Category Archives: Technology.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S FAR TO LATE TO CONTROL AI.

01 Saturday Apr 2023

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( Six minute read)

Why?

Because the change is already taking place.

Because,  There are now more cell phones in the world than people. There were less than 7% of the world on online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.

Because, technology has already radically transformed our societies and our daily lives, from smartphones to social media and healthcare. Technology touches nearly everything we do.

Because, your voice, your image, your race, your shopping habits, your health, your movement’s, your viewing habits, your voting, your financial standing, your criminal record, your interests, your decision making, down to what you are eating, not forgetting your sex life is and has being harvest for free.

All can be and are being faked.

Because, virtual interactions offers enticing financial opportunities for big businesses and digitalized Governments.

——-

Excessive use of technology can do more harm than good, and we should bear this in mind before we rush into digitizing our lives.

When all areas of human activity get rapidly digitized, it’s easy to become desensitized to the importance of innovations and advancements for the overall progress of society. Though it may be tough to predict which advancements technology would bring next, some innovations are already changing our beliefs about the world around us.

The coming generations will be living in a mixture of reality and the metaverse. Using headsets to create a  3D avatar – a representation of themselves –  to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments. Perhaps when they go online shopping, they will be able too try on digital clothes first, and then order them to arrive in the real world.

A virtual economy of inequality.  Nowhere does the intersection of technology, enterprises and individuals hold greater opportunity than in the metaverse.

If it happens at all – will be fought among tech giants for the next decade, or maybe even longer.

———-

The Metaverse doesn’t exist – at least not yet, but there no way of predicting how people will react to it, or how it will be used.

( Everything transformed into line of code, augmenting reality by superimposing a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world. You have an experience while wearing another person’s body and you get to walk a mile in that person’s shoes.)

The next generation of the internet has the power to reshape the way that businesses and consumers engage, transact, socialize, work and learn together exploring the world on their own terms.

As of today, there isn’t anything that could legitimately be identified as a metaverse. The metaverse is essentially a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces,

A better question might be:

What could become the metaverse?

Something that people would have considered magic just a few decades ago is now gaining popularity in business, gaming, and team building.

The combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality – will play an important role.

The distinction between being offline and online will be much harder to delineate. So we either end up in a situation where it’s complete chaos and everyone’s allowed to do everything and you know, there’s racism, sexism, abuse and all that kind of stuff, or there’s incredibly tight moderation and no one’s allowed to do anything.

Wearable screens and gesture-based computing, other recent innovations, are predicted to soon substitute the usual PC and phone screens.

A red-haired woman wears the Oculus Quest 2 headset in white, holding two controllers

——-

Robots, another buzzword in today’s business world, have already replaced humans in some workplaces — robotic arms work at assembly or packing lines. Flying cars will soon address the issue of limited ground space and long traffic jams.

Clearly, technology by itself is neither good nor bad. It is only the way and extent to which we use it that matters.

It is indisputable that thanks to technology, we get a chance to live a life our predecessors could not even dream about.

But do all tech advancements bring sole good to our lives?

Or, maybe, the impact of tech innovations is quite ambiguous.

We are all at the mercy of machine learning algorithms, that are non transparent, non accountable, and non regulated.

So we have an open letter from those on High in the Tec world,  advocating that the brakes should be applied to the creation of new tech that generates falsehood’s. You dont have to be a Tech genius to know that this is not going to happen.

My advice is.

To protect oneself.

Every person should have a secret verification word in order to authenticate the caller and a symbol to be used in all texts and emails, that if not present in any communication received or sent,  marks it as False.

——–

All of which begs the question: just why is the 21st century so dystopian?

A few years ago, you might have thought: this is just a phase. It’ll pass. But it’s not. If anything, it’s getting worse, and it feels like it’s here to stay.

When I say “it”, or “dystopia,” you might wonder exactly, precisely what I mean. What I mean is very simple though. How many crises do we face? More than I can easily count. Let’s try to list them all, though we’ll run out of sanity and room before we finish, for sure. Finances? Total crisis, incomes falling around the world, debt levels soaring. Infrastructure? Mega-crisis, unless you think the infrastructure we have survives this century, let alone this decade. Social systems? Everywhere from France to Britain to America — crisis. People’s…minds? Crisis, especially in young people, depression and anxiety and suicide rates soaring. Then there are the big ones: climate change and mass extinction, not to mention politics , which has taken a notably…fascist…turn, again.

All of this is what scholars have begun to call The age of Polycrises.  And in it, the better question isn’t: “what’s in crisis?

It’s: what isn’t?

Like I said, the list above is a mere brief beginning. Migration and refugees? Another one. Peace and democracy? Yup, in crisis.

How about upward mobility? Check. Faith and confidence in institutions? Super crisis. Take a look at any element of society or the world, and chances are, it’s in crisis. How about inequality? Shocking levels of crisis.

This is why the 21st century feels so dystopian.

It’s not really a “feeling,” though that’s the way it’s often made out to be by media. It’s an empirical reality. Scholars have begun to conceptualize the 21st century as a “Polycrisis” for a reason, which is that the dystopia is real.

So when media, bigwigs, wannabe intellectuals and so forth, make all this out to be exaggeration, hyperbole, imply that you are the fainting Victorian bride in the room, because, hey, Tucker!! Everything’s Great!!…they’re completely wrong. And that needs to be said. It’s a form of denialism at this point, because…

The next part is about cause and effect. We need, as a civilization and a world, to figure out what’s causing all this, so we can begin to undo it. But if all we do is deny it…then, my friends, our gooses are well and cooked.  It’s fascism on a dying planet, in different bitter and poisonous flavours, maybe.

ITS NOW AGI. ( Artificial General Intelligence) Already it is transforming every walk of life.

AI is not a futuristic vision, but rather something that is here today and being integrated with and deployed into a variety of sectors.

