Our neurology is primed to establish rapport with other humans, not artificial intelligence driving algorithms or machine learning that are disconnecting us all from what really matters on the planet.
The establishment of rapport depends on eye contact, breading and recognition of subtle changes in voice timbre.
IT’S TIME THAT WE DEMAND THAT ALL SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES ARE SUBJECT TO REGULATION AND LAWS.
THEY TRULY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE TECHNOLOGIES THEY ARE USING AND THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT ARE LESS AND LESS PREDICTABLE.
They ( by which I mean Facebook, Twitter, and all other platforms) are now using technologies to clean up their acts that are biased and driven by profit. Since they are monopolies they will only encourage regulation that cements their power.
WORST OF ALL;
Since these platforms, appear so interactive and democratic, we are seeing a degradation of our social processes as a form of personal empowerment. They are encouraging regardless of content, immune reactions, discouraging cooperation, consensus, or empathy.
MESSAGES ON THESE PLATFORMS MAY COST PENNIES OR NOTHING AST ALL, AND THEY ARE SOLD AND PLACED BY BOTS WITH NO REGARD TO THEIR CONTENT.
Social media manipulates us individually one private screen at a time.
It is no wonder :
WHEN SOCIAL MEDIA IS PROGRAMMED TO ATOMIZE US AND THE MESSAGING IS ENGINEERED TO PROVOKE OUR MOST COMPETITIVE, REPTILIAN SENSIBILITIES.
You ask:
Why Brexit? Why is there a rise in violent crime? Why DONALD DUMPS? Why mass immigration,? Why terrorism? Why inequality is on the rise? Why there is no effective battle against climate change?
FOR THAT MATTER WHY IS THE WORLD IN SUCH A MESS.
BECAUSE WE ARE ALL NOT CONNECTED TO REALITY.
IF WE WANT A WORLD WORTH LIVING IN OR ON RATHER THAN IN THE SOUP OF COMMUNICATIVE HUMAN AND MACHINE LOOPS CALLED BOTS AND ALGORITHMS WE MUST BE ABLE TO INTELLIGENTLY DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW INFORMATION.
Data sound bits may enhance a particular agenda like build a wall but they do not compete for dominance by appealing to our intellect, our compassion, or anything to do with humanity.
BYPASSING OUR HIGHER FACULTIES, OUR REASONING, AND OUR COLLECTIVE AUTHORITY IS UNETHICAL AND WILL BE IN THE LONG RUN, INEFFECTIVE.
Our DNA is not a static blueprint that acts differently in different situations, it does however to some extent depend on what protein soup in which we are swimming around in. IS IT THE IDEOLOGICAL SOUP OF ALGORITHMS, WITHOUT BRING OUR HUMANITY ALONG WITH US.
NOW IS THE TIME TO SEPARATE THIS SYNTHETIC IDEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN CONTACT SO WE ALLOW ENOUGH TIME FOR NON-CONNECTED, SOCIAL EXPERIENCES.
TO RE-ESTABLISH ORGANIC HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS AND A LOCAL SOCIAL FABRICS.
A good start would be to banning all smartphones at sporting events, schools.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin
Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :
WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?
There is no shortage of people who know what is wrong.
The most frequently cited reason is probably the decline of religion, specifically the religion of the person writing it.
The list is endless.
Lack of respect for elders, unregulated capitalism, greed, alcohol, the economy, the rich, attachment, premarital sex, liberals, the unemployed, pride, lawyers, apathy, Starbucks.
The planet itself is fine and does what it does best which is to exist, orbit, and rotate.
The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?
We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.
We live in a world where if you didn’t snapshot it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.
We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.
We live in a world where our tv’s and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.
What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?
What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors and didn’t fear them?
What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?
What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail?
What happened to the world as one nation under God?
The answer I suppose depends on seeing the world within framed views of rich and poor.
What is clear is that people’s desires are contradictory, so it becomes a matter of democracy.
The problem is that most people fail to see things from other peoples perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. Just different point of views. People have become greedy and have forgotten their own truth but what happens when people stop caring.
I’m going to assume almost everyone knows that poverty is a huge problem in so many countries across the world, you’re not starving right now but you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that are.
