When we look at the world it is important to recognize that we are looking at the history of different civilizations, however, we all have a common story.
We are born and we die.
Today the story is the same but with more mobility in-between, however, we’ve not changed a dot and it is certain that we will go on making things that will change or existence.
With to days technology, we are on the threshold of not just a new Industrial revolution but changing how we exist and where we exist.
The outline of a mobile phone as we know has changed not just rural Africa and Asia – putting communities in touch, giving access to information and money it is now also creating Social media platforms which are in the process of disconnecting us from reality.
This week Facebook, Google, and Twitter appeared in front of Congress. After which it is obvious, that we are not asking the right questions yet, or we have not found any good answers just yet as to why our world is getting sicker and sicker and it’s not Einstine science as to why.
When it comes to the world we can not cure just one aspect of the sickness, we must address an array of inherited illness.
Our new technological world is removing the need to think, to read, to imagine, to function, to communicate, to earn respect, to know why is true or a false pleasure, to plan long-term.
In other words, the internet has been infected by the problems that we all suffer.
What is need is that we need to take our existence back, whether it be as consumers, as citizens, and say we actually want to have some say over how all of this technology works, because we’ve really given that over to the tech companies ( outside of China, for the rest of the world, there are five big tech companies who really run everything) that have little or no ethical interest in other than profit
Why?
Because before we become the product for internet service providers, no longer just customers. we need a social movement around this issues to stop us all being run by the same algorithms brains driven by different programs that are incapable of acting for the common good.
Greed, inequality, you name it, our political affiliation, based upon the top-level domain information of websites you visit, your sexual orientation, where you like to shop, your financial status, race, gender can now be figured out based on the information that they collect and use.
If we didn’t have the bullshit movies, TV shows and sports pumping fake feel-good emotions into our systems, we would all feel the great weight of our inaction in an era where we need to get off our fucking asses and take a stand.
All the world’s problems are not on the internet.
We’re not supposed to watch a screen that pumps fake feel-good emotions into us.
It is quite plausible in the not so distant future we will have nothing serious to contribute when the hype – intelligent software supersedes humanity with genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics. New computer chips specialized for AI will power how we engineer genes, proteins, materials. Quantum computing a million times quicker than present-day computers will change the fields of drug development, manufacturing, and material science.
It will all be very murky but the potential is truly staggering.
Its now or never that we harness all this technology for if a day comes that the final decision is left to a Robotic brain rest assured that,Hal 9000 VS Dave will come true.
We all know that Social Media as it is called is having an effect on many if not all aspects of society both for good and bad.
TECHNOLOGY is now described as the third Industrial Revolution, with profit-seeking algorithms being the mercenary soldiers of the platforms on which Social media relies that are not only going to cause an algorithm war that will continue to unstabilize the world we live in.
An algorithm war will be the great oxymoron of our time.
Why will they cause a war? A digitally controlled systems war.
Because of originality.
At the moment it is vital that natural substances and public knowledge remain in the public domain so that we all have equal access to the collective humanity’s intelligence. Soon, however, we will not know who owns what, seed patenting, plants, medicines, and genetic materials, data, you name it and some algorithm will be controlling it. The more a nation or group of people is dependent upon digital systems, the more vulnerable they will become.
If we are to have a planet where companies can roam the planet in search of ever cheaper means of making a profit with these algorithms we must demand a global minimum wage.
Algorithms are already addictive. Promoted by multinational corporations that are avoiding taxes by their home countries.
The most effective way to take back control is to establish a Cloud Strongroom where all software programmes, are registered to their origins and a copy of the original program is held for future reference, transparency, available to all.
There is no doubt about the impact of AI. What will be automated next?
AI is only one fish in a vast ocean of technological progress.
” You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” Jobs.
Scientific data is piling up around us telling us that we are currently destroying what is left of the earth > deforestation, warming and acidification of oceans, CO2 emissions, melting ice caps, species extinction 100 to 1000 times faster than before the last Industrial Revolution, overfishing, soil degradation, over-exploitation of the earth ecosystem, running out of oil, pollution of drinking water, breathable air etc.
The list is endless combining to what we call human progress – GDP.
When in reality what is need is to decouple GDP from material throughput.
Consumption in rich countries is outpacing CDP growth. Perhaps if we placed a moratorium on Advertising for a few years we might reduce consumption and release us from the tyranny of growth at any cost.
If we peel back the false promises of technology the problems we have are much deeper causes, to tackle such as inequality, and consumption that is putting our plant at risk. Not to mention technology replacing many jobs creating a crisis of unemployment.
