Category Archives: Humanity.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET.

18 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Humanity., The Future, The Internet., The world to day.

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( A Rather long read 20th to 30th minutes)

This is a sort of follow on from the Post – These days what it means to be Human.

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

The ubiquitous presence of digital technologies and, along with it, ongoing connection of people, information, smart devices, sensors, objects etc, across intelligent networks, various types of clouds and processes is sometimes called The Internet of Everything.

By approaching it as a “thing” we risk losing ourselves in a Babylonian confusion.

That consumer fascination/applications aspect comes on top of all the real-life possibilities as they start getting implemented right now and the contextual and technological realities, making the Internet of Things one of those many pervasive technological umbrella terms, leading to genuine digital transformation opportunities in several areas, digital disruptions and, simply, business opportunities in the broadest sense.

There is no doubt that the internet is changing the way we live, work, produce and consume.

Smart meters:  To improve efficiency in energy, from a household perspective (savings, better monitoring etc.) and a utility company perspective (billing, better processes and of course also dealing with natural resources in a more efficient way as they are not endless).

Retail:  In an ongoing effort to digitize the consumer experience. Digital signage in retail outlets is in fact the big driver in 2015.

Whether our species evolves or collapses depends on what we do now with With such extensive reach, digital technologies cannot help but disrupt many of our existing models of business and government.

We become weaker when we keep giving away our power to technology–that is, to external objects. We then become dependent upon these objects, and soon get to the point where we can’t do anything for ourselves.

The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.

We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet.

Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet.

By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.

The question is :

If almost everything is connected, will it transform how we do business and go about our daily lives and will it help us manage resources more efficiently and sustainably or will it turn all of us into Google Dummies / Amazon Consumers and how will this affect our personal privacy, data security and our personal relationships?

It is changing our ability to cross the great divide of otherness and really speak to each other in unique and powerful ways.

The growth of the digital economy, the rise of the service sector and the spread of international production networks have all been game-changers for international trade.

If the internet is not made available to all earth’s inhabitants at an affordable cost the miraculous healing awaits this planet will never happen.

Just look at the growing unease over globalization, which is evident from the number of questions being asked about the power of corporations and the adequacy of the regulations governing employment, environmental issues and taxation. All distracting us from  long-term investment, which has serious implications for global growth.

We’re already seeing and feeling the impacts of climate change with weather events such as droughts and storms becoming more frequent and intense, and changing rainfall patterns.

Insurers estimate that since the 1980s weather-related economic loss events have tripled.

There is only one way of achieving change. We must accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the garden rather than fight over the turf.

One thing we can agree on is that the internet of Things still has a long way to go and that growth of connected devices or “intelligent things” will indeed grow exponentially over the coming years. 

There is a LOT that can still be connected.

There are numerous reasons for the growing attention for the Internet of Things.

While you will often will read about the decreasing costs of storage, processing and material or the third platform with the cloud, big data, smart (mobile) technologies/devices, etc. there certainly is also a societal/people dimension with a strong consumer element.

Experts predict the Internet will become ‘like electricity’ — less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill.

The world is moving rapidly towards ubiquitous connectivity that will further change how and where people associate, gather and share information, and consume media.

The experts agree on the technology change that lies ahead, even as they disagree about its ramifications. Most believe there will be:

  • A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.
  • “Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies.
  • Disruption of business models established in the 20th century (most notably impacting finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts, and education).
  • Tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms.

Here is what I see.

It is revolutionizing most human interaction, especially affecting health, education, work, politics, economics, and entertainment.

On the downside:

Interpersonal ethics, surveillance, terror, and crime, may lead societies to question how best to establish security and trust while retaining civil liberties.

More and more, humans will be in a world in which decisions are being made by an active set of cooperating devices. The Internet (and computer-mediated communication in general) will become more pervasive but less explicit and visible.

It will, to some extent, blend into the background of all we do. It will be a world more integrated than ever before.

We will see more planetary friendships, rivalries, romances, work teams, study groups, and collaborations.

We will become far more knowledgeable about the consequences of our actions; we will edit our behavior more quickly and intelligently.

It will change how we think about people, how we establish trust, how we negotiate change, failure, and success.

We will grow accustomed to seeing the world through multiple data layers. This will change a lot of social practices, such as dating, job interviewing and professional networking, and gaming, as well as policing and espionage.

With mobile technologies and information-sharing apps becoming ubiquitous, we can expect some significant improvement in the awareness of otherwise illiterate and ill-informed rural populations to opportunities missed out by manipulative and corrupt governments. Like the Arab Spring, we can expect more and more uprisings to take place as people become more informed and able to communicate their concerns.

There will be increased awareness of the massive disparities in access to health care, clear water, education, food, and human rights.

The power of nation-states to control every human inside its geographic boundaries may start to diminish.

The problems that humanity now faces are problems that can’t be contained by political borders or economic systems. Traditional structures of government and governance are therefore ill-equipped to create the sensors, the flows, the ability to recognize patterns, the ability to identify root causes, the ability to act on the insights gained, the ability to do any or all of this at speed, while working collaboratively across borders and time zones and sociopolitical systems and cultures.

From climate change to disease control, from water conservation to nutrition, from the resolution of immune-system-weakness conditions to solving the growing obesity problem, the answer lies in what the Internet will be in decades to come.

By 2025, we will have a good idea of its foundations.

The Internet will generate several new related networks. Some will require verified identification to access, while others will promise increased privacy.

The biggest impact on the world will be universal access to all human knowledge.

