Category Archives: Reality.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WILL RUSSIA INVADING UKRAINE LEAD TO WW3?

16 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Human Collective Stupidity., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Reality., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Telling the truth., The cost of war., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, War, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Where's the Global Outrage.

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No one knows and no one wants to find out.

Let’s cut right to the chase here:

The only certainty about the war over Ukraine is that all existing certainties have been shattered.

If one listens to main media it would be fair to say that it is in a warp way encouraging Mr Putin to use nuclear weapons, ( not that he needs encouragement )

So how worried should you be?   How does this end?

It is difficult to see how Putin “wins.” But he cannot accept defeat.

As long as there is no direct conflict between Russia and NATO then there is no reason for this crisis, bad as it is, to descend into a full-scale world war.

Is this true?

It’s always hard to predict what Mr. Putin is going to do, and anyone who says they know him really well … would not be telling you the complete truth.”

The hard facts are that this has now developed into a NATO backed war.

So what are the likely outcomes?

The spectrum of possible outcomes ranges from a volatile new cold or hot war involving the United States, Russia, and China; to a frozen conflict in Ukraine; to a post-Putin settlement in which Russia becomes part of a revised European security architecture.

That is as honest an assessment as anyone who isn’t Vladimir Putin can give you.

But the wild card here is the state of Putin’s mind.

The whole idea after the Second World War was we’re going to try to set up a system whereby we live in a world in which big countries cannot just decide we’re going to send in our military and take this territory that belongs to this other country has never worked.

There is almost zero mutual trust remaining between Russia and the West.

While the conflict is tragic for the Ukrainian people, it’s unlikely to lead to World War III because, at the moment, it appears that no world leaders want it to escalate to that degree, and efforts are being made to make sure fighting stays within Ukraine’s borders.

There are three major factors that make Europe today different from in the 1930s and ’40s and could prevent World War III.

The first is the NATO alliance.

The second factor is the presence of nuclear weapons.

The third is that the Ukraine is not a NATO member, so there is no formal obligation to come to its defence.

Where is this war going to go is however the big question keeping the world on edge:

It is fair to say that China or the USA would not allow their countries to be surrounded by nuclear missiles.

So be in now doubt that intellectual laziness, historical amnesia and dishonesty will take lives in the years to come.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” – Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) or to quote the late Norman Mailer, “Whatever else it is, history is a bitch.”

There is a saying that nothing unites a country better than being invaded by an enemy but Putin’s actions have far-reaching implications for global politics and democracy.

This is a dangerous backdrop against which to have a blazing public row over who is to blame for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Europeans need to ask themselves hard questions. Are they willing to confront Russia? Is Russia going to challenge the borders of NATO? And how should Europe respond?

The immediate question is how to diminish Russia’s ability to threaten its neighbours.

The West’s political, economic, and military posture toward Russia is obviously in a state of flux at the moment. As a result unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is no longer a global competitor to the United States and there is no strong ideological component that unifies and divides the international community with regard to Russia.

Rather, what we see is a revisionist Russia (with somewhat limited capabilities to project force beyond its borders) that is challenging core principles of the international community.

So we have a long and potentially very unsettled period ahead of us that no radiation will cure.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. HAVE WE ALL GONE BONKERS WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Environment, Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Natural World Disasters, Reality., State of the world, Telling the truth., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Four minute listen.

( Five minute read)

The message is clear Climate Change is here and is already having a significant impact.

It is inconceivable that we still have people refusing to accept the facts that surround them,  even if they saw 100 more years of it plain and apparent they and unfortunately many of our present world leaders are blind to what is happing and what is to come.

How much more evidence do they and us need ?

MAKE YOUR MINDS UP!

The Evidence for Rapid Climate Change Is Compelling:

I’ve not noticed any changes in the weather outside of the norm or I don’t give a Fuck what is happing. I’d rather live on another planet, than on one where every aspect of your life is subject to rigorous scientific control is not possible.

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.Rivers and reservoirs have shrunk dramatically in the past 20 years

Right now there’s nothing like enough understanding.

Observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.

Human activity is the principal cause. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system.

However if there was meeting tomorrow of world leaders they would as before, argue that its not their responsibility, making promises that cannot be kept.

To have any chance of drilling into them the urgency of tackling climate change on a global scale perhaps it would be best to invite them all together in Gautama bay, take their mobile phone, starve them for a week and get them to write their last wills and testaments.

This might fired the starting gun on what will become a global race to eliminate fossil fuels.

At this point you might be asking why is it so difficult for the world to take action.

The effort to control climate change impacts virtually every element of a country’s economy “so countries have traditionally been nervous about what they’re going to be asked to do.”

The idea that every five years countries would be asked to come up with more ambitious targets, ramping up their efforts is therefore bull shit.

“We are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake,” says Xi.

Hybrid wind-solar plant at Zaozhuang, China“All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles.”

“We should embrace the vision of a community with a shared future in which everyone is bound together,” he continues.  He is right!  Heart-stirring stuff, eh?

A cynic might think his reassuring words were partly a ploy to reingratiate China with the climate-conscious Europeans, and isolate a climate-sceptic US President MR DUMP. 

But there is a much more important broader context for his announcement:

Let’s be clear what it means:

China, the most polluting nation on earth – responsible for around 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions – is saying it is going cut that back to virtually zero within 40 years. The commitment is of significant because China has never promised anything near as bold as this on climate before. President Xi’s 2060 pledge was notably unconditional – China will move ahead whether or not other countries chose to follow.

Why?

Because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing – the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

It looks like Xi has judged that the economics of clean energy mean that decarbonising is now the most sensible choice for the Chinese economy as well as for the world’s climate.

So can we stop worrying about climate change?

Sadly we cannot.

It is going to take eye-popping investment in wind, solar and nuclear power.

Even as the economics tilts in favour of renewables the task of decarbonisation is still enormous. However once half the world is on-board with the project of decarbonisation it is hard to see how the rest could hold out.

Evidence of environmental damage and climate change everywhere. It’s the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Tackling it means changing how we do virtually everything.

We are right to be anxious and afraid at the prospect.  Remember that by  2050 urban centres will hold 75% of the world population and 40% of them have no resilience plans in place, and have no plans to develop one in the hear future.  

Currently accounting for 70% of the worlds population and 70% of global GDP and 70% of CO2 emissions.

Don’t get me started on the food crisis.

You’ll be even more apprehensive if I was venture down that online rabbit hole.

