Category Archives: Technology

The future impact of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

20 Friday Mar 2015

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I was told the other day that I had not addressing the last and perhaps the most important issue concerning the effects of Technology that the human race will ever faced. The dire warnings that machines run by Artificial Intelligence will one day take over from humans.

What better day to post my views an diamond eclipse. The last time it happened was in 1935 and the next time is 2206.  

Now don’t get me wrong I like being human! I want humans to retain autonomy over machines! Judgments of virtue are judgments of a whole life rather than of one isolated action. The development of moral character may take a whole lifetime. But once it is firmly established, one will act consistently, predictably and appropriately in a variety of situations.

However we will need a new set of practices for value creation; where data slaves dare to stand up and call for a revolution … But it will be very difficult to turn back the wheel that has already been set in motion several decades ago.

What is artificial intelligence and what is the media talking about? What ever it is it is a long way off before Machines turn on us never mind emulating human behavior to the point of mimicking communication.

Are these technologies beneficial to our society or mere novelties among business and marketing professionals?

Medical facilities, police departments, and manufacturing plants have all been changed by AI but how?

So far this bond has been one-sided because the ability to generate, recognize and express emotions are a unique prerogative of living human beings, but if this intelligence or abstract attribute could be taught to machines, it would re-conceptualize the perception of machines.

So in this post should I focus on the truly remarkable achievements of the technology or dwell on the dangers of what could happen if machines reach a level of Sentient AI, in which self-aware machines reach human level intelligence.

Let’s start with present day.  Do you believe that if all computers are stopped for a day, complete civilization comes to a halt!

Fifty years ago, this might have been a science fiction, but today it is a reality.

We cannot predict because of the great potential of AI what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI (may provide) however the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable.

So it is valuable to investigate how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.

The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence.

Presently, applications in advanced robotic appeared so real that one can believe a humanoid robot will be capable to interact or work side by side with people in a near future.

If so are we ready for the bio mechanical future revolution. ( Or as I would call it synthetic intelligence implants, because it is not natural intelligence.)

For the sake of the length of this post I will stick with AI.

This questions;  Will AI be a reality and many others are and should be the concern of the general public.

A time will soon come (brought about by the lack of education concerning rapidly advancing computer technology) when this question will need to be answered.  On the ethical use of such technology and its impact on intimate human relationships and society.

When is the best time to discuss the ethical uses of these technologies?  NOW.

If robots are ready to plug safely into society the question is no longer a questions for future generations to sort through, it must be decided, and soon.

As technology rapidly improves, it is inevitable that it should begin to take on elements of its creator and believe me there are many routes that Artificial intelligence can go. 

Its impact on society is only likely to increase.

For instance: Once we begin to mesh technology more closely with ourselves as humans we can begin to accept it as a part of ourselves and as a part of our society. Some say it could be curtain for Society.

memories-maya

As I have said in previous posts Technology is transforming our social, economic, and political institutions; our understanding of what it means to be human; and the distribution of power in the world.

 

The threat of AI equipped computer systems and machinery taking jobs away from humans is becoming a harsh reality. When and in what order should we expect various jobs to become automated ?

How will this affect the wages of less skilled workers, creatives, and different kinds of information workers? Some have argued that AI is likely to greatly increase the overall wealth of humanity as a whole. This is a total misconception as the rich will own the Data. Increased automation may push income distribution further towards a power law and the resulting disparity may fall disproportionately along lines of race, class, and gender.

Research anticipating the economic and societal impact of such disparity could be useful to start asking the questions.

How should the ability of AI systems to interpret the data obtained from surveillance cameras, phone lines, emails, etc., interact with the right to privacy?

How will privacy risks interact with cyber security and cyber warfare?

We already have drones and it will not be long before we have a weapon that does everything on its own without human help.  These weapons will be a threat to civilians?  Can lethal autonomous weapons be made to comply with humanitarian law. No.

Sophisticated remote-controlled military robots are already in use with no tractability, that fire a weapon to AI algorithms is that not something to fear. We are programming them. If that’s not scary enough put a nuclear war head on one.

Smart weapons raises many questions on the price paid to develop these weapons; money which could be used to solve most of the world’s social problems such as poverty, hunger, etc.

http://www.military.com:80/video/ammunition-and-explosives/projectiles/iran-unveils-new-smart-weapons-system/1427781968001/

Of course none of this is going to change anything as we are incapable of making war against Poverty or Inequality. Why? Because human intelligence can be viewed as being as diverse as its population. However this type of analysis of Intelligence leads us to the individual and becomes useless.

Over the last decade, electronic tiny minuscule signals have fundamentally revolutionized the way we live. People are spending more hours per day with machines than humans and in the future, computers will evolve quicker than the human race.

