Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you should trust the information or decisions that algorithms produce?
AI smartphones will soon be standard, using machine learning from the cloud and sooner than later smartphones will have personalized algorithms that will run even when offline.
These algorithms will be own by the companies that both sell and manufacture the phone and will, therefore, carry inbuilt biases depending on which platforms they are attached to.
Imagine a cheap little device that can compute as much data as all the brains in the world. It will have a deep and irreversible affect on everyone and there is no way of predicting what exactly will happen as the developers of such a device will have no idea what it is doing.
How far do we want to go- Robots that obey no matter what with us blind human as their allies.
Today the world faces a number of hugely complex challenges, from global warming to conflicts to nuclear weapons to rampant inequality. But one the real seismic change is how we are going to respond to each other when we all trusting algorithms to make decisions on our behalf.
Now is it the time to put in place world standards and regulations that govern the use of all biological data.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEEDS AS MUCH COMPUTER POWER POSSIBLE TO TACKLE ITS PENDING PROBLEMS.
HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT TO INSPECT THE SOURCE CODES OF ANY TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BIOLOGICAL DATA IN ITS TARGETED SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS.
IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COST OF POWER/ENERGY WILL DRIVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SYSTEMS IN THE WORKPLACE AND COMMERCIAL WORLD MARKETS NOT TO MENTION SURVEILLANCE EITHER BY GOVERNMENTS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS.
NOW IS THE TIME TO START DEMANDING STANDARDS.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS THE STANDING OF DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD TO DAY AND IS IT SOCIAL MEDIA THAT IS ALIENATING US FROM THE VOTE.
Democracy has many strengths, including the capacity for self-correction, but the question is can it survive social media.
The word ‘democracy’ has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: ‘demos’ meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and ‘kratos’ meaning power or rule.
Democracy of sorts had existed for centuries but there is no absolute definition of democracy. The term is elastic and expands and contracts according to the time, place and circumstances of its use.
Meaningful democracy only arrived at a national level in 1906, when Finland became the first country to abolish race and gender requirements for both voting and for serving in government.
Even in established democracies, flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though it would dominate the world. The combination of globalization and the digital revolution has made some of democracy’s most cherished institutions look outdated.
It is far short of the settled, comfortable state of maturity that many of its early adherents expected (or at least hoped) it would be able to claim after decades of effort.
Just a few years ago, Facebook and Twitter were hailed as tools for democracy activists, enabling movements like the Arab Spring to flourish.
Today, the tables have turned as fears grow over how social media may have been manipulated to disrupt the US election, and over how authoritarian governments are using the networks to clamp down on dissent.
They are fast becoming tools for social control.
So has democracy’s global advance come to a halt, and may even be in reverse.
The notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases no longer holds water.
Since the dawn of the modern democratic era in the late 19th century, democracy has expressed itself through nation-states and national parliaments. People elect representatives who pull the levers of national power for a fixed period. But this arrangement is now under assault from both above and below.
From above, globalization has changed national politics profoundly.
From below Modern technology is implementing a new modern version with national politicians surrendering more and more power to Social Media.
For example over trade and financial flows, to global markets and supranational bodies, and may thus find that they are unable to keep promises they have made to voters.
International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, and the European Union might have extended their influence, but they no longer have the power to implement what they preach.
There is a compelling logic too much of this:
The fragility of the United Nations influence elsewhere has become increasingly apparent with the state of the world.
How can anyone Organisation or a single country deal with problems like climate change or tax evasion?
National politicians have also responded to globalization by limiting their discretion and handing power to unelected technocrats in some areas. The number of countries with independent central banks, for example, has increased from about 20 in 1980 to more than 160 today.
So is the power now in the hands of multi Clongormentts like Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Mircosoft etc.
Certainly, the perception that democracy in decline has become more widespread than at any time during the past quarter-century. Erosion of freedom over the past few years, adopting smarter methods for m of subversion
There are four main sorts of Democracy.
Direct democracy
Representative democracy
Constitutional democracy
Monitory democracy
A liberal democracy (that is, one that champions the development and well-being of the individual) is organised in such a way as to define and limit power so as to promote legitimate government within a framework of justice and freedom.
Social media is a double-edged sword it allows us to speak truth to power but on the other hand, it allows power to manipulate public opinion and polarize the electorate.
Citizens use it to speak truth to power, and authoritarian governments use it to spread misinformation.
Twitter users got more misinformation, polarizing and conspiratorial content than professionally produced news.”
They fake petition signatures. They skew poll results and recommendation engines.
Rather than a complete totalitarianism based on fear and the blocking of information, the newer methods include demonizing online media and mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information overload, doubt, confusion, harassment, and distraction.”
