at.

Because while the web enables all sorts of other biases – it lets us filter news, for instance, to confirm what we already believe – the use of the web as a vessel of transactive memory is mostly virtuous. We save hard drive space for what matters, while at the same time improving the accuracy of recall.

But if a fact stored externally were the same as a memory of that fact stored in our mind, then the loss of internal memory wouldn’t much matter.

External storage and biological memory are not the same things.

When we form, or “consolidate,” a personal memory, we also form associations between that memory and other memories that are unique to ourselves and also indispensable to the development of deep, conceptual knowledge.

The associations, moreover, continue to change with time, as we learn more and experience more.

The essence of personal memory is not the discrete facts or experiences we store in our mind but “the cohesion” which ties all those facts and experiences together.

What is the self but the unique pattern of that cohesion?

Our over-reliance on google and the smartphone search engines is destroying our memories – ‘digital amnesia’. 

Google in its very nature is making us stupid, making us more likely to recall where the facts are rather than the facts themselves.

We hold the answers to just about all of life’s questions in our palms today. But that means our brains are feeling free to take some R & R.

If you have no working memory, you can have no longterm memory and you understand very little.

The growing reliance on the world wide web for fact-checking is rotting our memories.

We off-load memories to the cloud just as readily as we would to a family member, friend, or lover.

Almost all information today is readily available through a quick internet search. It may be that the internet is taking the place not just of other people as external sources of memory but also of our own cognitive faculties becoming an extension of our own intelligence, rather than a separate tool.

At this point, you might be asking why is any of this important.

Indeed, As the specter of creeping authoritarianism – as emergency disaster measures become normalized, or even permanent – it should be at the forefront of our minds. 

Because the consequences of COVID-19 will reorder society in a dramatic way, and this combined with climate change we are witnessing a tipping point as to how the world is going to work.

Unfortunately, we constructed a world that could not be more suited to a Pandemic – density everywhere- inward rural migration and now Data harvesting.

We can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behavior in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.

One consequence of coronavirus could be an entrenchment of exclusionary political narratives, calling for new borders to be placed around urban communities – overseen by leaders who have the legal and technological capacity, and the political will, to build them.

In other words an intensification of digital infrastructure in our cities to track the spread of COVID-19 using “big data” analysis to anticipate where transmission clusters will emerge next.

A police security robot drives on the high-speed railway station platform in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The device, which patrols public places, warns people when they are not wearing masks, checks their body temperature and identity.

This much is certain:

Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.

It will be a time of contradictions.

Internationally, many issues that appeared pressing prior to the pandemic will likely recede in prominence once the world begins its recovery. All non-coronavirus issues will be pushed aside.

Not only because of a shared experience but also because of the mutual assistance that will be required at the same time, democracies must prevent the emergence of a big brother-style intrusion into the personal sphere by the security apparatus.

Such a thing can only occur in the absence of massive civilian oversight.

Many countries will set up committees of inquiry to find out why they and their healthcare systems were caught unprepared, humanity is destined to return to its old self after the adjustment period ends. And that, on balance, is a good thing.

Coronavirus will not end globalization, but it will change it by disrupting our lives and causing painful tragedy —it may introduce a new acceptance of unpredictability into our thinking.

This is certainly not the last time that we’re going to have these kinds of disease eruptions if we deny, delude, and delay on climate change.

We know what to do to halt climate change, we just have to do it.

Our current sense of risk — such as when it is safe to cross a road — is insufficient to deal with threats that are so dire they must be minimized; we need a complete rethink.

If we don’t we will have unregulated algorithms run the world.

How much of life can now be conducted digitally?

If we can accept canceled flights, closed schools, postponed sporting fixtures now, perhaps we can accept restraints in the future.

If we can rely on international co-operation now, perhaps we can summon the same spirit again.

At some point, a nudge will be required. If the shock of coronavirus disruption isn’t enough for us to recalibrate, what will be? 

Our Memories!

We have to recognize there will be other pandemics and be better prepared. We must also recognize that climate change is a deeper and bigger threat that doesn’t go away, and is just as urgent.

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get inscribed into our biological memory banks. 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD WE ALLOW GPS TRACKING FOR THE COMMON GOOD TO DEFEAT COVID-19

19 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Big Data., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Emergency powers., Freedom, Google, GPS-Tracking., Human values., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Ten-minute read)

Emergency powers have a tendency to kindle emergencies.

Granted most of these powers adopted by countries to stop the spread of the coronavirus are needed.

At the moment we are not concerned and willing to give up liberties that were won by the sacrifice of millions of lives before us for the common good.

