With algorithms becoming the masters of social media are we all just becoming clickbait?
Devices are providing immediate information about our health and about what we see, where we go and where we have been.
Our lives are being shaken to their very core.
With 5G technology what we experienced at the moment will pale in comparison to the vast array of possibilities carried under its belt by this new generation of wireless connectivity, which is being built over the foundations of the previous one.
It will allow millions of devices to be connected simultaneously.
All stakeholders – business, government, society and individuals – will have to work together to adjust so these technologies and rapid changes are harnessed for the development of all, not just profit.
Swathes of the globe will be left behind.
Regardless it is no longer just about repetitive factory jobs rather an increase in inequality globally.
It is not only a moral imperative to ensure that such a scenario does not happen as it will pose a risk to global stability through channels such as global inequality, but migration also flows, and even geopolitical relations and security.
We already live in a world that has been profoundly altered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yet there is not much debate on the likely size of the impact.
Why?
Because there are such divergent views it is difficult to measure.
But within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2024, more than half of home internet traffic will be used by appliances and devices that are connected to internet platforms.
With almost everything connected, it will transform how we live never mind how we do business.
If there is no trusted institution to regulate it we can kiss our arses.
Now is the time to make sure it is changed for the better.
The internet of things will create huge amounts of data, raising concerns over who will own it and how it will be stored. And what about the possibility that your home or car could be hacked?
The internet is great for ideas, but ultimately, the things that will amaze you are not on your computer screen.
Artificial Intelligence may well invent new life forms but if we as humans do not contrive and manage global acceptable ethical parameters for all its forms – (bioengineering, gene editing, nanotechnology, and the algorithms) that run them we are more than idiots.
As Yuval Noah Harari says in his most recent book ( 21 Lessons for the 21st Century) ” There is no such thing as ‘Christian economics’, ‘Muslim economics’ or ‘Hindu economics’ ” but there will be Algorithms economics run by big brother.
The digital age has brought us access to so much information in just a few clicks of the mouse button or the remote control everything from the news, Tv programmes with the internet becoming somewhat glorifying sensationalism rather than giving us the truth.
The question is.
Are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives?
Or are they more than that:
Powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behaviour and affect what it means to be human?
What can we do?
The Second Industrial Revolution and the Third Industrial Revolution have lead us to this revolution the Fourth Industrial Revolution which can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.
Unlike previous revolutions, it is not the world as a whole that will see any of its benefits or disadvantages it is individuals and groups that could win – or lose – a lot.
Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews it will be the opposite with our increased reliance on digital markets.
At the moment it’s just not very evenly distributed nor will it be.
At best we can moan about it and hope that climate change shifts our reliance on biomass as primary sources of energy.
Back to Clickbait.
The issue with clickbait is that the reader or site visitor is being manipulated into clicking something that is misleading.
Clickbait is not one-dimensional. Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analysed and monetized.
Most clickbait links forward a user to a page that requires payment, registration or a series of pages that help drive views for a specific site.
It can also point to any web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue.
We’re all guilty of being gullible of clicking links online but Clickbait websites are notorious for spreading misinformation and creating controversy in the name of generating hits.
Have you not ever felt that you’re being played as dumb individuals whenever you watch the news or scroll through a media site?
Thanks to supercomputers and algorithms, we can make sense of massive amounts of data in real-time. Computers are already making decisions based on this information, and in less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain. A convergence of the digital, physical and biological spheres challenging our notion of what it means to be human.
Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.
Cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.
We can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny, and that’s until 6G comes along or living robots.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We live in a world where the obvious cannot be addressed.
Each and every aspect of our daily lives, work, relationships are somehow influenced or mediated by technology today, not only as individuals but collectives.
It makes one wonder about the sheer volume of ignorance which not only allows the same problems to persist decade after decade but to even get worse.
It is obvious that our very sustainability is under threat but we remain “Oblivious”
Why?
Consider the paradoxical and strategic implications of the fact that people do not perceive things being too small or too big, too far away or too close, too wide or too narrow, too unimportant or too important for us, too slow and gradual or too sudden and fast, always present or usually absent, too often repeated or not often enough to be remarked, too general, complicated and abstract or too simple, too respectable or too unworthy, too familiar or too alien, too similar or too different too few or too many… Imagine the practical implications of such blindness!
Some of the biggest things around us dissolve into background scene, too huge to count and seemingly too big to fail.
To defeat this blindness we must ask what exactly is obvious? Why? obvious to whom? To me? to you? To everybody? Everywhere? All the time?
Decisions about technology should not be irreversibly delegated to technocrats, corporations and tech monopolies.
We think unknowingly with other people’s thoughts.
The conclusion is that our senses and memories cheat us, our common sense is no good and our judgement false.
It is self-evident that basic assumptions are the riverbeds of our thoughts, the compass of our judgment and choices and our actions; most of them we inherited from trusted people and from authorities, they look inherent, seem to be there from eternity, as if out of sight, so that we would not question them.
This is now leading to a ready-made thinking world of algorithms used by Facebook- Utube – Google – Smartphones -Twitter -and Social media. An invisible prison of social media where it is easier to observe other people’s basic assumptions than yours; particularly when they are dissimilar with yours; then, other people have not yet grown into your culture may be useful to detect your unquestionable beliefs; especially very different people coming from somewhere else; or you, visiting somewhere else.