And yes, governments are increasing their efforts to censor the internet, but that’s because they recognize that the internet poses a threat to their control.
Every authoritarian regime has social media campaigns targeting their own populations.
If the liberal world order is indeed coming apart under pressure from
the authoritarians, the future of democracy will be deeply affected.
Social media firms are “largely immune from responsibility” in the legal sense, but that “in the court of public opinion it is a different matter, and future US/EU legislation seems likely if they don’t address these issues in a meaningful way.
So what is the answer?
Is social media basically good, or does it have a “negative impact on society”
There are no gatekeepers when you publish via your social profile, (outside of each platform’s terms of use) – you can write anything and anyone has the chance to view it.
Social Media has truly democratized media and given everyone a medium through which to be heard.
It has also opened the system up to those who would exploit it to push their own agendas. The platforms are now looking to police this, but it’ll likely always play a part.
To make democracy work, we must be participants, not simply observers.
One who does not vote has no right to complain.
Here are a few questions to mull over.
What can be done to fight citizens’ political alienation and distrust?
Are representative democracy and greater public participation the answer or do we need to think beyond current practices?
How can the cultural and historical factors involved and reflected in present developments help us look into the future?
What knowledge is needed to understand and inform decision-making in the future?
Which values are and which values must be at the base of decision-making?
If we are indeed heading for a Smartphone Algorithms Democracy:Who, or What will be in control.
The algorithms behind social media platforms convert popularity into legitimacy, creating echo chambers, overwhelming the public square with multiple, conflicting assertions.
Today, social media acts as an accelerant, and an at-scale content platform and distribution channel, for both viral “dis”-information (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false) and “mis”-information.
“Populist” leaders use these platforms, often aided by trolls, “hackers for hire” and bots, on open networks such as Twitter and YouTube.
Sometimes they are seeking to communicate directly with their electorate. In using such platforms, they subvert established protocol, shut down dissent, marginalize minority voices, project soft power across borders, normalize hateful views, showcase false momentum for their views, or create the impression of tacit approval of their appeals to extremism.
And they are not the only actors attempting to use these platforms to manipulate political opinion — such activity is now acknowledged by governments of democratic countries.
In addition, advanced methods for capturing personal data have led to sophisticated psychographic analysis, behavioral profiling, and micro-targeting of individuals to influence their actions via so-called “dark ads.” to self-censor or opt out of participating in public discourse.
Currently, there are few options for redress. At the same time, platforms are faced with complex legal and operational challenges with respect to determining how they will manage speech, a task made all the more difficult since norms vary widely by geographic and cultural context.
Every democracy needs its justice system, so we must “catch up with the modern world”, to cope with the social media.
In reality, old power structures still have power, they just have it in new spaces.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the Bin.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
—————————————————————————————
So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
We live in a world that is being connected and disconnected at the same time.
Two related facts.
But don’t worry we now have Algorithms that both filter and recommend.
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
The reality is that there’s no way of knowing where our generation is going in terms of technology and our reliance on it.
The year 2018 will be the year in which human interaction decreases the more technology increases. While social media fosters an environment of connectedness and belonging in the digital world, it also forces a disconnect between people in the real world.
With false news and social media, words are on their last legs, with print for the high jump, we will have more arse holes 2018 twittering shaping the world.
Where two or three words gather together there is a great danger that thought might be present. However we once again don’t have to worry because we have the option to log off and unplug anytime we want, so it’s up to us to decide if we want to engage with the actual world or the virtual one.
Technology may well be is a societal advancement that has enabled our generation to do things previous generations never would have thought possible.
However:
The biggest problem we have is accepting each other’s differences.
“Technology makes us forget what we know about life.”
82 per cent of smart phone users said they rarely (if ever) powered off their phones last year, while less than 43 per cent of 13- to 18-year-olds saw any value in ever going unplugged.
Why?
This is the Eternal Question to which there is no answer, and yet the only one that has to be asked.
Take a look around you.
Every day we becoming more and more desensitized. Save this Save that while saving the planet is being left to technology.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans.
But the real problem is how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely.
This is very poorly understood.
Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and it is more likely it could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.
It seems that most of us are in a mental wasteland inhabited by those upon whom the portcullis ( A sudden blotting out of all normal thought) has fallen.
How did we get to a place where the content on our phones is more interesting than the world around us?
In today’s society, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram has taken precedence over the real events scrolling through our daily lives.
Being “connected” to machinery 24/7 is affecting our ability to connect with our lives and the people around us.
Mechanical devices bait us into a make-believe life, as we are slowly being pulled away from a sense of who we are and what really matters.
