Category Archives: Modern Day Communication.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THE CLIMATE CRISES IS NO LONGER A LOOMING THREAT IT IS ARTFICAL INTELLIGENCE.

29 Saturday May 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Dehumanization., Digital age., Enegery, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Green Energy., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Reality., Renewable Energy., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Eight-minute read) 

We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.

All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.

In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.

There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are. 

Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.

To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician. 

Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.

Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today. 

His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives. 

Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.     

The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.  

It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all. 

Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.

Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.

THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.  

SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER-  GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN. 

SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts) 

                                  _______________________ 

 

We are now presented with two very different futures. 

The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.

or

We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.

For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.  

The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.

HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.

To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.

The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.

The question is who is going to pay for the transition.  

New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.

THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.

A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.

To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.

We will have to relearn the world to do so. 

We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.

At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.

The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.

Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.

One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.

Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.

The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.

To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.

To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything. 

To recognize a sense of shared humanity. 

To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.

To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.

Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.

Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.

They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.

As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool. 

The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence

The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.

There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.

 AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.

As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.

Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.

Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.

The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.

Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.

In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.

Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.

  • In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.

The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future. 

That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails. 

This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent. 

Why is the above urgent?

Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.    

These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust. 

The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”. 

These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Here is a few of them. 

FOOD SECURITY.

HEALTH ISSUES.

EDUCATION.

GENDER EQUALITY.

AFRICA.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION. 

OCEAN CONSERVATION.

WATER SCARCITY.

GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.

Artificial intelligence is not on the list. 

Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI). 

But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.

The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product. 

My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.

What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect? 

There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.  

 If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.     

We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.

As Harvey Sacks observed.

” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed” 

” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”  

All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS IT TIME TO STOP ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET.?

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom, Freedom of Speech, How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Ten-minute read) 

Since the internet was in its infancy, the rights of users to use it to express their opinions were sacrosanct.

However, there is a price for “free” internet, and that we’ve given up more of ourselves than we ever intended to.

Concern already exists that Facebook and similar social media platforms act as echo chambers that validate opinions we already hold – fuelling precisely the type of extreme views that Facebook says it has a right to edit.

Might this new position simply result in more fake news?

The Internet has and is empowering masses of people by access to world-wide information sources, education, and communication but what is now considered permissible and acceptable online is shifting.

The question is with this newfound freedom, that is influencing every aspect of our lives for good or bad, should we be requiring people to register their identity when using the internet.?

If so how.

It would be true to say as we have become constantly connected, none of us are as anonymous as we think.

George Orwell presciently realized that if citizens don’t know what is true and what is false, they can’t make a judgment about what to object to in their lives.

Is it time to introduce an online digital passport to eradicate individual desires, such as credulity, abuse, gender-swapping, exploration, radicalizing, hacking, trolling, spreading false news, promoting popularism groups, bullying, racism, the list is endless? 

( Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says. 

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give internet users the right to privacy and the right to withhold their personal details.

The Malicious Communication Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 make it possible to prosecute “trolling” – and many other forms of online harassment are also now covered by the legislation. )

Platforms on the internet avoided liability by claiming they were “mere conduits” of these views and not “publishers” of them.  The argument goes that this includes protection for freedom of expression by the right to remain anonymous online.

So which should remain enshrined: freedom of speech or freedom from abuse?

The world feels smaller and we’ve celebrated this but in any human population, there will be people with irreconcilably different understandings of the truth.

Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it.

The world, however, has changed, and many of us may be in the time warp of old values. Human beings are poor witnesses, easily misled by a personal bias, profoundly influenced by their social environment.

As products of their society, social media and journalists are no exceptions. 

The world is now a much more dangerous place, not because of Covid -19 which is plunging it into a Depression with social media exposing a system of governance corseted by greed – profit before the people. Then, on the other hand, social media is like cancer at the heart of societies spreading the news, not what the facts are, but what men wish to see.

The press once seemed to have a conscience, thanks to history’s painful social conflicts and questions of war and peace.

Social media is not concerned with any historical lessons it being a wildfire of the short-term reactions of unfounded populism without any in-depth investigative journalism.      

It is becoming impossible to distinguish between paid news and actual, unbiased news.

You could say that the world has more pressing problems.

However, our current and future problems, like the internet, are all interconnected.

Shifting trends and the advancement in communication technology require a re-examination of the underlying principle and its application in new contexts.

There are attempts to get some control.

Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal.

Because like several other precious freedoms, free speech must be placed outside the reach of political exigency.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is impossible to pass binding regulations or laws that don’t restrict the sanctity of free speech.

Free speech or the freedom of expression is the modern civilization’s most precious gift to human society but it can’t be reaffirmed by drowning out its opponents.

                                                         ————

The issuing of Digital Passports could not be left to the whim of Facebook or any other internet providers.

Also “Digital identity solutions leave us open to data exploitation with the valuable data from these solutions (being) used for other purposes, so governments could not be involved in their issuing other than making supporting laws with large fines. 

The most obvious hitch in this plan is that not everyone has a smartphone,

With the current Pandemic and vacations, there will be an attempt to introduce Covid-19 free digital health certification (Of course, this would only be applicable to people with smartphones.) and they could become a prerequisite for some activities.