Consider this conundrum:

When you talk to climate scientists you quickly discover they are far more worried about the dangers of global warming than most of us. Some tell you privately that they have had counselling to cope with the psychological effects of knowing the world is facing an impending disaster and not enough is being done.

Yes at this moment in history were in a mess.  Wars, Natural disasters, Energy, Rampant Inequality etc. On the right, I am alright Jack on the left just of a scream that will before defang in the next few years.

Leadership is action not position.

As Henry Miller said  ” No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance. “

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS THE WORLD IN THE STATE IT IS?

24 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Biotechnology., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, Human Collective Stupidity., Imagination., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Wars, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World View.

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( Twenty minute read) 

Following on from the posts under the heading of what shaped the world lets look at the state of the world as it is to day.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, with ever more political, social, cultural, financial and commercial relations transgressing nation state borders but the convergence of issues facing the earth are now so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.

The recent pandemic served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness.

When we start thinking about constructing a model of the world it’s better to say that while you are living in the world, it’s fairly difficult to judge it objectively or even understand all of its moving parts.

In addressing that issue I will note that many of today’s issues have legacies 100 years old and will not be addressed in this post.

If anything has brought us together over the last year and a half, it is our feeling of vulnerability about the present and uncertainty about the future.

Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures and this action must encompass an ethic of care, reciprocity, and solidarity.

But to translating and contextualizing these actions in a collective effort it requires a synopsis of the current state of the world.

It is only when the mess it is presented as a whole not news flashes that we have any concept of the state of the planet. 

The whole structure of today’s world, much of it inherited from an earlier era, is up for serious discussion.

Thinking of the present state of the world its remarkable what can be achieved when leaders are prepared to lead.

To achieve the maximum benefits from the extraordinary possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) and Robots will usher in tomorrow. 

                            _______________________________

There are many factors behind what I call ‘the disillusioned society’ but greed and fear, two of the ancient enemies of human kind are the big drivers of Earth’s ecological and human systems which are now in severe crisis.

Climate change is a trend that affects all trends- economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted. And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year.

Our throwaway society, which in part drives markets and GDP, is continuing to damage the environment. 

A key decision to changing our thinking and attitudes to polluting activities and endless growth is to dump Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the universal measure of progress. It is a totally inadequate measure of societal progress.Who is more powerful – states or corporations?

That said here is an overview of the current state of the world. 

Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh—the water on which the world’s terrestrial life depends. Around 70% of this fresh water is frozen in ice or permafrost. An estimated 4 billion people, nearly two-thirds of the world population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.

Agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally, a ratio that’s only going to increase – to an estimated 85% – as the population grows and agricultural production rises to meet it (by an estimated 50% before 2050).

About 43% of over 7,000 of the world’s languages are endangered. Just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s people, inhabiting upwards of 85% of the land surface of the globe.

In 2015, an estimated 2.1 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion lacked access to safely managed sanitation services. Over 80% of all wastewater returns to the environment without being treated.

Population, pollution, greenhouse gases and deforestation are creating never before seen changes in Earth’s living systems—including a cultural and species extinction rate that is the highest in the planet’s history.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, mainly as the result of human use of fossil fuels, have been determined to be the predominant cause of earth’s changing climate.

Sea levels are already rising by 2mm a year—faster than during the past 5,000 years.

Evidence is growing that the thermohaline circulation, driven by temperature and salinity, could be slowed or stopped by cold fresh water inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.

Our oceans are full of plastics. Sea ice and glaciers are melting throughout the globe. More than 93% of the enhanced atmospheric heating since the 1970s has been absorbed by the ocean.  

Over 90% of plastics produced are derived from virgin fossil feedstocks—about 6% of global oil consumption. This is equivalent to the total oil consumption of the global aviation sector.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

An estimated 75% of the Earth’s land surface has been degraded through human activities, negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction, and costing more than 10% of the annual global gross product in loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The failure to reduce world hunger is closely associated with the increase in conflict and violence in several parts of the world. In addition, gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition are being eroded by climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes. Approximately one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption—nearly 1.3 billion tonnes—gets lost or wasted every year.

In 2020, nearly 144 million children under 5 suffer from stunting (under height), 47.0 million children under 5 were wasted (underweight) , and of those, 14.3 million were considered severely wasted.

Industrialized civilization is still dependent upon cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy. There is a limited amount of fossil fuel. It is not “renewable” and there is no known way to make more.

The current humanitarian crisis in Ukraine may be in the spotlight right now however there are currently 27 ongoing conflicts.

A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. 84 million people were forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. This year, it is estimated that at least 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance.

The cost of war is almost unfathomable.

Just imagine what the world could do with that money if conflicts were to end worldwide. 

Conflict drives 80% of humanitarian needs and in 2016, the cost of conflict globally stood at an astonishing $14 trillion. That’s enough to end world hunger 42 times over.

Nearly 11 years after it started, the Syrian refugee crisis remains the largest displacement crisis worldwide (13.2 million, including 6.6 million refugees and more than 6 million internally displaced people). At least 2 million people are living in tented camps with limited access to basic services.

Lasting more than 60 years, the conflict in Myanmar (previously called Burma) remains the longest ongoing civil war in the world.

The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after 20 years of US-led conflict more than half of the country’s estimated 40 million population face “extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine.

Wars are constantly in the news. 

While we tend to hear more about refugees there are actually twice as many internally displaced persons around the world. In 2013, for instance, there were 16.7 million refugees and 33.3 million internally displaced persons. it’s easy to dismiss them and forget that we’re talking about individual people whose lives have been completely disrupted.

The World Bank and the IMF can pursue their loans in perpetuity, regardless of the loans having been given to dictators or incompetent borrowers, and regardless of whether the money actually benefited the poor.

The current depletion of biological diversity and, in particular, the prospect of severe depletion, if not virtual elimination of tropical forests, wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs that have been the “engines of biodiversity” for hundreds of millions of years, may have profound effects on the evolutionary processes that have previously fostered re-diversification.

Before 1961, the entire Earth satellite population was just over 50 objects. Since 1957, about 9,600 satellites have been launched and about 5500 are still in space—and 2300 of these are still functioning. The total mass of all space objects in Earth’s is more than 8800 tonnes. Earth’s orbit is now cluttered and dangerous with: ~34,000 objects bigger than 10 cm; ~ 900,000 objects from 1cm to 10 cm; and 128,000,000 objects from greater than 1 mm — 1 cm.