Sorry I am diversifying.  Back to AI

An amazing a human-machine relationship is developing.

Fortuitously for us so far the possession of knowledge alone does not make a being or machine intelligent.

This is the problem when it comes to computer scientists and engineers understanding just how their work affects humans and human values.

So what role should computer scientists play in the law and ethics of AI development and use?  None. They are focus on getting software products to market, regardless of whether they instantiated interesting principles of intelligent systems that could also illuminate the human mind.

How should lawyers, ethicists, and policymakers engage the public on these issues?  Should such trade-offs be the subject of national standards?

Significant parts of the economy, including finance, insurance, actuarial, and many consumer markets, are already susceptible to disruption through the use of AI techniques to learn, model, and predict agent actions. These markets are identified by a combination of high complexity and high rewards for navigating that complexity. Artificial intelligence techniques can be applied to financial investing, especially in the areas of credit risk assessment and stock valuation.

In the future, we can expect that the techniques of artificial intelligence will be integrated into systems that simultaneously address investing activities.

The successes of industrial applications of AI, from manufacturing to information services, demonstrate a growing impact on the economy, although there is disagreement about the exact nature of this impact and on how to distinguish between the effects of AI and those of other information technologies.

Many economists and computer scientists agree that there is valuable research to be done on how to maximize the economic benefits of AI while mitigating adverse effects, which could include increased inequality and unemployment.

All that said; Artificial intelligence certainly has a place in the future of humanity.

The danger of machines taking over too much of human interaction and work, the human mind, is to far-fetched to my thinking.

There is no doubt that computers are being embedded in all of our life accessories like mobiles,watches, cars, even our bodies and brains.

These subsets of AI, such as data mining, neural networks, speech recognition and lip-reading, behavior recognition, and face recognition, to name a few, are becoming increasingly powerful—and indispensable—to human organizations.

The question of whether a human brain is necessary for thinking remains in Science Fiction Hollywood.  

No one has agreed on a concrete definition of artificial intelligence, largely because there is insignificant understanding as to what comprises intelligence.

Professor Jefferson’s Lister Oration for 1949, from which I quote sums up the problem for me.

“Not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain-that is, not only write it but know that it had written it. No mechanism could feel (and not merely artificially signal, an easy contrivance) pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or depressed when it cannot get what it wants.

Or a  machine which is under interrogation”What do you think of Picasso?” Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense of humor, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make some one fall in love with it, learn from experience, use words properly, be the subject of its own thought, have as much diversity of behavior as a man, do something really new.

AI will remain valuable regardless of whether we’re able to build fully- functioning robots or human-esque brains.

AI, the harnessing of intelligence on the computer, will turn complex thought processes into fast computer simulations; it will be used to analyze past events and predict the future.

The ability of these systems to explain the reasoning process through back-traces and to handle levels of confidence and uncertainty provides an additional feature that conventional programming can’t handle.

Intelligence is defined as the ability to achieve goals through computational process. Although intelligence is only studied in humans, is it possible that machines may be more “intelligent” than those who created the machines in the first place?

Will computers reach human intelligence someday. They have already surpassed our calculation abilities and our speed of processing information.

There is no indication that microchip speed will not be multiplied in the future.

As with every innovative technology there are positive and negative externalities involved.

The Intelligent Robot-  Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Mankind?

No. This dream will remain elusive until machines attain the basic human virtue of common sense.

Our ability to take full advantage of the synergy between AI and big data will depend in part on our ability to manage and preserve privacy.

How we can ensure humans will be able to control AI once it achieves human-level intelligence? I would prefer humans maintain autonomy over technologies that could achieve sentience.

It is tempting to wonder what would happen if we spent more time focusing on helping each other directly, versus relying on machines to essentially grow brains for us.

We need to develop a science for understanding advanced Artificial Intelligence before we develop it further.

It’s just common sense. Intelligent machines won’t love you any more than your toaster does. Giving people a device that enhances intelligence may not be a terrific idea. What happens when a machine breaks the law?

Our AI systems must do what we want them to do. We ourselves don’t reason with precise truths. We don’t yet know really what consciousness is, what drives consciousness?

Why do we attend to only a portion of what we see and hear? It is obvious that given an event, observed by many, we each perceive it differently, and we take in differently. Do we each have individual filters that have to do with our own stories? Probably. But I think pondering this goes deeper. Is consciousness itself, somehow, directed? God forbid a machine is directing it.

John Cleese, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Describes AI

Being human, has to have a component of humanity to it. The nature of the mind and of memory, and how intelligence can be manifested in physical form is a joke when it comes to a Machine.