But for now, we’re many steps removed from that kind of streamlined process even becoming possible. Widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of any country’s response to COVID-19 so far.

So here is the challenge. 

Is it possible to create a Digital Passport that is unhackable, that can be applied for online, that would combine your present Passport information, that you could use to vote, to register an internet identity, and carry your medical history. 

People would only accept such a thing if it commands public trust.

As evidence with the recent election in the USA entrusting your democracy to a black-box proprietary system that is subject to hacking, glitches, and errors, but NOT subject to scrutiny, analysis, or independent verification, is the surest and quickest way to lose your democracy. 

However, creating an internet user register could be possible not only authenticating the user but making it more transparent and ensure that users have the right to remedy when wrong decisions are made.

As for platforms, they know what they need to do because civil society has told them for years.

Just in case they have not got the message they should ensure that the decisions they make about speech are in line with global human rights standards, rather than making the rules up as they go.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; ARE WE FOOLING OURSELVES WHEN WE SAY UNIVERSAL VALUE’S?

06 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Reality., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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(Five-minute read) 


Never in history is such a question more important. Unfortunately, we live in a world of distractions.

In my previous post to this one, (THE HARDEST THING OF ALL TO SEE IS ALREADY THERE.)   I attempted to say that the truth has no past.

By this, I meant that the truth is reality, and therefore religion and the state must be separated.

Only then can one hope for value with the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. A value is considered universal when it goes beyond laws and beliefs; rather, it is considered to have the same meaning for all people and does not vary according to the societies that have evolved. 

 In fact, cultural relativism is a belief that opposes the existence of universal values; proposes that a value can not be universal because it is perceived differently in each culture.

Given the ambiguity of the term, the existence of universal values ​​can only be understood as the values ​​that have to do with the basic requirements of the human being. Such as Fresh Air, Freshwater, Food, Clean Energy. 

Now with AI infiltrating our lives, it seems that the faster we travel, the importance of there place is getting lost.

It seems because there are no universal moral values, our command of science simply can not coexist with morals, and our internet fed imaginations 

We talk about the central issues of our times: A universal pandemic, an economic depression, continuing wars, climate change, migration, artificial intelligence, rising inequalities, erosion of the power of the vote, loss of individualism, loss of connection to ecosystems, to mention just a few of the problems to define any values that are universal.

We have many governments doubling down on the blame game and brinkmanship. 

We have bioengineering which alone is now much greater danger than a nuclear war. 

We have the maldistribution of wealth. 

We have world leaders unwilling to see beyond the next election. 

We have the extinction rebellion. 

We have non-transparent digital data.

We have 10.000 to 130,000 species going extinct each year.

We have a population of 7.7 billion   

We have extreme weather and biodiversity loss.

I ask myself why is it that with so many of us tryin’ to improve society, not that much changes but I hope that we don’t make changes to satisfy the noisemakers.

Rather than separating one problem from another, we need to connect them.

i.e. Climate changes to war and war to climate changes. 

The question remains.

> How do we the current guardians of the planet achieve a balance between living our lives and the life of the planet, that allows us to live them in the first place. 

 It is no longer that logic alone will solve the problems, nor protests, or political will but within functional societies, we do still have the ultimate weapon – VIEWING AND BUY POWER  and both are available in every type and form of human culture.

They must be added to the deep emotions of religion if we are to achieve change.

The life of now economies and pay later must come to an end if we are to avoid the hazards of the future. 

If Extinction Rebellion wants to be heard, it will not do so on top of bamboo towers stopping newspapers to be deliveries, or sticking themselves to windows. 

It must use social media digital platforms to encourage its supporters to use their buying power to attack profit for profit sake. 

Certain human characteristics as valuable – life regardless of whether or not it is believed in said characteristic.  

PROFIT WITHOUT CONTRIBUTION TO UNIVERSAL VALUES IS THE ENEMY. 

With these weapons, we can effect change and avoid the hazards to come.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S IS ENGLAND ENTERING A GOLDEN ERA IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE?

17 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., 2020: The year we need to change., Brexit., COVID-19, Disconnection., Donald John Trump, Economic Depression., European Union., Heredity Monarchy., homelessness., Human values., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Nigel Farage., Pandemic, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, President of the USA., Reality., Refugees., Robot citizenship., Sleeping Rough., Sovereign wealth fund, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The USA., Trade Agreements., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH

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    (Four-minute read) 

Here is a country that is losing its marbles.

In an interconnected world where there is no such thing as sovereignty because globalization means that nation-states submit themselves to international treaties and international agreements that are not always in their best interests.  

The recent economic crisis that started in 2007 and now the coming economic depression and the continuing pandemic will prove that sovereignty of nations being subsumed by international bodies cuts both ways as the global economy is tightly interconnected and hence, cannot be regulated by nations in isolation.

Here is a country that on 30 June 1997,  the final embers of its empire came to an end with the 99- years lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Never before has a country passed a colony directly to a communist regime that does not even pretend to respect conventional democratic values.

However the British Empire – for all its messy crimes and misdemeanors – was equally praiseworthy.

