( A thirteen minute read)

THE European Union (EU) is “unified only in name” and faces the “danger of disintegration” if it does not tackle the obvious reforms needed. 

The 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent sovereign debt crisis and then the 2015 migrant crisis demonstrated that the EU is unified only in name. Brexit and the idea of sovereignty it symbolizes is a mighty catalyst for all member states’ citizens to rethink their idea of Europe and national sovereignty.

While the majority of us scrape a living i have always held that if you want an organisation to operate you must attract the best by paying above the odds. The EU has repeatedly attracted controversy over the hugely lavish pay and perks it affords to its staff, which are in stark contrast to the experience of workers across the continent who have suffered years of pay freezes.

THOUSANDS of pounds of European Union (EU) taxpayers’ money are going straight into politicians’ coffers as MEPs are not using office allowances. As well as the £3,783 handed to them by the EU for an office space, MEPs are paid £7,392 a month – £88,704 annually – and get £21,057 to spend on office staff.

Surely its time that we the tax payer on social media demand a stop to the EU Gravy train loop holes by demanding that all expenses, payments are transparent and subject to scrutiny. 

The complete lack of transparency in the EU means that eurocrats think they can get away with living the high life at our expense. 

EUROPEAN Union bureaucrats put a staggering £85 million on credit cards issued to pay for meals and hotels – in just one year.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, was offered a salary five times higher than his pay in Warsaw.

A whopping £94 m is proposed to be spent on “information and communication” in the 2018 budget, including £28 m on promoting the next European elections.

On top of that the EU’s burgeoning fleet of electric cars is to be expanded by a third, from 60 to 90, and an eye-watering £3 m would be spent on making Irish an official language in Brussels.

A total of 249 offices out of the potential 748 do not exist or could not be found.

Only 133 current MEPs across the 28 member states revealed to the team what they pay in office rent. 249 said they either have no offices or refused to reveal their addresses, or their locations could not be found, while 19 said they work from home.

The European Parliament also does not keep a record of politicians’ offices in their home countries.

 “The EU Commission has to revise its Code of Conduct completely and put in place a credible, impartial, ethics body to stop the gravy train.

More than £17.4 million of EU taxpayers’ money has been blown on giving people bargain getaways to Brussels and Strasbourg, an official report into the extravagance of the European Parliament has revealed.

MORE than thirty per cent of the EU’s ex-MEPs have been re-hired as lobbyists.

Donald Tusk earns £22,000-a-month as an EU commissioner plus pension and benefits.

MEPs spent £1 million in one year on jollies around the world including trips to Mauritius, New York, Mexico and Cambodia.

Interpreters employed full-time by the Parliament earn the equivalent of up to €500 an hour because they have so little work to do.

More than £700,000 was lavished on an award ceremony for European cinema modeled on the Oscars.

The Parliament spent £1 million promoting itself on Facebook and £3.9 million on an online TV channel watched only 9.9 million times.

Concerns have been raised that a £40 million new museum to ‘promote awareness of European identity’ will replicate exhibitions in an existing visitor center.

Another scam they have is to buy a cheap ticket to fly to Brussels and then put in the expenses for first class ticket £277.80 each way first class £45 each way cheap flight.

The above I am sure IF WE LOOKED AT EU PENSIONS is just a drop in the ocean of fiddles.

There is a generation of kids coming up who can’t even conceive of a world without smart phones and social networking. It has officially embedded itself in our culture.

The question is what exactly are the effects of social media?

This blog is the first to be posted on my new Flip Board Magazine named ( # Silent Witness To The Beady Eye Social Media Washing Line.)

It is my hoped that the Magazine will provide a platform to enable Social Media to present a unified voice to effect change.

Its purpose is to promote and aid communication. 

We now have truly globalized voices. What a privilege!

But is it such a privilege.

Hashtags have grown into a phenomenon of their own.

By providing us with global reach for our voices, social networks enable businesses across the world to amplify their message in a way never thought possible only a decade or two ago. Given all the consolidation of media companies it is pretty easy to question whether the news we get from the major media is the full story or not.

Do you think the world is better or worse off with social networks?

As all social media platforms are subject to algorithms it cannot become our main form of communication and interaction. If we stop making our own choices than we’ve lost what it means to live and be human. 

This type of technology might be doing more harm than good. 

With so much being blogged and written, then curated and shared proactively, the volume of content has grown exponentially but is anyone listing.

What is really happening in the world.

Let’s look at ways that social media improves our life experience, and also a few ways that it uncovers a few of the more unsightly parts of humanity.

Social media are very helpful for expanding our sources of content as a whole.

It’s less important to have a news team interpret it on our behalf.

Today, all you have to do is login to our platform of choice where you can rant, rave, kumbaya, tell jokes, share images, and generally mix and mingle to your heart’s content. You can create a new blog and start putting our thoughts into words. Those thoughts could grow legs of their own once the social sphere grabs hold of them.

Are these voices now ripping the world apart?

In any case, social media is providing a means to have a voice on par with the big dogs for everyone but it is no longer grounded in reality plagued with the narcissistic selfie in front of everything from natural disasters to a sign with a political or social message on it, and a new hashtag of course.