We also know that in order that contact tracing could be more effective if it wasn’t voluntary. But it is vital, that our governments, that these powers (granted to governments during times of crisis) do not continue once COVID-19 is over.

The COVID-19 pandemic is barely four months old and there is no doubt that when it is over that “big data” will present new challenges as well as opportunities.

The threat of a disease as a “pretense” to justify authoritarian impulses to amass power and that technology can be used as a tool in that process could create a Big Data surveillance machine.

One present-day example comes from South Korea, which introduced an electronic system that sends out an automatic alert to people living nearby a known COVID-19 case.

Or Chinese authorities that are using software to sort citizens into color-coded categories — red, yellow, green — corresponding to their level of risk for having the virus.

Or for instance what if Google introduces a smartphone App that monitors social distancing. It will know your whereabouts down to 2 meters -7/7.

Or Governments introduce GPS to track the movements of citizens without their consent to prohibit gatherings of other 250 people. But what if the governor used that measure to stop a rival’s political rally?

But more importantly, if consumers don’t trust a smartphone-based tracking system, they can simply leave their phones at home. That would render the technology useless.

Even if voluntary it might provide people with a false sense of security if they don’t get an alert. Those who have opted out of tracking might be walking around with COVID-19 and infecting others without ever being picked up with the system.

Just think about it.

The potential in using new technology for public health surveillance to get ahead of an infectious disease outbreak must be tempting, so-called contact tracing,

There is a real danger that we could end up creating a society of untouchables. (The former name for any member of a wide range of low-caste Hindu groups and any person outside the caste system.)

Moreover, unless public health officials are involved, there’s potential to “game” the system by falsely claiming a person has the virus when they haven’t tested positive for it. That could lead to other harms, like a business intentionally undermining a rival or a political party suppressing participation.

A terror attack and a pandemic are vastly different, but both present opportunities for governments and the private sector to take on new powers in the name of keeping citizens safe.

The September 11th terror attacks led to the Patriot Act, in the USA, which gave the federal government vast new investigative powers that it claimed were necessary for the fight against terrorism.

During the HIV crises in many cases, public health officials would notify an HIV patient’s past sexual partners that they may have been in contact with somebody who had the disease, but never identified or named them.

One of the big issues at the time was the idea of doctors reporting the names of HIV patients to the states. Some states refused to accept name-based reporting so for years because they feared that it would discourage people from getting tested.

Public health and privacy rights do not need to be in opposition.

Good public health must respect civil liberties, and anything that advances human rights and civil liberties would advance public health.

So we are going to be faced with the rights of Individual freedoms against collectivism. 

The behaviors that define individualism may also enhance the likelihood of pathogen transmission, and thus may be functionally maladaptive under conditions in which pathogens are highly prevalent.

By contrast, the behaviors that define collectivism may function in the service of anti-pathogen defense, and thus be especially adaptive under conditions of high pathogen prevalence.

The question is which one will we choose or will we have a choice when all this is over.

An open-air prison-like the Gaza Strip or Equality among all. 

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

 

 

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THE BEADY SAY’S: TO ANCHOR OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CORONA VIRUS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AND WILL BE VITAL.

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Communication., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom of the Press., Honesty., Human values., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Politics

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(Four-minute read) 


At the moment rightly so we are all preoccupied with the consequences of our own individual lives and all indicator point to world disaster on a scale not seen by most of us. 

However, if and when we return to a semblance of normal the freedom of the press will be in jeopardy when the blame game starts, which is inevitable. 

Why will it be?

Because the present pandemic marks the emergence of a new model of watchdog function, one that is neither purely networked nor purely traditional but is rather a mutualistic interaction between the two.

What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to super empower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy—from a global bank to a nation-state—as individuals.

The fear that the decentralized network, with its capacity to empower individuals to challenge their governments or global banks, is not a democracy, but could lead to anarchy.

But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know.

There should be relentless exposure of politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life if we are to change the world for a better future.

False news forces us to ask how comfortable we are with the actual shape of democratization created by the Internet. It circumvents the social and organizational
frameworks of traditional media, which played a large role in framing the
balance between freedom and responsibility of the press.

Many of the problems can be laid at the feet of the Internet—fragmentation of the audience and polarization of viewpoints.

We cannot afford as a polity to create classes of privileged speakers and
press agencies, and underclasses of networked information producers whose products we take into the public sphere when convenient, but whom we treat as susceptible to suppression when their publications become less palatable.

Doing so would severely undermine the quality of our public discourse.

