( Six minute read)
Why?
Because the change is already taking place.
Because, There are now more cell phones in the world than people. There were less than 7% of the world on online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.
Because, technology has already radically transformed our societies and our daily lives, from smartphones to social media and healthcare. Technology touches nearly everything we do.
Because, your voice, your image, your race, your shopping habits, your health, your movement’s, your viewing habits, your voting, your financial standing, your criminal record, your interests, your decision making, down to what you are eating, not forgetting your sex life is and has being harvest for free.
All can be and are being faked.
Because, virtual interactions offers enticing financial opportunities for big businesses and digitalized Governments.
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Excessive use of technology can do more harm than good, and we should bear this in mind before we rush into digitizing our lives.
When all areas of human activity get rapidly digitized, it’s easy to become desensitized to the importance of innovations and advancements for the overall progress of society. Though it may be tough to predict which advancements technology would bring next, some innovations are already changing our beliefs about the world around us.
The coming generations will be living in a mixture of reality and the metaverse. Using headsets to create a 3D avatar – a representation of themselves – to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments. Perhaps when they go online shopping, they will be able too try on digital clothes first, and then order them to arrive in the real world.
A virtual economy of inequality. Nowhere does the intersection of technology, enterprises and individuals hold greater opportunity than in the metaverse.
If it happens at all – will be fought among tech giants for the next decade, or maybe even longer.
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The Metaverse doesn’t exist – at least not yet, but there no way of predicting how people will react to it, or how it will be used.
( Everything transformed into line of code, augmenting reality by superimposing a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world. You have an experience while wearing another person’s body and you get to walk a mile in that person’s shoes.)
The next generation of the internet has the power to reshape the way that businesses and consumers engage, transact, socialize, work and learn together exploring the world on their own terms.
As of today, there isn’t anything that could legitimately be identified as a metaverse. The metaverse is essentially a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces,
A better question might be:
What could become the metaverse?
Something that people would have considered magic just a few decades ago is now gaining popularity in business, gaming, and team building.
The combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality – will play an important role.
The distinction between being offline and online will be much harder to delineate. So we either end up in a situation where it’s complete chaos and everyone’s allowed to do everything and you know, there’s racism, sexism, abuse and all that kind of stuff, or there’s incredibly tight moderation and no one’s allowed to do anything.
Wearable screens and gesture-based computing, other recent innovations, are predicted to soon substitute the usual PC and phone screens.
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Robots, another buzzword in today’s business world, have already replaced humans in some workplaces — robotic arms work at assembly or packing lines. Flying cars will soon address the issue of limited ground space and long traffic jams.
Clearly, technology by itself is neither good nor bad. It is only the way and extent to which we use it that matters.
It is indisputable that thanks to technology, we get a chance to live a life our predecessors could not even dream about.
But do all tech advancements bring sole good to our lives?
Or, maybe, the impact of tech innovations is quite ambiguous.
We are all at the mercy of machine learning algorithms, that are non transparent, non accountable, and non regulated.
So we have an open letter from those on High in the Tec world, advocating that the brakes should be applied to the creation of new tech that generates falsehood’s. You dont have to be a Tech genius to know that this is not going to happen.
My advice is.
To protect oneself.
Every person should have a secret verification word in order to authenticate the caller and a symbol to be used in all texts and emails, that if not present in any communication received or sent, marks it as False.
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All of which begs the question: just why is the 21st century so dystopian?
A few years ago, you might have thought: this is just a phase. It’ll pass. But it’s not. If anything, it’s getting worse, and it feels like it’s here to stay.
When I say “it”, or “dystopia,” you might wonder exactly, precisely what I mean. What I mean is very simple though. How many crises do we face? More than I can easily count. Let’s try to list them all, though we’ll run out of sanity and room before we finish, for sure. Finances? Total crisis, incomes falling around the world, debt levels soaring. Infrastructure? Mega-crisis, unless you think the infrastructure we have survives this century, let alone this decade. Social systems? Everywhere from France to Britain to America — crisis. People’s…minds? Crisis, especially in young people, depression and anxiety and suicide rates soaring. Then there are the big ones: climate change and mass extinction, not to mention politics , which has taken a notably…fascist…turn, again.