Will the Internet make it possible for our entire civilization to collapse together, in one big awful heap? Possibly.

But the Internet has already made it possible for us to use one of our unique graces — the ability to share knowledge — for good, and to a degree never before possible.

We have to think seriously about the kinds of conflicts that will arise in response to the growing inequality enabled and amplified by means of networked transactions that benefit smaller and smaller segments of the global population.

Social media will facilitate and amplify the feelings of loss and abuse. They will also facilitate the sharing of examples and instructions about how to challenge, resist, and/or punish what will increasingly come to be seen as unjust.

Cyber-terrorism will become commonplace.

Privacy and confidentiality of any and all personal will become a thing of the past.

Online ‘diseases’ — mental, physical, social, addictions (psycho-cyber drugs) — will affect families and communities and spread willy-nilly across borders.

The digital divide will grow and worsen beyond the control of nations or global organizations such as the UN. This will increasingly polarize the planet between haves and have-nots. Global companies will exploit this polarization. Digital criminal networks will become realities of the new frontiers. Terrorism, both by organizations and individuals, will be daily realities. The world will become less and less safe, and only personal skills and insights will protect individuals.

There will be greater group-think, group-speak and mob mentality … More uninformed individuals will influence others to the detriment of standard of living and effective government.

Governments will become much more effective in using the Internet as an instrument of political and social control. That is, filters will be increasingly valuable and important, and effective and useful filters will be able to charge for their services. People will be more than happy to trade the free-wheeling aspect common to many Internet sites for more structured and regulated environments.

The information we want will increasingly find its way to us, as networks learn to accurately predict our interests and weaknesses. But that will also tempt us to stop seeking out knowledge, narrowing our horizons, even as we delve evermore deep.

The privacy premium may also be a factor: only the relatively well-off (and well-educated) will know how to preserve their privacy in 2025.

The most neglected aspect of the impact is in the geopolitics of the Internet. There are very few experts focused on this, and yet the rise of digital media promises significant disruption to relations between and among states. Some of the really important dimensions include the development of transnational political actors/movements, the rise of the virtual state, the impact of digital diplomacy efforts, the role of information in undermining state privilege (think Wikileaks), and … the development of cyber-conflict (in both symmetric and asymmetric forms).

It is going to systemically change our understandings of being human, being social, and being political.

It is not merely a tool of enforcing existing systems; it is a structural change in the systems that we are used to. And this means that we are truly going through a paradigm shift — which is celebratory for what it brings, but it also produces great precariousness because existing structures lose meaning and valence, and hence, a new world order needs to be produced in order to accommodate for these new modes of being and operation.

The greatest impact of the Internet is what we are already witnessing, but it is going to accelerate.

More people will lose their grounding in the realities of life and work, instead considering those aspects of the world amenable to expression as information as if they were the whole world.

The scale of the interactions possible over the Internet will tempt more and more people into more interactions than they are capable of sustaining, which on average will continue to lead each interaction to be more superficial.

Given there is strong evidence that people are much more willing to commit petty crimes against people and organizations when they have no face-to-face interaction, the increasing proportion of human interactions mediated by the Internet will continue the trend toward less respect and less integrity in our relations.

The Internet, automation, and robotics will disrupt the economy as we know it.

How will we provide for the humans who can no longer earn money through labor?

The opportunities are simply tremendous. Information, the ability to understand that information, and the ability to act on that information will be available ubiquitously … Or we could become a ‘brave new world’ where the government (or corporate power) knows everything about everyone everywhere and every move can be foreseen, and society is taken over by the elite with control of the technology…

The good news is that the technology that promises to turn our world on its head is also the technology with which we can build our new world.  It offers an unbridled ability to collaborate, share, and interact.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

It is a very good time to start inventing the future.

The most significant impact of the Internet is getting us to imagine different paths that the future may take. These paths help us to be better prepared for long-term contingencies; by identifying key indicators, and amplifying signals of change, they help us ensure that our decisions along the way are flexible enough to accommodate change…Afficher l'image d'origine

That billions more people are poised to come online in the emerging economies seems certain. Yet much remains uncertain: from who will have access, how, when, and at what price to the Internet’s role as an engine for innovation and the creation of commercial, social, and human value. As users, industry players, and policymakers, the interplay of decisions that we make today and in the near future will determine the evolution of the Internet and the shape it takes by 2025, in both intended and unintended ways.

Regardless of how the future unfolds, the Internet will evolve in ways we can only begin to imagine. By allowing ourselves to explore and rehearse divergent and plausible futures for the Internet, not only do we prepare for any future, we can also help shape it for the better.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS : THESE DAYS WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN.

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Innovation., Technology, The Future, Unanswered Questions.

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In writing this post I have decided to ignore as much as possible the obvious state that humanity now finds itself in.

It goes without saying that we are in a mess.

Who we are, is defined by who we are not, and the practices of exclusion that define identity have to be recognized – an issue we are already witnessed in the context of online communities like Facebook.

In the ‘cyber’ world, it is possible to have multiple identities and ‘selves’.Afficher l'image d'origine

While technologies have become a ‘part’ of humanity, it should be considered, I believe, how they are going to change the way we exist and, moreover, to what extent they are really necessary in human life.

 The 21st Century is, more than ever, a century ‘flooded’ by the invention and expansion of new technologies. These are varied: we use smart phones, computers and other devices that supposedly ‘enhance’ the way we communicate between ourselves and also socially interact.