For the robots or technology that may surpass our intelligence in the near future, observe my fleshy middle-digit and hear me cry: “I wave my private parts at your Auntie! Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberry!” —

Tell me how do you model thought?  Give me a machine that can read a simple children’s book, understand what the story is about, and explain it in its own words or ask reasonable questions about it.

That is it. I have tried artificial intelligence and I don’t like it.

Artificial Intelligence Technology is learning by itself. The claim that a machine cannot be the subject of its own thought can of course only be answered if it can be shown that the machine has some thought with some subject matter.

Where is this technology going to be? No one knows for sure, what we can only say for certainty is that this Artificial intelligence, and Machine Learning will transform all software and hardware, all industries and businesses. Roads, bridges, Cars, Homes, will be connected to it.

While today we do not possess the technology to achieve a truly sentient machine we cannot because of that speculate too deeply as to the results of such an achievement.

Only if intelligence ceases to be a sacred mystery to us, and we can control our destructive nature should any of us accept an Apple from the Adam of AI. 

One thing is for sure; We will sure need some kind of global governance in the interest of the individual. 

We are just in the beginning in terms of where these technologies will take us.  Mars and back.

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Constantly Connected Impacts Our Lives. After humans , the Smartphone

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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Right, this is the last post on the subject of what is shaping our technology driven Society.

We are living in a world that relies on data communications.

It is hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones.

The Mobil Phone/Cell phone/I phone what ever you wish to call it has evolved into the Smart Phone. > voice and text services, cameras, alarm clock, and radio, access to the internet> all of which will be on your wrist shortly > Apple Smart Watch.

1 in 4 people check it every 30 minutes, 1 in 5 every 10 minutes.

There are almost as many mobile subscriptions (6.8 billion) as there are people in the world (7.1 billion)

I start this post by saying there is no argument when it comes to positive benefits to Society, that the mobile phone has contributed more to the individual than the Internet or Big Data has done to date.

On the other hand I believe it has also contributed to : The mess we have on our hands, to spreading the inequalities of the world, to fueling terrorist Organisations, to spreading non-thrusts, to making today, now it’s tomorrow, and to leading us to expect more from Technology and Less from Each Other.   

The Mobil Phone has become an indispensable feature of technology that is rapidly changing the face of communication not only in the most remote areas of the world but also the family structures of the world.

Returning to an Individual and an overall view:

Mobile phones are helping under served populations access the critical skills and empowering information they need to make informed decisions for themselves and their families, and move toward economic self-sufficiency.

They have done more than all the Aid given to Africa and beyond. In fact they are being used to facilitate and promote economic development and growth.

They reduce search costs and increase information availability, which makes markets function more efficiently.

In terms of the diffusion of ideas and knowledge, mobile phones make available information about market prices and employment.

The people who are growing your food, making your clothes, and assembling your electronic devices are often poor, low-wage workers around the world who don’t have Internet access. The way we are able to connect with them is through mobile,” it provides workers with a voice — individually and collectively — by having an anonymous tool to provide feedback.

But we’re also learning that organizations — large, for-profit corporations and small, nonprofit social enterprises alike — are using mobile technology to operate better and smarter. Organizations are using mobile phones to gather real-time data that help them make informed business decisions and that yield social impacts.

But what effect are they having on Society as a whole.

Smart phones have brought a whole new meaning to the term multitasking.

Smart phones are changing the way that people interact with each other, allowing the users to be in a conversation without showing their personal expressions. As a result, we are beginning to lose the face-to-face contact that was such an important part of our lives in the past. The need to belong.

They provide farmers with information on market prices and weather reports, and they link micro and small entrepreneurs to markets and potential buyers. And, they provide mothers with important information to keep themselves and their children healthy.

Just look at

Taro Works, a mobile enabled tool with a cloud-based back-end. In non-tech lingo, this means field-based workers can gather and submit data through a mobile phone, providing real-time intelligence to their home offices. One organization using Taro Works is Honey Care Africa, a social enterprise that promotes sustainable beekeeping and economic development by providing micro finance, training, and other services to bee farmers.

Vision Spring is another social enterprise that uses Taro Works for better business and social impact. Vision Spring fights poverty by selling affordable eyeglasses to the poor, enabling them to work and learn. Why reading glasses? Studies of the economic impact of reading glasses in India showed a 35% increase in individual productivity and 20 percent increase in individual monthly income.

We knew there is great potential for mobile phones. But how to approach the issue of development using mobile technologies, remains contentious. In conjunction with Big Data, the Internet, their impact on economic development and growth are numerous.

There is no doubting their ability of time-saving capabilities/conveyance or getting assistance in an emergency. Therefore, smart phone is an important device which people cannot leave home without it.  A social necessity that we teens and adults, cannot be without, an addiction.