The empire was and is not just a story of domination and subjection but something more complicated: the creation of novel or hybrid societies in which notions of governance, economic assumptions, religious values and morals, ideas about property, and conceptions of justice, conflicted and mingled, to be reinvented, refashioned, tried out or abandoned.

The question is are we now to witnessing the final act. 

The non-recognition of England is already being used by its national broadcasting company the BBC referring to England as the four nations.  

In fact, England is already fragmented.

English nationalists if such a thing exists appear to be blind to the breakup of England.

Today, a hundred years on, the world is witnessing remarkable self-destruction in England.

An uneasy transition has or is taking place, from a decaying colonial legacy to a country that sees life through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram lies, manipulation, in every area…..with a global crisis forming, which is not just a Pandemic but an Economic depression with mass unemployment.

The question now is whether British people can continue to play their part in the development of the modern world. 

It has to pump trillions of quantitative easing money into its banks at the cost of ten years of Austerity. Dumping the EU its largest market on the results of a non-legally- totally false informed non legally binding referendum while building two Aircraft carriers and replacing worthless nuclear submarines, while 8.4 million its people alone are living in sub-standard housing with 400,000 people are either homeless or at risk of being homeless relying on foodbanks. 

The people themselves – about half who no longer give a rat’s a— about England, who are now hellbent on their smartphones, Ipads, creating an unrealistic, relativistic, melting pot utopia.

These people will be living on the English purse for some time, not the stuff of which national pride is made. They have other priorities dedicated to its demise. 

One would have to wonder why migrants risking life and limb to get here. 

Perhaps it because all the servants are leaving. 

These are the strange things happening, that demonstrate quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world, both devotion to business and profit, not people. 

“We convinced many countries, many countries – and I did this myself for the most part – not to use Huawei because we think it’s an unsafe security risk,” the US president Donald Dump said.

(This is a man who seems to wake up every morning wondering what controversy he can provoke, what headlines he can create.

Diplomacy, or the lack of it, can be a complicated business. We’ve learned that from observing Donald Trump.

Both his campaign and presidency is marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and his whims.

This is a man far more consumed with himself than with the nation’s well-being.

From that moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics.)

With the UK now becoming the US junior partner, (one of the most unreliable partners for any country) who cares when a phenomenal’ trade deal beyond Nigel Farage is promised, providing it sends its new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth to the South China Seas with American warplanes, and supplies the Arabs with bombs to finish off Yeham.   

It’s one thing to get rid of the Chinese firm Huawei and its 5G infrastructure and in return to sour the world’s second-largest economy behind the US, which has more money in the bank than any other country. 

Indeed three of the world’s 10 biggest sovereign wealth funds are Chinese, together holding more than $1.5tn (£988bn) in assets.

Not too long ago the UK was one of China’s favorite places to invest – not anymore. 

Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, warned: “China wants to be UK’s friend and partner. But if you treat China as a hostile country, you would have to bear the consequences.”

 China operates an Authoritarian form of capitalism against Anglo – American capitalism which is the root of the problem. Global supremacy.

China’s investments may well be subordinate to its National Development and reform commission, but the staggering truth of Huawei is that the US does not want China to be a superpower when it comes to technology.

With the pandemic being used to push the protection of businesses the world population will eventually be tracked.  

Both the US and England might well end up as viewed as failed states due to the handling of the COVID-19 with both countries ending up with up distant and withdrawn people far from enhanced by COVID-19.

Not too long ago, the UK did a 79 million deal to import pig semen from China for stemcell research.

Its not stemcell research it needs. It needs a lot of fixing but isn’t that what the next four years are going to be about?

What is needs is some Face Recognition and a written constitution.  All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. YOU CAN TAKE THE KNEE BUT WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES A NATION.

24 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Civilization., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy, Digital age., Disconnection., Donald Trump., European Union., Evolution, Facebook, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., POST COVID-19., Social Media, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Twenty-minute read) 

IT IS NOT COVID-19 OR TAKING THE KEEN OR THE GDP THAT MAKES A NATION. 

SO LET US ASK SOME QUESTIONS:

What is it these days that constituents a Nation?

How does a nation emerge and evolve?  

What are the precise differences between a nation and a gathering of people?

It is hard, -and even one may claim impossible- to give satisfactory answers.

Nations seem so compelling, so “real,” and so much a part of the political and cultural landscape, that people think they have lasted forever. In reality, they come into being and dissolve with changing historical circumstances – sometimes over a relatively short period of time, like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

Did you notice that suddenly out of nowhere, the BBC has started to refer to England as the Four Nations?

Charles Stewart Parnell said  “No Man Has the Right to Fix the Boundary to the March of a Nation” no man has a right to say to his country—thus far shalt thou go and no further.

Ernest Renan in 1882 said nations share “a soul” and memories of “endeavors, sacrifice, and devotion.

Historical events uniquely fuse together the population of a given territory into a nation.

These nations share “a soul” and memories of “endeavors, sacrifice, and devotion.”

But, because of migration, most modern states include within their borders diverse communities that challenge the idea of national homogeneity and give rise to the community of citizenship, rather than membership in the nation.

So is a nation the kind of moral conscience, which we call a nation? 