I thought by the end of writing this, I would know what was wrong with humanity, but I don’t and I would be most grateful to anyone that can offer an explanation.
I think it was Einstein who said that ” we seem to have found the way but lost the destination”. We all seek understanding and sympathy if not empathy.
Industrial Civilization leaves us slaves to nothingness and our last days are spent in a hospital where machines are our mothers.
The only thing that is certain in life is the depravity of mankind.
As a species, we generally are self-destructive, greedy, and overpopulated.
We are the only species that hunts on a full stomach, enact genocide, and create wars by selling arms.
Unfortunately, the current technological advances are not going change the fundamental problem of what we call civilization.
Ever since the dawn of our species through no fault of our own, we have been unable to act as one : (FOR THE COMMON GOOD).
EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.
We now enter a new age of TECHNOLOGY where data is feeding artificial intelligence that is, in turn, fanning advances in the world of scientific research, that is and will have far-reaching consequences on all aspect of living.
However, despite thousands of academic papers on the subject, our current civilization relies on trial and error.
The core of our present-day technology is flawed in as much as it is going to created greater inequality. While we are busy focusing on computer intelligence artificial intelligence might arrive in a living form first and bring with it unprecedented ethical challenges.
THE CORE OF SCIENCE SHOULD BE TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE THAT OTHER PEOPLE CAN TAKE AND BUILD ON.
We need to push the frontiers of our knowledge with deep knowledge far beyond cool social apps, and neural networks that are presently trampling over moral boundaries.
We need more minds thinking about where it’s all going to end up and not allow computers to figure out for itself.
OUR CIVILIZATION NEEDS TO WIN THE RACE BETWEEN THE GROWING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE GROWING WISDOM WHICH WE WILL MANAGE IT.
EVEN IF THERE IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO HELP HUMANITY FLOURISH THERE MUST BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERE.
As always it is our complacency that is the real threat to the world.
So I leave you with these questions.
How can we ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that benefit all parts of society, and serves the public interest?
How can we design meaningful public engagement around the future impact of AI technologies?
FINALLY, ANY AI THAT GAINS CONTROL OVER IMPORTANT SYSTEMS WITH UNSUPERVISED INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO POSE AN EXISTENTIAL RISK NOT JUST TO THE PLANET BUT TO HUMANITY AS A WHOLE. SO EMPOWERED IT WILL BECOME UNQUESTIONABLE.
The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the hands that serve a few instead of the many.
Most of today’s and past world problems have their roots in Inequality.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In this forthcoming age of technology, WE SHOULD NOW BE QUESTIONING what will be the point of life if we are not living it alone with free will.
Some like me are critical of technology, holding that it leads to alienation from nature, environmental destruction, the mechanization of human life, and the loss of human freedom.
Technology represents the knowledge of modern humanity, which seeks to control all of nature, including human nature.
As Martin Heidegger has forewarned, “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control” it will become the master over and destructive of what is.
The ongoing convergence between science fiction and real-life technological advances makes it easy to imagine ‘the digital age’ as an era of conflict between human and bits of intelligence.
Machines are becoming stunningly adept at making decisions for us on the basis of vast amounts of data – and getting better at this at an equally stunning rate.
It’s precisely because our present machines can neither think nor feel that THE ABOVE QUESTION matters.
We call them “smart” and marvel at their powers; we paint pictures of a world in which they, not we, are determining what we do and how.
We can’t help ourselves: we see purpose, autonomy, and intent everywhere.
Machine efficiency is a very poor model indeed for understanding ourselves; and cutting people out of every possible loop – the better to assure speed, profit, protection or military success – is a poor model for a future in which humans and machines equally maximize their capabilities.
When I think about the future of human-machine interactions, and the ways in which our ideas and identities do not simply belong to us anymore the crowd in the cloud is becoming a stream of shared consciousness.
So digital technologies challenge us once again to ask what place we occupy in the universe: what it means to be creatures of language, self-awareness, and rationality. What will be the point of life?
Unfortunately, our conceptual lens is being warped by technology. Why? because death is always in the background. It makes a mockery of everything we do.
In asking what it means to be human, we are prone to think of ourselves as individual, rational minds, and to describe our relationships with and through technology on this basis: as isolated “users” whose agency and freedom are a matter of skills and reasoned options; as task-performers who are existentially threatened by any more efficient agent.