Modern life is making us lonelier.
It’s not the technology that’s the problem; it’s us for abusing it.
We’ve become more and more antisocial by relying on technology too heavily.
Maybe if we look up and away from the flashing images and colors on our most recent Safari search, we will actually enjoy the company of those around us. So instead of counting the number of likes, count the memories in your life, because at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
For the foreseeable future, it won’t be possible to take people out of the decision-making process, but the year 2018 will with the power of Profit Seeking Algorithms push us further down the road of hypnotic trance.
Technology is a valuable tool when used correctly. However, the law has to catch up with privacy and safety issues, not mention profit seeking algorithms.
We’ve all heard about the power of algorithms—but Algorithms to Live is in my book to be avoided at all costs, if we are to value what is vital to us all.
They are creating a world of such inequality that the scariest thing is the immense possibilities of these unregulated Algorithms will turn us and all that is necessary for a sustainable life into commodities to be exploited.
What can be done:
Education, Education is the only solution.
By this I mean education not for the market place but for the foundation of knowledge. Not just a narrow streamlined pipeline of mundane thoughts which doesn’t let you think outside the box and do things on your own.
Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Ecology, to name a few.
Dramatic changes are inevitable, we need to accept the fact on ground level that our education models are broken and paralyzed.
Perhaps we might well need computer algorithms to select the best candidate?
There’s no magic formula, freedom and dignity will not be found on social media, nor computed by algorithms.
There are too many parts of today’s conversations that can not be translated through technology.
Tearing apart the nation states and the world with ALGORITHMS is a
Disaster waiting to happen. No Robot with a brain full of algorithms is
going to have the the ability of an artist to have human empathy and an
appreciation of history; while also having the savvy self-awareness to
understand that their work merely takes its place in a greater culture
at large. Such art brings comfort in our modern secular world: where
spirituality seems to live in a foreign universe of yesteryear.
You’re more than a number.
how the mythical and quotidian usually overlap to
the point where the two become indistinguishable.
So join a club and organizations to make real friends.
Happy New year.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE: THERE IS ONE THING WE TAKE FOR GRANTED: AND THAT IS TIME.
( A ten minute Christmas Read)
When I decided to post this blog about what one might envisage to see in the future it turned out that it is much more difficult than one thinks to imagine what the world will be like in twenty years time.
Time will tell, but what time is it. Do you know? I don’t know what moment in time is it right now. Was there a yesterday 13.7 billion years ago? We don’t know.
If there was something that caused the big bang there has to have being something before it. Was it time? If so has time always being around, going at the same speed, or its it.
Most of us feel that time moved very slowly when we were children and is gradually speeding up as we grow older. We use to become conscious of this speeding up around our late twenties, not anymore.
The assumption behind time is that we continually experience our lives as a whole, and perceive each day, week, month or year becoming more insignificant in relation to the whole.
This is true as we enter what I call Quasior time.
These days the speed of time seems to be largely determined by how much information our minds absorb and process – the more information there is, the slower time goes. This is because in states of absorption our attention narrows to one small focus and we block out information from our surroundings.
So is time as simple as we think it is.
I suppose it doesn’t matter how quickly you chase after or run towards time or light, either; that speed you view it traveling at will always be the same.
Anyway, when it comes to technology our time now has a tendency to dream optimistic futures. At this point it is tempting to roll out the usual clichés – food pills, flying cars and bases on the moon – but the reality will probably be less exciting.
For instance we could be eating insects in 2037. Falling in love with an artificial intelligence (AI) operating robot that has Scarlett Johansson’s voice. To bond is human.
Our DNA could be taken at birth and all defects remedied, altered or catered for.
or
Quantum computers and other varieties of information handling will be totally integrated in all of our possessions as well as ourselves.
Far fetched it may well be.
The world in 2037 will probably be much like it is today, but smarter and more automatic. However humans are driven by the same basic needs as we were 150 years ago, food, sleep, sex, the feeling of being appreciated and loved.
Will this change in the next twenty or 150 years? No.
So what can we reasonably expect?
In general the inventions for the last twenty years have been a human strive for freedom and communication which now appears to be flawed.
We are indeed becoming more independent and less constrained by the old social norms and this will have an impact on the relationships we form.
There will not be the three letters at the end of your signature that predicts your future. Replaced by robots; doctors outclassed by algorithms that can plug into vast medical databases; and travel agents wiped out by trip-planning, flight-booking web services.
Chatbots technology has and is drastically changed the world we live in and the shift has changed business, which means it will impact employees and society as a whole just the same..
Ten years ago, social networks like Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, the Internet was still something that no one quite understood.