It would make uninteresting reading to list all the possibility of Mobil usages.

There are a few to high light how they are changing our world and could be used to change it further.

Before the appearance of the smart phone; it was impossible to shop online during lunch time without a PC or laptop. However, with the support of smart phones, shopping online in these days is as easy as making a phone call.

Services to transfer money can also help counter human trafficking, crime.

Services/Apps have changed the way healthcare is delivered globally, with the potential to provide individuals with an unprecedented amount of access to health resources.

Mobile phones eliminates the need for clients to spend time traveling to the physical banks, enabling greater access to capital, which facilitates investment and productivity.

Services to conduct Surveys, to Petition government. To impose Western ideals and culture upon other nations, resulting in a “practical elitism, but smart phones also emit radiation which some believe may be harmful to human health.

The growth of the cell phone industry itself, adding more jobs and creating more demand for products and services is another way in which mobile phones have contributed to economic growth.

Recent studies show that radiation from mobile phones are interfering with navigation system of bees and causing them to lose their way back to their hive.  As a result of this their colonies are collapsing.

Cell phones have led to social evils such as ‘sexting’, harassment and bullying of teens, in addition to creating less unity with families and friends.

Social interaction does not lead to greater concern for others, and in fact may have the opposite effect of reducing concern for others, leading to decreased pro social behavior. Eroding people’s ability to write sentences that communicate real meaning and inhibit the art of dialogue resulting in a negative impact on people’s interpersonal skills. The next generation (or so) is not going to ever be able to connect with another person, confront someone, or talk to someone face to face.

Trans formative tool for Science, Research, Surveys.

And how much about our lives and work and relationships is left to be completely transformed as a result? is anyone’s guess.

Conclusion: 

For me all three ( Internet, Big Data, Smart Phones) are all connected to each other.

You will see from previous posts that I advocate that the power of Mobil phones as a lobbing force is untapped.  It could be used to force the United nations to pass a people’s resolution to place a 0.05% aid commission on all electronic trading on the world stock exchanges. ( See previous posts.)

We hear more and more communication, but less and less to communicate.

Half human, half machine almost god, this new link in the evolution will continue its exploration beyond the enclosure of time and space. Fortunately there are, not that our smartphones are intelligent.

R. Laing  already wrote in 1967: “The machines have become more and more able to communicate with each other as humans.

If we want a world that is more equal, access to information should be universal – it should not be limited to the privileged groups in a society, but available to all of us including the impoverished.

So what will be their future applications.  Feel free to add to my list.

Brain training.

iPod Finger, Smart Phone Finger, insurance will become big business.

Increase literacy.

 

Suddenly my smartphone vibrates mystique.

“The digital revolution is over, the digital won!  Because the more you consume, the more it abounds. The more stores, the more it circulates. The more you distribute, the more it flows.

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Cell phones can also be used to deliver important information about health and to

 

 

 

Where has the Present gone?

06 Friday Mar 2015

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We are the first humans to live in the future.

In my last post ” You are not a Gadget. Yet ” I attempted to outline how society is being reinvented by the internet, our connected devices – the internet of things.

You might not agree that they are having an effect. If not, you need to wake up.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself it is the storage of Data that will shape the future. 

Big Data is used almost anywhere these days; A vast subject- from news articles to professional magazines, from tweets to YouTube videos and blog discussions, impacting across virtually all academic disciplines.

Every minute of your existence is being stored and this vast storage is the most relevant subject of our times. DATA NOW STREAM from our daily life:

Today, machines seem to get better every day at digesting vast gulps of information from phones and credit cards and televisions and computers; from the infrastructure of cities; from sensor-equipped buildings, trains, buses, planes, bridges, and factories, you name it —

And they remain as emotionally inert as ever.       But for how long.

It is estimated that if all the data used in the world today were written to CD-ROMs and the CD-ROMs piled up in a single stack, the stack would stretch all the way from the Earth to the Moon and a quarter of the way back again.

The data flow so fast that the total accumulation of the past two years—a zettabyte—dwarfs the prior record of human civilization.

A report by the International Data Corporation in 2010 estimated that by the year 2020 there will be 35 Zettabytes (ZB) of digital data created per year.

All of what we do today leaves a digital trail:

Every bit of that information is being stored—but by whom? for what?

The US alone is home to 898 exabytes (1 EB = 1 billion gigabytes)—nearly a third of the global total.