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, four acres of rainforests in Brazil (i.e. about three football fields) will be replaced with farmland, largely to grow cattle and animal feed.

The commercial exploitation, militarization and weaponization of space around the earth is ongoing.

Space Tourism is just getting started but the impact of bioengineering is what is going to have profound impacts on society in the near future.

The development of bioengineering issues in tandem with overlapping

technological areas such as artificial intelligence are what is going to shape

the world for the next generations, if climate change does bot wipe us of the

globe.

(Biotechnological discoveries are increasingly facilitated by automated and roboticides, private ‘cloud labs)

These issues will shape the future of bioengineering and must shape modern discussions about its political, societal and economic impact.

Technology is in the infancy of creating a world state. 

                                   ————————————-

The Bioengineering Technologies to Look Out for in the Next Decade – The Wire Science

Bioengineering is a discipline that applies engineering design and principles

to biological systems. Some examples of this fusion are artificial organs or

limbs, the genetic synthesis of new organisms, gene editing, the

computerized simulation of surgery, medical imaging technology and

tissue/organ regeneration.

Bioengineering brings with it both huge potential for good, and risks to

regulate. Like any other technology, bioengineering has damaging potential,

whether it be through misuse, weaponization or accidents. This risk can

create significant threats with large potential consequences to public health,

privacy or to environmental safety.

We need critical thinking to understand what they are, what their impact is and how they are related, with ethical and regulatory frameworks, climate change, inequalities, technological convergence and the misuse of technology, in order to drive informed policy decisions.

Below is by no means a comprehensive list. 

<5Years 5–10 Years >10 Years
Artificial photosynthesis and carbon capture for producing biofuels Regenerative medicine: 3D printing body parts and tissue engineering New makers disrupt pharmaceutical makers
Enhanced photosynthesis for agricultural productivity Microbiome-based therapies Platform technologies to address emerging disease pandemics
New approaches to synthetic gene drives Producing vaccines and human therapeutics in plants Challenges to Taxonomy-Based description and management of biological risk
Human genome editing Manufacturing illegal drugs using engineered organisms Shifting ownership models in biotechnology
Accelerating defense agency research in biological engineering Reassigning codons as genetic firewalls Securing the critical infrastructure needed to deliver the bioeconomic
  Rise of automated tools for biological design, test and optimisation  
Biology as information science: impacts on global governance
Intersection of information security and bio-automation
Effects of the Nagoya Protocol on biological engineering
Corporate espionage and bio crime

Additions.  

  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Animals
  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Plants
  • Using Bioengineering to Create Eco-friendly Materials
  • Using Bioengineering for Greenhouse Gas Sequestration and Removal DNA technology, makes insulin much more accessible to people with diabetes by producing human insulin using bacteria instead of animals.
  • Veggie burgers using bioengineered yeast.
  • Altered yeast to produce collagen, the animal protein that is the main component of leather. 
  • To produce anti-malarial compounds. (Every year, 200 million people are affected by malaria.)
  • Bioengineered yeast to make beer and palm oil.
  • Genetically engineered bacteria that reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
  • Biodegradable product that eliminates both the unsustainable practices
  • Manufacturing biosynthetic indigo could reduce the use of petroleum and the release of toxic chemicals by a factor of five
  • Genetically engineer microbes to actually pull greenhouse gases – such as CO2 and methane – from the air. 
  • Use bacterial fermentation to turn that methane into a biodegradable polymer called poly hydroxy alkanoate (PHA).
  • To  provide nutritious and non-toxic feedstock for farmed fish that doesn’t require overfishing AND removes CO2 from the atmosphere. 

                          ———————————————-

What happens if a world state is reached?

It is natural at this point to ask whether a world state would be desirable— But quite clearly many areas of social life still remain outside state control.

First, all states are sovereign, which means that both domestically and internationally they recognise no jurisdiction superior to their own.

Secondly, all states are equal and should therefore be accorded equality of treatment before the law. 

A world state would not be a utopia in which there was nothing left to struggle over.

But once a world state has emerged those struggles will be domesticated by enforceable law, and so for purposes of state formation will be no longer important. Rather than a complete end of history, therefore, it might be better to say that a world state would be the end of just one kind of history. Even if one telos is over, another would be just beginning.

At the micro-level world state formation is driven by the struggle of individuals and groups for recognition of their subjectivity.

At the macro-level this struggle is channelled toward a world state by the logic of anarchy, which generates a tendency for military technology and war to become increasingly destructive.

The process moves through five stages, each responding to the instabilities of the one before — a system of states, a society of states, world society, collective security, and the world state. Human agency matters all along the way, but is increasingly constrained and enabled by the requirements of universal recognition.

The struggle for recognition is about the constitution of individual and
group identities and thus ultimately about ideas,

Hobbes (1968) justified the state on the grounds that only through
obedience to a common power could individuals escape a ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ life in the state of nature. A common power is necessary because of the physical equality and vulnerability of human beings — since even the weak can kill the strong, it is in everyone’s interest to accept the security provided by a state.

With the transfer of state sovereignty to the global level individual recognition will no longer be mediated by state boundaries, even though as recognized subjects themselves states would retain some individuality (particularism within universalism).

The question remains, however, whether a world state would be a stable
end-state, or be itself subject to instabilities that ultimately undo it.

Since even a world state would remain an at least partially open system, such
shocks could cause it to fall apart.

Equilibria are always vulnerable to exogenous shocks.

Going forward You have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once: the world is getting better and it’s not good enough”. (Dr. Hans Rosling.)

But we must keep trying. The past is not coming back. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT HOW THE MICROCHIP IS SHAPING THE WORLD.

15 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Nanotechnology, Reality., Speed of technology., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The Microchip., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Seven-minute read)

How Has The Microchip Changed The World?

The impacts of the microchip have been enormous.

They are either the savior of the world or the annihilator. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say the world would not be able to continue without the Chip that drives technology. 

They are around us everywhere.  Our phones, of course, our laptops, our iPads – all of those things we’re now surrounded by this technology.

More than likely.

THEY WILL END UP BEING IMPLANTED IN OUR BODIES IF WE ARE TO STAY OR EVER LEAVE THIS PLANET.

THEY ARE NOT ONLY SHAPING THE PLANET BUT OUR EXPLORATION OF THE UNIVERSE (WITH THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE RECENTLY SENDING THE DEEPEST PENETRATION PICTURE OF SPACE.) 