We have little in common with our creations – and a nasty habit of blaming them for things we are doing to ourselves.
Our machines may not yet be alive, nor yet conscious, but the evolutionary pressures surrounding them are every bit as intense as in nature and with few of its constraints.
Life is now, however, it is impossible to get to now never mind the future.
So what is now? Is it just our conscious.
The future is just another thought arising now, and the past is just a memory.
Reality according to quantum physics only exists when it is observed by something that is conscious. But what is an observer? It is not necessarily a human.
Is reality just information?
Information is meaning in the form of symbolism or code, and code can represent itself.
However, information then needs meaning and meaning requires choice which is subjective to perception so something else which is conscious, which then needs time and time effects itself both in the past and the future to produce reality – life, so reality is its own creator with on alternative.
We have a very limited and confused view of what is going on.
How can we create lives that a truly worth living?
If we wish to build not only better machines, but better relationships with and through machines, we need to start talking far more richly about the qualities of these relationships; how precisely our thoughts and feelings and biases operate; and what it means to aim beyond efficiency at lives worth living.
What does a successful collaboration between humans mediated by technology look like? Our creations are certain to grow far beyond our current comprehension:
Indeed, the paradoxical and perhaps troubling state of being “recorded live”, might be one answer to the question of what it means to be human in the current digital world.
Are we all just 3d quasi-crystals or tetrahedra or pixelated reality called the E8 Lattice.
If wisdom is the art of living, of existing, participation in human life is fundamental (Spiegelberg, 1965, 426).
It might be that through our engagement with the actuality of human life, encountering and pursuing the art of living, we might circumvent the trappings that perceive, in modern science and technology, the soteriological temptation of overcoming contingency and infinitude by means of rational inquiry and technological powers.
By such an exercise, humanity might learn not simply to be the handmaid of modern scientific progress and technological promise. Rather, humanity might learn to work against such things. This work, however, ought not to be done in opposition, as a competing exercise of power; but for the redemption of a broken world, or a broken person, which has been encountered,
The redirection of technology will be no easy task.
Contemporary technology is so tightly tied to industry, government, and the structures of economic power that changes in direction will be difficult to achieve. As the critics of technology recognize, the person who tries to work for change within the existing order may be absorbed by the establishment.
But the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling.
Each generation lays the ground for the next, ours is ensuring that the voice of the coming generation will be lost in the algorithms of the future.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We are just beginning to realize that our societies are founded on a very limited definition of power.
Google it and you will see where the real power is.
Data:
As software devours the world (we are all producing trillions of it) – to be exploited by Algorithms, that are aligning us all in one direction of living, without awareness or the ability to truly see the world around us.
There is no argument that Artificial Intelligence is the way forward but what is the point if we are not citizens anymore.
We’re consumers AND WILL REMAIN SO FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.
AI for profit is infiltrating every aspect of our lives and is going to expand the world inequality beyond wars.
If we want to change the direction of AI to serves us all we have to change the way corporations view us and the world.
And we all know that this is impossible.
There is no point in hoping that our governments are going to introduce regulations that are going to stick, as AI has passed the threshold of any transparency.
The warnings surrounding the AI revolutions are plenty.
The voiced by Elon Musk: ( Do you Trust this Computer) The not so late Prof Stephen Hawking warns us, Westworld: shows us.
Unfortunately, there is no money to be made ensuring that AI servers us rather than the owners of the algorithms. So we end up working on symptoms all the time, ignoring the causes till its too late.
This too late scenario is not an option with AI for profit that’s is now developing its own rules as to who gets what at what price, with little or no obligations for any of this technology to contribute to the core values of life.
AI might stabilize our environment, allow us to share more equally in the opportunities of life without damaging the planet, but this is pie in the sky.
The need for a balance needed for this technology which brings such benefits in terms of health, communication, education, safety, business, is now paramount.
In this, I am all right Jack world such an achievement would be surely something miraculous.
The reality is while we are all distracted, bombarded with false news no one has a crystal ball to see the future, but we do have the cultural history to know what happens when power is abused.
What will artificial intelligence do to us?
AI deals with ends: It establishes its own objects. In essence, AI represents thoughtless.