I do not see much good in convincing people not to trust their own mind; we must instead accept and work around this “blindness” without moving our life into monasteries at the feet of gurus or into laboratories at the feet of the experts of the day.
After a while, you don’t notice. They become references.
The Right to an Algorithmic Opt-Out…
How to notice, by ourselves, the obvious turned imperceptible? How to detect it, how to discern it from the merely neutral “obvious” background? How to evaluate the importance and potential of change of something so evident that it escapes your attention? How to wake up to it? How to seek and get help? How to help other people to do the same? What to do when people cannot or do not want to see the obvious? How to awaken people?
The question is still “How to open my eyes when they are open already?”
The intelligent reason should visit its basic assumptions, regularly; but it doesn’t.
Our worst enemy in discerning the obvious is a certainty, to be convinced that we know it all and that the obvious is obvious for us.
The obvious is best disguised into itself. One obvious hide another.
How banal to say that the obvious is that which is right in front of us, readily accessible to our observation, to our senses or being credible knowledge we have!
With commercial profit-seeking algorithms, this hidden price of selective blindness and thus freedom diminished.
if you repeat slogans endlessly they will become obvious for you (even some false ones), and you will end up believing them.
The most amazing for me is to observe how we only apprehend things fit to our size and relative to us. We do not grasp the incommensurable, out of proportion with us, with which we have no common standard of measurement: the trillions of billions.
Because of compression, we have become an incredibly stupid species.
The obvious known comes alive for us to do something about it only when understanding turns it into a personal image, vivid and simple enough to be of our size; otherwise, we stay paralysed and dumb.
Perhaps it because our body believes that big things don’t move and unmoving things are harmless.
Perhaps its because we are weak, unable to face them and we allow our judgment to slumber; we do not see what we do not wish to see, hoping that it will go away or solve itself.
Perhaps only when understood does the evidence become awareness, we are able to respond to, so that we would do something because of what it means.
Perhaps figuring out that the elusive 20th-century social contract is gone, is too enormous for us. Therefore we will go on like cattle to the slaughterhouse.
Why is this becoming true?
Because as Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations states.
“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of their inquiry do not strike people at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck them. And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.”
Only by understanding how and when common sense fails can we improve how we plan for the future.
Then, question and challenge the obvious at the root: “Why exactly it must be so? Why it is impossible? Who says so? Where is it necessary or impossible? Only here or everywhere? Really?! For whom; for you or for the entire humanity? With what means? At what size? Within what frame of time? Forever? Which pieces in this puzzle would, if changed, make the impossible possible and the necessary less so? Maybe you or somebody else, somewhere else, with different means have other self-evidence.
Where it will end?
Either there will be a technological or psychological breakthrough or we will see worldwide degradation like we’ve never seen before.
Old labels often obscure the obvious.
I’d like to state the obvious:
Problem-solving is the only thing in life that holds value. Anything that isn’t a solution to a problem is pure excess.
The truth is that the world is not a democracy. We don’t all decide what is best – only a select few do.
We are egocentric through and through – but creating a lasting, meaningful change feeds our egos like nothing else.
Unfortunately, creating change takes time, patience and perseverance.
It appears that for every one step we take forward as a global community, we end up taking two steps backwards.
Every problem in the world is a function that is processed in an environment, on a platform with certain bounds, certain rules, and certain major players.
As far as I can see, life has little certain purpose. If there is a real reason for it, then we have to accept that we simply don’t know the reason.
However, don’t give up until you have to – until there is a better, more logical option.
Big ideas can change the world, can’t they?
Of course, we don’t know. Nobody does. It is really about what we want to happen and whether we go out there and make it happen.
Will we be able to shift direction to avoid the worst impacts of climate change?
Yes.
We face risks, called existential risks, that threaten to wipe out humanity.
These risks are not just for big disasters, but for the disasters that could end history.
Nuclear war.
Climate Change.
Bioengineered pandemic.
Superintelligence.
Nanotechnology.
Inequality.
Unknown unknowns.
Anyone of them might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe.
In doing so we will get the economy back on its feet again and re-orientate our financial institutions so that they cannot place the world in a similar situation to what we experienced in 2008.
In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The Dead Sea will be almost completely dried up, nearly half of the Amazon rainforest will have been deforested, wildfires will spread like, umm, wildfire, and the polar ice caps will be only 60 per cent the size they are now.
Wars will involve not only land and sea but space. Superhurricanes will become a regular occurrence.
Should you be worried, of course not AI/Algorithms are here to guide you.
AI-related advancements have grown from strength to strength in the last decade.
Right now there are people coming up with new algorithms by applying evolutionary techniques to the vast amounts of big data via genetic programming to find optimisations and improve your life in different fields.
The amount of data we have available to us now means that we can no longer think in discrete terms. This is what big data forces us to do.
It forces us to take a step back, an abstract step back to find a way to cope with the tidal wave of data flooding our systems. With big data, we are looking for patterns that match the data and algorithms are enabling us to find patterns via clustering, classification, machine learning and any other number of new techniques.