With technology continuing to evolve on a weekly basis seniority will no longer guarantee you a job and office politics will slowly be thrown out the window. No jobs for life.
We live in the information age; in the last five years there has been more data created since the beginning of mankind.
Many of the degrees students are acquiring these days will have little relevance to the next in 20 years. Technologically, the 20-year jump from 2017 to 2037 will be huge. Elements of our world will change beyond recognition, creating new professions we can’t yet envisage.
The web has made the concept of informal education to become a phenomenon that everyone needs to be aware of.
Telehealth platforms will make in-home patient monitoring the norm. Genome mapping will lead to personalize medicines and 3D-printing printed replacement organs will be for sale on E Bay/Amazon.
The cloud, tablets and interactive PDFs will become mainstream.
Combine all of this into quantum computer technology with AI and we are well on the way into uncharted territory of exponential power growth, of self-replicating AI.
A ‘economic, social and environmental apocalypse.’
Technology underpins everything we’ve looked at so far – food, health, relationships and work.
The best decision’ is based on the best available information, and the best information is not the opinions of vested interests.
If we don’t get leadership right, all the bright shiny objects in the future will dangle beyond our reach.
With technology advances, answers are quickly becoming a commodity.
In the future the world will be in your pocket yet still you will ask
‘Who am I?’
We will not be able to fool the mind in the way that no matter how real the experience will feel, you will always know that it haven’t happen for real.
On the other hand.
Today you can Google – just about anything – just imagine how efficient “search” will be in 20 years.
Internal systems will capture corporate learning like never before, allowing you to tap deep into the set of corporate experiences.
Of much greater value will be the ability to ask the right questions.
Homes and offices will collect and process data.
Advertising will know who you are, who you were, and who you will be.
Buildings will have artificial intelligence ‘personalities’ and will be able to ‘talk’ to people with video tiles, color-changing materials and even electronic fibers in mats and other soft furnishings.
We may even have the ability to transcend our human bodies and live entirely in the cloud, but that’s not to say we will want to do so on any large-scale.
The decentralization movement is already becoming the major human rights issue of this decade and will do more to free mankind than all but a handful of humanity can contemplate yet.
It’s not quite the time for your brain-wave analyser to say ” Happy Christmas to your robot.”
Twenty years from now there will be many changes in medicine, technology and in environment, hopefully a better state for the poor people in the world, challenges in the climate change, or maybe some combination of economic, social and environmental apocalypse will cause the collapse of existing infrastructure and telecommunications will be back to pencil and paper or something even more primitive.
Whatever happens next, it will be a great time to be alive.
If anything is impervious to technology its life.
Just how insane things have gotten we might be in for a large dose of entropies.
Happy CHRISTMAS ONE IN ALL.
All human comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin.
Does the common good exist? or has technology killed it for good.
I am sure that there are far more Aristotle, thinking minded people than me that can answer this question.
While the exploitation and degradation of the environment is set to continue, life as we know it will one day be impossible on this planet unless we come together to act as one.
It is rational for corporations to free ride, given the costs of individual action, which affect profits and competitiveness in an international economy. There is little incentive for individual countries or corporations to do anything other than free ride.
Yet, collectively, this is the worst possible outcome for the environment.
The problem is that for common action to work it has to start small and be appealing to thousands with incentives.
Global problems are seen as long-term, to be resolved by political decisions. These are world problems – problems that ignore the artificial frontiers which crisscross the globe, problems which concern the whole human race, are driven by the system to engage in a competitive struggle for profits against each other.
Were we expected to co-operate to solve ecological problems – problems caused by the competitive, profit-seeking system that Governments support and uphold we would not need the out of date World organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO that all needs to be democratized abolishing the veto powers.
While it is clear that a question which concerns the whole world such as the possible consequences of global warming can be effectively dealt with only by unified action at a world level, it is equally clear that this is not going to happen under the profit system of capitalism.
The different countries into which the world is divided have different – and clashing – interests. At most, all that can happen under the profit system when a global problem arises is ‘much too little, much too late’.
On the surface, the changes created by climate change seem almost benign, or able to be addressed with common engineering and economic and technological solutions.
If we are honest about how much information we really possess at this time, politics would be more about than building an institutional framework for the narrow pursuit of individual self-interest in the essentially private domain of liberalized markets.
After all, whatever every human being is doing, whether it is pursuing money, or pleasure or God, he is only seeking his own well-being.
Sadly, however, most people don’t focus on what they have in common with others or on the recognition of our shared humanity.
As Einstein once said:
A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Today, with the tools of science and technology we have brought ourselves to a self-threatening situation that everybody in the society needs to turn spiritual, otherwise there is no survival for this world.