The risk is that the government will support its preferred media models and that the
incumbent mass media players will, in turn, vilify and denigrate the newer
models in ways that make them more vulnerable to attack and shore up the
the privileged position of those incumbents in their role as a more reliable ally watchdog.

Clarifying that the freedom of the press extends to “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” and that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer and individual bloggers. 

Social distancing must not be allowed to turn into ruling distancing.

 Long live WikiLeaks. 

An uncomfortable fact is that a free press in a democracy can be messy at the best of times with governments around the world underestimated the coronavirus the political exploitation of the outbreak is now a reality. 

Capturing the treatment of television is less comprehensive as it is a visual medium.

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL THE WORLD EVER BE ABLE TO ACT AS ONE?

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Human values., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The cloud., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Twenty-five minute read.

If humanity stopped fighting and competing against one another; if we bound together in a common cause, we could accomplish spectacular things.

Not true.

We would basically become mindless drones of no culture because it’d all just be one culture with no distinct forms.

If this were to become a reality, Ummm how would govern it.

China’s premier Wen Jiabao put forward the following equation in a speech: “Internet + Internet of Things = Wisdom of the Earth.”

How wrong he was, however, by 2025 there will be 1 trillion networked devices worldwide in the consumer and industrial sectors combined.

He should have said, “Internet + Internet of Things = Becoming what we do not think? Because people are truly not that intelligent.

In our houses cars and factories, we’re surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do. Now they are beginning to talk to one another. Soon we’ll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, even save our lives.

Intelligent things all around us, coordinating their activities.

Coffee pots that talk to alarm clocks. Thermostats that talk to motion sensors. Factory machines that talk to the power grid and to boxes of raw material.

We might be seeing the dawn of an era when the most mundane items in our lives can talk wirelessly among themselves, performing tasks on command, giving us data we’ve never had before? This intelligence once locked in our devices will flow into the universe of physical objects.

We are already struggling to name this emerging phenomenon.

Some have called it the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything or the Industrial Internet—despite the fact that most of these devices aren’t actually on the Internet directly but instead communicate through simple wireless protocols.

Others are calling it the Sensor Revolution.

I call it the Programmable Profitable in a World of profit-seeking algorithms.

It’s the fact that once we get enough of these objects onto our networks, they’re no longer one-off novelties or data sources but instead become a coherent system, a vast ensemble that can be choreographed, a body that can dance in the era of the cloud and apps and the walled garden— of Google, Apple, etc, which connotes a peer-to-peer system in which each node will not be equally empowered.

These connected objects will act more like a swarm of drones, a distributed legion of bots, far-flung and sometimes even hidden from view but nevertheless coordinated as if they were a single giant machine, relying on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention.

So the world will act as one. Or will it?

Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers.

It will change the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical putting intelligence from the cloud into everything we touch.

Call it “smart exploration.” 

The rises of the smartphone have supplied us with a natural way to communicate with those smart objects. So far they include watches, heart rate monitors, and even some new Nike shoes. Smartphone making payments to merchants wirelessly instead of swiping a card, and some billboards are using the protocol to beam content to passersby who ask for it. As a way to sell more products and services—particularly Big Data–style analysis—to their large corporate customers.

The yoking together of two or more smart objects—is the trickiest, because it represents the vertiginous shift from analysis, the mere harvesting of helpful data, to real automation.

In my view no matter how thoroughly we might use data to fine-tune our lives and businesses, it’s scary to take any decisions out of human hands.

It can be hard to imagine the automation you might someday want or even need, in your daily life. There are all sorts of adjustments you make over the course of any given day that is reducible to simple if-then relationships.

Facebook, which has famously described the underlying data it owns as a social graph—the knowledge of who is connected to whom and how.

Would you want to automate all of these relationships?

A world where every one of us would have a sensor on us. “Presence” tags—low-energy radio IDs that sit on our keychains or belt loops and announce our location, verify our identity.

This is the principle behind Square Wallet and a number of other nascent payment systems, including ones from PayPal and Google. (When you walk into a participating store today, Square can let the cashier know you’re there; you pay simply by giving your name.)

A tracking tool that monitors not just your pet’s movements, but your movements.

GPS reliably know our location within 100 feet, give or take, and that knowledge has and is transforming our lives immeasurably: turn-by-turn driving directions, local restaurant recommendations, location-based dating apps, and so on.

With presence technology, Google has already the potential to know our location absolutely, down to a foot or even a few inches. That means knowing not merely which bar your friend is at but which couch she’s sitting on if you walk through the door.