All of this is what scholars have begun to call The age of Polycrises. And in it, the better question isn’t: “what’s in crisis?
It’s: what isn’t?
Like I said, the list above is a mere brief beginning. Migration and refugees? Another one. Peace and democracy? Yup, in crisis.
How about upward mobility? Check. Faith and confidence in institutions? Super crisis. Take a look at any element of society or the world, and chances are, it’s in crisis. How about inequality? Shocking levels of crisis.
This is why the 21st century feels so dystopian.
It’s not really a “feeling,” though that’s the way it’s often made out to be by media. It’s an empirical reality. Scholars have begun to conceptualize the 21st century as a “Polycrisis” for a reason, which is that the dystopia is real.
So when media, bigwigs, wannabe intellectuals and so forth, make all this out to be exaggeration, hyperbole, imply that you are the fainting Victorian bride in the room, because, hey, Tucker!! Everything’s Great!!…they’re completely wrong. And that needs to be said. It’s a form of denialism at this point, because…
The next part is about cause and effect. We need, as a civilization and a world, to figure out what’s causing all this, so we can begin to undo it. But if all we do is deny it…then, my friends, our gooses are well and cooked. It’s fascism on a dying planet, in different bitter and poisonous flavours, maybe.
ITS NOW AGI. ( Artificial General Intelligence) Already it is transforming every walk of life.
AI is not a futuristic vision, but rather something that is here today and being integrated with and deployed into a variety of sectors.
There are numerous examples where AI already is making an impact on the world and augmenting human capabilities in significant ways. This includes fields such as finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, and smart cities, digital education, decision making, democracy’s.
Artificial intelligence algorithms are designed to make decisions, often using real-time data. They are unlike passive machines that are capable only of mechanical or predetermined responses. Using sensors, digital data, or remote inputs, they combine information from a variety of different sources, analyse the material instantly, and act on the insights derived from those data. With massive improvements in storage systems, processing speeds, and analytic techniques, they are capable of tremendous sophistication in analysis and decision making.
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These software systems “make decisions which normally require [a] human level of expertise” and help people anticipate problems or deal with issues as they come up. As such, they operate in an intentional, intelligent, and adaptive manner
AI generally is undertaken in conjunction with machine learning and data analytics. Machine learning takes data and looks for underlying trends. If it spots something that is relevant for a practical problem, software designers can take that knowledge and use it to analyse specific issues. All that is required are data that are sufficiently robust that algorithms can discern useful patterns. Data can come in the form of digital information, satellite imagery, visual information, text, or unstructured data.
AI systems have the ability to learn and adapt as they make decisions. In the transportation area, for example, semi-autonomous vehicles have tools that let drivers and vehicles know about upcoming congestion, potholes, highway construction, or other possible traffic impediments. Vehicles can take advantage of the experience of other vehicles on the road, without human involvement, and the entire corpus of their achieved “experience” is immediately and fully transferable to other similarly configured vehicles. Their advanced algorithms, sensors, and cameras incorporate experience in current operations, and use dashboards and visual displays to present information in real time so human drivers are able to make sense of ongoing traffic and vehicular conditions. And in the case of fully autonomous vehicles, advanced systems can completely control the car or truck, and make all the navigational decisions.
If we don’t want to end up as deglazed digital citizens here’s what should be done.
- Regulate broad AI principles rather than specific algorithms,
- Take bias complaints seriously so AI does not replicate historic injustice, unfairness, or discrimination in data or algorithms,
- Maintain mechanisms for human oversight and control, and
- Penalize malicious AI behaviour and promote cybersecurity.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com
“All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles.”
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All of them are presenting overwhelming challenges ahead.
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