What we are now seeing is the other side of ego—greed, lust for wealth and power, exploitation of others for personal gain. This darker side of ego separates us. We become mean and judgmental. We become polarized, one against another. We misuse the power that accompanies money in order to get more money.
But now the intention—why we act—has corrupted itself into what’s in it for me. The scourge of debt-backed money.
Existing realities on the planet could be changed in a moment, because existing realities do not take into consideration people’s will, they do not take into consideration people’s commitment, they do not take into consideration the love in their hearts.
However I am convinced because human beings have a capacity for empathy that transcends boundaries of language, culture, skin color, religion, age, gender, and physical ability we can do so.
To engage the different voices and stories that shape human inequities and potentials.
The first and the foremost thing we need to do is to empower the people. Empowerment does not mean amassing of material wealth, or technology. Today our pursuit for these is so vigorous that the very life of the planet is being threatened.
So here are a few observations:
A thing’s nature is detectable not only in its external appearance, but also and more importantly through the natural inclinations which guide it to behave in conformity with the particular nature it has.
Participatory democracy becomes real when individuals, groups, and communities see the benefits of connecting their identities and experiences with those of others.
So why is it that we cannot act for the common good?
Is it because most beings in the universe do not possess the rational ability to act consciously.
Is it because we possess the power of free choice and therefore have a radically different relation to everything.
Is it that the simple requirements of doing good and avoiding evil fail to provide human beings with much content for pursuing the moral life.
Is it because the common good has been associated with the existence of an active of life rather than any narrow perception of the limited.
Taking care of the Earth is not just a responsibility– it’s a privilege.
Don’t ever let someone tell you that one person can’t make a difference! Making a difference for the future of Planet Earth doesn’t have to include huge life changing choices!!
Here are a few simple suggestion:
Why not:
Make Train travel free. Have your bills emailed to you. Share what you care about. Ban Wooden coffins – cardboard coffin. Make solar panels grant able – Save Electricity. De-tox your home. Eat less meat. Eat and buy locally. Consume less chemicals, Conserve water. Stop using virgin paper. Paint you roof white. Make Florescent light bulbs free. Use refillable water bottles. Use your hankie as a Napkin. Recycle:
Every natural system on the planet is in decline.
If we all work together, we really can make a collective positive difference in the amount of damage we do.
Given the modern condition of American democracy, we need the arts and humanities more than ever.
It seems that if someone wants something, then it is good for them.
To define the good as ‘what all want’ is therefore a definition not of an effect by its cause, but just the opposite: a definition of a cause by its effect. The good is a cause. It is the final cause, the end or purpose.
There are, of course, some problems that you really cannot do much about on your own but these can be solved with a World Aid Commission of 0.05%. (See previous posts)
A different mirror” reflecting our connected histories and shared narratives–conflicting and complementary- is needed. Trump is just making darn sure it happens with a vengeance.
Our knowledge begins with sensation: with the things that we see and feel and taste and smell and hear. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has. Human nature impacts the rest of nature. We need to adapt to a changing world. We must organise to take the Earth back from those who currently own and exploit it, and must make it the common heritage of all.
Unless we invent the means with which we can practically colonize other planets and develop interstellar space travel. Without *both* of those, we are goners, no matter what.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
They say we have free will, but there are many types of tyrannies in our world.
You could describe our hand-held devices which are keeping us connected to anything, anytime, anywhere as one.
We now use our hand-held devices for almost everything. More importantly, they use us for everything.
The extreme availability of information has not led to a more enlightened population, but to more confusion.
Connectivity is both a blessing and a curse.
It has become the pathway for almost all we do as we have become helpless without technology and the need for immediate data at our fingertips. But this is taking its toll.
The number of times we look at our phones daily would shock you: some studies say 50 times, others as many as 75 to 150 times. Most of our e mails are reactionary.
Information technology is all-pervasive in production and consumption.
Each time we look at the phone, we look away from what we should be or were focused on. Our collective ability to stay focused on anything is destroyed.
How does this connect to Growth.
It is too simplistic to attribute all of our economic problems to government: indeed, that sort of reasoning is counterproductive: it absolves everyone else responsibility.
Although part of the responsibility lies with forces that are outside a government, a significant share rests with the attitudes, preoccupations, we have to Artificial Intelligence that is now analyzing our every movement to the extent that advertising is becoming personalized.
I’m not saying that growth is bad but growth that destroys value just for profit is cancer that is driving inequality with a tendency to cluster around the short-term, issues while ignoring reality is going to bite us all.
I want to begin by touching on a crucial economy-wide factor
in the erosion of our economic strength which fosters short-term
thinking.