Already machines can process spoken language, recognize human faces, detect or emotions, and target us with highly personalized media content. While technology has tremendous potential to empower humans, soon it will also be used to make them thoroughly obsolete in the the workplace, whether by replacing, displacing,or surveilling.

 So is it possible to design intelligent systems that safely design themselves.
However, our bodies are also undergoing fundamental changes.
It is now possible to artificially increase physical characteristics and other bodily features. Our own natural biological capabilities can be extended almost endlessly.

These changes certainly influence several human aspects, such as identity, personality and much more.

Technological advances have made ‘fluid’, but superficial the way we communicate and perceive ourselves. There is no boundary when it comes to what I actually am, and what I project myself to be.

It is not possible, anymore, to discern between who is actually sitting on the other side of the screen, and what is being said online, in a chat, for instance.

Our bodies have become transcendent in the sense that they are; in some cases

not even regarded as necessary anymore. Bodies are thus not natural, lively and active agents through which we encounter and perceive others and the world,

but have become ‘replaceable.’

Technology is proposing a complete ‘denial’ of our bodily existence. A ‘body’ not that is not useful at all anymore, is becoming a recyclable item rather than rotting or burnt to a cinder.

Imagine a future scenario in which extremely powerful computerized minds are simulated and shared across autonomous virtual or robotic bodies.  Given the malleable nature of such super-intelligence— they won’t be limited by the hardwiring of DNA information – one can reasonably assume that they will be free of the limitations of a single material body, or the experience of a single lifetime, allowing them to tinker with their own genetic code, integrate survival knowledge directly from the learning of others,and develop a radical new form of digital evolution that modifies itself through nearly instantaneous exponential cycles of imitation and learning, and passes on its adaptation to successive generations of “SELF”

Not only would the lineage of such beings be perpetually enhanced by automation, leading to radical new forms of social relationships and values, but the systems that realize or govern those values would likely become the instinctual mechanism of a synchronized and sentient ” technocultural mind.”

One could say that are approaching such an era, and such a ‘technological leap’ must, or at least should, be assessed critically. It seems crucial to understand to what end, and how, technology can or should be used.

It is important to create ethical boundaries when it comes to our use of new technology.

A minority of wealthy persons and influential companies will have power over biotechnology and others, thus restricting the access of the public to this information.

Our body is an important instrument through which we perceive and discover the world. This means that the body can also be plural, malleable and ‘fluid, however, it is important; in my view, that it does not lose its essence. Our bodily features are embedded in the social world, and they are part of culture, as well as nature.

We need to create restrictions to the access of new technologies, by engaging with ethical questionings that allow a better understanding of what it actually means to have these technologies changing the way we exist.

It could be said that the boundary between what it means to be human has been crossed and it seems not be possible anymore to argue that being human means having certain physical qualities, a consciousness, and so for this post it is quite a complex task to address what does humanity mean.

Because of not only the varied theoretical concepts involved but the understanding of our relations to new technologies; also, to how these technologies have entirely changed the idea of  ” what it is to be human” We’re not the same species we were 100,000 years ago. We’re not going to be the same species tomorrow. We will become more and more software-driven species. Change the software change the species. 

 The question of ‘what it means to be human’ is deeply rooted in our bodily experiences, feelings,sensations and perceptions. It is with them that we give meaning to our existence.  We are shaped by these bodily experiences, as culture and its technological advances shape us.

We should not, hence, give more importance to one in comparison to the other.

Digital information and technology are important to us, until a point. After this, our humanity as a ‘natural resource’ must take head and claim its right to exist as biological, finite and, above all, human beings.

This cannot be replaced by technology.

That said being human these days is closely related to machines and other ‘artificial’ traits.

I suppose that in this is the start of age of ‘cyber cultures’ and new technologies.

We are on the threshold of genetically engineered ‘humans’‘ Genetically engineered’ beings that bear very similar qualities to humans but will they be dependable on something ‘greater’ than themselves, namely, their maker: The‘genetic engineer.’

Humanity is intertwined within biology and culture but humans are now capable of distancing themselves from the world, and thus creating an awareness of their own place in it.

 This is, I believe, a crucial point that needs to be taken into consideration when discussing how new technologies influence our life and thus completely change the meaning of who we are. We should be able to reflect upon ourselves, the way we deal with new technologies, and, more than ever, we need to be aware of how these will change our ways of life.

A multifaceted discussion on these topics will surely help better elucidate this new form of existence and the consequences it might bring with it.

 

Each of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity.

 

In the end, it is because of our great capacity for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us.

Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology is largely based upon the idea that being human means existing in a society, it means not just to exist individually, but to be shaped by others, as well as by oneself.

 

Plessner vehemently opposes a dualistic model of humanity, such as those based upon the body/mind dualism. He strongly emphasizes that we exist in a culture, but our own biological traits also mould the way we live in the world.
For the moment we shape our sociality through history by acting as ‘organic’ beings.
 

Being human is having a will to changing one’s destiny and life.

However in transhumanist visions, materiality is seen as an inactive, passive, manipulate substance, and matter is interrupted as code, a program that can be changed according to individual wishes.

The fragility of our body is being lost nowadays, the idea that we, and thus our bodies, are finite is changing.  The body has lost its ‘expressivity’ and meaningfulness, it has become but a dull and unnecessary object. 

In the future  ‘cyber cultures’ might have bodies, but they act and ‘think’ like. 
However, they are, in regard to their lifespan, or, one could say, life, expandable.
The days of the body being buried or burnt to ash are fast coming to an end with Gene Editing.
Afficher l'image d'origine

Now that we know the blueprint of Life cross species transplantation is around the corner.