It’s time before the technology of profit-seeking algorithms plunders what is left of the world resources that we redistribute on merit bases that reflect the population of a country and their development needs the voting power within the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.
If you look at the World Bank and the IMF you will see that most of the countries representatives in both institutions are finance ministers, or central bank governors while the WTO has trade ministers neither of which have people or the environment as their mantra.
This needs to be done as
Our major world institutions are long overdue in need of reform.
In order to create a fairer global economy is it not the time to democratize the major global institution’s and remove the veto powers.
Right now votes are apportioned to each country according to the financial shares in the institutions with the rich countries claiming over 60%.
The World Trade Organisation is technically democratic with one vote for each member state, but in reality, it is the countries with the biggest markets that pull the punches.
The poorer countries are don’t have the negotiating prowess or the funds to make their voices heard.
Instead of a few powerful countries setting the agendas and predetermining decisions in what is called the green room a large dose of transparency is required allowing the media to access whether the rules and penalties stand up to the common sense notion of fairness.
Perhaps we can get social media to evolve to where it is the people of countries that elect who represents them in these Institutions.
If we don’t bring our institution into the technological age there is little likelihood that the next wave of general learning algorithms (that will be able to solve problems with us specifying how) will place power in our hands but rather in the hands of a few companies and as we have witnessed recently power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When men run out of words they reach for their swords, not their mobile phones.
One way or the other Algrothims are going to change human history.
All human comments appreciated. All like click chucked in the bin.
The big question that is going to confront us is arriving quicker than we think.
Where will AI or machine learning ultimately take us?
Should we allow AI or Machine Learning be simply set by those that directly profit from it (or the machines themselves) or should direction beset by all of us.
If so how?
If machines end up thinking for themselves then what?
If we don’t open our minds to these questions they will be opened for us by many artificial scientists whether we like it or not.
We are now in a race against the growing power of technology and what wisdom we have left.
In my mind, it should be made mandatory that we humans participate in how present-day technology is being used.
It’s not white Algorithms that we should be engaging with but the voices of common sense. We need people who can think and not technologists solely to decide what evolutionary surprises are in the long tall grass.
We can afford to risk letting Ai or Machine Learning breed in real time.
If we do there will be many perverse outcomes that will cause catastrophes.
Algorithms are developing that are exploiting rules and seeking the greatest possible rewards to such extent that we are already losing control to little green boxes called Siri. Alexa, and our smartphones.
Increasingly polarized and radicalized political movements, constant surveillance, leaked health data, manipulation of elections using Facebook data are only the tip of the iceberg.
With computer science ethics is optional.
A conscious Robot built first and fixed later will not work. It needs to learn both social and ethical implications of its actions prior to operating at any level of compatibility.
We, therefore, must ensure that it is impossible for scientists to be able to abdicate the responsibility for their creations.
There is no room for some nerd-sighted geniuses of our day to make a mistake.
I.E. That’s not my problem I just programmed or built it is not good enough.
All of us should be consulted through appointed representatives to determine whether a technology once introduced is usable by all with in the resources available.
All technology programmes whether they are Algorithms for profit or otherwise should under Law be required to submit a verified copy of the program to be held in a virtual world strongroom, accessible to all ensuring transparency and accountability.
The information inside our brains is being extracted quicker and quicker by Ai and it will end up in the hands of a machine owned by a program Android called Connecto with over one hundred billion neurons.
Now you might think that this is total hogwash but Connecto is a Neuroscience research program already going on.
Scientists aren’t sure if technology is destroying our brains but it’s only a question of time before a brain is uploaded to a computer and you may rest assured that only a few will understand what it will produce.
Our apps are taking advantage of our hard-wired needs for security and social interaction and researchers are starting to see how terrible this is for us. The more tapping, clicking and social media posting and scrolling people do, the “noisier” their brain signals become.
Decode our thoughts and our private minds will no longer to private.
If it’s in your mind it is in your brain.
Therefore because all brains are of a similar structure no matter what language, what religion what color your skin is whether you rich or poor we all walk and we all think much the same way we are in danger of a commonality that can be used and exploited to create a social interaction that is common to us all.
All day long, we’re inundated by interruptions and alerts from our devices.
This is why all those Like clicks are helping to create a systemic programme that could lead to being able to decode our thoughts and our personalities.
For me, the question is where is all this leading as we don’t yet quite know what intelligence is.