Advertising:
It is a major driver of unnecessary consumption.
This hasn’t always been the problem. Advertising use to inform you of the useful qualities of an object. Now it manipulates your emotions like anxiety and promises to improve social acceptance or class distinction.
It is now with a frenzy of social media advertising attaching its self to saving the world that is driving consumption to new dizzying heights.
Growth for growth’s sake, is an ugly word with even uglier connotations when it is using social media in the form of algorithms FOR PROFIT, regardless of the cost.
So what is driving it:
In the information age, time is compressed and events are squeezed into ever-decreasing periods.
We have governments encouraging a restless, fleeting mode of being, and a superficial, hurried culture, which is inimical to fundamental values.
They encourage growth programs, the benefits of which are available immediately, but the costs of which appear only at a later stage. They are less interested in public investments that have to be financed now but do not payoff adequately before the next election.
It’s as if human progress depends on economic progress.
At minimum, the kind of short-term oriented cycle in which we find ourselves behaves as though tomorrow is forever. And, in fact, a series of tomorrows will create a forever — a very predictable one — and not a very desirable or promising one.
Rewards which are heavily focused on short-term results, even if they make some financial sense, often do not deliver the economic promise or the synergy which is anticipated.
Perhaps it is true that the landmarks in human progress — in the arts, science, government, or elsewhere — have rarely been reached in societies in which the economy was unable to free most of its members from a daily obsession with subsistence needs.
On the contrary, wherever the economy is feeble or stagnant for
a prolonged period, where most people see their basic material
needs as unfulfilled and the prospects for improvement as
unlikely, the result is almost invariably either a dull fatalism
or political upheaval, neither of which is likely to be favorable
to liberty and freedom.
However we are now looking at a unremitting focus on economic growth. The drive to achieve growth at practically any cost and to the exclusion of all other measures of prosperity.
This focus on GDP growth as the prime measure of economic success is out of date. It’s not how big it is that counts, it’s what you do with it.
The distance to the future – is no longer the next election, it will be how much you are willing to pay the Cloud for information. The cumulative effects of almost five decades of constantly accelerating reliance on government regulation to address social inequities and problems is coming to an end.
The linkage between ownership and participation is changing.
Social Media is not just eroding the meaning of democracy but effecting our critical thinking skills. Polluted with consumption advertising it is adding to global inequality.
While there are hundreds of different marketing strategies, only one can bring in consistent sales from day one. Social media advertising. This is why global social ad spending doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and is projected to increase another 26% in 2017.
One of the fascinating things about social advertising is that there is virtually no limit to your ability to scale.You don’t have to wait for someone to search for your targeted keywords. You don’t have to wait for someone to run your promotion or read your blog.
( For Instance:
With more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, providing advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone and everyone. It provides free lead magnet like:
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Product coupons
Sitewide discounts
Limited-time offers
Giveaways
Free shipping
These leads can then be nurtured with a targeted autoresponder. Offering free products, download-ables and predictable discounts and coupons for her audience. Doing so has earned Facebook more than $1,000,000 in annual sales in just 2 years. Facebook allows more advanced targeting than any other advertising platform on earth. Advertisers can target by location (within a 5-mile radius), job description, interests, past activity, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.
Instagram now boasts more than 500 million monthly active users and commands one of the highest audience engagement rates in social media, 58% higher than Facebook and 2000% higher than Twitter.
Twitter with 328 million monthly active users, it remains one of the most popular social media platforms. Brands don’t need to pay in order to reach their followers, which enhances the platform’s value even when running paid ads.
Pinterest: With 175 million monthly users is highly targeted toward women with an 81% female user base.
LinkedIn : Where you tend to find the highest average disposable income, has an estimated 227 million monthly active users.
Snapchat Advertising:310 million users.
All Social advertising is incredibly measurable.)
(You can, in fact, control when you choose to look at your hand-held device.)
In light of this one easy solution to over-consumption would be to ban advertising- at least in pubic places and on Social Media where Profit seeking Algorithms are used.
Much of’ the crippling of our economic systems can find its roots in Algorithms for profit. (see previous posts)
The consequences of elected government’s short-range perspective are not difficult to understand. They are seen as having succeeded in undermining the economy through overbearing regulation, tolerance of inflation, indifference to the cost of environmental and social programs, and a pervasive anti-business attitude.
Government thus diminishes the private sector’s sense of responsibility —
both in economic and ethical terms — for its own conduct and for its own performance.
While I appreciate that degrowth will not happen as quickly as we need it to do and it will take generations to move our collective consciousness on most issue, we don’t have that kind of time any longer.