It means receiving a coupon for a grocery item on the endcap at the moment you walk by.

Think about a liquor cabinet that auto-populated your shopping list based on the levels in the bottles—but also locked automatically if your stock portfolio dropped more than 3 per cent.

Think about a home medical monitoring system that didn’t just feedback data from diabetic patients but adjusted the treatment regimen as the data demanded.

Think about how much more intelligent your sprinklers could be if they responded to the weather report as well as to historical patterns of soil moisture and rainfall.

It does not stop just there think about applications on top of these connected objects.

This means not just tying together the behaviour of two or more objects—like the sprinkler and the moisture sensor—but creating complex interrelationships that also tie in outside data sources and analytics. 

Plugged into that information, your system wouldn’t just know how much water is in the soil it could predict how much there will be, based on whether it’s going to rain or the sun will be baking hot that day.

It means walking through an art museum and having your phone interpret the paintings as you pause in front of them.

This simple link—between a tag on us and a tag in the world—stands to become the culmination of the location revolution, delivering on all the promises it hasn’t quite fulfilled yet. A simple link—between a tag on us and a tag in the world—will complete the location revolution.

The treasure that it digs up could be considerable.

This is obviously true for retailers:

It’s a future where the intelligence once locked in our devices will now flow into the universe of physical objects. Users and developers can share their simple if-then apps and, in the case of more complex relationships, make money off of apps, just like in the mobile marketplaces.

Processing it all in the cloud in a language unheard of.

On Google Maps, you can now navigate inside certain airports and stores, with Wi-Fi triangulation helping out your GPS. 

And according to a mobile couponing firm called Koupon Media, some 80 per cent of customers who buy gas at one major convenience-store chain never walk inside the store, so presence-based coupons could make a huge impact on the bottom line.

But it’s also true for our everyday lives. Have you ever lost an object in your house and dreamed that you could just type a search for it, as you would for a wayward document on your hard drive? With location stickers, that seemingly impossible desire has become a reality:

A startup called StickNFind Technologies already sells these quarter-sized devices for $25 apiece.

Think about a thermostat app pulling in readings from any other device on that platform—motion sensors that might say which room you’re in, presence tags that identify individual family members (with different temperature preferences)—as well as outside data sources like weather or variable power price.

An even more natural category for apps is security. It locks itself up, shuts down the lights and thermostat, and activates an alarm system complete with siren, flashing lights, and auto-notifications, and notifications with an on-call platoon of off-duty cops all coordinated through the Smart­Things.

This, finally, is the Programmable World, the point at which the full power of developers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists are brought to bear on the realm of physical objects—improving it, customizing it, and groping toward new business plans for it that we haven’t dreamed of yet. Indeed, it will marshal all the forces that made the Internet so transformational and put them to work on virtually everything around us.

However, there are obviously some pitfalls lurking in this future of connected objects.

As a sanity check.

Our fears about malicious hackers preying on our email and bank accounts via the cloud might pale in comparison to how we’ll feel about those same miscreants pwning our garage doors and bathroom light fixtures.

The mysterious Stuxnet and Flame exploits have raised the issue of industrial security in the era of connected devices.

Vanity Fair recently detailed nightmare scenarios in which hackers could hit connected objects, from our high tech cars (university researchers have figured out how to exploit an OnStar-type system to cause havoc in a vehicle) to our utility “smart meters” (which collect patterns of energy use that can reveal a great deal about our activities at home) to even our pacemakers.

The idea of animating the inanimate, of compelling the physical world to do our bidding, has been a staple of science fiction for half a century or more.

No, the main existential threat to the Programmable World is the considerably more mundane issue of power. Every sensor still needs a power source, which in most cases right now means a battery; low-energy protocols allow those batteries to last a long time, even a few years, but eventually, they’ll need to be replaced.

Just as with social networking, the privacy concerns of a sensor-­connected world will be fast outweighed by the strange pleasures of residing in a hyperconnected world.

A bigger concern, perhaps, is simple privacy. Just because we’ve finally warmed up to oversharing in the virtual world doesn’t mean we’ll be comfortable doing the same in the physical world, as all our interactions with objects capture more and more data about where we are and what we’re doing. iStock_000049614472Medium1

What’s coming is ubiquitous connectivity that will accelerate how people collaborate, share, learn, gather, do business, and exchange knowledge.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; HERE ARE THE BIG QUESTIONS THAT ARE YET TO COME WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY.

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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Thirty-minute read.