                      ————————   

Despite being a piece of real estate no larger than a fingernail, the modern microchip is home to billions of transistors, miles of metallic interconnects, and layers of structures stacked on top of each other like skyscrapers.

Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.

One or more microchips run every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.

Every time we make a Zoom call, between our personal devices, routers, data centers, satellites, and peripheral devices, at least a quintillion microchips were called to work.

Unfortunately, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste.

The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon.

The arduous task of turning these disc-shaped, purple-colored wafers into microchips and memory devices falls on the fabs,(a fab or fabs is a term commonly used to describe a fabrication plant responsible for making semiconductor devices) which are high-tech facilities scattered across the world, with the majority in Southeast Asia.

A “fab” that processes 50,000 wafers—the silicon platform on which chips are built—per month consumes over 1 TWh of electricity a year.

That’s as much power as is required by a city of 100,000 residents.

Moreover, a rough estimate pegs the water consumption of a fab at over 19 million liters per day. That’s the amount of water consumed by a city of 60,000—for a whole year! In addition, these facilities utilize tons of chemicals, most of them expensive and toxic, and generate tons of waste, which include greenhouse gases like SF6, CF4, NF3, and C4F8.

There are over 1,000 semiconductor fabs operating globally today.

They make $450 billion worth of microchips a year and generate 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

This complex semiconductor fabrication process is nestled at the heart of an elaborate web of international assembly lines. The company that makes the wafers and the fabs that create the microchips can be located in different parts of the globe. The assembly of the actual device likely takes place in a different company at a third location, and the end user could be anywhere in the world.

This means that the company whose name is on the final product might have very little control over the conditions and practices of the fabs.

Further, different parts of the semiconductor lifecycle are regulated by different environmental legislation, making not just the implementation of sustainability efforts, but also the tracking of their environmental footprints, complicated.

The elements of lithography, sand and silicon crystals, sit atop a silicon wafer

Given the size of the microchip, these numbers seem extraordinary.

However, this could very well be the price that we pay for the complexity of a chip, and the comfort it brings into our lives.

                       ———————————–

Advances in the technology sector have seen revolutionary gadgets surfacing because of this little mysterious device.

Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such in personal, social, political, and economic spheres.

Microchips are clearly being utilized for several other purposes.

In military applications, the microchips were used to build the Minuteman II missile in the 1960s. To add to that, a Z-40 semi-automatic pistol with a microchip embedded in its grip was released to avoid the use of the pistol by any unauthorized user.

In Industrial applications, scientists have employed the use of a microchip-based technology to detect the type and the progression of cancer in patients. Because of this technology, patients can now be informed of their prognosis within a few hours.

Chip improvements have led to increased computing power and incredible memory function.

Microchips have enabled applications like on-device artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual augmented reality to come to life.

Gains in data transfer such as 5G connectivity have been enhanced by the microchip technology.

Microchip technology has made huge advances in technology.

Objects and devices such as communication devices, vehicles, personal entertainment devices, GPS tracking devices, weapons, identification cards, micro-ovens, supercomputers, and many other applications use microchipMicrochips’ distinctive mode of collecting data and transmitting data to its exact destination has made information easier to handle.

The epic and revolutionary manufacturing techniques of microchips have created a storm of microchip-embedded devices that affect our daily lives, both positively and inevitably negatively  

Regardless of the industry, modern electronics use thousands, millions, or even billions of semiconductors on a single chip.

As a result, today as consumers demand more electronics, one of the most important components of any circuitry has become something of a scarcity. is that there is a massive shortage.

This has happened over the past year, largely due to a significant shortage of the most basic building block of technology:

Semiconductors.

                     ——————————

It is likely that microchip manufacturing will continue to be a major consumer of electricity, water, and chemicals.

So in shaping our world we could ensure that the energy is supplied by renewables, that the water is recycled, and the chemicals are processed without damage to the environment. In other words, we must be relentless in our efforts to make microchips more sustainable. And we should never forget that the comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.

Microchips act as a key unit for programming the conversion of the car industry to electric cars, which is increasingly dependent on electronics, the lithography industry, the smartphone industry, and the internet to name just a few of the trillion applications over the past several decades.

The microchip industry filled by the need for big science is growing exponentially year on year. 

The problem is embedding them in objects is one thing, deciding in which devices to embed them and what systems to build around them is another matter altogether.

Laws governing their application are literally in human hands for now but not much longer.  

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE WORLD IS GOING

20 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Consciousness., Cry for help., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Populism., President of the USA., Purpose of life., Reality., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World View.

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Twenty-minute read.

Does our perception of the world reflect reality?

We hardly see the world as it is.

Technology is often touted as the savior that will rescue us from our misbegotten ways, redeem us, and put us on the track to utopia. Then there are the dystopian views, where the future is dominated by technology that either rule over us or saps us so completely of our humanity that we might as well be a bunch of gadgets ourselves.

There are countless challenges today both environmental and not.

Mostly, we see the world through a set of layers. These layers are made up of our emotions, past experiences, and beliefs, and whichever perception is held by most, is popularly deemed as the reality.

Among contemporary scientists and philosophers, the most popular solution to the mind-body problem is probably materialism.

According to neuroscience, the contents of your head are comprised of 86

billion neurons, each one linked to 10,000 others, yielding trillions of

connections.

Materialists aspire to explain feelings and experiences in terms of the chemistry of the brain. It is broadly agreed that nobody has the slightest clue as yet how to do it, but many are confident that we one day will.

For human beings to survive, they need to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life.

But, the real reality is different and it’s above any perception.

THERE ARE NO UNIQUE VOICES ANYMORE. 

Here we are once again with another verbal diarrhea conference at the Summit of America’s with the president of the USA delivering a version of his domestic economic pitch promising leaders from Latin America that the United States is committed to helping the region combat crime, corruption, and its economic struggles.

“We will introduce a new approach to managing migration and sharing responsibility across the hemisphere.”  A load of verbal bollix but it raises the question are we now heading into globalization vs regionalization?

If so why?

Because of the pandemic and the ongoing wars, today’s great powers have little choice but to spend their way to political stability, which is unsustainable, and or try to control knowledge that is unattainable due to technology. 

Because the internet is currently eliminating the middleman the Politicians who are in a representative democracy hence the shift to direct democracy – Popularism – with power now resides with those best able to organize knowledge.