Technology that ostensibly should help people save time, has instead led to a situation where time is scarcer than ever.
When an exponential growth curve becomes vertical, time has ceased to exist as duration.”life stands still at a tremendous speed”, with serious consequences for culture, intellectual life and the very fabric of society.
What we do not know today is what it will take to send us to
the pumps.
The struggle now concerns the right to be unavailable, the right to live and think more slowly.
Choosing to live according to one’s own self-made conception of reality, human nature, and happiness is a recipe for tyranny.
It is about time that we ask what wireless communications and the Internet are preconditions for. They are problems need to be understood well, in order to be dealt with the political upheaval that is around the corner.
Relying on averages generate by computers is worsening inequality
within countries, and the world as a whole.
So is there anything that can be done legitimately that will have a positive effect.
Becoming more grounded in ones own true feelings and perceptions is a primary indication that one has begun to free himself from the “tyranny of the should.”
Assuring that investment in future profitability is not sacrificed on
the altar of quarterly earnings growth. Refocusing our approach to economic decision-making, to benefit all not the few.
Willingness to pay the price today for the health and vitality of the country tomorrow is the ultimate test of stewardship. To live with a view to the regime should not be supposed to be slavery, but preservation.
Finally, it is as we all know easy to point the finger, however we are the will in any form or symbol and we are identifiable as water.
However if we are to address any of our world problems and stop the self-perpetuating downward cycle, with all the suction of a whirlpool, from which there will be no escape we cannot and should not rely on technology to bail us out.
There is only one solution. Make Greed pay a World Aid commission of 0.05% ( See previous post)
Technology, if it has not yet become the de fac~o
decision- — . . . maker in the production process, has
certainly become a participant who cannot be
ignored.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.
However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.
Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.
It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.
It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.
It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.
The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.
You might think that this is all hog wash.
( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.
It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”
Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.
You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree. Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.
Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina. ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)
Back to the more serious subject:
It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.
The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.
Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.
This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.
Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.
Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.
This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.
So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.
The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.
As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.
Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.
THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:
All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.
It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.
Accountable, Transparent, Reversible.
If we are to have any hope of tackling any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
PROBLEMS are caused by our actions, and can only be
resolved by us changing these actions.
The scientific innovations and new technologies thus
generated seem limitless, as they unfold everywhere
and on all kinds of fronts. It is the wild west where
rules are made up as we go and hope for the best.
There is no central body GOVERNING the use of the
cloud.
In a constantly evolving world transformed by cloud, social and mobile technologies, we’ve become accustomed to the idea of storing our personal data in the cloud, whether it’s via Dropbox, the iCloud or even Facebook.
as confusing as it may be we are never far from a new
era of revolt.
But this really only tells half the story. So far cloud computing has, for the most part, been used to speed up and reduce the costs of existing processes.
However we’re moving into what is becoming known as the mobile/cloud era. Cloud computing is set to impact not only on the way we do business, but how we live or lives.
Our thinking is being shaped by several key areas:
Applications we’re seeing at the moment really are the tip of the iceberg and, as the technology matures further, who knows how we may be using the cloud in even a year from now.
Smart cities are growing ever closer to becoming the norm as organisations begin to realize that the cloud can do so much more than simply speed up or reduce the cost.
Eight years from now we are likely to see low-power processors crunching many workloads in the cloud, housed in highly automated data centres and supporting massively federated, scalable software architecture.
So far we know that the following things are likely to happen:
There will be larger clouds. Some of these clouds will link to others. Many services that businesses consume will sit on top of clouds. Software will be much, much larger.
As with any technology, a lot of the true problems could come in implementation. Who will be the police? Who will be the judge? Who will be the jury for penalties?
We don’t have a clue what the procedures, policies and infrastructure really are.
It is said that changing the world is a noble, innate, haunting idea that, when flirting with it, ends up becoming as beautiful as it is dangerous.
Experts estimate cloud apps will account for a whopping 90 percent of worldwide mobile data traffic by 2019.
Cloud computing brings with it a whole new set of applications that will sit on multiple tiers of cloud infrastructure.
All the cloud promises is that you will have to turn over your security interests to a third-party in the clouds, and secondly that you are going to turn over your ability to do ANY real work to some third-party software provider in the cloud and become totally dependent on an internet connection to even work on the most simple of application based tasks.
Cloud data centers will “become much like a breathing and living organism with different states.
They will be differentiated by their infrastructure capabilities into a whole new set of classes.
So where are we.
How are we going to operate them efficiently?
Will they have standards and full technical disclosure?
The answer to both questions is that it is highly unlikely will we see either.