While the precise form these changes will take is unclear, recent history suggests that they are likely to be welcome at first and progressively advanced. It appears reasonable that human intelligence will become obsolete, economic wealth will reside primarily in the hands of super-intelligent machines, and our ability to survive will lie beyond our direct control. 

Genetic Editing could lead to the Gene Rich and genetic discrimination leading to greater Inequality.

Man is said to have evolved from monkeys and apes…. but we still have monkeys and apes.

Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: DID MAN CREATE GOD?

24 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Life., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized

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The scientific attempt to explain religion has been around for over a century.

All seeing eye awesome wallpaper

They, however they are, say we are all made from the same star stuff.  Which is kind of hard to believe if you’re having your head cut off by ISIS.

I have always told my friends that I was created not born.

If you look back over history I am certainly not the first.

The principle of causation is fundamental to my claim.

So who or what created me?

If God was the beginning who began God?

I suppose that something which had no beginning has no need of a cause but on the other hand that something can begin without a cause is not only unreasonable, it is arguably inconceivable.

Consider, that if the greatest beginning of all—that of the universe—had no cause whatsoever! what would be the reason for it or us to exist.

So we left with the Big bang picture of the universe that started off very hot and cooled as it expanded is in agreement with all the observational evidence we have today.

Nevertheless it leaves a number of important questions unanswered …

Why is the universe so uniform on a large-scale?

Why does it look the same at all points of space and in all directions?

Did we create God to give it a cause or the other way around.

Scientists might never work out how life could arise by natural processes. Matter came into being without any cause; so they also have to believe that life itself popped into existence without an adequate cause.

This leave us to ponder whether the cause of the universe’s beginning must have been super-natural, i.e. non-material or spirit—a cause outside of space-matter-time. Such a cause would not be subject to the law of decay and so would not have a beginning. That is, the cause had to be eternal spirit. God created time itself.

Thus, He is not limited by anything in the universe, including the future, since God created time itself .“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” If we can believe this verse he did it in the dark as he created light after.

Today’s atheists, in a non-prophet organisation the origin of our universe is a vexing problem. The very state of the observable universe today presents serious problems for them, as it demands a Creator.

I have three questions for any atheists to answer:

“How did nature choose the specific laws which control the universe, as deduced from observation?”

“How did the universe start off with an initial state in such a high degree of homogeneity?” This is the initial condition required for the big bang to produce the currently observable universe.

“Why, after 13.8 billion years since the big bang, is not the universe in thermal equilibrium?” In fact, why is it so far from equilibrium?

They might point to Quantum Mechanics.

But Quantum mechanics never produces something out of nothing. Quantum fluctuation must presuppose that there was something to fluctuate.

The quantum vacuum is a type of something. It has properties. It has energy, it fluctuates, it can cause the expansion of the universe to accelerate, it obeys the (highly non-trivial) equations of quantum field theory.

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? So if you hang your theology on quantum cosmology for the creation of the universe, you would be sorely wrong as it is deficient and assumes time to exist, among other problems.

The electromagnetic arrow of time: information carried by light comes to us from the past and not the future. We remember the past and not the future.

Biology is defined by the presence of self-reproducing organisms. This reproduction process took millions of years to get us to where we are today so that nobody can really prove anything. We are said to have evolved from monkeys and apes … but we still have monkeys and apes. 

Modern man is a pretty new species, with modern humans being only 200,000 years old.  But religion is, at best, 6- to 10,000 years old (depends on where you get your source from)

So man lived for over 190,000 years and one day just got up and created a god.  Why?  What did man do for 190,000 years when there was no god? Where did the evolutionary change come from that made modern man such a genius?

Why would man, 6,000 years ago, decide that we need consistency in this life – that everybody needs to believe and think the same way? 

It’s not too long ago that we worshiped the Sun as a God.

STEPHEN HAWKING Says:

“Recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

This is an abandoned theory, an old idea by people who wanted to rationalize things with their primitive knowledge.

It means that something is created out of nothing, which is impossible according to the law of conservation of mass.

Here is some of the scientific stuff which to be honest is somewhat beyond my pea brain.

The principle that matter can neither be created nor be destroyed, now part of the first law of thermodynamics.

“The Three Laws of Thermodynamics.”

The principle that matter can neither be created nor be destroyed, now part of the first Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.

    • The first law, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.
    • The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy (iinevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society, a measure of the amount of disorder in a system.) of any isolated system always increases.
    • The third law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero.

Outside of the concept of time, there is also no concept of something beginning or even ending; in fact, the word “eternal” has no meaning as it suggests a linear progression into infinity, which is also another concept that does not exist within our temporal framework.

Man fumbles in dark trying to explain something completely beyond their ken and then curses and rejects it because they cannot understand it, but it does not change what it is.  How is it that so many intelligent people fall into this trap?

If one says that God must have a beginning, then they trap Him within His own creation and He is clearly outside of it.

It’s not science, it’s a choice, a belief system that allows man to believe he only has to answer to himself.

All religions are creations of man designed within their time and societies.

For me God is unconditional LOVE.

I can reach for excellence but perfection is God business.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS OUR PRECONDITION OF IGNORANCE GOING TO BE OUR DOWNFALL.

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Climate Change., Environment, Humanity., Natural World Disasters, Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Where's the Global Outrage.