If one were to believe some political theorists, a nation is above all a dynasty, representing an earlier conquest, one which was first of all accepted, and then forgotten by the mass of the people.

With technology however we are learning that man is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains.

Why, then, does national identity give rise to such extremely strong feelings?

And why would so many be ready to “die for the nation” in time of war?

THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. 

In the age of global transportation and communication, new identities arise to challenge the “nation,” but the pull of nationalism remains a powerful force to be reckoned with – and a glue that binds states together and helps many people (for better and for worse) make sense out of a confusing reality.

Language invites people to unite, but it does not force them to do so.

The United States and England, Latin America, and Spain speak the same languages yet do not form single nations.

Religion cannot supply an adequate basis for the constitution of a modern nationality either.

Geography, or what is known as natural frontiers, undoubtedly plays a considerable part in the division of nations.

So a nation’s existence is if you will pardon the metaphor, a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.

National identity is typically based on shared culture, religion, history, language or ethnicity, though disputes arise as to who is truly a member of the national community or even whether the “nation” exists at all (do you have to speak French to be Québécois or Irish to be Irish? Are Wales and Tibet nations?). 

Theorizing further about nations, Renan says they reinforce themselves in a “daily plebiscite” of a common will to live together. 

This might have been true before the arrival of the internet and the smartphone.

Now the world can see into every backyard and what is on the washing line.

In other words, we are no longer living in a world defined by Nationhood but a world that is driven by the whims of bias, color, profit, and the inequality of the accident of birth. 

WE TODAY MIGHT LIVE BEHIND FRONTIERS BUT WE ALL CONNECTED TO ONE ANOTHER.

The term “nationalism” is simply not part of technology so the nation exists in the minds of its members as an “image”. 

For most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place.

THEN ALONG CAME SOCIAL MEDIA.  

Face book alone has around 2.6 billion people using it every month but it remains a sub-identities not a new identity; however, the technology it and other platforms are using does not reflect their impacts on nationhood.

After decades of inward-looking and jargon-infused discourse, governments are just beginning to wake up to social media and finally taking their communications seriously.

They reflect the grand narrative that is shaping a common sense of belonging.

Our digital identity is already an inextricable part of our lives, as is the technology that allows us to manage it. However, there are two really sad things about this and the unintended consequence of the use of these emerging technologies.

First, most people have no idea of the dramatic changes that are occurring slowly yet inexorably.  Second, this shift in identity, from internally derived to externally driven, can’t be good for us as (formerly unique?) individuals nor for us as a (formerly vital?) society.

We come to see our identities as those we would like to have or that we want people to see rather than who we really are. We then feel compelled to promote and market these identities through social media.

It is easier than ever to change our identity, yet it is harder than ever to control.

It isn’t difficult to see how external forces may now be gaining a disproportionate influence over our self-identities compared with previous generations. These platforms are shaping our self-identities in ways in which most of us aren’t the least bit aware.

In previous generations, most of the social forces that influenced our self-identities were positive; parents, peers, schools, communities, extracurricular activities, even the media sent mostly healthy messages about who we were and how we should perceive ourselves.

But now, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme in a social world where profit is motive and rule by the collection of data. 

On the Internet, people create imaginary identities in virtual worlds with a new generation contemplating a life of wearable computing, finding it natural to think of their eyeglasses as screen monitors, their bodies as elements of cyborg selves.

They are and will blur the boundaries between their on-line and off-line lives, and there is every indication that the future will include robots that seem to express feelings and moods, not nations.

We are ill-prepared for the new psychological world we are creating. 

The Internet constantly confronts us with evidence of our past but we are losing the chance to remake ourselves?

This is certain to have some kind of profound effect on the development of identity.

What that effect will be we’re not quite sure.

Smartphone—allows us to produce a narrative of our lives, to choose what to remember and what to contribute to our own mythos.

This is of particular importance for those who yearn to establish new identities.

The trouble is, most difficult memories aren’t captured by photos, videos, or tweets, complex historical past has to be read or taught as it has a major consequence: 

Memory is almost a form of political representation, enabled by social media; groups are able to preserve their history as they travel across continents.

National identity – there we are. 

But the main victim of today’s shenanigans when it comes to nationhood is that sentiment of self has been tempered for centuries by an intense feeling of collective suffering, generating a crave for unity, a thrive for a fusion of the entire society.

In the end, nations will form a federation like the USA and Europe.

Each nation of Europe represents too much of a specific history for the European spirit
to be anything else than the spirit of the European nations.

Over time this too shall pass eventually but it will take centuries for Europe to forget that Europe is just about nations. 

The USA under the Presidency of Donal Dump nationhood appears to mean that the more you destroy, the more you count.

The Uk now referred to itself as the four nations all of which have their national selections, with the exception of the Olympics.

The best way of being right in the future is, in certain periods, to know how to resign oneself to being out of fashion.

There can be little doubt that the present COVID-19 and the forthcoming Economics Depressions are and will start to exam what defines – A Nation.

The virus loves a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own ends, as it is not talking to itself.

Technology allows for self-representation and preservation of personal and collective identity by providing autonomy and empowerment but it now poses questions about authenticity in new, urgent ways.