To find the patterns you or I cannot see. They create the code we need to do this and give birth to learner algorithms that can be used to create new algorithms.
So do you remember a time, initially, when it was possible to pass on all knowledge through the form of dialogue from generation to generation, parent to child, teacher to student? Indeed, the character of Socrates in Plato’s “Phaedrus” worried that this technological shift to writing and books was a much poorer medium than dialogue and would diminish our ability to develop true wisdom and knowledge.
Needless to say that I don’t think Socrates would have been a fan of Social Media or TV.
The machine learning algorithms have become like a hammer at the hands of data scientists. Everything looks like a nail to be hit upon.
In due process, the wrong application or overkill of machine learning will cause disenchantment among people when it does not deliver value.
It will be a self-inflicted ‘AI Winter’.
So here is what your day at 70th might be.
Welcome to the world of permanent change—a world defined not by heavy industrial machines that are modified infrequently, but by software that is always in flux.
Algorithms are everywhere. They decide what results you see in an internet search, and what adverts appear next to them. They choose which friends you hear from on social networks. They fix prices for air tickets and home loans. They may decide if you’re a valid target for the intelligence services. They may even decide if you have the right to vote.
7.30 am
Personalised Health Algorithm report.
Sleep pattern good. Anxiety normal, deficient in vitamin C. Sperm count normal.
Results of body scan sent health network.
7.35 am
House Management Algorithm Report.
Temperature 65c. House secure. Windows/ Doors closed Catflap open. Heating off. Green Energy usage 2.3 Kwh per minute. (Advertisement to change provider.) Shower running, Water flow and temperature adjusted, shower head hight adjusted. House Natural light adjusted. Confirmation that smartphone and I pad fully charges. Robotic housemaid programmed.
Refrigerators will be seamlessly integrated with online supermarkets, so a new tub of peanut butter will be on its way to your door by drone delivery before you even finish the last one.
8.45 am. Appointments Algorithm.
Virtual reality appointment with a local doctor.
Voice mails and emails and the calendar check.
A device in your head might eliminate the need for a computer screen by projecting images (from a Skype meeting, a video game, or whatever) directly into your field of vision from within. It checks
9 am.
Personalised Financial Algorithm.
Balance of credit cards and bank accounts including citizen credit /loyalty points. Value of shares/ pension fund updated.
10 am. Still in your Dressing gown.
11 am. The self-drive car starts. Seats automatically shift and rearrange themselves to provide maximum comfort. Personalised News and Weather Algorithm gives a report. The car books parking spot places order for coffee. Over coffee, you rent out a robot in Dublin and have it do the legwork for your forthcoming visiting – hotels.
12 pm.
Hologram of your boss in your living room.
1 pm.
Virtual work meeting to discuss the solitary nature of remote work.
Face-to-face meeting arranged.
2 pm. Home. Lunch delivered.
3 pm. Sporting activity with a virtual coach.
5 pm. Home
7 30 pm.
Discuss and view the Dubin robot walk around containing video and audio report.
Dinner delivered. Six quests. The home management algorithm rearranges the furniture.
8 30 pm
Virtual helmets on for some after-dinner entertainment.
10 pm
Ask Alixia to shut the house down not before you answer Alixia question to score points and a chance to win — Cash- Holiday- Dinner for two- a discount on Amazon- e bay- or a spot of online gambling.
———
The fourth industrial revolution is not simply an opportunity. It matters what kind of opportunity is for whom and under what terms.
We need to start thinking about algorithms.
The core issue here is of course who will own the basic infrastructure of our future which is going to be effect all sectors of society.
They are not just for mathematicians or academics. There are algorithms all around us and you don’t need to know how to code to use them or understand them.
We need to better understand them to better understand, and control, our own futures. To achieve this we need to better understand how these algorithms work and how to tailor them to suit our needs. Otherwise, we will be unable to fully unlock the potential of this abstract transition because machine learning automates automation itself.
The new digital economy, akin to learning to read, has obscured our view of algorithms. Algorithms are increasingly part of our everyday lives, from recommending our films to filtering our news and finding our partners.
Building a solid foundation now for governance for AI the need to use AI responsibly
and to consider the broader reaching implications of this transformational technology’s use.
The world population will be over 9 billion with the majority of people will live in cities.
So here are a few questions at 30 you might want to consider.
How does the software we use influence what we express and imagine?
Shall we continue to accept the decisions made for us by algorithms if we don’t know how they operate?
What does it mean to be a citizen of a software society?
These and many other important questions are waiting to be analyzed.
If we reduce each complex system to a one-page description of its algorithm, will we capture enough of software behaviour?
Or will the nuances of particular decisions made by software in every particular case be lost?
You don’t need a therapist; they need an algorithm.
We may never really grasp the alienness of algorithms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to live with them.
Unfortunately, their decisions can run counter to our ideas of fairness. Algorithms don’t see humans the same way other humans do.
What are we doing about confronting any of this – Nothing much.
So its no wonder that people start to worry about what’s left for human beings to do.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We are the first generation to know we’re destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it.
SO AS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
We need to recognize that everything we do, every step we take, every sentence we write, every word we speak—or don’t speak—counts. Nothing is trivial.
Take personal responsibility.