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We all live our own lives but we are all subject to consequences of our own and each other’s ‘ignorance’.Afficher l'image d'origine

The problem is that we are literally ‘born in ignorance’ and raised in a world of people likewise born and raised which means then, that there is a very nearly overwhelming amount of misinformation, opinion, predisposition et cetera regarding what we ‘know’ about ourselves and how we ‘should’ deal with each other or there wouldn’t be the mass of troubles there is in the world today.

The human condition in this especially negative sense is a measure of our ignorance with respect to what we know about ourselves as ‘a life-form in its configuration space’ -biology, anthropology, the resource/environment, government/economy and ‘the nature and course of human evolution and progression’, as the idea of that whole and its parts varies throughout the world.

This has led us to a point that the idea of wealth and ownership beyond ‘base-domain human requirements’ is fundamentally antithetical to best well-being and viability in the nature and course of the life-form’.

Not only is there something of ‘a human condition’ endemic (the individuals) of people’s and nations, but one compounded by typically profound differences between their ‘autonomous’ governments and economics due to natural resources, geography, climate et cetera.

Up to now our attempts to understand nature and generally to know about things not produced by man, have turn us instead exclusively to things that owed their existence to man.

As I have said we are evolved out of ignorance and continue to be born in ignorance, and that means that even as we discover and amass knowledge – the ‘if this, then that-ness’ of matter and existence, ‘new situations’ and ‘new ignorances’ will always present something of a problem to someone as long as we exist.

Unfortunately, the new Technological age is adding to this and contrary to what is currently assumed about the proverbial ivory tower independence of thinkers, no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

We have entered the age of Igorance-Smart phone.

The action of the scientists, since it acts into nature from the standpoint of the universe and not into the web of human relationships, lacks the revelatory character of action as well as the ability to produce stories and become historical, which together form the very source from which meaningfulness springs into and illuminates human existence.

If like me you ponder on why it is that we seem incapable of grasping that human activities in the last two centuries have effected the Earth’s climate.

We have taken all the carbon from hundreds of million of years which had been locked up in fossil fuels and stuck it into the atmosphere in a time of two hundred years.

We don’t need to wait for the Paris Climate agreement ( Which is just a joke) there is a Methane nuclear boom under the Arctic that we could see our temperatures go up by 6c in the next 30 years.

We have buggered around with the atmosphere beyond a joke or promises.

We need some Big decisions to stop the march of climate change.Afficher l'image d'origine

Surely we are not going to wipe ourselves out through ignorance when they are so many choices but if we do at least most of us will still be ignorant.

To address the problems that derive from the grotesque Inequalities and structural poverty of our world.  Quite as hoc diplomacy is not enough. Some thing more structured is needed. Like an World Aid Commission of 0.005%. (See previous posts)

Click the Ignorant like button or make an intelligent comment.

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THE BEADY ASKS; IS THIS ANOTHER WORTHLESS MEETING FOR DO GOODERS.

14 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Politics., The world to day., Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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It is easy to be cynical about United Nations or for that matter about any World Organisation.

But the Secretary-General announced the first World Humanitarian Summit will be held in early 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey takes the biscuit.

The world is facing an unprecedented displacement crisis. Today, more than 60 million people are forcibly displaced as a result of violent conflicts and natural disasters.

Turkey has as we know just done a deal with the European Union for Visa to hold fleeing Refugees from War zones so they can’t get into Europe.

As a leading humanitarian donor and key policy-setter, the European Union will play a major role at the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul.

The purpose of the summit is to set a forward-looking agenda for humanitarian action to collectively address future humanitarian challenges. The aim is to build a more inclusive and diverse humanitarian system committed to humanitarian principles.

It’s been almost 25 years since the last time the world came together to discuss humanitarian aid.

 The European Commission provides humanitarian funding worldwide to over 200 partner organisations which implement relief actions on the ground. These include non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international organisations and United Nations agencies.
Reshaping aid at the World Humanitarian Summit to my mind seems sum what a joke and more of a NGOs nice gathering as those attending are only required to give commitments. 
Nobody respects the rules of war, or is willing to sacrifice their young to prevent and end conflict.
Leaving no one behind, and working differently to end need, do indeed require investment in Humanity. As always there is no aspiration as to how to raise the billions required to battle these inequalities.
Like the Paris Summit on Climate Change this meeting is all about hot air, with promises that will be broken as soon as they are made.
This is not the United Nations fault but if anything worthwhile comes out of the first World Humanitarian Summit it should be the reform of itself under the last two heading on the Agenda.
Its time to understand that the interconnected world we all live in is primarily driven by self-interest and corrupt gains.
For example:
Mr Cameron is presently holding a conference on corruption.  He has totally forgotten that England’s wealth was obtained by an Empire that dealt in Slavery. Plundered the world and recently had some of its elected MP fiddling expenses. Not to mention bailing out its banks with billions of taxpayers funds and is currently trying to sell bank shares back to the taxpayer how already owns them. And is now in the process of destabilizing the EU for the sake of Profit not Sovereignty.
The only way we can solve more complex innovation challenges is by tapping the global community.
The belief that anything in life is just a problem waiting to be solved, usually with the right technology fix seems to be all the rage other than watching Money electing the next USA president we are develop inequalities to represent real world situations and use them to solve problems.
There is only one commitment needed to place a World Aid Commission on all Activities that exist to generate Profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)  The cost of the refugees world crises in 2016 is 25 billion.
Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart.  Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS INEQUALITY IS THE CORROSIVE PAINT OF THE FUTURE.