Who owns what?  What’s our purpose in life?  What are the values that we believe in? How do we think and make decisions?  What do we mean by work?  Can our work ever have true meaning unless it is to serve others?

What will help us all think deeply about the questions we need to ask and answer?

Climate change or technology.

However, for many of us, the answers to these questions differ in our working lives, compared with our personal lives, with family, friends and neighbours.

Were a ruling elite like Google to impose a command-and-control, fear-driven culture in which power is abused and the outcomes are social and economic misery for the vast majority?

Our reaction, if we are to go by what is now observable, will be So what? Now what?

MAKING sure companies compete fairly is a tricky business. The firms being regulated know far more about their business than those doing the regulating;

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all of humankind.” Says Putin. “Whatever country comes to dominate this technology will be the “ruler of the world.”

His rhetoric is entirely appropriate. Automation and digitalization have already had a radical effect on international systems and structures.

Technology can easily be referred to as the scientific knowledge to the practical problems we are experiencing in the world today.

On the other hand, its core strategy is to gobble up market share with profit-seeking algorithms.

Our environments are all so full of technology to the point that most of the time we take it for granted.

So are we all becoming personified idiots?

Technology has a great impact on all the fundamental aspects of all our cultures including laws and how they are enforced, language, art, health care, mobility, education and religion.

The obvious problem with all of this is that countries will not own or be in control of the technologies.negative effects of technology

While we all sit back and accept the benefits technology it also brings manipulation on a  worldwide scale with our future in the hands of only a handful of corporations and the vast amount of people that are okay with that.

It’s hard to argue against innovation. It’s hard to argue against greater choice, more convenience and lower prices.

One way or the other it is also hard to underestimate the fundamentally different rules that Google /Amazon/ Facebook/ Apple/ Baidu play by.

Hiding behind forked rhetoric that the data they collect does no harm as it is anonymous.

You do not need to know who you are. It is enough to know what you consume, your habits, your tastes, and where you are, through the IP address, the GPS of the mobile, or your Google account. Your name, or your phone number, is not important to sell you things.

Blurring the borders of privacy. Replacing real-life communication.

And on top of it, violent games and videos killing empathy and bring destruction into an individual’s life. Plagiarism and cheating are increase while analysis and critical thinking decline, ending up in social isolation.

(We now have a new perverse sexual harassment of Cyber flashing which is not against any law. Why? Because our laws cannot keep up with the speed of change)

Commercial technology like Smartphones, I pads, Home Alexa/Echo and there like is about creating another consumer touchpoint for their robust ecosystem of e-commerce, services, and media taking advantage of less sophisticated consumers and trick them into consuming items for short-term satisfaction and long-term pain.

Originally created to serve faithfully to humanity, digital devices are revealing their harmful impact on our lives.

We should all be careful what we wish for.

There’s an argument made by big corporations for each country to charge corporations the lowest possible tax rate, to loosen environmental regulations down to zero, and to eliminate employee protections. All so that a country’s commodity producers can be the cheapest ones.

The voice market war has only just begun.

The contenders:

Amazon-Echo v Google-Alexa.amazon-echo-google-home

Once they figure out how to improve their recommendations and push more people to make regular household purchases via voice it will lead to an explosion in voice-based shopping.

Google already has one of the most valuable brands in the world.

Google maps have virtually no meaningful rival.  Gmail…Google basically controls our handheld existence.

Google controls your life, literally, even if it costs you to believe it.

Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites.

When you search on Google, they keep your search history forever.

Google is a company that offers almost all its products for free because the money is earned by selling the data it collects with those products, to advertisers and companies.

Last year Google made over $161 billion in total revenues.

As it is the premier search engine in the U.S., Europe, and many developing countries Google has the tools to control much of the world.

That’s just Google then you have Amazon.

With around 225 million customers around the world, Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, including Foods anywhere in the world. ( 300 items a second) These days half of all product searches start on Amazon.

Our lust for cheap, discounted goods delivered to our doors promptly and efficiently has a price.

Amazon has done a lot of good for consumers by expanding choice, making shopping far more convenient and by delivering extraordinary product value.

Yet, we can’t–and shouldn’t–ignore the profound effect that Amazon is having on just about every corner of the retail world they set their sights on.

Amazon is selling its facial recognition technology, known as Rekognition, to law enforcement agencies.

First and foremost, Amazon isn’t required by its investors to make any real money.

For us the Great unwashed there’s always the opportunity to cut a corner, sacrifice lifestyle quality and suck it up as they race to grab a little more market share.