We need to use social media – this is one of the most effective ways to get brands to listen to you, so tell them that you want a change.
Why?
Because, unfortunately, the politicians who dominate the world stage are, depressingly, mostly cut from the old cloth, and the leadership challenges they face, are particularly complex and will require different skills — notably a clearer vision among leaders of organisation’s shared purpose.
Because the digital revolution is far from over the pace of change only seems to be quickening when in fact it is causing isolation.
Because, we are allowing non-regulated large technology platforms to become too powerful, using their size to dominate markets and we are not paying enough attention to how the tools they create can be used for ill – like device addictions, as we drown in notifications and false news feed posts.
Because there is an increasing imperative for all of us to respond to climate change. Which will and is challenging our lives developing on a daily bases right in front of our eyes into our biggest need to act as one.
How can any of this be achieved?
How will the changing political, economic and environmental landscapes shape the world?
Don’t get caught up in the how of things. Don’t wait for things to be right in order to begin.
Because in our age of tectonic geopolitical shifts, “alternative facts,” and conflicting narratives, our routine everyday life is losing sight of our true goals and aspirations.
Because with the rise of short-sighted populism we will solve nothing, other than feeding the great unwashed with short term gratification.
We need to write a piece of software that eliminated malware, viruses and all of that crap.
We need to show our political leaders that they want to change, to understand our common humanity.
We need to try to put yourself into another person’s headspace and accept people for who they are and what their beliefs are.
We need to collaborate and push for policies that complement both sides of the political spectrum.
We need to make wasting our resources unacceptable in all aspects of our life. Every product we buy has an environmental footprint and could end up in a landfill. The impact of plastic pollution on our oceans is becoming increasingly clear, having drastic impacts on marine life.
We need to be more conscious about what we buy, and where we buy it from. Living a less consumerist lifestyle can benefit you and our planet.
We need to use our purchasing power and make sure our money is going towards positive change.
We need to realize that what we eat contributes around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for almost 60% of global biodiversity loss.
We need to be supporting eco-friendly products.
We need to try to waste as little food as possible, and compost the organic waste we can’t eat.
We need to make education free for all. Start educating not for profit but for a better understanding of what is the common values of life.
We need to stop asking the world’s smartest scientists to find us more time and to reverse gravity’s effect on our lives.
We need to stop killing each other. Countries start wars and people die and more people are in poverty.
We need to create out of profit for profit sake a World Aid fund with perpetual funding. (See previous posts) A new nonprofit called Carbon Offsets to alleviate address Climate change and Poverty.
We need to realize that all significant change throughout history has occurred not because of nations, armies, governments and certainly not committees. They happened as a result of the courage and commitment of individuals. Believe that you can and will make a difference.
The genesis for change is awareness so I need to stop.
This year will not only be another opportunity for the leading minds in media in all its forms to highlight consumption for consumption sake.
However, if they wanted to spread a message that helps us all they would ban advertising that promotes consumption for consumption sake/profit.
Feel free to add your priorities. With rapid innovations in technology and open access to data its no longer “wait and see.” We need to stop the huge feeling of apathy.
The coming year, let alone the next decade looks unpredictable.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Of course, as with all hypothetical questions, there is no correct answer.
Whether it will be a liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour party that will be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.
However, looking at the present state of England against the problems facing the world one would have to say the horizon is far from looking bright.
The longer-term questions about the UK’s relationship with the EU will still need to be addressed no matter what the result of the current general election.
This very question itself will pale in comparison to the coming nexus environmental and energy problems facing us all.
Even if one was to ignore climate change it is truly impossible to overstate the havoc—financial, social, cultural—that could be brought about by peak oil if sufficient renewable energy is not in place to make up for declines in fossil fuels.
By the middle of the next decade or so, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically.
The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both.
The one thing we can be sure of is this:
No matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future. From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, will see technological change on an astonishing scale.
All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn’t drive us into caves.
With over 60% of global GDP will be digitized by 2022 it is a total waste of time for countries such as the UK to attempted to pull up the drawbridge, to increase national production and reducing reliance on imports. These world-changing technologies are already creating more interconnected, interdependent and rapid business networks.
How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection will develop due to a hard Brexit is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to see.
The question is, will Britain outside the EU be a more global, more deregulated, more free-trading country five years from now.
Presently nearly half of the UK’s total trade is with EU countries.
Leaving the biggest free trade area with over 500 million consumers won’t be cheap no matter what the divorce bill is. The EU has 53 trade deals worldwide the UK has zero.
The consequent rebalancing of the British economy will therefore take years and more than likely create a food underclass.
WHY?
Because it is as yet unclear when the UK will have the legal authority to begin negotiations; when the UK will leave the EU customs union; and what the trade arrangements between the UK and the EU will be after that point.
It is therefore difficult to see how third countries could engage seriously with the UK until these decisions have been taken. In addition, there are significant obstacles to meaningful trade deals with most of the countries.
The world will be more complicated even if these projections assume an orderly exit from the EU.
Only when we stand together can we secure our prosperity in a competitive world as the distinction between the country, town, will blur, with Artifical intelligence not to mention sea levels rising.
Why?
Because if I’d been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff but artificial intelligence is proving itself an unexpectedly difficult problem.