Kilobyte     1,000 bytes

Megabyte  1,000,000 bytes

Gigabyte  1,000,000,000 bytes

Terabyte  1,000,000,000,000 bytes

Petabyte   1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

Exabyte    1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

Zettabyte   1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

Yottabyte    1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

Just in case you have no concept of a byte.  A byte is a sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one alphanumeric character) processed as a single unit of information. A single letter or character would use one byte of memory (8 bits), two characters would use two bytes (16 bits).

So you would want to be certified to think that Society as we know it is not a changing. 

The question is:  What is all of this information going to produce.

There is already an algorithm to detect when women were pregnant by tracking purchases of items such as unscented lotions—and offered special discounts and coupons to those valuable patrons. To plunder the Stock Exchange/Foreign Exchange. (See previous Posts)

Credit-card companies have found unusual associations in the course of mining data to evaluate the risk of default: people who buy anti-scuff pads for their furniture, for example, are highly likely to make their payments.

They are trained computers to identify deep patterns in vocal pitch, rhythm, and intensity; their software can scan a conversation between a woman and a child and determine if the woman is a mother, whether she is looking the child in the eye, whether she is angry or frustrated or joyful.

Other machines can measure sentiment by assessing the arrangement of our words, or by reading our gestures. Still others can do so from facial expressions.

Before you think about anything it has already being done. Good bye to the Present.

Big data is not just about helping an organization be more successful – to market more effectively or improve business operations. It reaches to far more socially significant issues as well. It is transforming science, engineering, medicine, healthcare, finance, business, and ultimately society itself.

The first full human genome sequence took five to 15 years to complete, and cost $1 billion to $3 billion. Now a genome sequence takes a little more than 24 hours and costs about $1,000.

NASA receives over 4 TB of new Earth Science data each day.

It Uses THE SHADOW Internet THAT’S 100 TIMES FASTER THAN GOOGLE FIBER.

Like me you problem never hear of it and will never get to use it.

Google's data centre in Douglas Country, Georgia: The amount of data held by the internet giant means there may soon need to be a new number created to measure the quantity

So what am I exactly trying to say here.

I suppose the best starting point is the Human Brain.

Your brain is home to around 100 billion neurons, all of which are perpetually establishing and breaking connections, known as synapses, with other neurons.

There are trillions of these connections throughout your brain helping orchestrate everything from movement, to learning, to establishing and recalling memories. Just to give you some perspective on the storage capacity of your brain: It has a storage capacity of some estimates come in as low as 1 terabyte, or approximately 1,000 gigabytes.

You can easily buy a 1 gigabyte USB drive for under £15. A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes, so that means you’ve got three brains right there.

For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.

Now consider this:

A sweet little external hard drive can give you an entire terabyte of memory for about £70. That’s 1000 gigabytes, and roughly 3333 human brains. So for £70 bucks, you could store 3333 people’s brains in your backpack.  Nice!

If you want to back up your brain and upload it to a cylon body, IBM’s “neurosynaptic” chips are the closest thing to a synthetic brain yet.

Also, consider this:

A typical 3-minute song takes up about 5 megabytes of space. So that means your brain, can hold about 60 songs.

A computer chip that emulates the human brain - and might one day replace it

Now don’t get me wrong I acknowledge that every major scientific revolution has been driven by one thing, and that is data.

Data is pouring in from every conceivable direction: from operational and transactional systems, from scanning and facilities management systems, from inbound and outbound customer contact points, from mobile media and the Web.

Organizations are inundated with data – terabytes and petabytes of it. According to IDC, “In 2011, the amount of information created and replicated will surpass 1.8 zettabytes (1.8 trillion gigabytes), growing by a factor of nine in just five years.

That’s nearly as many bits of information in the digital universe as stars in the physical universe.

I have nothing against the collection of Data nor with sharing the data, which ultimately could improve the lives of the millions of people who are generating it—and the societies in which they are living – to provide a beneficial impact on society as a whole.

The potential for doing good is perhaps nowhere greater than in public health and medicine, fields in which, “People are literally dying every day” simply because data are not being shared.

There are over 200 satellites in orbit continuously collecting data about the atmosphere and the land, ocean and ice surfaces of planet Earth which might save us from Climate Change.

Some of this data is held in transactional data stores – the byproduct of fast-growing online activity. Machine-to-machine interactions, such as metering, call detail records, environmental sensing and RFID systems, generate their own tidal waves of data.  All these forms of data are expanding, and that is coupled with fast-growing streams of unstructured and semi structured data from social media.“

The challenges facing big data today and going forward including, but not limited to: data capture and storage; search, sharing, and analytics; big data technologies; data visualization; architectures for massively parallel processing; data mining tools and techniques; machine learning algorithms for big data; cloud computing platforms; distributed file systems and databases; and scalable storage systems.

In bio medicine the Human Genome Project is determining the sequences of the three billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA.