With their algorithms, they tell you what restaurants you have to eat in, choose your music, label your photos associating them with each family member or friend that appears in them, pay for your purchases, suggest the movies you should see, and the apps that may interest you.

When in fact the searches we do, what websites we visit, what products we look at, where are we, your medical history, your political beliefs, your associations with others your employment prospects, everything from the womb to the grave is collected and analyzed

Before I hear you calling me a hypocrite I also have used Amazon.

If this scenario prevails, would this be really the way information is supposed to be organized?

In short, does the fact that an algorithm is able to provide more relevant information than a human justify this scenario?

These big brands platforms are more powerful than governments. They’re wealthier. If they were countries, they would be pretty large economies. They’re multinational and the global financial situation allows them to ship money all over the world.

Can we do anything to make a difference?

We need to be supporting the development of an efficient circular economy.

Why?

Because sustainability is an unstoppable force.

Let’s not race to the bottom.

Country’s population size will become less important for national power as small countries that develop a significant edge in AI technology will move far above their weight.

Ultimately, however, winning and losing will not be determined by which country gains the most growth through AI. It will be determined by how the entire global community chooses to leverage AI — as a tool of war or as a tool of progress.

They can eliminate rules protecting clean water, air or consumer safety, but they will always find a way to be cheaper or more brutal than you.

We all assume that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, are spying our activity and up to now advertiser is not interested in your name when they are it will be too late and the winner will be Inequality.

So what does all this mean and what are we all going to do about it when we’ve stopped talking about it?

Once you start to connect all the invisible dots together the impact on society will, in the end, be down to the people that use the technology they have to be responsible for it and if they use it irresponsibly they have to be held accountable.

A Footnote:

For me, there is little point in Jeff Bezos setting up an Earth fund when Amazon is one of the biggest promoters of pollution. Pretending to be a do-gooder.

The brown box doesn’t begin to address the larger issue: Each year in the United States alone thrown paper in the trash that represents approximately 640 million trees or roughly 915,000 acres of forest land.

Amazon ships an average of 608 million packages each year, which equates to (an estimated) 1,600,000 packages a day.

Then when we talk about energy consumption, we’re talking about the sources of energy that generate our power: oil, coal, natural gas and alternatives like solar, wind, hydropower and biofuels.

How much electricity they use and the bill is, god only knows, so its no wonder that they have contracts with oil and gas companies.

Now consider that people conduct over 1,6 billion searches per day, and you get a massive energy footprint of roughly 12.5 million watts.

Is e-commerce reducing or increasing our carbon footprint?

Google’s worldwide operations, collectively worldwide use about 2.26 million megawatt-hours per year to power its global data centre operations, which is equivalent to the power necessary to sustain 200,000 homes.

In 2018 Google generated 39.12 billion dollars earnings out of which it paid 243 Million a day in electricity.

This is only an educated guess.

The link between global warming and energy demands is obvious. Surely both of these players should be investing in Green energy.

There’s a deafening silence from pundits and elites and columnists and politicians on our joint self-destruction.

They are simply going on pretending it isn’t happening.

We don’t, as societies or cultures, value learning or knowledge or magnanimity or great and noble things, anymore.

The average person has become a tiny microcosm of the aspirations and norms of elites. We’re the only people on earth who thwart our own social progress, over and over again — and cheer about it.

We are caught in a death spiral now. A vicious cycle from which there is probably no escape. The average person is too poor to fund the very things — the only things — which can offer him a better life:

The result is that a whole society grows poorer and poorer.

Unable to invest in themselves or one another, people’s only real way out is to fight each other for self-preservation, by taking away their neighbour’s rights, privileges, and opportunities — instead of being able to give any new ones to anyone.

Though it’s too late to escape for them, let us hope our governments regulate their algorithms for profit sake.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY IS IT THAT WE ARE ALLOWING ALGORITHMS TO RUN OUR LIVES.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Innovation., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Technology is getting increasingly personal.

With algorithms becoming the masters of social media are we all just becoming clickbait?

Devices are providing immediate information about our health and about what we see, where we go and where we have been.

Our lives are being shaken to their very core.

With 5G technology what we experienced at the moment will pale in comparison to the vast array of possibilities carried under its belt by this new generation of wireless connectivity, which is being built over the foundations of the previous one.

It will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously.

All stakeholders – business, government, society and individuals – will have to work together to adjust so these technologies and rapid changes are harnessed for the development of all, not just profit.

Swathes of the globe will be left behind.

Regardless it is no longer just about repetitive factory jobs rather an increase in inequality globally.