There are numerous examples where AI already is making an impact on the world and augmenting human capabilities in significant ways. This includes fields such as finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, and smart cities, digital education, decision making, democracy’s.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are designed to make decisions, often using real-time data. They are unlike passive machines that are capable only of mechanical or predetermined responses. Using sensors, digital data, or remote inputs, they combine information from a variety of different sources, analyse the material instantly, and act on the insights derived from those data. With massive improvements in storage systems, processing speeds, and analytic techniques, they are capable of tremendous sophistication in analysis and decision making.

———-

These software systems “make decisions which normally require [a] human level of expertise” and help people anticipate problems or deal with issues as they come up. As such, they operate in an intentional, intelligent, and adaptive manner

AI generally is undertaken in conjunction with machine learning and data analytics. Machine learning takes data and looks for underlying trends. If it spots something that is relevant for a practical problem, software designers can take that knowledge and use it to analyse specific issues. All that is required are data that are sufficiently robust that algorithms can discern useful patterns. Data can come in the form of digital information, satellite imagery, visual information, text, or unstructured data.

AI systems have the ability to learn and adapt as they make decisions. In the transportation area, for example, semi-autonomous vehicles have tools that let drivers and vehicles know about upcoming congestion, potholes, highway construction, or other possible traffic impediments. Vehicles can take advantage of the experience of other vehicles on the road, without human involvement, and the entire corpus of their achieved “experience” is immediately and fully transferable to other similarly configured vehicles. Their advanced algorithms, sensors, and cameras incorporate experience in current operations, and use dashboards and visual displays to present information in real time so human drivers are able to make sense of ongoing traffic and vehicular conditions. And in the case of fully autonomous vehicles, advanced systems can completely control the car or truck, and make all the navigational decisions.

If we don’t want to end up as deglazed digital citizens here’s what should be done.

  • Regulate broad AI principles rather than specific algorithms,
  • Take bias complaints seriously so AI does not replicate historic injustice, unfairness, or discrimination in data or algorithms,
  • Maintain mechanisms for human oversight and control, and
  • Penalize malicious AI behaviour and promote cybersecurity.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WILL THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY GET RID OF INEQUALITY.

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Afghan War., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Environment, Green Energy., Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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(Thirteen-minute read)

With or without technology there will always be inequalities in the world.

So why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology?

Because this way of thinking is so ingrained that is adopted by organizations that fight poverty—which often refashion themselves to resemble technology startups.

Inequality has been growing so much that all governments and civil society speak about it with increasing worry, trying to understand its causes, but unable to find solutions, because of greed. 

It is our policy on technology that drives inequality.

There is no better example of this than in the way the world is handling the current Covid pandemic unable to share the know-how to make the vaccinations. 

Patents and copyrights are not guaranteed as individual rights, like the right to free speech or religion.

After all, why would a drug company pay large amounts of money to people to develop new drugs if the drugs can be copied and sold by competitors from the day they enter the market?

If it is not already obvious, patent and copyright monopolies are instruments of public policy, not acts of God.

This is why there is still not enough coronavirus vaccine to meet worldwide demand.

A year ago there was no commercial market for mRNA products.

Vaccine manufacturers long ago should have been sharing technology and expertise to boost production in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in developing countries. 

The same would be true of software developers, makers of medical equipment, computer manufacturers, smartphone companies, and any other product where the cost of research and development was a substantial portion of the price of the product.

The complete elimination of patents and copyrights is of course an extreme scenario, but it is a possible policy option.

If we did choose this policy option, we would have a much more equal distribution of income, in spite of having the same technology.

In short, the fact that there was a huge increase in inequality associated with the development of technology over the last four decades was the result of policy choices, not technology.

There should be serious public debate about both how strong we want to patent and copyright protection to be and also whether they are always the best way to promote innovation and creative work, as opposed to alternatives like direct public funding.

If we acknowledge the extreme case, where we literally have no patent or copyright protection, then we have to recognize that there is nothing inherent in our technology that would cause inequality.

Few things, in principle, can’t be delivered through technology.

It is entirely our rules on technology that can cause inequality to increase.How Technology Ends Inequality

So on one hand, technology can eradicate poverty — not by making poor people less poor, but by making it less valuable to be rich.

On the other as technology spreads, making its creators rich, but treating its users the same, we should expect more monopolies and more financial inequality.

Although it is your data you can’t pay for a better Facebook experience.

Companies are incentivized to offer a product if it makes more than it costs. And technology ends up not costing much once you’ve built it.

So, in the end, you charge people whatever they can pay and in poorer countries, people just pay and get paid less.

Times are changing from the days that growth in inequality was largely an organic process independent of government policy.  

“Owning” the robot/algorithm is not a technical relationship, it is a legal one, and therefore one that depends on our laws.

The reason some people might get very rich from owning robots or algorithms is that they own patents and copyrights that are needed for the making of the robots/ algorithms.  

                                         __________________

In the past, technological improvements would be beneficial to all:

Extreme economic inequality is corrosive to our societies.

Around 8% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty — but do you know why?

Gender inequality, caste systems, marginalization based on race or tribal affiliations are all economic and social inequalities that mean the same thing:

You might think that poverty causes hunger (and you would be right!), but hunger is also a cause — and maintainer — of poverty. This is why now with climate change, negotiating international trade agreements behind closed doors with only bureaucrats and corporate lobbyists present has to end.

Economics should take into account ethics and the environment, and treat its claims less like invariable truths.

It goes without saying that any actions coming out of Cop 26 climate change conferences to reduce temperatures will be derailed by not just income inequality, (only the higher income household will be able to afford green energy technologies. Solar panels, electric cars, heating pumps, etc.) but by the total lack of shared responsibility to do anything about it.   

Of course, there are hundreds of other elements that contribute to the problems our world is now facing. 

World poverty isn’t a problem of limited resources, it is a problem of inequality and this inequality is upheld by the idea that aid creates dependence.

Climate change will drive up to 132 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030.

The pricing carbon emissions on average is at a mere $3 a tonne.

The price of inequality in all its forms is greed. There are vast fortunes to be made with Technology/ Algorithms for profit and nothing blurs ethical lines faster than greed. 