Technology can be used to preserve the language, customs, and culture, but it will if not transparent and shared drive inequality without any understanding of the perspective of critical sociology. 

It’s my hope that as we become more sophisticated consumers of computational technology—and realize how much it is changing the way we see our world and the quality of our relationships.

Remember it is nationalism’s adaptability to most local conditions that allow it to thrive, especially when supported by a government intent on expanding its own power domestically and internationally.  It’s an attractive ideology for political leaders, as it provides a ready-made and widely-believed justification for increased political power in order to Make the Nation Great Again. 

One way or the other coming climate change, with mass migration, will redefine what it is to be a Nation.  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

27 Friday Mar 2020

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

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(Four-minute read) 


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

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

Why will it be?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Long live WikiLeaks. 

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: DOES ABSOLUTE TRUTH EXIST. IT IS EITHER ABSOLUTELY TRUE OR IT’S NOT. .

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Fake News., Google Knowledge., Honesty., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., Reality., Religious Beliefs., Social Media, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Fifteen-minute read. 

You don’t have to belive but it helps for something to be true.

Our modern society often seems geared towards quick fixes, superficial relationships, material things.

We are bombarded with advertising and social media images but below this superficial level of experience, there are deeper truths.

The problem of determining the truth in current events (and in other areas) when we’re faced with conflicting views from thousands of media and Internet sources seems insurmountable. Does this make sense? Is it likely?

While accepting that no one is going to get everything right all the time without the truth aiming for equality is a recipe for disappointment.

So we enter into our search for truth by asking these vital questions:

Is truth the property of verbal and written language, or is it now visual and as such by-passes the chaotic problem of human perception and interpretation?

Or is truth assumed to exist in an abstract realm of correctly conceived ideas? 

Or is the truth the true knowledge of things as they are now, as they have been in the past, and as they will be in the future?

What does it mean to know the truth? 

The most valuable asset you can have is trusting but to have trust it must be true?

Pragmatic proofs are paraded daily on TV and Social media which are both promoted by unregulated platforms with unchallenged Fake News making convincing claims to “knowing.” 

Truth used to be conceived as a property of accurately stated words or accurately conceived ideas that correctly characterize world realities like the Corna virus outbreak that might turn out to be the modern-day catalyst to defining the truth.

Let’s start with death as it has a way of concreating the mind.

It is undeniable or is it.

We can’t know anything for certain, so the truth is in need of a God.

Without the Ressurection, Christianity would not exist.

We can’t imagine X being simultaneously true and false in the same manner. Another word if something is true, it’s not simultaneously false in the same way. 

How to “prove” it.

All truth is empirically or scientifically testable.

There are no eyewitnesses who watched Big Bang so the assumption that something came from nothing is propositional truth. It has been the big question facing humanity since mankind crawled from the primordial ooze – where did the universe come from?

If we consider the hypothetical proposition of the impact of finding life on another planet or it arriving on this planet it will not prove anyone theological system right or wrong, so our confused view of what is true will remain.  

For an example of this is.

If by deduction reasoning, verified against observed facts penguins exist.

But put another way, the claim “penguins exist” is itself a penguin.

That said if someone just refuses to acknowledge logic, it ends all rational discourse. You can’t logically prove anything to someone who denies logic.

So deduction depends upon the nature of assumptions.

These assumptions are not applicable universally because the premises from which they are deduced may not hold good at all time and places.  

There is a part of the world that we can’t see. 

Quantium Maths is a realm of reality that doesn’t consist of material things but of non-material forms. Quantum physics brings us a new kind of reality, provides us with direct suggestions of how we can live in accordance with the numinous realm of the universe.

But the meaning and purpose of our nature are anchored in the numinous realm of reality, not virtual reality. We usually take our thinking for granted, and the thoughts in our mind tell us a lot of things, but they say nothing about where they are coming from!

The word, “consciousness” derives from the Latin, “con” and “sciencia”, and it means a state of “knowing together” what is true and not true.

There is no plural form because there is only one consciousness.

Our concepts of truth evolve in the same way in which our bodies evolve.

For some reason, in our history, worldviews have always been accompanied by threats.

We believe that the evolution of concepts and their understanding is the true function of biological evolution. It is impossible to know, whether we are evolving with the cosmic mind, or whether it is merely our mind that has to evolve to a better understanding of a non-evolving cosmic order.

We are left with verifiable truth taking many paths based on observations which become intellectual toys that the real world may forget in the intellectual gymnastics and mathematical treatment of the observations.

The principle of noncontradiction cannot be established scientifically only by a witness. 

Once you concede that *an* absolute truth exists, a whole slew of truth statements come with it:  

It can’t be absolutely true since that would create a contradiction:

So if you remove all religious beliefs it is very easy subconsciously to absorb the truth.

An ascending process” in which facts are collected, arranged and then general conclusions are drawn in which we arrive at a generalisation on the basis of particular observed facts. This process is realistic because it is based on facts and explains to them as they actually are. But it can only show that the hypothesis is not inconsistent with the known facts.

In reality, the collection of data is not illuminating unless it is related to a hypothesis.