It is not only a moral imperative to ensure that such a scenario does not happen as it will pose a risk to global stability through channels such as global inequality, but migration also flows, and even geopolitical relations and security.

We already live in a world that has been profoundly altered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yet there is not much debate on the likely size of the impact.

Why?

Because there are such divergent views it is difficult to measure.

But within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2024, more than half of home internet traffic will be used by appliances and devices that are connected to internet platforms.

With almost everything connected, it will transform how we live never mind how we do business.

If there is no trusted institution to regulate it we can kiss our arses.

Now is the time to make sure it is changed for the better.

The internet of things will create huge amounts of data, raising concerns over who will own it and how it will be stored. And what about the possibility that your home or car could be hacked?

The internet is great for ideas, but ultimately, the things that will amaze you are not on your computer screen.

Artificial Intelligence may well invent new life forms but if we as humans do not contrive and manage global acceptable ethical parameters for all its forms – (bioengineering, gene editing, nanotechnology, and the algorithms) that run them we are more than idiots.

As Yuval Noah Harari says in his most recent book ( 21 Lessons for the 21st Century) ” There is no such thing as ‘Christian economics’, ‘Muslim economics’ or ‘Hindu economics’ ” but there will be Algorithms economics run by big brother. 

The digital age has brought us access to so much information in just a few clicks of the mouse button or the remote control everything from the news, Tv programmes with the internet becoming somewhat glorifying sensationalism rather than giving us the truth.

The question is.

Are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives?

Or are they more than that:

Powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behaviour and affect what it means to be human?

What can we do?

The Second Industrial Revolution and the Third Industrial Revolution have lead us to this revolution the Fourth Industrial Revolution which can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.

Unlike previous revolutions, it is not the world as a whole that will see any of its benefits or disadvantages it is individuals and groups that could win – or lose – a lot.

Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews it will be the opposite with our increased reliance on digital markets.

At the moment it’s just not very evenly distributed nor will it be.

At best we can moan about it and hope that climate change shifts our reliance on biomass as primary sources of energy.

Back to Clickbait.

The issue with clickbait is that the reader or site visitor is being manipulated into clicking something that is misleading.

Clickbait is not one-dimensional. Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analysed and monetized.

Most clickbait links forward a user to a page that requires payment, registration or a series of pages that help drive views for a specific site.

It can also point to any web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue.

We’re all guilty of being gullible of clicking links online but Clickbait websites are notorious for spreading misinformation and creating controversy in the name of generating hits.

Have you not ever felt that you’re being played as dumb individuals whenever you watch the news or scroll through a media site?

Thanks to supercomputers and algorithms, we can make sense of massive amounts of data in real-time. Computers are already making decisions based on this information, and in less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. A convergence of the digital, physical and biological spheres challenging our notion of what it means to be human.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

Cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.

We can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny, and that’s until 6G comes along or living robots.

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

THE BEADY EYE SAYS; SO YOU ARE NOW 30 BY THE TIME YOU ARE 70 HERE IS WHAT A DAY IN YOUR LIFE WILL LOOK LIKE.

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read)

The Dead Sea will be almost completely dried up, nearly half of the Amazon rainforest will have been deforested, wildfires will spread like, umm, wildfire, and the polar ice caps will be only 60 per cent the size they are now.

Wars will involve not only land and sea but space. Superhurricanes will become a regular occurrence.

Should you be worried, of course not AI/Algorithms are here to guide you.

AI-related advancements have grown from strength to strength in the last decade.

Right now there are people coming up with new algorithms by applying evolutionary techniques to the vast amounts of big data via genetic programming to find optimisations and improve your life in different fields.

The amount of data we have available to us now means that we can no longer think in discrete terms. This is what big data forces us to do.

It forces us to take a step back, an abstract step back to find a way to cope with the tidal wave of data flooding our systems. With big data, we are looking for patterns that match the data and algorithms are enabling us to find patterns via clustering, classification, machine learning and any other number of new techniques.

To find the patterns you or I cannot see. They create the code we need to do this and give birth to learner algorithms that can be used to create new algorithms.

So do you remember a time, initially, when it was possible to pass on all knowledge through the form of dialogue from generation to generation, parent to child, teacher to student?  Indeed, the character of Socrates in Plato’s “Phaedrus” worried that this technological shift to writing and books was a much poorer medium than dialogue and would diminish our ability to develop true wisdom and knowledge.

Needless to say that I don’t think Socrates would have been a fan of Social Media or TV.

The machine learning algorithms have become like a hammer at the hands of data scientists. Everything looks like a nail to be hit upon.