So far, any decoupling has either been largely relative – in the sense of merely achieving higher rates of economic growth than gains in emissions – or achieved by shifting dirty production from one national territory to another.

And that is why, for now, global emissions are still rising.

The idea of “Just Transition” without financing is pie in the sky. 

Take the aftermath of the Afghan 20-year war.

The country is now facing starvation. Why not bomb it with food.   

By coming together to tackle the plague of destitution around the world, we have the opportunity to advance the human condition and eliminate global poverty in a way no one has done before.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS DAN BROWN DISCRIPTION OF EVOLOUTION IN HIS BOOK ORIGIN TRUE.?

24 Sunday Oct 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Digital age., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Natural selection., Purpose of life., Reality., Speed of technology., Survival., Sustaniability, Technologically Enabled Genetics., Technology v Humanity, Technology., The essence of our humanity., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twelve-minute read) 

 All organisms share a few fundamental desires: to survive, to grow.

It is only on the scale of statistics with millions of particles that a particle’s choice shapes up as a predictable radiation half-life. But even individual human wants and desires average out to weirdly predictable laws in aggregate.

If a little one-celled protozoan – a very small package – can have a choice, if a flea has urges, if a starfish has a bias towards certain things, if a mouse can want, then so can the growing, complexifying technological assemblage we have surrounded ourselves with.

Its complexity is approaching the complexity of a microscopic organism.

This tissue consists (so far) of billions of dwellings, millions of factories, billions of hectares of land modified by plant and animal breeding, trillion of motors, thousands of dammed rivers and artificial lakes, hundreds of millions of automobiles coursing along like cells, a quadrillion computer chips, millions of miles of wire, and it consumes 16 terawatts of power and None of these parts operate independently.

No mechanical system can function by itself.

Each bit of technology requires the viability and growth of all the rest of the technology to keep going and there is no communication without the nerves of electricity.

This whole grand system of interrelated and interdependent pieces forms a very primitive organism-like system. Call it the technium as in Dan Brown’s book.

The technium is the sphere of visible technology and intangible organizations that form what we think of as modern culture.

It is the current accumulation of all that humans have created. For the last 1,000 years, this technosphere has grown about 1.5% per year. It marks the difference between our lives now, versus 10,000 years ago.

Our society is as dependent on this technological system as nature itself.

Yet, like all systems, it has its own agenda. Like all organisms the technium also wants.

Of course, we humans want certain things from the technium, but at the same time, there is an inherent bias in the technium outside of our wants.

What this means is that when the future trajectory of a particular field of technology is in doubt, “all things being equal” you can guess several things about where it is headed:

The varieties of whatever will increase.

Technologies will start out general in their first version, and specialize over time. We can safely anticipate higher energy efficiency, more compact meaning, and everything getting smarter. All are headed to the ubiquity and free. Over time the fastest moving technology will become more social, more co-dependent, more ecological, more deeply entwined with other technologies. Many technologies require scaffolding tech to be born first. The trend is toward enabling technologies that become tools for inventing new technologies easiest, faster, cheaper.

This is what is suggested in the final chapters of Origin. 

                                              ————————

The origin of us, the modern humans (Homo sapiens), has been a topic of debate for a long time, with the place of origin of humans being great controversial, but where it is going will be more controversial. 

Dan Brown’s book (Origin) advocates that our species has reached or will reach its biological pinnacle in the no so distant future when it will be no longer capable of changing.

Maybe not.  As we are now all so mixed we block evolutionary change and are driving our evolution towards bio-engineer people. 

Evolution is the outcome of the interaction of mutation, genetic recombination, chromosomal abnormalities, reproductive isolation, and natural selection.

We become living computers. 

But it does not mean an improvement in our lot. 

At the end of the day, you’re going to view the events in your day the way you want to not the way they truly are.

THE QUESTION HE ASKS IS ARE we’re all going to be small SPECKS on the tablets of history.  

 

Human Evolution generally depends on natural selection, random genetic drift, mutation, population mating structure, and culture but the faster things die the faster they “mutate” or evolve.

Single-celled organisms evolved into more complex multicellular life, and then man gradually evolved from some unknown mammalian ancestor and reached the pinnacle of evolutionary fabric.

The ways we connect, grow, and develop as individuals are also undergoing rapid and profound changes with future generations raising their kids into a world of default connectedness (technological, emotional, cognitive), in which transparency and integrity become the easiest paths to a fulfilling life.

At the moment all arguments are based on the same tenets of Natural selection.

We don’t always have to do what technology wants, but I think we need to begin with what it wants so that we can work with these forces instead of against them.

High tech needs clean water, clean air, reliable energy just as much as humans want the same.

At the moment we are destroying the planet’s ecosystem.

However, I can imagine singular threads of the future rolling out positive — a massive, continuous, cheap, real-time connection between all humans, or total genetic control over crop plants, or synthetic solar fusion energy — but it is hard to see how all these threads weave into the other threads of climate change, population decrease, habitat loss, human attention overload, robot replacement, and accelerating AI.

Why?

Because we have no shared positive vision of tomorrow. Given what is happening today we are unable to imagine it.

Because power and money are transferring to algorithms like BitCoin and thousands of interconnected computers.

Because there is also a belief that life cannot be trusted.

In this stage, blame is placed on other individuals, society, government, nature, disease, etc., and other elements believed to be outside of one’s conscious control and influence. Control is often motivated by fear and survival. The enemy is perceived as a threat, and because of this, people believe they are morally justified to kill, eliminate or repress that enemy.

It is true as our digital trails become stronger and stronger, that Humanity is entering a Transformation Age, a new era of human civilization.

Recent breakthroughs in the field of quantum physics are revealing that consciousness is primary to our experience of reality, yet there remains no consensus as to the nature of consciousness itself nor to the nature of reality.

Yes, an inescapable dystopian future is entirely possible, but not inevitable because imagination has been unleashed upon the world in a literal sense. 

How the human brain without a chip will evolve over the next million years is anyone’s guess. 

Just in case we get it wrong here is the Human code.