                                         

                                          ———————-

While the Earth, the planet, will continue to go its way regardless of what happens on the surface we are unable to act collectively and never will be able to do so.

We live toward incredible times where the only constant changes and the rate of change are increasing so fast that there seems to be no meaning to life.

Not until we eradicate poverty, establish free education, set aside ideological differences, change our primary focus to the long-term care of nature and people, remove profit for profit sake Algothrims, and create a World Aid Fund that we all can invest in. (See previous posts)

Not until when we are able to separate our own perception from reality we can take the necessary measures to be happy.

Not until we all realize that we are with Climate Change currently headed to a sixth mass extinction event and that this possibility alone needs to bond our collective conscious into acting like one.  

Unfortunately, I believe, that if we aren’t now past the point of recovery, if we don’t act soon, civilization and human habitation here will be untenable.

                                      ————————

There’s no going back we are now stuck in a sad chamber of denial as those who are in power hopelessly try to ward off the apocalypse by promoting unsustainable economic growth. Our TV screens are inundated with appeals for help, while the cost of everything from health care, housing education, energy, etc is rising more than one can earn.

We must unplug our brains from smartphones and start working together in large numbers, as part of a coordinated effort to achieve change. 

Like Evolution Migration goes both ways – out and in. 

Rests assured if we continue to ignore the climate the earth will force us to go only one way, with the world passing through a nuclear war if we continue to ignore the warning signs.

If this happens humans will finally have little to no reason to fight.

What’s the point? 

                                           ————————
China faces further economic slowdown, according to future predictions.

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution forces us to think about where today’s innovations are taking us, when it comes to what our world will look like, in the medium-term – how we will organize our cities, where we will get our power from, what we will eat, what it will mean to be a refugee – it gets even trickier. 

I predict the internet will go spectacularly supernova and fifty years from now catastrophically collapse.

With the world’s superpowers thrown into chaos as they come to grip with new powers, financial slowdowns, and emerging economies it will be the start of Apple’s path to world domination. 

National leaders will find themselves under increasing pressure from their people, putting a strain on inter-country relationships.

The main political tendency will be away from multinational solutions to a greater nationalism driven by divergent and diverging economic, social and cultural forces with technology and political alining against Mega Power. With countries looking at solving their own problems before looking outward the Climate will continue to heat up.

Nations will increasingly adopt protectionist policies as well as look at ways of further securing borders, something which has already begun to take place as Europe grapples with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

Rising military costs, declining oil prices, and internal issues will all weaken Russia further with its inability to control the federation creating a vacuum. It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form.

While it remains a major economic, political and military power, the United States will “be less engaged than in the past”, with the powerhouse learning some vital lessons from history.

China will continue to be a major economic force but will not be the dynamic engine of global growth it once was,

The EU will remain hostage to the economic wellbeing and competitive environment in which it operates.

Nation-states created by the west will collapse. 

                                          ———————–

We all want to know the future unfortunately in a supposedly thriving economy we are now facing inflation as the real cost of living.

Trickle-down economics does not work. 

Social media is not simply a more sophisticated platform. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat WhatsApp have turned into a gallery of Frankenstein’s monsters.

They are a new kind of assault on who we are, not just what we think.

“Like” button for Facebook

To have great predictions, these corporations have had to amass vast quantities of data on each of us – what is sometimes called “surveillance capitalism”, trading in human futures, herding us into our echo chambers of self-reinforcing information.

In doing so we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each other. With it, our ability to empathize and compromise is eroded.

We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximize our attention to advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.

Apps allowing us to hail a taxi or navigate our way to a destination are undoubtedly useful tools. But being able to find out what our leaders are really doing – whether they are committing crimes against others or against us – is an even more useful tool. In fact, it is vital if we want to stop the kind of self-destructive behaviors.

Advertisers have been playing with our brains in sophisticated ways for at least a century. And social atomization – individualism, selfishness, and consumerism – have been a feature of western life for at least as long. These aren’t new phenomena. It’s just that these long-term, negative aspects of western society are growing exponentially, at a seemingly unstoppable rate.

We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive.

For so long as our economy works in that way, and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, kill whales, mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know it is going to leave a worse world for future generations.

We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.

Is the human race capable of pro-actively defining, harnessing, and expressing a collective consciousness, without the need for tragic experiences?

Much of the problem is around our inability to define collective consciousness. Who are we? Who do we want to be in the future? 

I think it is time to act.

Our paths have never been so clear. More than ever, science can tell us what different socioeconomic-emissions paths will mean in terms of future temperature.

Which will humanity choose?

The world is getting smaller every day. There is only one world, and it’s made of consciousness. Matter is what consciousness does. 

NO MANDATES. A long-standing issue is that the accords generally have no clear mechanisms for mandating that countries carry out their promises. World pressure and ethical considerations have to drive most of the agreements.

So, lots of promises, but no guarantee that countries will honor them.

“Once we have ruled out the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Is the nature of global collective consciousness, yet another thing, such as climate change, that the population of this planet is going to happily sleepwalk towards, as it shrugs its collective shoulders and says, “Well, you know, sniff, what can you do?”

Drones hold potential for many environmental benefits but nature’s technologies and designs are more often than not far superior to our own. 

 Computers in our pockets offer huge conservation potential. 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS : WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU ? WHERE DID YOU COME FROM ? WHERE ARE YOU GOING ?

03 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., COVID-19, Covid-19 Vaccines., Dehumanization., Evolution., Genetic engineering, Genetics., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Post-Covid-19, Purpose of life., Reality., Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Here we are at the start of another year and we are truly living in a very unique time in the history of our civilization, facing several simultaneous challenges and converging crises:

A deteriorating environment, very unequal distribution of dwindling resources, widespread poverty, wars, climate change, oppression of many peoples, and dissatisfaction with life even in those countries with a surplus of material wealth.

For the most part, these crises we humans have brought upon ourselves over the course of many centuries by our attitudes towards each other and towards nature, and by the concepts, we have developed regarding who we are and the very purpose of our being here — in other words, Our worldview.

Who are we?

Where do we come from?

What is our purpose?

Where are we going?

All of these questions are fundamental to how we individually and collectively make meaning. As such they are questions asked by all spiritual traditions and since the very beginning of our species. Even the first cave paintings suggest that as soon as we were human, we started to ask these kinds of questions.

                               ————–

The only evidence you have that you exist as a self-aware being is your conscious experience of thinking about your existence.