In due process, the wrong application or overkill of machine learning will cause disenchantment among people when it does not deliver value.

It will be a self-inflicted  ‘AI Winter’.

So here is what your day at 70th might be.

Welcome to the world of permanent change—a world defined not by heavy industrial machines that are modified infrequently, but by software that is always in flux.

Algorithms are everywhere. They decide what results you see in an internet search, and what adverts appear next to them. They choose which friends you hear from on social networks. They fix prices for air tickets and home loans. They may decide if you’re a valid target for the intelligence services. They may even decide if you have the right to vote.

7.30 am 

Personalised Health Algorithm report.

Sleep pattern good. Anxiety normal, deficient in vitamin C. Sperm count normal.

Results of body scan sent health network.

7.35 am

House Management Algorithm Report.

Temperature 65c. House secure. Windows/ Doors closed Catflap open. Heating off. Green Energy usage 2.3 Kwh per minute. (Advertisement to change provider.) Shower running, Water flow and temperature adjusted, shower head hight adjusted. House Natural light adjusted. Confirmation that smartphone and I pad fully charges. Robotic housemaid programmed.

8 am.

Personalised Shopping/Provisions Algorithm report.

Refrigerators will be seamlessly integrated with online supermarkets, so a new tub of peanut butter will be on its way to your door by drone delivery before you even finish the last one.

8.45 am. Appointments Algorithm.

Virtual reality appointment with a local doctor.

Voice mails and emails and the calendar check.

A device in your head might eliminate the need for a computer screen by projecting images (from a Skype meeting, a video game, or whatever) directly into your field of vision from within. It checks

9 am.

Personalised Financial Algorithm.

Balance of credit cards and bank accounts including citizen credit /loyalty points. Value of shares/ pension fund updated.

10 am. Still in your Dressing gown.

11 am.  The self-drive car starts. Seats automatically shift and rearrange themselves to provide maximum comfort. Personalised News and Weather Algorithm gives a report. The car books parking spot places order for coffee. Over coffee, you rent out a robot in Dublin and have it do the legwork for your forthcoming visiting – hotels.

12 pm.

Hologram of your boss in your living room.

1 pm.

Virtual work meeting to discuss the solitary nature of remote work.

Face-to-face meeting arranged.

 

2 pm. Home. Lunch delivered.

3 pm. Sporting activity with a virtual coach.

5 pm. Home

7 30 pm.

Discuss and view the Dubin robot walk around containing video and audio report. 

Dinner delivered. Six quests. The home management algorithm rearranges the furniture.

8 30 pm

Virtual helmets on for some after-dinner entertainment.

10 pm 

Ask Alixia to shut the house down not before you answer Alixia question to score points and a chance to win — Cash- Holiday- Dinner for two- a discount on Amazon- e bay- or a spot of online gambling.

                                                       ———

The fourth industrial revolution is not simply an opportunity. It matters what kind of opportunity is for whom and under what terms.

We need to start thinking about algorithms.

The core issue here is of course who will own the basic infrastructure of our future which is going to be effect all sectors of society.

They are not just for mathematicians or academics. There are algorithms all around us and you don’t need to know how to code to use them or understand them.

We need to better understand them to better understand, and control, our own futures. To achieve this we need to better understand how these algorithms work and how to tailor them to suit our needs. Otherwise, we will be unable to fully unlock the potential of this abstract transition because machine learning automates automation itself.

The new digital economy, akin to learning to read, has obscured our view of algorithms. Algorithms are increasingly part of our everyday lives, from recommending our films to filtering our news and finding our partners.

Building a solid foundation now for governance for AI the need to use AI responsibly
and to consider the broader reaching implications of this transformational technology’s use.

The world population will be over 9 billion with the majority of people will live in cities.

So here are a few questions at 30 you might want to consider.

How does the software we use influence what we express and imagine?

Shall we continue to accept the decisions made for us by algorithms if we don’t know how they operate?

What does it mean to be a citizen of a software society?

These and many other important questions are waiting to be analyzed.

If we reduce each complex system to a one-page description of its algorithm, will we capture enough of software behaviour?

Or will the nuances of particular decisions made by software in every particular case be lost?

You don’t need a therapist; they need an algorithm.

We may never really grasp the alienness of algorithms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to live with them.

Unfortunately, their decisions can run counter to our ideas of fairness. Algorithms don’t see humans the same way other humans do.

What are we doing about confronting any of this –  Nothing much.

So its no wonder that people start to worry about what’s left for human beings to do.

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