A1 B2 C3 D4 E5 F6 G7 H8 I9 J10 K11 L12 M13 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY ARE WE SO BLIND TO WHAT IS HAPPING IN THE WORLD.

16 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence.,  Attention economy, Big Data., Communication., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., MISINFORMATION., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , 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) 

What if you woke up tomorrow and everything you had thought was true was a deception?

A deception formed by people that stood to profit from your ignorance. Not just on one small area but every facet of your existence.

Would you want to know? Or, would you be content with the life you had before you discovered the truth? Could you close your eyes and act as if nothing ever happened?

What if you could see the ways that you have been deceived and the way that those that came before you were made to believe a lie? How valuable would the truth become? Would it make you change your habits? your routines? the way you talk or think or speak? Would it impact you or would you brush it off and carry on with business as usual?

What if after waking up you decided to respond to that truth?

What if you started studying history and world events and, like a string of pearls, events were no longer random but contained a sequence? What if that sequence was repeating? What if while studying these events they began to seem familiar?

None so Blind2.jpg

 

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

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

There is an entire media world around us, that we’re completely fine with THAT FEEDS US FOR THE MOST PART SHIT AS ENTERTAINMENT. 

There is an advertising industry that is turning climate change into products to sell.

Bio this Bio that. Shop to save the world.

Our lives are taken over by technology – smartphones, Ipads, Apps. This menace is seen in the increased addiction of internet users to social media and other internet products; and the exploitation of internet users by internet companies.

The internet and social media are like a two-faced coin; one side is good and the other is bad. These inventions are now abused and used against our existence and survival.

The internet and computers are daily changing our lives and improving efficiency, almost taking over our lives with some sectors where technology is taking over how we live and do business.

Emails and social media platforms have changed communication, both individually and business-wise.

Financial transactions and business deals are now completed in a matter of seconds.

The idea of constantly visiting a doctor for medical checks is almost becoming obsolete with the invention of the wearable.

Robots are increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes.

                                         ——————-

The Zombie Apocalypse May Not Be How You Originally Envisioned, it’s time to give ourselves a reality check. 

We are shells of who we may have been because instead of looking around and experiencing the life we are dependent upon a lit-up screen.

We are lacking socialization; instead of talking to and spending time with other people, we are getting all our information from the Internet.

The Internet is an amazing resource, but there are some things it cannot teach or give you.

It cannot teach you the value of spending time with friends and family, or how to live life to the fullest by being present in the current moment. You never know just how many opportunities and experiences pass you by because you are looking down at your screen.

Each generation is becoming more and more dependent, and no longer sustain skills that were once deemed necessary. We have lost social skills, manners, and expect everything to be delivered to us as fast as the Internet does

We are all so distracted by our phones that we have not fully noticed the zombie apocalypse that is happening right in front of us.

Technology is a beautiful thing, but if we cannot learn how to use it responsibly and in moderation, our future may not be as bright as the screens we are holding.

                                                ———–

The important thing people need to realize.

The chances are, you’re probably reading this on your phone right now.

Maybe you saw it while you were scrolling through Facebook, or maybe you came across it while making random Google searches. The point is, you used some sort of technology to be able to access this article.

Nowadays, people use technology as a filler.

Try to remember what life was like before you were attached to technology by the hip.

I bet you spent your time doing totally different things than you currently are doing.

Maybe you used to read actual books, go outside and enjoy the weather, spend quality time with your family or communicate with people through handwritten letters rather than emails and text messages.

The reality is that our lives have completely changed.

But is it for the better, or worse?

The basis of democracy is the idea that people of sound judgment, wisdom, and morality should be chosen to lead the government, make decisions for the masses, and direct the force of the state/government. 

“The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” Frederic Bastiat 

A divided people are easier to rule. 

Governments act in multiple ways to seduce us into their service.

For the masses, this is done through the illusion of welfare and public spending in which the state first robs us through taxation and then bribes us into supporting it by giving us a percentage of the stolen funds back in the forms of government welfare programs. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENT OR JUST PROBLEM SOLVING?

17 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Digital age., Evolution, Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE., Life., Modern day life., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World

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(Twelve-minute read)

Let’s start with this question.

Is humanity getting smarter or dumber with AI?

The answer has to be both, as intelligence per se cannot guarantee that one uses it intelligently.

We can find undisputed evidence of this by looking not that far back in history.

It took humans 200,000 years to think about God, soul, nature, world, life, and themselves. Our ancestors wrote million tons of Literature on all these topics and we still haven’t figured out any of these.

There’s more food wastage in the world than ever before although a large number of people are dying in hunger, malnutrition, and gross food shortage.

Although we know we are depleting Earth’s limited resources at a break-neck speed, there’s more over-production than ever before and more over-consumption than ever before!

For the sake of energy and resource conservation, we request the poor to consume less who already consumes way less, while we shut our eyes to the rich who keep consuming exorbitantly.

We invented the first atomic bomb in 1938 and the world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945.

The concept of capitalism has many debated roots, but fully-fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries. 

Ever since we have plundered our planet-destroying what we love. Heating what is useful to us. We oppose what is good for us. Then, we love what is bad for us. We adore what is damaging to us. We follow what is deceitful.

We believed we were invincible, most intelligent, and just the best.

Then Corona showed us how very weak, unprepared and vulnerable we are.

With all the information we have been able to gather to help fight the virus – there are still some who cannot follow the rules. This is the height of stupidity.

So we are intelligent but only to a certain degree.

There are conflicting ideas about how intelligence is measured.

                              ———————————–

Is intelligence overrated? 

Socrates held that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’

Intelligence is ‘the ability to think, reason, and understand instead of

doing things automatically or by instinct.

This is not beyond animals and even plants, they too can be said to be possessed of intelligence. 

The problem with artificial intelligence is that is it artificial and does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

It leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. 

But when one considers that intelligence at its broadest, refers to the functioning of a number of related faculties and abilities that enable us to adapt and respond to environmental pressures.

So as we move toward an increasingly digital world Artificial intelligence cannot be considered in isolation.  

Take the West’s obsession with analytical intelligence. It has had and continues to have, dire political, social, and, above all, moral consequences.

Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence.

All this is to say that what constitutes intelligence can vary quite considerably according to our values and priorities.

After all, people deemed to be less rational—women, non-white people, the lower classes, the infirm, the ‘deviant’—were not just disenfranchised but dominated, colonized, enslaved, murdered, and sterilized, in all impunity.

History is full of technological over-hyping.

Will we control intelligent machines or will they control us? Will intelligent machines replace us, coexist with us, or merge with us? What will it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence? What would you like it to mean, and how can we make the future be that way? 

Why should we be asking these questions?

Because with AI there’s an enormous gap and there’s a paradox at work here.

We are living at a time when great advances have been made, and are continuing to be made, in many areas of science and technology. These advances are having a major impact on our lives, and this will probably continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

This may, at first, seem to be a very positive prospect, but there are important reasons to be concerned with its benign effects.  

As a society, we have not learned how to deal properly with the risks, especially at the early stages, when knowledge is sparse.

In today’s world, the benefits of AI have been seized by a small, wealthy elite.

If anything, regulation is getting weaker. As our technological abilities grow ever more powerful, the danger of this approach is steadily increasing. What would a wiser policy look like?

The most difficult problems involve new technology that has very obvious, attractive, characteristics, while little, or nothing, is known about the effects of long-term use.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food products are one example.

Nanotechnology is another fascinating new area that is sprouting all kinds of new products. Its applications range from sunscreen lotions to more durable concrete, to improved ways to administer medication. But the same characteristics that make it so interesting and useful, also make it dangerous.

Cell phones addiction.  

Whether this will lead to an intelligence explosion; and whether this is something we should welcome or fear.

Saying that “real intelligence has consciousness just pushes the problem further down the road” 

The next problem is what is consciousness and can AI be consciousness.

To become so it would have to act independently.  

As long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial  

After all, today, we cannot go very far without having some considerable IT skills.

                                    —————

While the large corporations profiting from this technology are strongly motivated to defend their products, often funding research to develop arguments in their favor, there is no adequate countervailing force.

Take profit-seeking algorithms that are plundering the world unregulated.

Surely they should be careful study by an independent public agency to look for possible harmful effects, especially possible consequences of long-term use before releasing for general use.

                     ——————————————  

When you look at the world we have today you could not be blamed for thinking that we are all suffering from world dementia which is disturbing our multiple higher cortical functions including memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgment.

As a consequence of our greed and our disregard for the health of our planet, we are now faced with the problem of producing energy that is carbon-free. 

This is going to require a complete change in how we live our lives with our energy requirements produced from sustainable green sources. 

Yes, we are currently addressing the problem with Climate Change Conferences that to date are barking down the wrong road. 

Why?

Because all intelligence is telling us that there is no option but to generate energy from green renewable sources – sun – wind – water.   

Taken together, this suggests that the only viable option (working alongside intelligent technologies) is to take the H out of H20  (with green energy) and convert it into Hydron gas energy totally free of CO2 when used.  

When it comes to Genius AI is way behind humanity.

Genius is in contrast is more a matter of drive, vision, creativity, and luck or opportunity.pool of liquid hydrogen like that at the core of Jupiter

Intelligence is not in the cloud.

Whenever you use any service on the internet, you are connecting to one of many millions of servers located in one of many thousands of data centers around the world.

The energy requirements for these centers are estimates to vary from 200 terawatt-hours to 500 TWh and there are an estimated 18 million servers deployed in data centers globally.

If electricity continues to be a major source of data center energy and is generated from non-renewable sources, data center emissions could exceed the aviation industry which is currently responsible for 2% of annual human-generated CO2.

The data center industry is changing rapidly and how that will affect energy profiles is uncertain, but surely companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and their like should be using green energy. 

Companies all over the world use cloud storage. 

Finally:

Finances are intertwined in every part of our lives, and technology is quickly following suit, finding a way into every aspect of modernity.

They’ve been on a collision course for decades, and the integration of technology into finance was, as we see it now, eventually inevitable.

You’re seeing this now with new algorithms being used to determine credit worthiness, or generating profit for profit’s sake.

For better or for worse, artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural progression for us, and something that has the potential to make life much less monotonous.

AI and finance go hand-in-hand. 

One thing is clear, blockchain will indeed eventually transform how the industry works. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IN ORDER TO BECOME PROACTIVE AND NOT REACTIVE WE NOW SHOULD BE BUILDING A NEW LIST OF GLOBAL PRIORITIES.

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Capitalism, Civilization., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disaster Capitalism., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Robot citizenship., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Viruses., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Ten-minute read) 

Why?

We cannot come back from Extinction.

BECAUSE  The world we now have is a tragic begging world. 

WE MUST BECOME PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVITY.

Because humanity is entering a new age, where we are faced with not only existential risks from our natural environment but by those of our own creation. 

Two hundred years ago we didn’t understand the basic causes of a Pandemic. 

Because the world is now so interconnected (with a vastly increased population than any time in our history) pandemics have more opportunities not only to spread new diseases but to originate new sources.

Because we are reaching “The Precipice”  a time where we’ve reached the ability to pose an existential risk to ourselves, which is substantially bigger than the natural risks, the background that we were facing before.  

Because we need to understand our vulnerability and determine what steps must be taken to end this pandemic. 

Because just a few years ago more than one bomb was created.

One in the hands of a few decision-makers that could destroy civilization the other the Internet, not in the hands  

The current bombs are created by our continuing abuse of the planet we live on. They are not in the hands of deranged dictators or impeached presidents but in the hands of a system of exploitation called capitalism now becoming more and more driven by profit-seeking algorithms.   

Because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact.

Because there are vast differences between the effectiveness of working on different global problems we need better global prioritization.

Because as technology improves and the world economy grows or shrinks, it is getting easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.

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

Because Covid-19 is showing us that there are many available avenues for improving the world, in terms of social value.

Because now there is much uncertainty around the value of specific options.

Because not enough cause prioritization is done, from the perspective of total social welfare.