AI makes its own decisions about who and where to target.
We are in danger of losing the essence of human cognition. U Tube is full of disinformation rhetoric, social media full of weird views.
With social media playing such a big part in our lives, could we be sacrificing our mental health and well-being as well as our time? In some ways, the AI explosion represents the latest challenge for transparency.
What does the evidence actually suggest?
Conclusive findings are limited.
People use social media to vent about everything from customer service to politics, but the downside to this is that our feeds often resemble an endless stream of stress.
It won’t be long before marketers will be buying data science products that autonomously construct audience segments and our world organizations such as Governments will not be able to cope.
At the moment most of AI is narrow, meaning it is specifically programmed to accomplish one task or two, however it is well on the way to developing what is called general AI that will assist us with practically everything we do.
It must be remembered that machines will not learn the same way as humans do. They will think in an abstract way whether they are managing multiple goals simultaneously or not.
An example is Face recognition.
Before all of this happens:
Surely we as the creators of AI should be passing laws that require all AI programs to be vetted against human values. That a copy of the original program should be held in a virtual cloud strongroom available to one and all. (See previous Posts)
Until we have a viable path forward.
There are now billions of people walking around with supercomputers in their pockets, and they are all connected to each other by the internet. Unless we use this power to replace Capitalism with a form of Direct democracy that really recognize that we are interconnected, that our well being is inextricable from that of our ecosystems, profit-seeking Algorithms and there like will continue to rape our Planet.
In Jason Silva latest video (below) he conveniently ignores in his presentation the power of the planet to move not just continents but all of us.
When he advocates that AI, Biology, and Nanotechnology will combine to make nature with technology one and the same to become the motherboard of technology he ignores nature.
Nature is the physical world collectively, plants, animals, landscapes, oceans, air, and all other features and forces that are not created by man.
It won’t be the coming together of AI,Biology, Nanotechnology, nor big data, or patterns, that is going to tax the human imagination, rather the rewards of climate change that is well on the way to changing the planet we all live on.
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
Surely its time for all of us to stop acting as though we are all independent of Life.
To see the future first you have to be able to imagine it.
People might be beginning to understand but the clock is running out faster and faster which is being signaled by nature year after year while banks are commercializing its very existence.
Including us, none of the worlds in the universe are immune to natural limits.
If we and our politicians are still dragging our feet in another ten, twenty, thirty years we will have degrees of climate change that we will simply not be able to manage. The whole world will be in trouble.
As all the bad things re climate change are coming true assisted by the inertia of AI which is getting build into the system this time we will not be able to rely on coal to generate energy,
The chances of Technology (In the form of Algorithms) tackling inequality or driving sustainability are dismal in the extreme. (See previous postings)
The coming global problems that are going to be created by technology are obvious to see, lack of meaningful employment with the resulting immigration causing civil unrest and a return to Nationalism.
Just look at the results of Paris Climate Agreements being adhered too.
A complete allusion due to the rise of Nationalism.
Why?
Because of nationalism, we are now beginning to address the world problems on all the wrong levels.
We need to be looking forward not backward. Make America great, or Brexit Britain the two current prime examples.
We are now all living with technology and no government can control it.
Now more than ever the global capitalistic economy with national politics does not work.
Basic human needs are changing and even if we manage to establish a Basic Wage for all it will not solve who lives or dies.
Human stupidity or violence should never be underestimated. There is no post-truth fake news it has been with us for thousands of years.
No one has the time to analyze all the information that AI is producing other than another machine to make a judgment.
( I often feel that we should all be changing Facebook, Twitter, Google and the like for the information we are supplying them with.)
We have out of date Organisations that are incapable of making anything stick.
So I hear you saying what can be done.
First and for most, we must apply a World Aid Commission on all Profit-seeking Algorithms, on all high-frequency trading, on all sovereign wealth funds acquisitions, on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,00, on all world Lotto prize money etc. (See previous postings)
Then we must create a technology storm room where all programmes relating to technology in all its forms are held with access to all in sundry.
Of course, this is pie in the sky as it will never happen.
Since the dawn of history, the human has not been able to share for the common good of all, but there is one thing that might focus our minds sooner than extinction and that is the price of oil as it runs out.