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Capitalism, Humanity., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Politics., The Future, TTIP. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, World Organisations., World Politics

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The world we live in and on has and will continue to face many threats from extinction to survival till its demise in 6.5 billion years from now.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality eyes"

We all know that most of its present day problems have being created and propagated by us humans.

Some are easy to eradicate others not so.

WHY? Because global wealth concentrates is now in fewer hands resulting in inequality destroying our attitudes to world problems.

There is little need to state that there are many form of Inequality.

It come dressed in all colors along well beaten paths.Afficher l'image d'origine

But one form for me leads to many of the others and that is Income Inequality.

(The income from capital continues growing faster than the income from labor.)

While Economists are conditioned to believe in the optimality of the market the newest economic inequality numbers, which ran counter to the expectations of almost all experts, are frightening.

.That’s why they have been in denial for so long that change is not likely in the short run.

But we have to try, because getting this wrong means that economists promote machine-like models that suggest that it is simply some invisible mechanism (or maybe an invisible hand) that ensures that workers don’t get paid very much, that owners make high profit rates, and that the economy will be just fine under these conditions.

Market forces alone cannot determine who gets wealthy and who doesn’t.

Owners of capital seek higher returns through speculation in financial assets, in effect bidding up prices in an eternal quest for ever higher returns, returns that can’t be matched by investments in productive capital (the returns from which have been declining for decades).

Economics can no longer be accepted as a discrete, coherent discipline. It through inequality has left millions impoverished laying in its wake.

As a result there is tremendous anger, disillusionment and fear. All of which are corrosive to democracy.

Just look at the unfolding elections in the USA.

Nearly total disillusionment with established politics due to a dysfunctional government, with the Republican party now barely a political party with a candidate that has risen out of the poplar base called Trump that the establishment could not squash. The main stream spectrum of world politics is moving to the right. Neoliberal policies have led to declines and near stagnation.

You can rest assured that we are going to see a very ugly scene.

Their solutions are the same old failed tactics.

When both parties kowtow to money, the people’s needs are ignored, and

politics becomes illegitimate.

Afficher l'image d'origine

Afficher l'image d'origine   Afficher l'image d'origine

You might say that redistribution of wealth is theft. But Redistribution of investment Profit for Profit’s sake is not.

You might think that  21st century technology such as the internet is going to change everything.  But it is money that is writing the laws, the behind the door trade agreements, through lobbyist undermining democracy. This is happening all over the world.

There is no clear relationship between the total value of capital and profitability.

Whether distributions of income and wealth are partly shaped by social and political relationships – class conflict if you will – or mostly by “market forces.”

The forces of technology are what they are.

Take the contemporary communication technologies it can be used for various purposes, to increase surveillance, to increase power, control or it can be used for to empower people.  Technology does not care you can use it both ways.

The technological connectedness is a myth.

If there is to be a rebalancing.  The current trade agreements could be designed for the people.  They are not.

They are however designed for the benefits of investors. They are not trade agreements except very marginally. That is the reason that they are keep secret, not quite totally as the details are being written by corporate lawyers and lobbyist.

They are however up to now effectively secret from the population.

We can fix the problem, but it will take bold steps. It will take a combined movement not splintered movements to force change. This is highly unlikely.

There is hatred and anger about just about all institutions.

There is only one way to effect redistribution.

Place a World Aid commission on all financial and acquisition activity that are made for the sake of profit. ( See previous Posts)

It is us the tax payer that bailed out the Banks, that paid for the research to create the internet. Are we getting any return on the investment. No.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S GOVERNMENTS ARE FAILING US.

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change., European Union., Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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WHY?

Because they no longer guarantee life and the pursuit of happiness.

I am not talking about you can’t please all the people all of the time.Afficher l'image d'origine

I am talking about when they come together in the United Nations an out of date organisation with no secure means of funding other than begging. Only when signatory nations are prepared to follow suit with firm domestic policies is a UN aspiration somewhat effective. This never happens on global issues as they are afraid of paying the political price.

On something as fundamental as changing the source of energy which is going to cost trillions. Only governments coming together will there be any effect.  They are supposed to be a trustee of the natural resources that citizens depend on for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In modern society, of course, much of the complexity in our lives is placed there by governments, supposedly acting to “help” us avoid failure or to “protect” us from failure.

Instead they are eroding our liberties by collecting reams of information from your digital footprint. Our societies where you’re free to be whatever you want, feels less and less so each year.

They are selling climate dispensations, flogging off natural resources and revenue earning industries to sovereign wealth funds for short gain profits.

Some failures were obviously. They are failing to adequately address global warming.  It seems to me that Politicians seem to think that the Marketplace will take care of it.

More visible recently were the bailing out of  high-profile banking institutions which are still considered by the government to be too big to fail without threatening the long-term well-being of consumers and the broader economy.

They have created confusing missions that are not be communicated and embraced, and are were easily undermined by rank corruption and unethical conduct, or are beyond careful monitoring through performance measurement and management. They don’t  ‘know’ enough to enable them to make effective decisions about the best way to allocate scarce resources with the top appointees unqualified to lead.

The days are gone when many economists believe in the efficient market hypothesis, which assumes that the market will always contain more information than any individual or government.

The implication is that market prices and market movements should be free from interference because markets cannot be improved upon by individuals or governments. However we all know that the invisible hand of the market place will not bring about the changes necessary.

Which brings us back to the United nations. An organisation so infiltrated by lobbying groups that it is danger onto itself.