The reasons are endless.

However to build the new field of ‘global priorities’ and to try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them we need to start understanding that just as the fate of gorillas currently depends on the actions of humans, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own.

Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. This could ultimately lead to machines that are much better at these tasks than humans.

(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but they also pose catastrophic risks. How one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood.)

Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls.

If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur. Nonetheless, work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected. 

Prioritization research appears to be in its infancy. With common prioritize interventions almost zero it remains impossible to assume some common world values.

Why is this? 

Once again the reasons are numerous – but they can be encapsulated in the word inequality, in all its forms.  

Causes have to be made before developing a deep understanding of an area that required prioritization – climate change for example.

Covid-19 is shining a light on the need to develop world health versus biological research – which received very little attention up to now. 

While billions are spent making AI more powerful, there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe. 

AI could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.

Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. If machines surpass humans in intelligence, then common beliefs could easily originate from websites.

This is why it is necessary that we create a list ranking of which problems we think are most pressing for people.  That promotes civilizational resilience, mitigating great power conflict, or laying the foundations for the governance of outer space. 

If you have read this post you could not be blamed for thinking that the idea of creating a new list of global problems is worthless. BUT ALL THE TALK, AND AGREEMENTS IN THE WORLD ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE FUNDED TO BECOME PROACTIVE.  

( See previous posts recreating such a fund – 0.005% world Aid Fund, before the current third revolution of Artificial Intelligence, invents the machine with intelligence that far surpasses our own.)

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

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE ARE MOVING INTO A NEW PHASE OF THE ALGORITHMIC REVOLOUTION.

02 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Civilization., COVID-19, Digital age., Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., President of the USA., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Six-minute read) 


With the current pandemic and economic depression, algorithmic entanglement will stratify the populations of countries with barely a question asked.

Now is the time to challenge and examine their underpinnings, by introducing a software program to examine every algorithm in order to establish whether it is a friend or foe. They must be audited yearly to log and access the contents of their programs, and to be issued with health certificates.

Are AI Algorithms Dangerous

It is not possible to go back to test or analyze why decisions are made by algorithms. 

They are learning from the environment surrounding them and once they learn we have no way of knowing to any degree – what rules and parameters they are following at which point we have no way of controlling them or knowing how they react with other algorithms.

You only have to look at the stock exchanges, where they are already trying to outwit search other.

So you can be certain that there is going to be a stock exchange crash not caused by the Economic Depression but rather algorithmic greed for profit.  

At the moment it seems that while they are out of sight they are out of mind.

But as we are going to see with any covid-19 vaccine and its distribution, algorithms will create their own rules and inevitably polarize society as a whole.

Where the decision is taken by an algorithm (as to who gets vaccinated or how safe it is when the algorithm could be hacked.) is at stake. Apportioning responsibility to any particular segment of code will be almost impossible. 

Because they have no knowledge of what they are even being judged on, they will look for supremacy over each other. 

Neither the companies using them nor the people making them take responsibility for how they can wreck lives and reinforce stereotypes.

The people making the algorithms don’t take responsibility for users of their code and the people using algorithms place responsibility on the creators.

Self – regulation is no longer viable because the larger the environment into which they are embedding themselves, the more unpredictable they will become. 

Indeed software engineers will soon be extinct.

America’s 45th president likes to tweet.

He does this because he sees it as a way to bypass the ‘dishonest media’. Regardless of how you may want the world to be, the learnings from bulk text feeds are as close as we can really get to how the world actually is.


We must open our eyes to the power of algorithms and how dangerous they can be when unchecked.

These issues are not strange. The software can play you for a fool, but we’re still in the early stages however, they are as of now present in our lives making idiotic shopping recommendations, misclassifying pictures, and doing other senseless things.

History is not a predictor of the future – but knowledge can be – we can’t rely solely on mining historic data to draw conclusions; we need to incorporate expert knowledge.

We are Tick Tocking and Clicking our way to no return.  

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

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S YOU CAN’T FIGHT THE POWER YOU DON’T SEE.

01 Sunday Nov 2020

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(Five-minute read) 

The present Covid-19 Pandemic might be warping our sense of reality however there is another pandemic that is shaping and will shape our future reality.

We – in many ways, things are way better than they were thanks to technology.

We can work from anywhere because we have the Internet and we have Zoom and all of those platforms.

If you are able to say technology, on the whole, has done well, it probably means you’re in a fairly privileged position.

There’s still a huge digital divide.

Even – there are billions of people who don’t have access to the Internet. 

 

On paper, algorithms sound like the pinnacle of efficiency, but as they’ve become more ubiquitous, there’s a difference between potential and reality both must be separate for the survival of democracy and the forthcoming distribution and administration of any covid-19 vaccine worldwide.  

 The reality is that Algorithms will be used to distribute and decide who will get the Covid-19 vaccination.

When it arrives algorithms will continue to reflect the biases that it has been and is being trained into machines that are learning a representation of the world that is skewed.

Some will say that Data is neutral. It’s just numbers. It’s just data but the past dwells within our algorithms and the flaws that are in our technology are what’s the algorithm’s information it’s taking in.

I am not just talking about the U.S. presidential election in a few day’s time.

We have already seen artificial intelligence being used in voting or politics how they extend beyond the realm of computer vision.

If we’re defining success by how it’s looked like in the past and the past has been one where men like Donal trump were given an opportunity to Twitt falsehoods, spreading them with the aid of Facebook and others it’s no wonder who gets hired or fired?

Do you get that loan? Do you get insurance? Do you and I pay the same price for the same product purchased on the same platform?

Automating inequality.

Before a human looks at your resume, it gets vetted by algorithms written by software engineers who are involved in the system (without changing the system itself he the engineer is still going to reproduce algorithmic bias and algorithmic harms.)

Any sorts of algorithmic tools that are intended to be used, again, have to be verified for nondiscrimination before it’s even adopted.

We now have an AI system – right? – that can classify skin cancer as well as the top dermatologists but to change society to change what AI is learning in order to create what can be realized is going to be trusted into our lives by the inevitable economic depression.