Big Data is further expected to add more than €250 billion a year to the European public sector administration. Thus, the whole European Union could benefit from the cumulative financial and social impact of Big Data.

One clear example of Big Data is the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) (www.skatelescope.org) planned to be constructed in South Africa and Australia. When the SKA is completed in 2024 it will produce in excess of one exabyte of raw data per day (1 exabyte = 1018 bytes), which is more than the entire daily internet traffic at present.

Another example of Big Data is the Large Hadron Collider, at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), which has 150 million sensors and is creating 22 petabytes of data in 2012 (1 Petabyte = 1015 bytes).

Smart cities, data gathered by sensors integrated with transport data, financial transactions, location of users, social network interaction will provide an entirely new dimension to thinking about how cities function.

These three examples are only scratching the surface.

Google almost certainly has more data storage capacity than any other organization on Earth. Their biggest data centers cost half a billion to a billion dollars, so they can’t have more than 20 or so of those. These are the storage centers we know about.

  1. Berkeley County, South Carolina
  2. Council Bluffs, Iowa
  3. Atlanta, Georgia
  4. Mayes County, Oklahoma
  5. Lenoir, North Carolina
  6. The Dalles, Oregon
  7. Hong Kong
  8. Singapore
  9. Taiwan
  10. Hamina, Finland
  11. St Ghislain, Belgium
  12. Dublin, Ireland
  13. Quilicura, Chilie
  14. Eemshaven, Netherlands
  15. Groningen, Netherlands
  16. Budapest, Hungary
  17. Wrocław, Poland
  18. Reston, Virginia
  19. Additional sites near Atlanta, Georgia

In 2010, they were operating around a million servers, with close to 10 exabytes of active storage attached to running clusters. Google has a hard drive die every few minutes.

Let’s assume Google has a storage capacity of 15 exabytes, or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

  • Amazon (They’re huge, but probably not as big as Google.)
  • Facebook (They’re on the right scale and growing fast, but still playing catch-up.)
  • Microsoft (They have a million servers, although no one seems sure why.)

However, it’s nothing compared to the ridiculous claims by some news reports about the NSA datacenter in Utah. This facility could hold “between an exabyte and a yottabyte” of data.Microsoft data center

Apple tends to make between three and five times as much revenue as Google does. Whether it is Apple or Google at the top of the heap, you cannot deny that they are both building platforms and business models that will shape the next decade in the tech industry.

Computing is definitely moving to the cloud, and Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all in it to win it by manipulate us all.

Because the shifts in both the amount and potential of today’s data are so epic, businesses require more than simple, incremental advances in the way they manage information.

Public Sector Information (PSI) is the single largest source of information in Europe. Its estimated market value is €32 billion.

The value of Big Data to the UK economy alone, being £216 billion and 58,000
jobs in the next 5 years.

Data traffic is expected to grow to 10.8 Exabyte per month by 2016.

Could we have foreseen the mortgage meltdown, the financial institution crisis and the recession, if only we had gotten our arms around more data and done more to correlate it?

Could we trim millions of dollars in fraud from government programs and financial markets?

But big data wants more.

Not satisfied with seeing everything about everybody it wants to store your spoken words which for thousands and thousands of year were private and should remain private.

For us to allow or turn a blind eye to this kind of monitoring and storage would be the first steps to towards slavery.  

Such a move by Governments under the cloud of spotting terrorists plots is a form of terrorism on free speech.  All Smart Phone should be be encrypt to ensure the freedom of mankind.

So I will leave you with this.

Modern science demands the use and understanding of numerical methods.

Data is like an object approaching a fixed point. It is travelling at a constant speed, such that, after one second, the distance is halved: after 1.5 seconds, the distance is halved again; after 1.75 seconds, it is halved again and so on. So data will never actually reach the fixed point, because with each fraction of a second it only halves the distance remaining.  Both the Data and the distance can theoretically be split infinitely.

Big Data technologies to analyse and properly compare disperse and huge data sets would provide huge benefits in terms of discoveries in experimental sciences.

And you think you live in the Present- think again.

Exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes definitely are on the horizon.

But tell me where is hindsight located? Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time.

No single person can make sense of what a billion other people are saying. The best way to Safeguard personal data is not to give it in the first place.

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The Internet is dissolving National borders. Are we heading towards Electronic Governance

23 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Technology

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I have a feeling that this post will require more than one visit to the keyboard.

Sorry this is rather a long-winded post.

As technology is influencing every aspect of living the problem is where to start.

I am at this very minute using technology that is advancing at such a rate it seems to have control over our lives. So let’s start by saying that I am not against Technology but I don’t want to end up with my Fridge controlling my Life. (Previous Post on Technology)

In this post I want to look at the effects of Technology on Society in general. The impact of technology on human behavior.