New media such as Social Media seems to be driving a return to a more pluralistic communication System and Social movement activists may be seen as consumers of these new media, and for this very reason find attention for their demands.
But this, in fact, is open to différent types of interprétation.
So where are we?
As F.M. Powicke said: ” Political and social history are in my view aspects of the same process. Social Life loses half its interest, and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately”
Social media with its networks and its rules petitions and false news that go beyond democratic representation and is achieving exactly what Powicke rightly identified.
Social left politics is in disarray, Right-wing politics on the rise, Liberal politics in the pockets of Economic growth and the technologic revolution.
It is, therefore, time for in-depth research on the interactions between movement organizations and the society of social media that goes beyond the analysis of media bias.
In course of constructing the political landscape of these movements, if there is going to be any chance. We must not allow the world to be governed by the altar of profit, whether its Apple, Microsoft or some other monopoly platform.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The vast majority of us now live in cities far removed from nature, walking around with our faces in smartphones connected to the cloud by algorithms sporting fancy names like Twitter, Facebook etc.
I am sure you have read or hear that we are now connected more than ever in our history, but most of this connectivity is false. As amazing as this seems, this is just the beginning of what we can expect.
Mobile technology has seen a meteoric rise in adoption since the debut of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years have given us significant advancements in mobile technology, but relative to the span of recorded human history, seven years is still a short time.
We’re barely skimming the surface of what we can expect from technology.
This very moment we live in a world in which news is broken in under 140 characters and people are more driven by bouncing icons on their mobile phones than what can be experienced outside of their 3.5” screen.
Google attempts to understand our behaviors to deliver more relevant information and content to better connect with users through their various services.
As connected as we are now, there is still a fundamental disconnect between people and the companies that attempt to reach them through these technologies.
We may one day reach a point where true conversations can happen between man and machine, but for now, it is still up to the people, the marketers and brand ambassadors of the world, to drive this human connection.
So what does all of this mean?
The world used to be really small. People were limited to what happened in their city or village and every now and then, if the event was truly important, the news spread far enough. They wrote letters that would take months to reach their final destination if ever at all. The information was kept by few. You would hear from countries directly involved in the recent history of yours and you would barely ever make it very far from home. And even if you did, it was not an everyday thing or an everyday decision for anyone.
This was the life less than 100 years ago.
And to put things in perspective, humans have been on earth for around 200.000 years and the Earth herself is 4.543 billion years old.
So we can agree that the way we live now is fairly recent.
“We are now so disconnected” with the madness being amplified year after year with so much information it leaves us with 3 choices:
You will listen to it as if this had nothing to do with you what so ever.
Or
You hide under your blankets. Forever. And deny it. Live in the bubble. Proclaim that all is well. Refuse to see the disconnection to the point that you are unable to move or function.
Or
We can take a stand, and make a choice.
We can listen enough to know and make an informed choice and then we can choose to do something about it.
This is where the greatness is found.
There are no absolutes in science but we have to begin to trust the science of climate change.
Why?
Because it is untestable that this is the best planet we know, and it is clear beyond any doubt that the risk to us all is climate change.
The move beyond the land and our disconnection from nature are impressive… but it is also one of the main threats facing us all.
With or without the Paris climate agreements: We are still pumping 70 million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere a day.
Rest assure that climate change will not all happen at once.
It must now be treated as a continual threat with no debate.
We exist by nature consent not the other way around and the sooner we learn it the better.
It is the time that we put sustainability on all Education syllabus.
It is the time for all of us to demand that all-weather forecasting slots on our televisions screens at least once every three months addressed climate change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?
Not as much as you might think.
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.
You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.
There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.
However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.
The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.
Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:
Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.
More than half the world’s population is still offline.
Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.
By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.
Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.
The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)
Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.
Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.
Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.
When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!
Technology is not destiny, education is.
Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.
If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.
MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.
It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..
Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.
The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.
Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.
But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself. According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.
Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.
The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).
So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).
Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.
The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.) Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.
You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.
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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’
What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’
Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.
It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.
UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.
Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.
Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?
I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.
Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.
Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.
UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.
It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.
UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.
There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.
So why is it not being done?
Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
I can hear you saying where will the money come from?
Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.
It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly.
As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”
All human comments and suggestions 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.
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.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
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