So a Covid-19 vaccine is going to transfer real power into the world of Data and we can’t fight the power you don’t see, you don’t know about.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN IT COMES TO WORLD PROBLEMS WHY IS IT THAT WE HUMANS ARE UNABLE TO APPRECIATE THE GRAVITY THEY PRESENT.

03 Friday Jul 2020

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(Twenty-minute read)

As global citizens, the news is packed with statistics and updates on the challenges we face. Most of these challenges have existed from time memorial and are too large to be solved by one person at a time and if they affect huge numbers of people we are numb by their enormity.  

Photographs can be effective for a while. They capture our attention — they get us to see the reality, to glimpse the reality at a scale we can understand and connect to emotionally. But then there has to be somewhere to go with it.

“There is no constant value for human life.”

Granted that certain global issues cannot be solved by on-the-ground, grassroots-style projects like human rights, climate change, wars, etc. 

So is it a perception problem? 

No matter how hard we try we are unable to perceive the whole earth never mind the Universe as one.   

We witness this many times in history when the value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy and now we are once again witnessing it with COVID-19.

We all go to great lengths to protect a single individual or to rescue someone in distress, but then as the numbers increase, we don’t respond proportionally to that.

We don’t scale up, even when we’re capable. 

There’s a hard limit to human compassion. The human mind is not very good at thinking about and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals. As the number of victims increases, our empathy, our willingness to help, reliably decreases.

We seem unable to prevent our past from impacting our present?

However, our current behaviors are not shaped by past events but by mass media in the form of social media which is creating self-limiting beliefs.

They appear so real to the extent that we cant hardly tell whether its a self-limiting belief or a real one, as a result, we are unable to see the world correctly, so we look on as millions die. 

Numbers simply can’t convey the costs, there’s an infuriating paradox at play.

We know that we must protect the Earth but are unwilling to pay the cost of doing so.

Our problem is to replace the false beliefs we acquired with the right one.

Which issues are the most urgent?

And can one person, really, truly, make that much of a contribution?

Here are some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of if not there are living in coco land. 

FOOD.

One in nine people in the world goes hungry each day.  

It has been estimated that if women farmers could be given the same resources as men, millions of more people could be fed. 

How can it be 2020 and people are still going hungry?

Nutritious food is often more expensive. Visit your local supermarket and compare the price of a punnet of strawberries to a chocolate bar. 

Even though approximately 12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.

HEALTH.

In a world of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 per day) and 2.2 billion living on less than $2 per day (2011 data)

The reality is far more complex. Untold hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services, in fact over half of the world population do not have basic health care. We are a long way from the universal right to health.

Communicable diseases were responsible for 71%  of deaths, and low-income countries are the most severely affected. 

EDUCATION. 

It’s estimated that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school. 

HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS. OCEAN CONSERVATION

The earth is full. Full of our waste, full of our demands.

The economy is now bigger than the earth, unimaginable, unattainable, and unsustainable. There is no infinite growth possible on a finite planet because nature sets the rules and individual issues mean nothing if they are not attached to nature.  

There are countless studies and evidence all around you indicating that the coming crises are inevitable.

If an economy grows at 2% per year, it will double in 35 years. 

Imagine twice as much human economic activity as we now have. Can our planet sustain this? Do we need to do this? Why would we want to? Why are we doing this?

Even though a lot of us know that it makes no sense to try to grow endlessly and outstrip the only planet we have. 

What if anything can be changed? 

We all know that the road to global decarbonization must involve renewable energy.

Although the Paris agreement’s goals are aligned with science, alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments.

Its a no-brainer in the current emerging global political climate.

Rather than tackle mitigation measures economies are now due to Covid-19 returning to pumping more not less carbon into the atmosphere.

Climate stabilization must be placed on par with economic development, human rights democracy, and peace.       

From a money perspective, we can’t help it—we live in a grow-or-die system.?

Currently, we have a system that provides humans to have an innate cost/benefit assessment tool called the smartphone operating at all times. 

Here are a few suggestions.

It is now vital that we consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview. 

Money must be created without debt so it doesn’t force us to grow and consumer beyond our means.

New Money must no longer enter circulation as credit, that is, as debt.

It will simply be money spent into circulation by the government as a permanently circulating exchange medium to enable the country’s economy to function.

This money will be equity on the national balance sheet and be our commonwealth.

It will replace bank-created debt-money ending the privilege of commercial banks to create and issue what we use as money.

Then we have trillions in the form of pension investment funds that are nontransparently invested. If we demanded that these funds were moved from fossil fuel industries to green energy industries whose returns are going to be massive we would be reducing carbon emissions by millions of tonnes.

Next, we have the advertising industry.

All advertising that does not promote sustainability should be curtailed by law.  We must turn the direction of humanity towards thriving not consumption for profit.  

With the coming economic depression, we do have room for growth—the growth of community cohesion and commons conservation. We can grow our efforts to educate our children, care for our people, and care for the planet. We can grow into a more just, caring, sustainable society. 

Because we are careering into a world of a few haves and billions of have -not.

Access to information owned by Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, to name a few, must become transparent and available to all as the interactions of all our individual worldviews shape the condition of humanity.

Lastly, we must address inequality.   

There are now 65.3 million people displaced from their homes worldwide.

Think about that number: 65.3 million. Can you even imagine it?

It’s now or never that we make a profit for profit’s sake contribute to a World Aid fund.

(see previous posts)

As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth has enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

We can’t eat drink or shit data.

 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE : LOOKS AT WHAT IS NOW BEEN CALLED THE NEW NORM.

26 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Economic Depression., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, POST COVID-19., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Viruses., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

While the pandemic continues to turn the world upside down, new realizations are beginning to dawn on us, there’s no going back to normality.

There is no doubt that we are getting close to the “new abnormal”.

We are all in this together and no one really knows what the future holds but you only have to look at the advertising industry to see what is coming. 

We are now in a digital dance in which the use of surveillance and testing to find and control outbreaks will eventually determine who gets to make or earn a living or not.