Beyond that, you’re on your own.

You cannot access anyone else’s conscious thoughts, so you will never know if they are self-aware. Nonexistence is the absence of existence, by definition. Therefore there is no such thing as nonexistence.

To say that something does not exist thus seems to be a fallacy since NOTHING does exist.

How are you?

By far the biggest constituent of you is emptiness are atoms, and since all atoms are 99.9% empty space, technically, you’re made of nothing.

We call ourselves humans. We think we behave intelligently but we humans are animals! defined less by rationality and more by stupidity.

At the basic level, you are made of just four types of particles, which have been around for the majority of the lifetime of the Universe.

Atoms make up your body, 12 kg of bones, 33 kg of muscles, and 15 kg of fat. More than half of those cells aren’t exactly your own. They’re bacterial cells that weigh around 2 kg. Your body contains at least 60 chemical elements. For the most part, it’s oxygen and hydrogen forming H2O or water. 99% of the mass of your body is made up of just 6 elements. Of that, 65% is oxygen.

If you wanted to be more poetic, you could say you are made of stardust. All the elements you’re made of were once cooked up in the stars.

By the way, in case you wondered, the uncoiled DNA from all the cells in your body would stretch from here to Pluto and back. 

What are you?

Mentally, humanity was created as a rational, volitional agent.

According to the Bible, you are a god. ( God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) but God does not have a body so your physical being is nowhere near a god.

Physiologically and anatomically you are an animal struggling for survival on the basis of evolution. 

Within just the past 12,000 years, your species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. We have been so successful that we have inadvertently created a turning point in the history of life on Earth.

We have altered the world in ways that benefit us greatly. But this transformation has unintended consequences for other species as well as for ourselves, creating new survival challenges, with our megacity incubators of viruses such as the flu and now Covid. 

Where are we going?

Will our species go extinct?

The short answer is yes, replaced by Artificial Intelligence, but not life.

Why?

Because mankind will control life through its varied reproductive activities manipulating life, whether it be by cloning, gene splicing, genetic breeding, etc.

Life in its simplest form, a single-celled organism, has microbial intelligence and can learn and adapt behavior to its environment. However, everything starts with something already alive. Only life begets life and intelligence doesn’t come from non-intelligent sources. 

Even the most simple of life forms is beyond our ability to create from non-living sources.

Life is created and is not the result of abiogenesis it controls and regulates the physical processes within each cell.

So since there is no evidence or logical consideration to believe that life is the result of a physical process, we can dismiss the concept of Artificial life as impossible. It isn’t just a gap in our understanding it is a physical impossibility.

However, there may well be life, with or without consciousness, interfacing with the physical components that support life created by an outside intelligence.

This is probably the most pressing and interesting question for the future.  How much of life will be controlled by AI?

                                 —————-

The current Covid pandemic is being fought against by a new form of vacation that instructs our immune systems to operate in a particular way rather than the immune system reacting. A step in evolutionary development towards part AI life.  

Where is this interpretation of behavior taking place?

What part of the cell decides one food-foraging pattern is preferable to another?

Where is the information stored while it’s being coded into an arrangement of molecules and atoms?

The nucleus of a living cell is often referred to as the “brain” of the cell because it controls cellular processes and functions. However, the nucleus is not capable of conscious levels of intelligence. In fact, we can’t point to any cell part and say, that’s where the intelligence has to be coming from.

Signals received by cells must be transmitted effectively into the cell to ensure an appropriate response. This step is initiated by cell-surface receptors.

How do conscious levels of intelligence now suddenly originate or emerge from unconscious atoms and molecules?

We have to bear in mind that in an evolutionary sense, nothing can influence where we wind up biologically unless it affects individual success in passing along genes. When a new behavior is written to the DNA, the information has to be assigned to an arrangement of atoms that advocate that consciousness exists at the microbial level. 

If so, that creates even greater problems, and without going into all of them, the chief problem is that survival sets a pretty low bar.

The question isn’t so much whether humans survive the next three or three hundred thousand years, but whether we can do more than just survive.

The current virus pandemic highlights this problem. The virus hasn’t yet committed to any direction.

However, it is as with all viruses an evolving entity, subject to the same processes of evolution.

With the new mRNA vaccines, we have a choice to make!

Why?

Because it is inevitable that Genome editing is going to be the future. 

Because now being alive is not a prerequisite for experiencing, evolution. 

We either move into a new phase in the evolution of consciousness and a new era of life on the planet, or we will witness the unraveling of the web of life and the immature end of our species and much of the community of life with us. 

The time to make this choice is now!

It starts with a fundamental shift in our dominant worldview.

It is time to grow up! and for us to respect all life. 

What is our purpose? 

This is explained in the following story.

“In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? Do you actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?

09 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Algorithms., Capitalism, Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, Politics., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., 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.  , Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Five-minute read) 

With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.

If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”

Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.

However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down. 

Why? 

Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life. 

In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.

Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!

We’re all in this together.

There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;

To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.

An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.

With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.

A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.

If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“

If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.

The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.

Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.

What do you think the economy is? 

It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?

To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.

Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up. 

Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.

History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.

Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.  

So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.

It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit. 

It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms. 

Either we are really all in this together or we are not.

Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)

The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.      

Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.  

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS SLAVERY DEAD? NOT BY A LONG SHOT, WE ENTERING A NEW WORLD OF SLAVERY.

20 Saturday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Covid - Passports., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Human values., Humanity., Modern day Slavery, Modern Day Slavery., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, The Future, THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., Vaccines., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

NOT BY A LONG SHOT.

When you hear the word slavery, it conjures images of shackles, mistreated people of color, forced to work.

This image was once a true, vivid picture;

However, the term slavery has broadened, and now slavery comes with many more definitions creating a new image for the vile term slavery.

THERE IS A NEW, MODERN, INVISIBLE SLAVERY THAT ENSLAVES PEOPLE AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW IT ! !! AND MOST OF US CHOSE THIS FORM OF SLAVERY. 

This new strain is much more virulent and deadly adding hundreds of thousands of new slaves to the mix every minute of the day  – Algorithms Slavery. A hidden world programming its self. 

Slaves are cheap these days.

There are an estimated as high as 45.8 million people in modern slavery around the world. More than in the 18th century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. 

Simply knowing the statistic that 45.8 million individuals are enslaved in our world is not enough to put an end to the malpractice of modern-day slavery.