As the barriers to information come down, we are all already living longer, eating, drinking, going about our business differently with totally complacency as to the effects it is having or will have on our lives.

The impact of technology on society is deep. It is both positive and negative.

Is it now the principal driving force of society, determining societies mode of operation?  I would not say yes, however we are fast coming to the point of no return.  We need to protect ourselves from its negative and predatory influences before it’s too late.

The meanings assigned to technologies are determined by the norms and values of social groups which draw on the “wider context” of sociocultural and political environment.

The heterogeneous and hierarchical community of technological development functions as a mediator of social values and forces value orientation in society to change. They bring new technological constructs or their complete generation to life.

For example;

Capital mobility has increased incredibly, the economy has shifted to the service sector, innovation has become the primary source of productivity growth in relation to engineering, organizations, institutions as well as individual workers. The “technical construction of society” has become a major issue, that is social processes are mainly mediated by technological development.

The nature of economic competition has been undergoing huge changes, as more and more people think that there have been profound changes in the relation between economy and society and innovation requirements.

People start moving on a different time scale, time has been speeded up. Space has become globalized, by turning into more unified and more complex at the same time. The society’s level of being informed, with exploiting the opportunities provided by information and communication technology, has been increased dramatically.

Socio-economic processes create new virtual spaces or even real spaces are modified: the processes are arranged in new ways in the interacting local, regional, national and supranational spaces. While integration processes are considered to be a general tendency, clear attempts for isolation also appear repeatedly.

Knowledge has become the main economic source, and learning abilities and skills have become a criterion of adaptation at the levels of individuals, companies, local communities, nations, supranational organizations and the world taken as a global system.

As the internet dissolves national borders how will we help indigenous cultures co-exist with an increasingly homogenous global culture?

The internet is stripping the world of privacy. More and more people store personal information on the internet, how will we ensure that information is kept secret?

It is causing massive changes to;

Social/Isolation/Social Skills/Obesity/Depression/Sleep Habits/E Waste/Cyber-bullying/Deceit/Reality/Stress/Social Boundaries/Sexual Boundaries/Social Bonds/Distraction/Attention Span /Addiction/Lack of Empathy/Violence/Energy Consumption/Neurosis.

People fail to realize that technology is the root cause of many of our modern troubles;

The current financial crisis might not of happened but for Technology. Internet gambling has become an addiction for many. Uncontrolled Porn is debasing us all. The development of smart weapons.

I believe that people have too readily embraced technology, seeking only the benefits, and ignoring the many downfalls.

The excessive use of machines in every field can result in an under-utilization of human brains. Over time, we may even lose our intellectual abilities. You know of the declining mathematical abilities in children due to use of calculators since school, don’t you?

Where is the digital divide going to take us? How is our ‘tomorrow’ going to be?

It has made life easy, but so easy that it may lose its charm one day. One can cherish an accomplishment only if it comes after effort. But everything has become so easily available due to technology that it has lost its value. There is a certain kind of enjoyment in achieving things after striving for them. But with everything a few clicks away, there is no striving, there’s only striking. With the developments in technology, we may be able to enjoy all the pricey luxuries in life but at the cost of losing its priceless joys.

If you read Google’s privacy policy carefully, it is clear that they retain the right to make significant decisions about our data without regard for our interests.

Nearly everything is being assimilated into technology Google Earth documented the entire map of the Earth; taxes, email, chatting, shopping, and work can be done over the internet; you can read on your Kindle; you can make home-made movies on Windows Movie Maker; and hundreds of other such ways.

According to a new creed, technologists are turning ourselves, the planet, our species, everything, into computer peripherals attached to the great computing clouds.

The news is no longer about us but about the big new computational product that is greater than us.

Is constant contact with the world really a good thing?

The continuous and self accelerating innovation processes characterized by the intense competition has brought about some changes in time relations.

If you are always in contact, there will be a decreasing amount of time to devote to yourself, and others will shape your opinions more and more.

The question is whether the hyper-connected life is taking us where we want to go.

It is it possible for technology to have value without facilitating a human goal?

We live more in our heads than any society has at any time in history, and for some the only reality is the one inside their heads.

By 2020 it will enabled the sending of messages via wireless headsets and visors”virtual telepathy”

At present, it is used largely for profit of individual or corporate gain.

It is used for short-term, monetary expediency, with little thought to the long-term survival of the human and other species on this planet.

Our present method of operations has become like a cancer, devouring its host.  It just cannot continue for much longer.