Is it the brain of Sapiens or the biological structure of plants that have made us subsistence to them or the structure of atoms that are the foundation to both or some other forces that we are unaware of that is the real intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
I AM SURE THERE IS NO NEED HERE FOR ME TO REMIND YOU THAT TECHNOLOGY IS NOT ONLY CHANGING THE WAY WE CONDUCT OUR LIVES BUT THE WAY WE WILL EXIST IN THE FUTURE.
There is a wonderful aspiration by the writer Isaac Asimov introduced in 1942:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the previous law; and a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous two laws.
I call the above an aspiration because as we all know that this will never happen.
We now have AI learning from AI, engage in cyberbullying, stock manipulation or terrorist threats. We also have AI surveillance, both private and public collecting data with or without permission.
A.I. systems don’t just produce fake tweets; they also produce fake news videos.
What, exactly, constitutes harm when it comes to A.I.? No one knows.
AI systems, are already no longer limited to a single set of tasks.
On the other hand, we need AI to tackle world future problems, such as climate change, threats from space, immigration, and sustainability itself.
There is no argument that regulation of what I call essential AI should be avoided.
However, my A.I. for profit or exploitation did it should not excuse illegal behavior.
A.I. system must clearly disclose that it is not human. As we have seen in the case of bots — computer programs that can engage in increasingly sophisticated dialogue with real people — society needs assurances that A.I. systems are clearly labeled as such.
We must ensure that people know when a bot is impersonating someone.
We must ensure that A.I. system cannot retain or disclose confidential information without explicit approval from the source of that information. Because of their exceptional ability to automatically elicit, record and analyze information, A.I. systems are in a prime position to acquire confidential information.
We must ensure that an A.I. system must be subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator. This rule would cover private, corporate and government systems.
Unfortunately none of the above is possible.
This is why I favor ( In the interest of caution) that we establish A World Technological Strong Room, just like the World seed bank where all software programmes are held and available to everyone.
Of course, it would be totally naive to think that all AI should be subject to scrutiny.
It’s not military nor intelligence AI that I am talking about, it is AI that is created for exploitation for profit.
Rather than regulating what AI systems can and can’t do that make it more expensive to develop AIs the strong room would hold the founding programme.
Because Artificial intelligence systems are now learning from each other and have the potential to change how humans do just about everything. We must ensure all AI has an impregnable “off switch.”
How can this achieve? and by whom.
This is where I am open to suggestions.
It could be A United Nations Cloud Strongroom, run by a world people algorithm that copies all existing software and Algorithms.
Companies making and selling AI software will need to be held responsible for potential harm caused by “unreasonable practices” Any sufficiently transformative technology is going to require new laws and New legislation that isn’t imminent.
There’s no denying Brexit is going to be a serious smack in the face for the EU.
The second EU straw is now the populist gale that will blow throughout next year.
Surely now is the time for some reforms.
Fundamental problems other than Brexit must be addressed.
But what to change? There’s little consensus yet.
Ever closer union, which has been an EU rallying cry for nearly 30 years, is almost “dead.” Lofty speeches are falling on deaf ears.
It may be forced by politics or forced by new leadership but there is no doubt that the divisions between wealthy northern European nations and those in the South, where public finances are strained and youth unemployment remains a major problem has to be resolved.
The rise of nationalist parties — on left and right — threatens to reverse nearly 70 years of integration in Europe. The Greek bailout is in danger of collapsing. There are doubts about the future of the euro.
It is was unrealistic to expect radical change, when there are creditors and debtors in the EU. Because of this, it’s almost impossible for European Union to continue with a deepening integration on fiscal affairs.
Here are three reforms it should and can be undertaking imminently.
One> Stop the gravy train Strasburg to Brussels.
Two> Make the Commission an elected body.
Three > Establish legal entry points for refugees.
There are arguably two primary types of democracy: direct democracy, in which all
citizens directly participate in decision-making; and representative democracy, in which the power of the people is delegated to periodically elected representatives.
Where is the difficulty with the above reforms?
After all is not democracy said to be in the eye of the beholder.
Britain’s departure from the EU, which will be negotiated over just two years, will also distract attention from reforms. There will be pressure to wrap up Brexit talks quickly, but the EU is not known for moving fast.
Europe needs to change, and fast.
Either it prepares for the future, or it will become obsolete.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
The vast majority of us now live in cities far removed from nature, walking around with our faces in smartphones connected to the cloud by algorithms sporting fancy names like Twitter, Facebook etc.
I am sure you have read or hear that we are now connected more than ever in our history, but most of this connectivity is false. As amazing as this seems, this is just the beginning of what we can expect.
Mobile technology has seen a meteoric rise in adoption since the debut of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years have given us significant advancements in mobile technology, but relative to the span of recorded human history, seven years is still a short time.