To describe EXACTLY what they will be doing in 1,820 days never mind that a second financial crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove not just to be the remaking of Britain but the whole of the EU.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Everyone sees the world in different ways however the greatest innovations of man are found in the most simple things:
Starting with Fire, Language, Tools, and Wheel writing has been the sole reason that mankind has been able to accumulate knowledge.
Since then the use of our inventions have taken us a long way, they’ve allowed us to land on the moon, travel over oceans, and even eliminate major health threats with various medicines.
You could not be blamed for asking what was actually gained by landing on the moon — a handful of rocks and a game of low-gravity golf — was of virtually no value and yet the act of the journey was invaluable beyond all measure as it personified our continuing evolution.
The same is true with technology today.
The development of it is mind-blowing but its application is almost entirely mindless – profit-seeking algorithms and weaponized drones.
Setting aside why do we exist and what is the purpose of life? (These are hard questions that demand answers) it is what we have not achieved that will be judged by future generations.
Karl Marx once famously observed that capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own destruction but he was wrong. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s people.
The human race ended the 20th century in pretty good shape, at least comparatively speaking.
The first half of the 1900s was almost certainly the most bloody and brutal phase of humanity’s existence.
Now we have all the information in the world yet it has made us only more ideological and more ignorant; we have access to limitless opinions yet we seek to criminalise those who don’t agree with us. We are so advanced and yet so backward, so cynical and yet so stupid, that we can no longer even agree on what constitutes a fact.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Consider the internet itself, probably the most revolutionary invention in the history of humankind. Its potential to share information thus to accelerate the advancement of science and keep the world running in the event of a catastrophic disaster — the purpose for which it was first intended — is all but limitless.
And what do we use it for most? Porn.
Consider the smartphone, the match to the powder keg of the worldwide web. Almost everyone in every half-developed part of the world, even people living on the streets, has a device more powerful than supercomputers that once took up whole buildings. We can access virtually any image, any idea, any information from anywhere in the world.
And what do we overwhelmingly use it for? Taking pictures of ourselves.
Let’s look at medical technology — the smartest minds on the planet developing machines and medicines that keep the average person today alive for longer than was once ever dreamt of.
And what is the result?
We are fatter and lazier than ever, resulting in spiralling hospital costs that will send most Western governments broke in a matter of decades. It was once said that the only two certainties in life were death and taxes and yet now we are defying death and there aren’t enough taxes to pay for it.
We are too dumb to even know when to die.
It may well be impossible to connect a full chronological series of species, leading to Homo sapiens, but over millions of years of evolution, we’ve picked up some less than ideal characteristics.
Why? Because of greed.
It will take the efforts of several scientific disciplines and sophisticated technology, probably over many years, to discover the underlying nature of our mental faculties, their neurological basis, and their development over time.
And it’s fair to say that we have little idea of what we’ll evolve to in the future, but there is one thing for certain, evolution is about adapting to your environment – Weaponized drones, Climate change, Algorithms.
Algorithms that are feeding Social media, are stripping us of a collective understanding of what is going on in the world.
People like to blame fake news on Facebook, and that is true enough.
But the far greater truth is far worse than that. Neither fake news nor Facebook emerged like Athena fully-formed from nothing. They were made by us. By us and for us and of us.
While the positive uses for technology are endless I marvel as I read Asimov to see the way in which he foresaw the ethical conundrum in which we now find ourselves embroiled.
Of course, when they (the future generations) look at our achievements the one thing they will not be able to comprehend is why we have not been able to stop killing each other.
Weaponized drones are now more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons.
It might be argued that this would be a way of sparing human beings who could stay comfortably at home and let our intelligent machines do the fighting for us. If some of them were destroyed — well, they are only machines. This approach to warfare would be particularly useful if we had such machines and the enemy didn’t.
Just like those tried at Nuremberg who attempted to wash their hands of mass killings we have now developed weaponized drones to kill, with a Punches Pilot immunity, that is violating all existing international law.
So humans through the use of technology may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves.
Perhaps the result (if we are not already wiped out by Nuclear or a Weather bomb) will be that we’re no longer subject to the driving force of evolution – but unnatural selection by drones.
Now the question is, how accurate is this statement?
Is technological progress actually taking us backwards?
Are we advancing ourselves to death? At what point do many deaths become too many deaths?
This is the first problem with technology.
If it is accurate, we’re already screwed.
Of course, none of this is important given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we probably won’t have to worry about that for thousands of years.
Wrong.
We’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behaviour is predictable.
But number-crunching algorithms are leading us perilously wrong. There’s something unsettling in the idea that, amid the vagaries of choice, chance, and circumstance, mathematics can tell us something about what it is to be human.
Who we are together, as a collective entity?
Despite the grand promises of Big Data, uncertainty remains so abundant that specific human lives remain boundlessly unpredictable. The more data that are collected, cross-referenced, and searched for correlations, the easier it becomes to reach false conclusions.
It might be true that in large groups, the natural variability among human beings cancels, however, if we end up with algorithms setting thresholds extremely unlikely outcomes are bound to arise eventually.