We all can and should play a part in the international advocacy for the freedom and rights of all, not only as fellow human beings but also as concerned community leaders and consumers in the global economy.

They’re the step-by-step instructions working quietly behind the scenes of everyday life; in internet search engines, satnavs, air traffic control, and food delivery services.

Companies and governments increasingly rely upon algorithms to make decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods – from loan approvals to recruiting, legal sentencing, and college admissions – from internet search results to product recommendations, dating matches, and what content goes up on our social media feeds. 

Slavery today includes:

10 million children.

24.9 million people in forced labor.

15.4 million people in forced marriage.

4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation.

Human trafficking and slavery are the fastest-growing illegal activities in the world today. 

Keep the National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s 24/7 confidential hotline handy.

Saving this number in your contacts and using it whenever suspicious of having seen a victim of human trafficking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to aid law enforcement officials in uncovering exploitation, bringing traffickers to justice, and victims to freedom and restoration.

                                                ——————

Algorithms have been rising fast and saturating our modern world.

We should not take the path of least resistance by sitting in judgment on the past while ignoring the injustices of our day.

Most algorithms in the world today are created and managed by for-profit companies, and many businesses regard their algorithms as highly valuable forms of intellectual property that must remain in a “black box.”

Every time a site is opened we are confronted with an Agreement Templates a choice to Agree or not.  Many websites prompt you to agree to their terms of use before you can register on the website or even use it.

There are two different types of website agreements: browsewrap and clickwrap.

A browsewrap agreement is connected to the main page of the product by a hyperlink. The hyperlink leads to another webpage that will have the terms and conditions of the agreement detailed.

A clickwrap agreement is designed to ensure that the user has a chance to see the terms of use and they must also actively agree to the terms in order to agree. (This one is more legally binding.) 

But are not transparent as they do not reveal the source code, inputs, and outputs of the algorithm that is running the site. 

Without this transparency, the question is how can they be legally binding. 

Specifically, machine learning algorithms – and deep learning algorithms in particular – are usually built on just a few hundred lines of code. The algorithm’s logic is mostly learned from training data and is rarely reflected in its source code. Which is to say, some of today’s best-performing algorithms are often the most opaque.

This is the new form of slavery.  Now being promoted by track and trace, with the current Coivid pandemic digital certifications that no one knows how or who will control, the data that they are now producing and in the future. 

 It suggests that technical transparency – must become law.

Essentially such laws would mandate that users be able to demand the data behind the algorithmic decisions made for them, including in recommendation systems, credit, and insurance risk systems, advertising programs, and social networks.

In doing so, it tackles “intentional concealment” by corporations.

But it doesn’t address the technical challenges associated with transparency in modern algorithms. Here, a movement called explainable AI (xAI) might be helpful.

However, this approach merely shifts the burden of belief from the algorithm itself to the regulators.

In the world of data analytics, it’s frequently assumed that more data is better.

But I firmly believe that the resistance to getting vaccinated is founded on this dilemma of trust.

Risk management, data itself is often a source of liability. That’s beginning to hold true for artificial intelligence as well.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE ROLE OF MONEY IN POLOTICS.

05 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Big Data., Corruption., Democracy, Digital age., Emergency powers., Facebook, First past the post., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Modern Day Democracy., Money in Politics., Political Trust, Politics., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS MONEY?, What Needs to change in the World

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(Eighteen-minute read) 

First, money is a medium of exchange that lets us earn, buy, and sell completely different things in the same units.

On top of this, money is also a unit of account—i.e. it lets us put the prices of very different things in the same terms.

This is why private wealth impacts public life, with the world of politics full of lobbyists. 

Money has always shaped the process of political competition and influences policymaking but most of us are unaware of how money works, behind the scenes in the political theater, it is a year-round issue that dictates the daily life of the nation.

Money finds its way into politics in myriad ways — 

Any political campaign lives or dies by its funding and for a long time, there has been a popular myth about how everyday voters who outnumber the wealthy will collectively donate more money than the few donations of the wealthy.

The influence of cash within politics could be called dark money.

It turns politicians’ existence into serving their donors instead of their voters, which affects the policies they support, how they allocate government spending, and their expressed values.

Regardless of our personal feelings, money makes the world (and democracy) go round.

It seems unfathomable that these external entities have such leverage in our election process.

Whether elected officeholders betray their voters, prioritizing interest groups or single campaign donors, remains a question to be answered in the public sphere. 

The super-wealthy class is almost single-handedly funding elections, which impacts our government’s overall functionality and integrity, meaning the power lies in the hands of few.

Cash has become a determining factor for who wins the most crucial elections like the president of the USA. 

most expensive presidential campaign

 

Since 1980 if you add it all up it comes to $ 105 billion 349 million.   

There’s way way way too much money in politics and most of it is having a corrupting, undue influence and locking out the voices that count.

For too long, money has been the one thing that has reigned supreme in a democracy.  

The influx of cash from corporations and interest groups sways the ways our political leaders pass legislation that supports these entities, regardless of the public’s best interest.

It allows corporations to buy leverage that alters the fabric of our economy.

                              ———————————

Fighting undue influence and corruption from political financing requires a clear understanding of the difference between unlawful influence on public administration and behavior and breach of trust of voters.

The former requires precise regulation of those sectors of administration that usually lend themselves to compensate campaign donors.

The potential entry point in the public sector can vary along with several channels of influence.

Beyond political advertising and election contributions, cash is influential in the lobbying industry. 

A ridiculous game in which corporations are people and money is magically empowered to speak. Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections.  Donal Trump and referendums like Brexit.

While banning all campaign donations is an option, a comprehensive approach will take into account private agents who can resort to lobbying, personal networks, or corruption.

The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money in politics what it is – it is a form of corruption and it muzzles more of us than it empowers, and it is an imbalance that the world has taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest.

                                               —————

Money cannot always buy the best election results – Trump – Robert Mugabe – Crown Prince Abdullah – Kim Jong-un – Bashar al-Assad –Saparmurat Niyazov –  Putin – Idi Amin Saddam Hussein – Mengistu Haile Mariam – Augusto Pinochet – Pol Pot – Charles Taylor – Suharto – Mobutu Seko to name just a few dead and alive.

As of today, there are 50 dictatorships in the world.

But the millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money.

It’s time to get big money out of politics., and have a system of scrutiny to ensure that no special access or call time with rich donors or big-dollar fundraisers to permanently eliminate big money from our politics and return it to the people.