We’re barely skimming the surface of what we can expect from technology.
This very moment we live in a world in which news is broken in under 140 characters and people are more driven by bouncing icons on their mobile phones than what can be experienced outside of their 3.5” screen.
Google attempts to understand our behaviors to deliver more relevant information and content to better connect with users through their various services.
As connected as we are now, there is still a fundamental disconnect between people and the companies that attempt to reach them through these technologies.
We may one day reach a point where true conversations can happen between man and machine, but for now, it is still up to the people, the marketers and brand ambassadors of the world, to drive this human connection.
So what does all of this mean?
The world used to be really small. People were limited to what happened in their city or village and every now and then, if the event was truly important, the news spread far enough. They wrote letters that would take months to reach their final destination if ever at all. The information was kept by few. You would hear from countries directly involved in the recent history of yours and you would barely ever make it very far from home. And even if you did, it was not an everyday thing or an everyday decision for anyone.
This was the life less than 100 years ago.
And to put things in perspective, humans have been on earth for around 200.000 years and the Earth herself is 4.543 billion years old.
So we can agree that the way we live now is fairly recent.
“We are now so disconnected” with the madness being amplified year after year with so much information it leaves us with 3 choices:
You will listen to it as if this had nothing to do with you what so ever.
Or
You hide under your blankets. Forever. And deny it. Live in the bubble. Proclaim that all is well. Refuse to see the disconnection to the point that you are unable to move or function.
Or
We can take a stand, and make a choice.
We can listen enough to know and make an informed choice and then we can choose to do something about it.
This is where the greatness is found.
There are no absolutes in science but we have to begin to trust the science of climate change.
Why?
Because it is untestable that this is the best planet we know, and it is clear beyond any doubt that the risk to us all is climate change.
The move beyond the land and our disconnection from nature are impressive… but it is also one of the main threats facing us all.
With or without the Paris climate agreements: We are still pumping 70 million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere a day.
Rest assure that climate change will not all happen at once.
It must now be treated as a continual threat with no debate.
We exist by nature consent not the other way around and the sooner we learn it the better.
It is the time that we put sustainability on all Education syllabus.
It is the time for all of us to demand that all-weather forecasting slots on our televisions screens at least once every three months addressed climate change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
YET we are more connected today than ever before and this has its madness and its greatness.
So we are DEFINITELY more connected than ever before.
Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you should trust the information or decisions that algorithms produce?
AI smartphones will soon be standard, using machine learning from the cloud and sooner than later smartphones will have personalized algorithms that will run even when offline.
These algorithms will be own by the companies that both sell and manufacture the phone and will, therefore, carry inbuilt biases depending on which platforms they are attached to.
Imagine a cheap little device that can compute as much data as all the brains in the world. It will have a deep and irreversible affect on everyone and there is no way of predicting what exactly will happen as the developers of such a device will have no idea what it is doing.
How far do we want to go- Robots that obey no matter what with us blind human as their allies.
Today the world faces a number of hugely complex challenges, from global warming to conflicts to nuclear weapons to rampant inequality. But one the real seismic change is how we are going to respond to each other when we all trusting algorithms to make decisions on our behalf.
Now is it the time to put in place world standards and regulations that govern the use of all biological data.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT THE WORLD IS GOING TO NEEDS AS MUCH COMPUTER POWER POSSIBLE TO TACKLE ITS PENDING PROBLEMS.
HOWEVER, IT SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT TO INSPECT THE SOURCE CODES OF ANY TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BIOLOGICAL DATA IN ITS TARGETED SOFTWARE ALGORITHMS.
IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE COST OF POWER/ENERGY WILL DRIVE THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS SYSTEMS IN THE WORKPLACE AND COMMERCIAL WORLD MARKETS NOT TO MENTION SURVEILLANCE EITHER BY GOVERNMENTS OR OTHER ORGANISATIONS.
NOW IS THE TIME TO START DEMANDING STANDARDS.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?
Not as much as you might think.
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.
You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.
There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.
However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.
The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.
Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:
Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.
More than half the world’s population is still offline.
Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.
By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.
Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.
The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)
Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.
Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.
Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.
When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!
Technology is not destiny, education is.
Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.
If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.
MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.
It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..
Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.
The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.
Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.
But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself. According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.
Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.
The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).
So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).
Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.
The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.) Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.
You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.
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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’
What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’
Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.
It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.
UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.
Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.
Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?
I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.
Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.
Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.
UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.
It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.
UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.
There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.
So why is it not being done?
Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
I can hear you saying where will the money come from?
Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.
It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly.
As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin>
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
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So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