The gift is not a technology to enable us to realise evolution for the cruel being it is, but giving mankind the intelligence and tools to exclude ourselves from the other species on the planet and take a step back to interpret for ourselves where we as a race are going?
Leaving the brutality of evolution behind is not a gift given to us by evolution.
We have evolved to the point whereby we stand on the threshold of controlling our genetic and ultimately evolutionary destiny. Unfortunately, the problem with humans is, whenever we encounter a problem we have evolved to the point where we think that we can overcome it with technology.
Advances in technology, medicine and culture mean it isn’t just the fittest who get to pass their genes on to the next generation.
External aids could be entirely responsible for our survival.
All of this relies on earth’s natural resources which are supposedly gonna be gone by 2050!
The problems in this world are manmade therefore man can solve them.
The sad truth is that we have Governments and World Organisations that pay lip service when the real debate is a knowledge- and research-based exchange of argument and counterargument that should be focused at the analysis of a specific question, our survival.
Passion and competition, yes, but, more than anything else, debate is an exercise in critical thinking! The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself.
Technology has already affected the way our memory works.
AI. After all, natural evolution wouldn’t be able to mould and program devices to a point of sophistication that may lead to sentience, but we may be able to and maybe at that point even though its not natural, it is an evolution born of natural origins and most likely would go on to create newer better versions of itself.
In theory, humans are exercising their judgement in the process, but in reality, the computer system is viewed as too “smart” to be second-guessed by a human being.
So . . . what do we need to be more afraid of?
Robots with a compulsion to out-think humans? or humans that are afraid to second-guess the robots?
We must confront an urgent problem related to technology: the automation of “pre-emptive violence” – front-loaded with a bias to kill, with little impetus to contradict that bias.
At present drones are the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.
So are we at the peak of human evolution?
Certainly not. Certainly not as long as there are humans, there will be human evolution.
We are not even close to the peak of evolution.
Just look at wthat werecently found > The Higgs Boson, Mapped the Human Genome, Cloned a sheep, built the International Space Station, discovery the Double Helix Structure of DNA, Split the Atom, invented the Internet, we’re revisiting the theories of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.
We have Created Nuclear Weapons, the Periodic Table of the Elements, Created the Internet Developed Vaccines, Created Music, Created Photography, Flight, Electronic Devices, Traveled to the Moon, Eradicated Small Pox, Created the Television, Discovered Mathematics, Invented the Printing Press, The Phone, Discovery and Control of Electricity, Cars, Invented Zero, Created of United Nations, Discovered World is Round.
AND STILL, WE ARE UNABLE TO ACT TOGETHER.
Why?
Because you know the downfall of civilisation has really passed the point of no return when even a rich white guy can’t get anything done.
Humans are the only organism that can alter their environment to suit them (instead of the other way around)
Finally, people must take into account that nature will commence exerting its own controls LONG BEFORE the human race has reached the point where it can step off the evolutionary treadmill.
With our increasing reliance on technology – and in particular machinery – to do our dirty (but muscle-enhancing) work. The less each generation depends on physical strength, the more likely it is that the whole species will grow weaker to the point of stagnation.
As evolution relies on the survival of the fittest, evolution itself will evolve everything else in all our lives will be transitory and every other artificial intelligent goodwill application will become visionary.
Only when we’ll be able to repair and augment our children’s DNA. Then we really will have triumphed over evolution. Race” will no longer be an issue. Perhaps we will stop killing each other.
Yet we’ve got our problems. A lot of them but the very things we invented to sustain us will destroy us.
The exact nature of our evolutionary relationships with the planet and AI will be the subject of debate for the foreseeable future.
It doesn’t matter if we’re uncovering evidence for climate change or deciding whether a drug has an effect: the concept is identical.
By setting an arbitrary threshold, and agreeing that anything beyond that point gives you grounds for suspicion with greed this is the evolutionary path we are setting our selves.
Mentally the world appears to be de-evolving with smartphones and social media platforms.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Never mind standing on the moon here are some depressing reality about your planet Earth.
We live in a world of trillions of living organisms and billions of humans and few millions of other species.
There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.
There are nearly 210 million orphans in the world.
More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.
AND THAT JUST FOR OPENERS.
35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).
Over 100 million people live in slums.
1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labour force, are unemployed or underemployed.
Cows earns more than 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people.
An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’).
At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..
About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor
3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day). Both in rich countries and poor, a staggering 30-50% of all food produced rots away uneaten.
By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people) The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. One fourth of humanity lives without electricity.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.
The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population.
The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people. The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.
Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.
Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.
60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.
Land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.
An estimated 40-80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams,
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.
While we witness the horrific events that are occurring within our society and world today now with a blink of an eye, our world is constantly changing, for the good, but also for the worst.
With technology, we are losing sight of what is important.
We have begun to categorize people based on how they act, what they wear, their political party, their skin color, where they live and so many other factors.
We are always forgetting ourselves until someone wakes up to remind us of who we really are. Humans?
The world was always beautiful. It’s only becoming lesser and lesser.
There is only this world, only this single reality, and its shared by everybody, everyday… Not created.
Were economically and morally bankrupt.
THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.
The world has no one society. Surely its time we started to vote with our eyes not our ears.
Economics is not an unbiased academic discipline, it’s an ideology. Furthermore, economics is based on the false premise that perpetual growth is achievable.