                                —————-

Our democracy shouldn’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy and powerful.

It belongs to all of us or does it with the arrival of Big data the next currency of politics now being used to directly influence our decisions.

Data brings change to much more than just the commercial side of our lives.

We have to acknowledge that our data has much more than just a “one-shot” value.

The fact that Facebook and other social networks collect data on us is presented as something outrageous but not in the political world.  

Putting you into an “opinion bubble” by better targeting political ads and thus motivating you to actually go and vote, and become (unknowingly) an ambassador for the power that has you in its aim, exists. 

Data as a Political Asset: valuable stores of existing data on potential voters exchanged between political candidates, acquired from national repositories, or sold or exposed to those who want to leverage them

Data as Political Intelligence: data that is accumulated and interpreted by political campaigns to learn about voters’ political preferences and to inform campaign strategies and priorities, including creating voter profiles and testing campaign messaging.

Data as Political Influence: data that is collected, analyzed, and used to target and reach potential voters with the aim of influencing or manipulating their views or votes.

In reality, the same problems with money and now data have existed for years, with huge amounts of personal data being sold to corporate clients. And yet, we only start panicking when we see how the illegal, or barely legal trade of our life patterns collected by social networks impacts our political choices.

Knowing where we spend our time, what media we watch, what books we read, what food we prefer, and what words are we most likely to use in our tweets makes the difference.

But what is it that makes the politicians “addicted to big data like it’s campaign cash”,

Unfortunately, this “addiction” to data has induced politicians and their campaign managers into the same illusion that businesses are struggling with right now:

Big data allows reliable prediction and, obviously, politics, as the very structure of societal governance, is heavily impacted.

It is, indeed, a problem.

The amount of information that companies have about who we are and what we are as social units is so huge, that it is this data reshaping the very fabric of our societies.

Most people believe — because of huge public buzz scandals like the one of Cambridge Analytica — that big data in politics serves the goals of better manipulation.

The issue of data collection in the interest of the political actors must not be reduced to just cynical Frank Underwood-style power brokers buying data on where we eat and what we watch on Netflix and who our friends are to better sell us their quotes about how they are gonna make our lives better.

The overwhelming power of the big brother that tracks our every step raises the question.  If societies value equality of information, open debate, and transparency, these trends should be of concern?

One thing we know for sure is that the clear trend of getting more and more data involved in political campaigning and decision-making is there.

Without considering these questions, there is a danger that any response may have unintended consequences and fail to advance the principles we want to uphold.

Bribery is human nature and the only way to expose it is with transparency requirements that enable the media, public interest groups, and parties to engage in this debate.

The manipulation of the future political result, by algorithms is only a click away.

We will still need (yes, NEED) tons of “money in politics.”

Without big donors, how many Independent candidates will be able to go up against the dark money and deep, oligarch pockets?

Ok, let’s figure out where that money goes. 

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

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HAVE WE BECOME DESENSITIZED ?

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Afghanistan, Civilization., Cry for help., Dehumanization., Desensitization., Disasters., Emotions., Foreign Aid., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Purpose of life., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Truth, 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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( Seven-minute read) 

Just the other day I watched a news report on Afghanistan with shocking images of starving children.

It’s not as if this is the first time starving children grace our television screens.   

It was predicted that if the country does not get aid there will be a human disaster with the loss of millions of lives. 

We all could be forgiven for not remembering the Irish Potato famine that killed around a million, but not the Famine in Ethiopia 1983-85 that killed around the same number of people. 

Since then the world is now confronted with the realities of climate change – streams of migration while the covid pandemic has killed 4,984,325 people so far from the outbreak to October 27, 2021, which is a contributor to our desensitization of suffering a very complex topic.

However I believe the world rich countries, paints it as something almost good, necessary, and a part of life.

The more we are exposed to these things, or let children be taught it’s normal through movies, books, and so forth, the initial shock becomes less and the stark colors in which they were viewed, become duller.

This may raise in some readers’ minds the question of what we ourselves actually believe.

Take our belief in God.

He or she or it is becoming nothing less than the process of opening our lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe. God represents the direction of our wonder – not the destination. 

Which leads to no easy answers, just more questions.

However, if we humans could come together in harmony with the real universe, our troubled species would have its best chance to enjoy this jewel of a planet, unique probably in all of the cosmos. 

The hope of this happing in a throwaway world is negotiable, leaving people feeling defeated and powerless.

Every daylight hour we are bombarded by pleas for help to save something, now including the planet. Suffering seems to abound and we see it so often on the news or in movies that we’ve become desensitized.

“I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”

It’s no secret that the world is falling apart as we know it,  people are becoming desensitized to the events that are shaping our society.  

Desensitizing is a tool, and the world uses it to change and shape our thinking, alter our perspective and mold us into the way they want, too emotionally exhausted to feel anything. 

Just because it’s “normal” in today’s age, should we be in less shock, disgust, or lessen the intensity of emotion towards it?

What’s the harm?

It is not something to just succumb to, we must choose what we allow it to impact because it takes us farther away from the rawness and reality 

It is how we use it and allow it to affect us that any understanding of this relationship can we hope to achieve behavioral change.

Indeed, the world is in a chaotic and cruel place but what happens to us that we lose the deep sense of caring – something that would have been abhorrent to us in the past is not despicable anymore. We accept the fact that this is what the world has become

But it is not about pictures or videos anymore.

We are simply desensitized to tragedies happening around us because they are becoming less like tragedies and more like everyday actions.

It is very easy to point fingers at platforms such as Facebook, & Twitter. But both of them are flexible and adaptable, they are not an omnipotent force governing what the people chose to say or think.

As far as it goes, Social Media platforms are objective viewers of the world.

They are merely tools used by the people.

The question is, what are we allowing ourselves to become desensitized to?

Being sensitive is first and foremost allowing oneself to feel in great depths.

We become lethargic and we cannot hope to change behavior without first implementing a re-sensitization effort.

As our world undergoes anthropogenic changes, it is critical to examine how these changes affect our well-being and our relationship with the natural world.

What do we do when all of the chaos, all of the destruction of the world is shoved in our faces day after day?

We wonder why there isn’t a better way to go about things?

We can’t let our sensitivity be the darkness that sits on our shoulders.

Sensitivity helps us acknowledge our own consciousness.

We need to remember that it is a tool and that we do have a lot of control over it, but without thought, it appears we don’t have much control over it at all.

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

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