( Twenty minute read)

There is no denying that the benefits of technology are needed but what are the downsides costs.

As the demand for up-to-date technology increases, we need to reevaluate how we measure the hidden cost of the TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION.

It will not be us picking up the tap, but the yet to be born that will have to pay, living in a world that is detached from what makes it all possible The Earth.

Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.

At this point it is impossible to say with any authority what exactly the cost will be.

Some technologies are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop, but you should know about all of them right now. In the not-too-distant future, we will be able to print human organs, but not the brain.

According to Stephen Hawking, “Humans are entering a stage of self-designed evolution.”

That may be so, but technology is more than just fusing the physical and digital worlds.

Marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, face and voice recognition and algorithms learning from other algorithms.

With wireless connecting brain-reading technology directly to electrical stimulators on your body it has the potential with more items moving from physical to virtual to decouple us from reality. Wireless communications is already dominating our everyday lives

It is already impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries, our politics, improving medicine, influencing our culture.

Apart from the obvious technology is also in the process of changing democracy, moving capitalism underground, assisting conflicts, packaging natural resources, destabilizing society, disrupt the way governments deliver services to citizens, just to mention the tip of the ice berg.

.It will not be long before we will all have DNA maps from birth.

However with the arrival of Quantum computers the way we use technology will be reshape, along with the societies we live in.

As soon as two to five years from now, such systems or time on such systems are likely to be for sale.

There are probably plenty more uses for quantum computers that nobody has thought up yet.

However you may rest assured that the ordinary citizens (or even governments) won’t be able to own their own quantum computers for a long time, if ever, but I can imagine large companies renting time (measured in fractions of seconds) to whoever needs their services.

With this in mind the race has well started to create monopolies of knowledge Google, of Social Media Society – Facebook, consumerism E Bay, Amazon, Alibaba, of Finance – Pay Pal, of Communication – Apple, of Biotech Thermo Fisher Scientific, of cloud business – Microsoft -IBM, Oracle,  of computer microchips to data center-makers-Intel, to name just a few.

Here are a few of their Mission statements:

Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

Pay Pal: “To build the Web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution.”

Alibaba: “To make it easy to do business anywhere.”

Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Microsoft:  “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.”

United Nations: “The maintenance of international peace and security.”

Medecins Sans Frontieres:   “To help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.”

Non mention the health of the EARTH?

Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable but we’ll see more intelligence built into communication. With always-on connectivity, social networking has the power to change cultures, as we saw with the Egyptian Revolution, which led to the Arab Spring.

The results of changing the world are often complicated and unpredictable.

With the technology of smart phones social influences will continue to move rapidly between cultures.

In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to move things from one place to another; to reach farther with our hands, voices, and senses. We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better. The changes may relate to survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such as knowledge, art, or control.

As computational power rises exponentially, not linearly, so does the rate of change — and that means the next 10 years should pack in far more technological change than the last 10.

It is my prediction that all of it will end up in the cloud.

Why?

Because it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of our brains  (driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centers in the prefrontal cortex) that is driving technology to tap into our personal sensors.

Make no mistake: emails, Facebook and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.

Already, the cloud is powerful enough to help us communicate through real-time language translation.

When is a profit not a profit? When it turns into a monopoly exploiting all around it.

Just like Capitalism technology it is unable to regulate itself and with the arrival of Quantum computers it will make everything and everybody beholden to technology, endangering  much of the openness that we now enjoy online.

So I one again ask the question:

Is it time to regulate Algorithms that have profit as their end targets and is it time that we demanded an open data website that would allow anyone to find information on a host of county government programs, from budget information to welfare data to crime statistics.

This would be linked to two powerful benefits.

First, it makes government more transparent and understandable at a time when trust in the public sector has plummeted.

Second, it has the potential to generate significant economic benefits impacting budget issues, public safety and education, transparency and economic value for tax payers money.

The bottom line is that government data can be extremely valuable for public consumption, but only if the policies behind the data are well thought out and the related costs are affordable. For instance, would a map of society reveal awkward disparities in how rich and poor neighborhoods receive public funding?

Many governments are running on old, outdated systems, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.

I believe that such an open based  data website would benefit from the collective wisdom of the community, simplify how citizens and businesses interact with the state.

However IT WOULD HAVE THE unexpected startup costs if data is kept in a legacy computer system that requires reformatting; quality-related costs to keep open data fresh and up-to-date; legal costs to comply with open data legislation; liability costs in case something goes wrong, such as publication of nonpublic information; and public relations costs that can occur when a jurisdiction generates bad press from open data about poor performance metrics or workforce diversity problems.

That apart present technological advances and information overlays will change how we live in significant ways.

We will have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems, allowing for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a universal method for identifying someone energy requirements becomes much harder when you no longer have a central authority to figure out how to link together the different systems.

It will not be like self-driving trucks with lidar system guidance run by algorithms or self-driving cars.

Who is responsible when the self drive truck or car kills someone. Try bringing a self thought Algorithm to court.

Try suing an Face-detecting systems for wrong identification or payment.

Then we have:  Gene-therapy.

Biology’s next mega-project will find out what we’re really made of.

Three technologies are coming together to make this new type of mapping possible.

The first is known as “cellular microfluidics.” Individual cells are separated, tagged with tiny beads, and manipulated in droplets of oil that are shunted like cars down the narrow, one-way streets of artificial capillaries etched into a tiny chip, so they can be corralled, cracked open, and studied one by one.

The second is the ability to identify the genes active in single cells by decoding them in superfast and efficient sequencing machines at a cost of just a few cents per cell. One scientist can now process 10,000 cells in a single day.

The third technology uses novel labeling and staining techniques that can locate each type of cell—on the basis of its gene activity—at a specific zip code in a human organ or tissue.

Then we have, the relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.

Then we have, Botnets are used to commit click fraud.

Google ads pay a site owner according to the number of people who click on them. The attacker instructs all the computers on his botnet to repeatedly visit the Web page and click on the ad. Dot, dot, dot, PROFIT! If the botnet makers figure out more effective ways to siphon revenue from big companies online, we could see the whole advertising model of the Internet crumble.

Then we have, hackers breaking into computers over the Internet and controlling them en masse from centralized systems. The problem is getting worse, thanks to a flood of cheap webcams, digital video recorders, and other gadgets in the “Internet of things.”

Then we have, reinforcement learning.  Reinforcement learning may soon inject greater intelligence into much more than games.

SO WHAT NOW?

What are the implications to human development and the diversity of life on earth? What opportunities are there to reduce risks and vulnerabilities, enhance resilience, and create transformations to prosperous and equitable futures?

Science can provide only some answers; it is not a panacea for all problems. We need to also make personal, economic, social, and political changes, whatever the cost will be.

Reinforcement-learning algorithm can learn from collated data and experiment in simulation to suggest, say, how and when to operate the cooling systems.

Algorithms don’t know the Meaning of Environment.

They have however so concept of the  “The term ‘environment’  it refers to all external conditions and factors that affect living organisms. Here external factors mean all the things around us such as air, water, light, animals, humans etc.

Algorithms are shadow boxers of yesterday all because technology trends can affect the bottom line of business. 

Although big data algorithms hold great promise, they should still be approached with caution and skepticism.

For instance Algorithms should not be relied upon to ration medical care until the technology has substantially matured.

If we ignore what is happening there will be more riots, and increasing divisions along economic, religious and ethnic lines with Robots completely replacing humans in the workforce.

IT IS TIME FOR THE OWNERS ALL PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS TO BE REGISTERED WITH A COPY OF THE WORKING CODE.  NO PROFIT EARNING ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE GRANTED A PATIENT.

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