What we will see is a pitched battle fight for dominance with us reduced to an “inside-out” perspective.
For instance, “The more the president [of the United States] scandalizes the world with Tweets, rather than embracing the future together with minimal barriers, we see the Western world retreating and starting to look inwards.
Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians, but it is also destroying what it left of any world community spirit, with the smart phone embodying this state of affairs.
Technological advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence or augmented reality are upset the global economy. The ability to acquire new knowledge will be worth more than the knowledge already learned, with people becoming brand-proof, it will become very difficult to exist the devil’s boots that don’t creak.
Behold the Cloud.
Every revolution up to now has had a common thread with the resulting conflicts largely boiling down to pervasive economic inequality.
The Cloud revolution however is wireless dogma, not a guide for action, accepting connections and doling out information anywhere, anytime if you have the money to pay.
The Internet revolution of tomorrow with the cloud as it’s center of power, will be the content revolution ,that does not bode well for the state of the world to-day and that could be inviting the collapse of society as we know it.
We are heading for a unilateral and silent war, which I think its going to be horrendous.
The difficulty will not come from governments that will be held hostage to a communication that it does not control but from profit seeking AI that feeds off the cloud.
A whopping 90% of businesses already use at least one cloud computing service.
The main players, Amazon, Google Drive, Apple Cloud, Microsoft, with revenue estimated to be in trillions by 2020, know this.
It’s now totally the way of the future.
The cloud it is not just a metaphor for the internet it is more than a motor, it is a fuel that is constantly renewed, tirelessly feeding self learning algorithms.
The crisis of technological capitalism opens the prospect of new revolutionary waves everywhere.
Many economists extol the fact that “It’s very good for the economy” but this is not true. The world in which Beethoven grew up was in turmoil. It was a world of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions – just like ours today.
This is not a war in the traditional sense of the term: it is and will be more and more a confrontation between belligerent technological armies; it is a war waged by the “civilized world”, firmly entrenched in its positions, against hundreds of millions of deprived civilians.
The divide between rich and poor started with the domesticate plant and animals, which lead to farming – based societies resulting in land ownership. It became easy to acquire wealth and to pass it down from generation to generation, till we arrived to-day with half of the world’s wealth owned by 1%.
We have never being able to decrease inequality peacefully and we never will be able to do so in the future with self learning profit seeking algorithms.
However we are now looking at a new revolution that will be governed by time in the cloud.
Why?
Because Revolutions are voluble, and the cloud is highly suited to exploiting that volubility.
Because capitalism is and always will be set up for consumerism profit, to acquire wealth for the few not the many.
The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.
Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest.
And so while the incredible benefits of globalisation have lifted many from poverty, profit seeking AI are going to create alienation and isolation in those areas that have lost out.
All new inventions and technologies have one thing in common:
They derive their strength from digital and information technologies. All innovations are made possible and are enhanced by digital power. That power is in the Cloud.
Similarly, without computing power, no artificial intelligence and, without it, no sophisticated robots.
To live this transition means first to become aware of current and future changes, and to consider their impact at all levels of society as a whole.
However, the reasons to rise up are not lacking: economic precariousness, multiplication of political scandals, crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions are all ringing warning bells.
Globalisation didn’t create multinational corporations but those that can take advantage of the changes have and will enriched themselves beyond imagination. While swathes of society will find themselves left behind, forced to compete for jobs at ever lower wages.
The free flow of money and the demolition of trade barriers fostered their growth and delivered them the political power to challenge the fundamental ideals of democracy.
The planet can deal with human demands on it at only 30 percent of what we take from-dump on it now (anyone who thinks that we can double our demands on the planet and people every 12-20 years in perpetuity or that technology will save us should be excluded from serious discussions, I think).
The world has limited resources and cannot go on consuming and squeezing people into every available space. That sense of powerlessness now threatens to overwhelm the positives of globalisation and free trade; such as cheaper consumer goods and higher global living standards.
Forcing nations into a tax rate race to the bottom.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who takes venality to an entirely new level. For all the good it has done, however, it has come at a significant cost, particularly in the developed world. Today, this translates into a crisis of political authority: we are not only frustrated by the incapacity of politicians to solve our problems, but we also question their legitimacy to act on our behalf since we discover, in certain situations, more capacities to act and find solutions than they do.
Tomorrow, this may result in an awareness that citizens can, in some cases, do without policies to make politics.
There are two major threats to us all. Climate Change and The Cloud.
If we do not wake up and demand change we will all indeed be living with zero intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
At this point it is tempting to roll out the usual clichés – food pills, flying cars and bases on the moon – but the reality will probably be less exciting.
bobdillon33blog 