When we become habituated to the amazing technological achievements of recent years, we forget to be thrilled and amazed. We lose that great sense of wonder, of awe. We take brilliance for granted and so we ignore the human elements of fortitude, creativity, and intelligence” (Vaidnyanathan, 51-52).

When you stare at a screen too long, and it feels like your mind stops “Thinking.” You are socially and psychologically cut off from your fellow citizens.

You can see evidence everywhere.

It has become incredibly easy with the rise of the internet to become popular just by making the biggest impression. Being the funniest, cruelest, the one with the saddest story are all similar ways of becoming an internet phenomenon.

It is even reflected in popular culture, where being the fastest rapper or wearing the sexiest fashions all makes the headlines. These are all the same; they are shallow. You really do not have to work hard at being sexy, or rapping, or even having a sad story.

This generation leans on technology to serve their pleasures, and claim to be successful, or at least act like it. The internet is leading to a decline in “normal” social behaviors.

The news is a great example: Presented without any indebted analyst.  You see or read an interesting story, think about it for a second, and then you brush it over your shoulder, without any critical thinking, or wondering how it will affect your life.

So should we be concerned that an informational inequality often exists between governments and citizens.  More and more governments are using information and communication technology especially Internet or web-based network, to provide services between government agencies and citizens, businesses, employees and other  nongovernmental agencies.

Government activities that take place over electronic communications among all levels of government, citizens, and the business community, including: acquiring
and providing products and services; placing and receiving orders; providing and obtaining information; and completing financial transactions.

E Government is becoming an integrated tool of Governance – comprising three enabling sets of new technology: infrastructure, solutions and the exploitation of public portals.

Is E-governance beyond the scope of e-government?

Can Smart government equal smart governance resulting in Trans formative government, lean government, cloud computing, open government data, participation governance, digital divide, universal and mobile access, trust, security, identity, interoperability, and social media among others.

It might create a digital divide between those with ready access to electronic media and those without. It is changing the way people and businesses interact with government.

One of the most important aspects of e-government is how it brings citizens and businesses closer to their governments. An e-government infrastructure enabling the implementation of specific applications to address specific problems and issues of government management.

So when providing Internet access and email services in public portals, the most positive impact will come from the solutions and services that can be accessed from the exploitation of public portals with these communication tools.

Most recently we have seen agreements established between the U.S. and the EU on the transfer of personal data of airline passengers well beyond the scope of reasonable requirements.

Data retention, National Identification systems, e-government and joined-up databases, among other risks to privacy. What is the meaning of “identity”; the implications of turning several identities into one (without questioning consequences); what are the different scenarios and contexts for identification? This is changing the way information enters and flows around the system of government, introducing new—and sometimes uncontrollable—influences into decision-making

If we truly want to be successful we need to engineer the machines. ‘Machines replacing human beings’ does not portray a rosy picture, does it?

Overexposure to the Internet has taken its toll. In this virtual world, you can be who you are not, you can be virtually living even after you die. Isn’t this weird?

How can we prevent the invention of new purposes? That are often based on flawed assumptions, including dangerous ones.

In the current climate of fight against terrorism and cyber crime this imbalance is currently shifting towards greater government control over citizen data.

Is IT  a good thing’ for government?

Consequences and implications for e-government from wide-ranging surveillance and spying of digital communication. Ignoring the evidence about downsides to technology and ignoring the evidence of the widespread costs of failure of e ­government about how one should gather data about the world in e­ government as elsewhere – has always been about self ­promotion as much as promotion of knowledge.

Virtually unknown a decade ago impacts associated with e­ government, cost­saving and improvements in public service quality.  computers in the public sector cause job losses

It can lead to serious issues like unemployment and crime.

 

These days, smartphones don’t just make calls, they’re an electronic extension of our lives.

 

 

Have you ever stopped to think about how many people use the Internet in this world? The answers are astounding.

  • One-third of the entire global popular uses the Internet every day.
  • There are more tweets sent every second than the amount of breaths you take in an hour.
  • $116,220 worth of iPhone apps are downloaded each hour. That’s not even considered Android or others!
  • 98 years worth of digital video are uploaded to YouTube every day.
  • We spend more hours each day on devices than sleeping.

These technologies have completely redefined how companies carry out their most essential activities.

– 91% of employers screen prospective employees through social media

– 76% of employers screen prospective employees through Facebook

– 53% of employers screen prospective employees through Twitter

– 48% of employers screen prospective employees through LinkedIn

No matter what type of advancement we make, we’ll always have something to complain about and I can hear a lot of you saying I am just another nerd doing exactly that.

There is no doubt that we need technology but we must guard against technology that does not need us. I cannot imagine a single technology that only has upsides.

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100 Years - Then and Now

100 Years - Then and Now