The world is in a mess due to greed, and democracy as we know it is under attack from unbridled consumerism and Social Media. We have to accept the reality that markets are not motivated by the priority of care. Nor is it the United nations.

Why don’t we the voters demand better representation?

We must demand that the United Nations pass  binding people resolution placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions , on all Foreign exchange transaction over $20,000 on all other form of Capitalist Activities that function for profit for profit’s sake.( see previous posts)

This is the only way we can take care of our world make Greed pay for it.Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. ARE WE ALL BEING DUMBED DOWN?

09 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Politics., Social Media., The Future, The Internet., The USA., The world to day., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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Some time ago I posted are we all being Googlified.  

We use the internet and social media is not so much to expand our minds as to lose them.

Social media does not democratise debate. It limits it to the resilient, offering tweet-size solutions.

We tend to validate what we already believe, wish or suspect is true as opposed to challenging our way of thinking.

In this overheated world fulled by attack ads, and social media frenzies, the only think that matter is how an individual feels about something. Feeling validates itself and anything else is an establishment conspiracy.

It is well-known that if you want to rule a people keep them ignorant.

Take the USA for instance.

One has only to look at the rise of Donald Trump, the Tea Party, Climate change deniers, Creationists, and the hold these have and the lengths believers go to push their agendas, contrary to tangible, scientific proof, to understand that ignorance is something people invest in heavily.

In a country that was founded on Immigration the USA that has built some 650 miles of wall along the 1,954-mile US-Mexico boundary. There are around 16,238 murders per year in the United States; this averages out to around 44 murders per day. There were 2.24 million prisoners in the United States as of Dec. 31, 2011. That accounted for about 22 percent of the global prison population.

“It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population.” 

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance.

Here as elsewhere we see politicians more concerned with appearing approachable than smart or engaging in genuine political discourse.

Celebrity gossip dominates news feeds and cycles.

We have a generation that have not read a book since leaving school. How take selfies posted on Facebook to say look at me I did this or I am here, got the t-shirt. Who cares. Almost all of us have been there before you.

Topical TV discussion ( on this side of the pond Question Time, Hard Talk, News Night and the like) shows use celebrities, sportspeople, or some one from the station’s stable of stars to discuss controversial issues eschewing experts and reducing complex subjects to clickbait.

Shrinking government funding for Education, and other artistic, creative, literary and scientific endeavors, works to erode the significance of scholarship and creativity and all they entail as respectable and seriously useful occupations or pastimes.

Universities are changing as a consequence of fee charging and anti-intellectualism. Instead of teaching students the joy of learning and critical thinking, we train them for jobs.

Ignorance should never be held up as inspirational, convenient fictions, don’t replace facts, and aggressive cyber trolls never silence the truth.

A clever country is where intellectuals are not scorned as elite, but recognised as essential.

If we want inequality to disappear our Leaders must educate for free and capitalism with its unrelenting greed must pay. ( see World Aid commission of 0.05%)

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT OBAMA PRESIDENCY. GOOD OR BAD.

06 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by in Humanity., The Future, The USA., The world to day., World Politics

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Obama will probably turn out to be one of the most consequential presidents in recent history, if not of all time.

In this most polarized age no president could be judged great by all, at least not for long.Scales finally falling from America's Obama-obscured eyes

He has accomplished a great deal during his presidency.

Away back In October 2008, there were four great tasks before him.

“If he sees the country through the current economic crisis, brings the war in Iraq to an end, passes health-care reform that actually achieves something close to universal coverage, and sets the country on a course away from a reliance on fossil fuels.

To varying degrees he has done all four.

The trouble is that each victory has come with extraordinary complications.

Today under Obama’s policies unemployment stands at 5 percent. Yet wages remain stagnant and economic insecurity is still widespread, despite the availability of jobs.

On Iraq,

Obama followed through on his promise to remove American troops and end George W. Bush’s catastrophic war, but the country has not released its hold on us. The corrupt sectarian government of Nouri al-Maliki alienated and oppressed its Sunni citizens, allowing ISIS to thrive. Obama is still struggling with the aftermath of the war, as will his successors.

On health care,

by passing comprehensive reform, Obama did what Bill Clinton failed to do and what Democrats had spent decades trying to accomplish. But though the Affordable Care Act is a huge success in many ways, with millions of Americans newly insured and all people able to get coverage regardless of their health history, the fact that it was essentially a gigantic kludge — a complicated fix laid on top of an already absurdly complicated system — has limited its ability to provide universal coverage or eliminate the pathologies of a profit-driven health care system.

Obamacare wasn’t really a government takeover, but the student loan overhaul actually was; it yanked the program away from Sallie Mae and other private lenders that had raked in enormous fees without taking much risk. It all added up to a revolution in how America finances higher education, completely overshadowed by the health care hoopla and drama.
And on climate change,

Obama got something of a late start, but he has moved aggressively, with new regulations on auto efficiency and power plant emissions, along with a historic agreement just signed in Paris which committed virtually every nation on earth to a common effort to reduce carbon emissions.

There are hundreds of other decisions and accomplishments one could point to over the last seven years as being of great consequence, but any list would have to include the nuclear agreement with Iran, the normalization of relations with Cuba, new Wall Street regulations, saving the American auto industry, ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, ending discrimination against gays in the military and pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and avoiding the kind of major scandal that plagued so many of his predecessors.

He achieved all this against a Congress that opposes him on virtually everything and in the midst of a race to determine his successor.