Either because it is committed to religion being false (e.g., they want to live a sinful lifestyle, so they need to convince themselves that God isn’t real, or at least, worth obeying), or because they’re too proud to admit defeat, or because they’re not really that interested in investigating the issue deeply, or simply because they don’t see things the same way that you do.        

The narrower the problem on the basis of logical reasoning the truer it becomes verified by observation. 

The penguin stands verified. It does not need a witness or scientifically proven. 

But truth relies on the axiom that things are either true or false: things that are false cannot be true, and things that are true cannot be false.

There exists absolute and knowable truth, outside of the realm of the natural sciences, and not subject to empirical and scientific testing.

All scientific knowledge is built upon a bed of metaphysical propositions that cannot be established scientifically. Where experiment is practically impossible, abstraction and analysis afford the only means of escape from those which complicate the problem so much.  

So many people hold wrong opinions simply because they’ve never thought deeply on the subject. And our culture is absolutely toxic with wrongheaded philosophical and religious views and now false news.   

I won’t say you are wrong if you won’t say I am. The argument depends totally on the rules of the logic game. Unfortunately because of Social media, our intellects are falling.  

We established the truth of the claim by the witness and not those who hide behind logically incoherent arguments removing themselves from the field of logical discussion.

The only thing to do (I presume) is to attempt to lure them back by showing that they’ve transgressed logic and are simply appealing to emotion?

Assuming that the public square should be devoid of religion; assuming that faith is irrational; etc. “Absolute truth exists” is absolutely true.

On the other hand, no one can know anything for certain, is sceptic’s absurdity.

This statement is a broad (self-refuting) metaphysical and epistemological claim.

To achieve a trusted world it requires a compromise of the cultures.  

At this point in our analysis, we might ask:

Does it all matter? Why should we care?

Our answer is the belief that happiness in this life can be found only by understanding the spiritual background of the universe, and by living in accordance with it. 

This means that we have to recognize the invisible background of reality and accept the importance of spirit in our life. Denying the transcendent aspects of our nature can lead to serious problems for our physical health and spiritual well being.

The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth or someone may claim the right to tell it for you. 

Our task isn’t the task of slaves to technology, who have to serve their creator.

“If Materialism is false”, writes Imants Baruss “then what is true?”

What is true these days is that we economizing it.

Let people believe what they want, as long as those beliefs aren’t leading to hurtful or unlawful actions.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WITH THE INFORMATION AGE ARE WE HEADING FOR CYBEROCRACY.

30 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by in Cyberocracy., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Freedom, Google, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Populism., Reality., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute last post of the year read) 

 

Technology is not neutral or apolitical.

So information may very well come to succeed capital as a central theoretical concept for political and social philosophy.

The retrieval systems of the future are not going to retrieve facts but points of view. 

However, the weakness of databases is that they let you retrieve facts, while the strength of our culture over the past several hundred years has been our ability to take on multiple points of view.

The question is, will new technologies speed the collapse of closed societies and favour the spread of open ones. The information revolution empowers individuals, favours open societies, and portends a worldwide triumph for democracy—may not hold up as times change.

The revolution in global communications will forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.

We are witnessing this happing already with the rise of popularism – Election of Donal Trump and Boris Johnston, but the tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. However, mere tools aren’t enough. The tools are simply a way of channelling existing motivation.

The influence in the information age is indeed proving to revolve around symbolic politics and media-savvy — the ‘soft power’ aspects of influence.

The information revolution may well enable hybrid systems to take the form that does not fit standard distinctions between democracy and totalitarianism.  In these systems, part of the populace may be empowered to act more democratically than ever, but other parts may be subjected to new techniques of surveillance and control.

Technology with algorithms are leading to new hybrid amalgams of democratic and authoritarian tendencies, often in the same country, like China that is building a vast new sensory apparatus for watching what is happening in their own societies and around the world.

The new revolution in communications makes possible both an intense degree of centralization of power if the society decides to use it in that way, and large decentralization because of the multiplicity, diversity, and cheapness of the modes of communication.

Of all the uses to which the new technologies are being put, this may become one of the most important for the future of the state and its relationship to society.

So are we beginning to see the end of democracy and the beginning of Cyberocracy?   

Crime and terrorism are impelling new installations for watching cityscapes, monitoring communications, and mapping potential hotspots, but sensor networks are also being deployed for early warning and rapid response regarding many other concerns — disease outbreaks, forest protection.

However, the existence of democracy does not assure that the new technology will strengthen democratic tendencies and be used as a force for good rather than evil. 

The new technology may be a double-edged sword even in a democracy.

To this end, far from favouring democracy or totalitarianism, Cyberocracy may facilitate more advanced forms of both. It seems as likely to foster further divergence as convergence, and divergence has been as much the historical rule as convergence.

Citizens’ concerns about top-down surveillance may be countered by bottom-up “sousveillance” (or inverse surveillance), particularly if individuals wear personal devices for detecting and recording what is occurring in their vicinity.

One way or the other Cyberocracy will be a product of the information revolution, and it may slowly but radically affect who rules, how and why. That is, information and its control will become a dominant source of power, as a natural next step in political evolution.