Can economic growth be sustainably achieved?
Finite resources make perpetual growth theoretically impossible. No amount of technological breakthrough or creative accounting can counter that physical fact.
Is economic growth desirable?
The short answer appears to be no.
Exponential growth will eventually take you to impossible places.
Unfortunately, we live in a world of capitalists that thrive on the great Myth of Perpetual Growth, endless growth, ad infinitum, forever, till the end of time.
It seems as though we are damned if we grow and damned if we don’t.
We’ve now with Algorithms for profit sake got to a position where there’s nothing to keep us in check – so we have to do it ourselves.
It’s a waiting game now – to see if we can learn to behave differently to bacteria in a petri dish before it’s too late and we kill our host.
It’s not worth the risk.
Ecology and economics have to be intertwined, or we’re in serious trouble.
It’s time we all get our head out of the smartphone and become smart.
We can have debates about what we’re going to do about this and that, but if you can’t see the reason in the core of what I am saying, we’ll be having two very different conversations.
There is little point in arguing any longer whether Neoliberalism is to blame for damaging ecology beyond its ability to support us. It has lead to the inevitable collision between an insatiable economic model and a finite planet whose resources are stretched to the hilt.
The perception of the need for perpetual economic growth is a fraud and this assumption creates massive risk when reaching the limits of our natural systems.
With a world population nearly at 7 billion people, the implication for economic growth seems obvious as we cannot assume that the status quo will hold in a changing climatic environment. Reaching the earth’s resource limit is inevitable if it is not already occurring.
However changing our society’s behaviours cannot be achieved through some overseeing organization.
Perpetual growth has been ingrained through exposure to intensive branding and marketing by the very corporations who provide jobs and economic growth, and round and round we go…… Enacting such dramatic change through a highly centralized governing structure that dictates appropriate resource use, population levels, and actively redistributes wealth is a hard sell even in dire times.
As a result, we cannot continue consuming more and more water, spewing out more and more carbon dioxide and burning more and more coal.
In the past 22 years, half of all of the oil ever burned has been burned.
At present, the global population is increasing by 83 million people annually and we are already consuming natural resources as if we have “1.5 Earths.”
If every person used as many resources as the average North American, more than four Earths would be required to sustain the total rate of consumption. Other words if everyone lived like the average American, the Earth could sustain only 1.7 billion people — a quarter of today’s population.
27 billion people will inhabit the planet by the end of the century and hidden in every calorie of food eaten are 10 calories of fossil fuels.
Technology can lead to greater efficiencies, it requires energy — it does not create it.
Water is obviously a key component of human life. It is also vital to energy, industry, agriculture and livestock.
With all of this in mind, it’s time to abandon the perpetual growth economic model and move instead to a model that stresses conservation, efficiency, recycling and renewability. Clearly, the world is on an unsustainable path and, by definition, anything that is unsustainable won’t last.
Above all else, we must redefine the quality of life as something other than just having “more.” The goal should be to simply have enough. Our quality of life should not be measured by “stuff,” but instead by the things that make life rich; our relationships, our hobbies, our work and our passions.
GDP merely measures what people are willing to pay for, which is not necessarily connected to the use of energy, or any other physical resource.
The world will be confronting shortages of hydrocarbons, metals, water and fertilizer, which will dramatically affect global agriculture. The latter is critical.
So why are we unable to change direction.
Because of the threat, transnational organizations have over the nation-state.
Because no one is willing to bear the costs.
Because of the amount of power capital has over labour.
As it stands, nearly half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — lives on roughly $2 per day.
The solution is to get profit for profit sake to pay:
By introducing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all High-frequency trading, on all sovereign wealth funds acquisitions on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,000, on all gambling and lottos wins creating a perpetual world aid fund.
By issuing United Nation Green Deal non-trading Bond.
By the introduction of a World Day of non-consumerism Advertising.
By building non atomised Societies that are attached geographical – belonging not defined by competition.
By eating together one a week.
The question is how do we communicate this obvious message, in the face of corporate control of the media, and increasingly academia, science and the political system?
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
These days in the higher ethylene of the political world it seems you must be an accomplished liar and not a far-seeing planner to be successful.
With the advent of social media people’s day-to-day exposure to political discussion and disagreement has increased dramatically.
However what is worrying is that technology in the form of social media, the smartphone is continuing to create a contemporary problem that large sections of the public want ‘democracy’ but without the ‘politics.
As a result, were are seeing fake news driving populist politics that has no longterm objectives.
There is nothing new about fake news it has been prevalent down the ages but the days when a lot of us believe that many of the major world events that are shaping our destinies occur because somebody or somebodies have planned them that way are all but disappeared.
However, with the media making very little effort to explain political decisions, rather than just jumping on any perceived gaffe or conflict ‘democracy’ remains an incredibly positive notion.
With the public no longer thinking about the world within the silos of government departments governments need to engage people in solutions rather than top-down ‘vote for us and we’ll provide the answers.
Younger people don’t just copy their parents’ tribal loyalties. Voting is more like shopping, with preferences changing on a quim of twitter on social media.