And much depends on who that successor is; if it’s a Democrat (presumably Hillary Clinton), then what Obama achieved could be reinforced and expanded.

Obama would then be considered the most important president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

Any Republican, however, would devote himself to reversing everything Obama did.

What a joke it would be if fly over Americans voted for a Chump Trump.  Who doesn’t seem to know what policy arguments are.

He has promised to pay off the entire $19 trillion national debt by the end of his second term as president. But doing that — while also keeping promises to cut taxes, increase defense spending, and leave Social Security and Medicare untouched — would require Trump to somehow juice the economy so that it grew by a magical 25 percent a year.

Sanders is a bit better, maybe.

What ever happens the contours of the next presidency, and maybe even the one after that, will be determined by what happened between 2009 and 2016.

Whatever you think of him, it’s looking like Barack Obama did indeed change the country’s trajectory, by doing pretty much what he said he would.

Americans are lucky to have Barack Obama as president, and we should wake up and appreciate it while we can. It could be a long wait for the next one.

His accomplishments, ambitious goals, dignity and honesty under tough circumstances demand admiration and appreciation. Becoming the first black president is itself an epic triumph. He doesn’t ask for credit for being the first black one. He and his family are at risk every day, and we take their courage for granted.

He wasn’t a catalyst for same-sex marriage but nourished the culture that made it possible.

Not everything has changed in the Obama era. For example, he talked a big game about eliminating wasteful programs, but other than killing the F-22 fighter jet, an absurdly expensive presidential helicopter and a hopelessly captured bank regulatory agency called the Office of Thrift Supervision, he hasn’t done much of that.

He was reelected by a comfortable margin, but conservative Republicans have taken back both houses of Congress and made impressive gains in statehouses on his watch, riding a powerful wave of hostility to federal overreach. That political legacy could imperil some of Obama’s left-of-center policy legacy if a Republican is elected to succeed him. It has already stymied gun control and immigration reform, while forcing Obama to accept deep spending cuts he didn’t want.

Or it could all get worse.

We view current events as puny rivers of tweets, not grand chapters in the ultimate story — history.

A world seen through the sacred screens of televisions and computers that can view only the puny.

So, Mr. President, on behalf of me the silent witness unlike your ungrateful nation, thank you. Enjoy your well deserved sleep. You might enjoy my Unpublished book. https://flipboard.com@no1bobdillon

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S SHAME ON US ALL THAT CALL OURSELF EUROPEANS.

04 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in European Union., Humanity., Politics., The Refugees, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis as countries struggled to cope with the influx, and creating division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people.

Under the terms of the EU’s deportation deal 202 people from Greece to Turkey have to-day being forcibly returned to Turkey.

On the island of Lesbos, which lies just across the Aegean Sea from Dikili, the 136 deportees boarded two Turkey-bound boats in what some witnesses described as a “sedate state”. On Chios, a Greek island farther to the south, violence briefly erupted as police attempted to transfer selected deportees to a third ferry.

The calmness of proceedings belied the horror of what they represented.

“This is the bargaining and bartering of human bodies,”

Only two of the 202 deportees were Syrian. The rests were mostly Pakistanis, and so could have been deported back to Turkey under pre-existing international agreements, or Afghans, who the Greek government claimed had elected to return to Greece of their own accord.

“It is absolutely mind-boggling that neither the media nor human rights organisations had access to the detention facilities to monitor the asylum procedures,” said a Human Rights Watch spokesman.

The first day of deportations has been met with affirmative statements by credible international organisations, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who confirmed that all procedures were regular and rights of deportees were observed.

Even as the expulsions were under way, a rubber dinghy with about 40 men, women and children arrived from the shores of Turkey, and on the other side of the Aegean dozens of others were arrested trying to follow in their wake.

Turks are now putting up blue tarp to stop the prying eyes of the press.

The conflict in Syria continues to be by far the biggest driver of migration. But the ongoing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, abuses in Eritrea, as well as poverty in Kosovo, are also leading people to look for new lives elsewhere.

Europe needs to be reminded that Deportation from Europe has a dark history.

Without genuine transparency over the enacting of the EU-Turkey deal, pictures alone won’t be enough. Amid this crisis, children are the most vulnerable of all. Many are travelling with their families, while many others are on their own. Every one of them is in need of protection and entitled to the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

 This is an appalling deal. 

We that is Europe is responsible in more ways that one for the Crises. If we were less concerned and not driven by fear we would have set up proper immigration enter channels and now of this would now be necessary.
Our world organisation like UNICEF can only stand by and appeal for funds.
There are still millions caught in situations of conflict, displacement, poverty and underdevelopment – the main causes of the crisis
“It’s what happens when the media is not looking that will matter most.”

Map of asylum claims in Europe in 2015
Tensions in the EU have been rising because of the disproportionate burden faced by some countries, particularly the countries where the majority of migrants have been arriving: Greece, Italy and Hungary.

In September, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 160,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to those who are in Italy and Greece.

Another 54,000 were to be moved from Hungary, but the Hungarian government rejected this plan and will instead receive more migrants from Italy and Greece as part of the relocation scheme.

The UK has opted out of any plans for a quota system but, according to Home Office figures, 1,000 Syrian refugees were resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme in 2015. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the UK will accept up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.

Let me ask you. 

What would you do to escape ISIS and the Taliban?

Even if we have taken in the odd million.

Shame on us all. That we can’t offer at least temporary sanctuary.  

“The journey is difficult but we have no choice,” We have to endure.

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