Surplus information or monopoly information that is concentrated, guarded, and exploited for privileged economic and political purposes could and WILL most likely lead to Governance by social media platforms owned by Microsoft/ Apple/ Google/ Facebook/ Twitter.

When we change the way we communicate, we change society. 

The structure may be more open, the process more fluid, and the conventions redefined; but a hierarchy must still exist.

The history of previous technologies demonstrates that early in the life of new technology, people are likely to emphasize the efficiency effects and underestimate or overlook potential social system effects.

The information revolution is fostering more open and closed systems; more decentralization and centralization; more inclusionary and exclusionary communities; more privacy and surveillance; more freedom and authority; more democracy and new forms of totalitarianism.

The major impact will probably be felt in terms of the organization and behaviour of the modern bureaucratic state.

The hierarchical structuring of bureaucracies into offices, departments, and lines of authority may confound the flow of information that may be needed to deal with complex issues in today’s increasingly interconnected world.

Bureaucracy depends on going through channels and keeping the information in bounds; in contrast, Cyberocracy may place a premium on gaining information from any source, public or private. Technocracy emphasizes ‘hard’ quantitative and econometric skills, like programming and budgeting methodologies; in contrast, a Cyberocracy may bring a new emphasis on ‘soft’ symbolic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of policymaking and public opinion.

Why will any of this happen? 

Because the actual practice of freedom that we see emerging from the networked environment allows people to reach across national or social boundaries, across space and political division. It allows people to solve problems together in new associations that are outside the boundaries of formal, legal-political association.

As Cyberocracy develops, will governments become flatter, less hierarchical, more decentralized, with different kinds of middle-level officials and offices? 

Some may, but many may not. Governments [particularly repressive regimes] may not have the organizational flexibility and options that corporations have.

So where are we? 

Future trends:

  1. The advanced societies are developing new sensory apparatuses that people have barely begun to understand and use;
  2. A network-based social sector is emerging, distinct from the traditional public and private sectors.  Consisting largely of NGOs and NPOs, its rise is leading to a re-balancing of state, market, and civil-society forces;
  3. New modes of multiorganizational collaboration are taking shape, and progress toward networked governance is occurring;
  4. This may lead to the emergence of the nexus-state as a successor to the nation-state.
  5. We now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordination activities that take advantage of that change.
  6. Civil society stands to gain the most from the rise of networks since policy problems have become so complex and intractable, crossing so many jurisdictions and involving so many actors, that governments should evolve beyond the traditional bureaucratic model of the state.

There is no doubt that the evolution of network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies will attract government policymakers, business leaders, and civil society actors to create myriad new mechanisms for communication, coordination, and collaboration spanning all levels of governance. 

However, states, not to mention societies as a whole, cannot endure without hierarchies. 

In the information-age government may well undergo ‘reinventing’ and be made flatter, more networked, decentralized, etc.—but it will still have a hierarchy at its core.” As the state relinquished the control of commercial activities to private companies, both the nation and the state became stronger.  Likewise, as the social sector expands and activities are transferred to it, the state should again emerge with a new kind of strength, even though it loses some scope in some areas.

A central understanding of the big picture that enhances the management of complexity is now needed more than ever. 

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD WE BE GIVING AWAY OUR PERSONAL DATA FOR FREE.

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Big Data., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Face Recognition., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google Knowledge., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Robot citizenship., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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(Six-minute read)

 

Is it time we started to demand that if you use my personal data it’ill cost you because I am worth it.

We all make a trade-off between security and convenience, but there is a crucial difference between security in the old-fashioned physical domain, and security today.

Security is done digitally with algorithms exploiting and analysing your very mood.

In this digital lifestyle, it is nearly impossible to take part in the web world without leaving a trail behind.

Personal privacy is dead.

How to Protect Yourself From Mobile Data Collection

 

We have no clear sight into this world, and we have few sound intuitions into what is safe and what is flimsy – let alone what is ethical and what is creepy.

We are left operating on blind, ignorant, misplaced trust; meanwhile, all around us, without our even noticing, choices are being made.

With the increasing ownership of mobiles, marketing companies now have unlimited access to our personal data. Every site one opens has an agreement form to be ticked with terms and conditions that are all but unreadable on small screens.

It’s not a choice between privacy or innovation, it is the erosion of legally ensured fundamental privacy rights interfacing with apps.

Nuggets of personal information that seem trivial, individually, can now be aggregated, indexed and processed.

When this happens, simple pieces of computer code can produce insights and intrusions that creep us out or even do us harm. But most of us haven’t noticed yet.

Since there’s no real remedy, giving away our most sensitive and valuable data, for free, to global giants, with completely uncertain future costs, is a decision of dramatic consequence.

iCloud and Google+ have your intimate photos; Transport companies know where your travelcard has been; Yahoo holds every email you’ve ever written and we trust these people to respect our privacy.

You only have to be sloppy once, for your privacy to be compromised.

With your Facebook profile linked, I could research your interests before approaching you.

Put in someone’s username from Twitter, or Flickr and Creepy will churn through every photo hosting service it knows, trying to find every picture they’ve ever posted.

Cameras – especially phone cameras – often store the location where the picture was taken in the picture data. Creepy grabs all this geolocation data and puts pins on a map for you.