Under the cloak of preventing the virus from spreading governments are either already deploying, or actively considering, surveillance technology of such intrusiveness that it would have caused outrage and furious protests even a month ago. 

As the human and economic impact unfold, how massive this change will become is still unclear.

Indeed, it is a real question as to whether normal or abnormal can be sensibly used at all, given their tremendous baggage and built-in biases and the general confusion they create.

However, there are a few new norms becoming clearer.

The current devastating pandemic is likely to happen again and again and the digital dance to avoid the next outbreak will not be to the tune of governments, but two powerful global corporations laying down the law to territorial sovereigns and restructuring the economic order. 

Whole industries grossing billions of dollars are built on the words “normal” and “abnormal” and on the ideas of “well” and “disordered.”

It is therefore inconceivable that the right thing can be done and that the situation can change. Given that even the best and the brightest in the field of advertising are attached to an illegitimate naming game, from Bio this and Bio that there is probably no hope for change other than COVID free. 

Add the coming World economic depression, with unemployment and climate migration one thing is clear, slowing the pace of climate change and adapting to its impacts, must become a central organizing principle of society at all levels, from local to global through national and regional.

The declarations of climate emergency must start meaning that, rather than being just an additional agenda item for busy executives and politicians.

Why? 

Because climate change and the erosion of wildlife habitats will ensure a ready supply of zoonotic viruses.

Up to now, the emphasis is on lifting the lockdown has centered solely on the necessity of bringing the economy out of its cryogenic chamber to take in the world it has inherited.

We’re all online now, new conformity which is developing a serious digital divide between the young and older generations. And if the impact of Covid19 is another step in the collapse of modern societies, then it is likely it will have been another climate-driven step in that collapse.

The new normal, in other words, change what was wrong but keeps what was right with the old normal.

But if the old normal was wrong, then why did we call it normal?

The word “normal” appears straightforward enough it possesses a certain kind of authority or “power to divide and distinguish things” since a person’s mental model of “what is normal?” is tremendously influenced by how society and its institutions define “normal.”

But like many of our words, as soon as we begin thinking about it, it starts to fall apart at the seams. The fact with which we started our process of categorization becomes the standard or norm, and everything that diverges from that norm is not just different but abnormal and therefore less than normal.

Our concept of normal pulls double duty; it tells us that what is, ought to be.

Nor can it mean “free of discomfort,” as if “normal” were the equivalent of oblivious.

Normality forces upon us are that “in most cases, no formal rules or standards indicate what conditions are normal” In the absence of such rules, those who wish to identify normality will normally turn to one of three different definitions.

The first is the statistical view, “where ‘the normal’ is whatever trait most people in a group display”. Normal is what is typical, what most people do – which means it is impossible for any individual to be normal.

Second, the norm provided a concrete standard that, if followed, allowed the user to reproduce a specific pattern. Normal-as-ideal, then, might be in harmony with normal-as-ubiquitous, but it might be quite different.

What is normal for a human being, then, are all those behaviors that make it fit to thrive in its particular niche. The capacity to feel shame when betraying a loved one is normal in this scheme, as is the desire for one’s offspring to survive.

When it comes to defining normality, we start with what we think is normal before even considering what is abnormal with all three above end up sliding into each.

The new normal will mean that most of us will go back to most of what we were doing before the pandemic struck (1), but that our societies will make changes for the better (2), which will end up being good for the survival of our communities (3).

The question, then, is why would you use the word “normal” at all? 

Normal is safe. It’s familiar. In the face of fear, people long to go back to a time before the fear set in.

Covid-19 causes us to experience a great deal of anxiety, and then we imagine a carefree time before these feelings set in. We don’t begin with normality and then categorize those instances where it is transgressed.

If we begin with all of those things that we instinctively feel are “abnormal” and then try to find comfort by erecting a norm that resolves our anxieties. We then locate this norm “in the past”, which gives us the benefit of claiming the norm as our own. This, after all, may seem easier to attain than one that requires all the hard work of creation.

It is not something we need to build from scratch; all that is necessary is that we return home to it.

We will all continue to face daunting challenges for which we are not prepared. Modern medicine, as advanced as it is, is still, in the grand scheme of things, relatively young.

We’re not sure what exactly the future will look like – which is why we prefer to discuss it in the familiar terms of the good ole’ days – but we know that it’s coming to greet us.

Bergson used the term élan vital to describe the mysterious impulse toward an open future that seems to animate all life. In fact, this impulse is what life is. Life, says Bergson, “since its origins, has been the continuation of one and the same impetus which separates itself into diverging lines of evolution”.

If we are careful two huge tech companies that control mobile phone technology will enable governments to build and deploy proximity-tracking apps on every smartphone in the world.

 Your online appointments for everything IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.  

Here is a shortlist of Normal abnormalities in the world. 

  • 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
  • 750 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
  • 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
  • In developing countries, some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuelwood.
  • The wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%. In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets
  • A quarter of humanity — live without electricity.
  • 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.

A strong economy in a nation doesn’t mean much when a significant percentage (even a majority) of the population is struggling to survive.

THE NEW NORM.

Thinking about it, I much prefer the new COVID-19 normal, as I am certain you do too. After all, it has, in some bizarre way, opened our eyes to the infinite treasures that lie within us and in front of us, that we may have been too numb to notice until now.

What was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.

We can make the new normal any way we want providing we make it GREEN. 

If “the new normal” means giving up to technology then THE NEW NORMAL MUST BE REJECTED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.

These temporary measures are just that; temporary. They need to be observed, but NOT FOREVER. New normal or not, every day really is a miracle.

The new normal that activity tracks your steps, whether you are black or white, rich or poor, left or right-wing, gay or straight, Muslim or other, Facebook or Twitter, contaminated or not, is irrelevant to living life and appreciating the world we all live on. 

It’s the powerful combination of humanity and values that count. We are living in a world of continuous change “Technology Rules The World.”

The new norm requires that we consider our systems as a platform for scaling value.

An investment that needs to be made by leadership. The time has passed for small commitments, hyperbole, and delays in embracing sustainable investing.

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