Unfortunately, our present-day political system has not yet caught up, it offers limited choice. What happens in between elections is for all attentive purposes driven by the smartphone that are monitored by unregulated algorithms owned by you know who.
What is been ignored is that this digital space in all its diversity represents a huge opportunity with the power to engage people in new ways. Online participation in local decision-making is one possibility. This would involve citizens outside election time-.
So we need to understand all the ways people behave and respond in the digital space and set clear and realistic goals for what they hope to accomplish.
However, people are now becoming slow and slower to engage with the internet due to the lack of security/ privacy/and a source of truth.
Why?
Because Capitalism is spending billion on digital marketing each year, and for good reason. Digital media has enormous power to reach and influence people. Over 2 billion people—about one-third of the global population—now access the Internet.
We all know if we are to avoid extinction due to climate change which poses real risks to our collective future we need a green energy transformation.
The problem is that behind a veneer of objectivity, Capitalism as always sees an opportunity to make a profit – Carbon Credits for instance, with more and more consumerism products being promoted as good for the environment
With all the political goodwill the transfer to low carbon emission can only be achieved by offering citizens a means to get involved other than protesting.
How can this be done?
We must allow people to exercise democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment ie De-politicising decision-making by limiting capitalism’s worst failing- profit for profit sake.
To have authentic democracy!
Citizens must be afforded the opportunity to get involved not just politically, but financially by creating Green Energy European Bonds that cannot be traded.
These bonds will allow citizens to regain control over unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions.
They can be sold like lotto tickets. Forging a common agenda.
Emancipating citizens from all levels of government from bureaucratic and corporate power. Allowing direct investment into shared, green prosperity.
Politics has never been popular and never will be:
The more disengaged, the less likely that political parties will deliver.
We’re able to measure things in a way that we’ve never been able to measure them before. So why not measure the wealth of a nation by the financial investment support it gets from its citizen’s. Rather than encompassing every possible thing that can go under the rubric of “green.
I suppose my goal here is to propose something vague enough that no one will object to it.
Have you wondered how you got to where you are today?
Greed.
Is technology taking control of our lives or our destiny?
Yes. We’ve ditched reality.
The very data on which we measure the economy is disconnected from
the reality, with political leaders using high soaring” words “which often
imbibe emptiness.
Communication and leadership are key elements in elections these days
but you can’t sell a bad product, can you?
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Right now nobody knows for sure but it is going to radically upend many aspects of our lives, as it is a technological paradigm shift.
3G or 4G was just a trailer, and the movie is about to begin.
Why?
Because it is going to marry data collection and computation with billions of devices.
But there is a debate on the necessity for it, considering human physical and mental limitations.
It will become the underlying fabric of an entire ecosystem of fully connected intelligent sensors and devices, capable of overhauling economic and business policies, and further blurring geographical and cultural borders.
It will create a world populated by digital citizens in continual interaction with their surroundings, their peers and public services.
It will enable communications & computing power to come together creating a hyperconnected ‘Internet of everything’ world.
It will release the spectrum for mobile devices, bring about dramatic transformations in our daily lives.
It is going to change everything about everything else.
It will rock the world economy over the next decade as we haven’t yet
conceived that will be tied into the 5G network.
For example:
Your car will know your every move faster than your mind. Cars will be able to use 5G to talk to other cars and sensors built around cities, from street lamps to gas stations.
Think about your relationship between the smart city and an autonomous car.
Think about predictive care. It will enable advanced data transfer from wearables and sensors, facilitating remote clinical decisions and robotic surgery
Think about bring virtual reality into the classroom, allowing students to face real-life situations without real-life consequences.
Think about living in a world of always-on, always-sharing, cloud applications and services.
Think about it leading to seamless and ubiquitous information control.
It will potential to unlock trillions of revenue across a broad range of industries creating a different hidden economy with wireless consumption.
This revenue will be equivalent to total U.S. consumer spending in 2016, and more than the combined spending of China, Japan, France, Germany, and the U.K. This revenue also represents about 4.6 per cent of all global real output in 2035.
Another words countries without 5G will become less competitive globally, spreading inequality on a scale not seen before. This inequality leads to more than just differences in consumption and wealth distribution. It affects access to healthcare, education, nutrition, employment, financial and technological platforms; it exacerbates poverty, exclusion and violence.
By 2020, analysts estimate that there will be more than 20 billion installed IoT devices around the world, supporting 22 million jobs generating massive amounts of data.
With access to this kind of information, industries of all kinds will be able to reach new levels of efficiency as they add products, services, and capabilities.
It will mean that a surgeon may not need to be in the same room as a patient in the future. A surgeon could use a VR headset and special glove to control a robot arm that would perform an actual operation in another location.
With haptic feedback, you’ll be able to transmit the tactile sensation of experience, enhancing the sights and sounds of a video experience.
It will make drone warfare affordable and drone defence essential.
It will make consumption and production distant and broad concepts that are somehow unattached from us.
So what can we, as consumers, do, instead of feeling powerless and distraught?
We must ensure that 5G respect nature, and the interconnectedness of everything that matters for humanity.
An unofficial trade war is already afoot in the tech industry due to the imminent rise of 5G technology.
But it will not happen overnight. Think in terms of a decade or more for it to fully unfold.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