Then comes an even bigger new horizon.

We are entering an age of wireless information. The information you didn’t know you were leaking.

Maybe the first time you used a new app.

Every device with Wi-Fi has a unique “MAC address”, which is broadcast constantly as long as wireless networking is switched on.

Many shops and shopping centres, for example, now use multiple Wi-Fi sensors, monitoring the strength of connections, to triangulate your position, and track how you walk around the shop. By matching the signal to the security video, they get to know what you look like. If you give an email address in order to use the free in-store Wi-Fi, they have that too.

Once aggregated, these individual fragments of information can be processed and combined, and the resulting data can give away more about our character than our intuitions are able to spot.

When I realised that I’m traced over much wider spaces from one part of town to another I asked myself what is the point in giving you information away when you could franchise it out and get something back in return.

Public debate on the topic remains severely stunted.

Through the current trends in the globalization of technology is in the knowledge society, we have to start asking where is the world moving to?

The concepts and applications of biocomputing, medical informatics, anthropocentric computing, high-performance computing, technological diffusion, predictive analysis tools, genetic algorithms, and cultural informatics all in new or little known fields of information technology.

Many organisations create, store, or purchase information that links individuals’ identities to other data. Those who can access and analyse this personal data profiles can take deep insights into an individual’s life.

A law-abiding citizen might say “I have nothing to conceal.” This is a misconception.

In any debate, negotiation or competitive situation, it is an advantage to know about the other party’s position in order to achieve one’s own desired outcome.

Data brokers – buy and combine data from various sources (online and offline) to deliver information on exactly defined target groups to their customers.

“Click-world” merchants know a lot more about their clients’ private and financial habits than the individual knows about the merchant company or its competitors.

You, therefore, could not be blamed for asking -given the increasing bargaining position of merchants, is the consumer still getting a good deal?

It would be interesting to know how good a deal consumers get when they exchange their data for free-of-charge online services.How to Protect Yourself From Mobile Data Collection

Data has become an economic good for which the “producer” is usually not remunerated.

Data privacy is a matter of choice and individuals should have the right to decide if a company can collect information on them.

Is there a solution:

Of course if you Google it what you will get will be all sorts of advice such as, avoid cookies, use the VPN or disabling the location tracking in your devices and use Browsers that don’t track your activities.

It’s tempting to just play ostrich and put our heads under the sand however data collection is affecting and will affect your life.

This is why we must preserve the right of individuals to know what kind of information is being collected and what is being done with that information.

You could say that the most valuable thing on your computer or network is the data you create. After all, that data is the reason for having the computer and network in the first place.

The first thing to understand is that there is very little that can “prove” that any company (whether an individual, government entity, corporation, etc.) is engaged in safe or adequate data handling processes.

Therefore :

We must retain the right to define our own privacy boundaries and then advocate for those boundaries before invasions in our daily lives become out of control and irreversible.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT MODERN DAY POLITICS.

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, England., English parliamentary proceedings., European Elections., European Union., First past the post., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Political voting systems., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Social Media, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Five-minute read) 

My vote makes no difference is plausibly a part of the modern-day phenomenon of algorithm analyse voting that has lead to both the election of Donal Trump and Boris Jonhson.

It is resulting in the loss or deliberate yielding up of decision-making power by national governments to other organisations with Social media platforms both domestic and international— Like Facebook, Twitter,  etc. 

Combine this with Ngo’s, quangos, the law courts, business corporations, central banks, the E.U., the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and its no wonder that many are no longer content as voters to be the foot soldiers of a social or religious bloc.

They want to make a difference individually and although in a mass democracy this may lead to inevitable frustration, few would want to return to a time of extreme political polarisation or digital dictatorship. 

The symptoms of short term popularism driven by social media platforms and the smartphone are leading to a no-deal Brexit are the same worldwide. 

Denunciations of the system, citizen disengagement from mainstream parties, electoral volatility and/or apathy, the rise of dissenting movements that appeal to large numbers who are, or feel themselves to be, disfranchised or ignored by an establishment dominated by uncontrollable and often faceless forces are replacing old political systems. 

Hence the perception that parties and politicians are no longer willing or able to represent their voters, that they are “all the same” and that politics has become an irrelevant smokescreen for the machinations of special interests and lobby groups.

When relatively few people are losing out—these changes may not seem to matter much. They may even seem desirable: “pooling of sovereignty,” removal of political interference from civil society, increasing checks on the executive by domestic and international courts, subsidiarity in decision-making, encouragement of inward investment, and so on.

This creates a political and administrative burden that can neither manage nor surrender—a great cause of popular discontent.

Not so, of course, when things suddenly go wrong.

One has only to look at England:

A combination of capitalism and socialism in a highly centralized system without a nationally elected government makes England today a very unusual place.

This oddity has opened up a constitutional free-for-all.

However, national identity, not administrative or economic efficiency, is the core of both devolution and independence— and the rest is window-dressing with the past affecting us all in more complex and deep-seated ways than in countries that have experienced violent historic ruptures.

Community loyalties, however deep-rooted, are not permanent.

Whatever happens in England, there will remain the question of how to govern a big, growing, diverse, crowded, and increasingly self-conscious England.

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