When it comes to politics, religion, or any other very personal area of life, discussion gets contentious almost immediately. Regardless of how those with the other opinion are depicted by the media. Social media is meant to be social, not a boxing ring.

It’s amazing to see how people behave when their true identity is masked.

Facebook is crawling with people ready to go to social media war with anyone on a topic they care about, but what else are they doing to fix the problem?

Venting on social media doesn’t fix a thing; it just stirs the pot.

The ugly underbelly of ignorance is easy to ignore while you’re going about your everyday life but on Twitter, it’s all over the place.

If we are to avoid a world driven by Social Media confusion, with no source of truth we must air our free will and collective voices to effect change.

We must expose and resist Algorithms that are supplying a world of short-term pleasure for profit.

So If you have a genuine point of view, feel free to hang it out on the washing line and see what reaction it gets.

( A two-minute read)

What is now becoming clear with technology is that Capitalism is programmed to subordinate life to the imperative of profit. ( Capitalist Algorithms are making profit all but invisible)

Ever since David chucked a stone we have glorified war, selling trillions in arms rather than eradication of inequality.

We were and still are griped by a logic that has given us everything from slavery to the smart phone, to oil spills, to child labor, to terrorists, to Donald Trump with pending ecological collapse and climate change.

GDP and now smartphones measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

Surely no matter who or where you were born on earth you want to live in balance with your environment on which you depend for your survival.

Nature has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.

Our TV screens recently passively report one of the largest Icebergs ever to brake off the Antarctic. Not good enough.

One dimensional capitalism has to go.  We can carry on with the status quo.

If we carry on dishing out inequality the choice is staring us stark in the face.

There will be no Future with or without technology.

I am sure there are many like me blogging, twittering, their views on Social media, but we have to grow out the logic of social media algorithms.  If we do not we are going to pay a heft price. If our current trajectory continues, democracy as you know it will be ruined. Social Media is in the process of rendering our votes worthless and unfit for purpose.

The world is now full of misinformation that is debunking people’s attitudes.

Facebook algorithms along with a clatter of others, are a form of manipulation making us all, more and more polarized from the world we live in.

Its time for a reboot. It wouldn’t turn out the way you want it. We need to do some thing about it quickly. ( Read my previous blogs.) Let’s face it; you’ve probably tried to imagine the typical daily life in the distant future. Technology will, indeed, play a pivotal role in our lives in 34 years.  We are told that the primary purpose of all robots and incredibly advanced technology will be to allow men to have a relaxed and calmer lifestyle.

There will be little point if our worlds is falling asunder and watched over by a United Nations without a unity people.

Digital technology will not simply intensify prevailing cultural trends but also provide resources for reinterpreting its meaning. We must grasp the opportunities it presents us, by coming together in a united world voice to change the core human cry from growth for the sake of profit to sustainability.

All comments Appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

(A ONE MINUTE READ)

With this deal the Tories have wilfully imperilled three decades of Irish-British peace, of good relations between Ireland and Britain, and risked plunging IRELAND back into a new era of conflict.

The Conservative Party, a wink-and-a-nod acknowledgement which will give 17th century Protestant fundamentalism a platform to preach its archaic world-view in the 21st century.

From opposing civil rights to denying climate change, the creationist-believing Ulster Trumps have been offered a warm welcome in Downing Street.

The Tories will now need to seek the approval of the DUP, so the DUP will need to seek the approval of the UDA, UVF and RHC.

Its simply staggers belief.

During the Troubles had connections to multiple Ulster militias.

The DUP are the most arrogant, duplicitous, hypocritical bunch of charlatans to ever enter electoral politics. They have a line of scandals and corruption as long as you like, and every one of their scandals would end careers in GB but they get away with it because of the extremely tribal nature of NI politics.

Everyone knows how horrible the IRA is, but most have heard nearly nothing about the Loyalist paramilitaries, who actually targeted mostly civilians and killed more civilians than the IRA over the course of the Troubles.

They also initiated the violence that started the Troubles. The IRA was inactive and had no popular support until the Loyalist groups began killing innocent people for being Catholic.

There is no excuse for what the IRA did, but even less for what some of the Loyalist terrorists did.

Yet people don’t even know what they did…and that is not an accident.

( A two-minute read)

The idea that the DUP IS NOW IN POWER in Westminster WITH MRS TERRORIST MAY should worry us all.

With strong historical links with Loyalist paramilitary groups Mrs May AND HER new-found friends SHOULD BE ON THE TOP OF THE ENGLISH TERRORIST SUSPECTS LIST. 

Specifically, the terrorist group Ulster Resistance was founded by a collection of people who went on to be prominent DUP politicians. Peter Robinson, for example, who was DUP leader and Northern Ireland’s first minister until last year, was an active member of Ulster Resistance.

One of the things the group did was collaborate with other terrorist organisations such as the Ulster Volunteer Force to smuggle arms into the UK, including RPG rocket launchers.

The Tories to end an election campaign which they spent attacking Corbyn for his alleged links to former Northern Irish terrorists by going into coalition with a party founded by former Northern Irish terrorists is a deep irony.

The DUP also fights hard against women’s right to choose to have an abortion, making them the biggest pro-forced pregnancy party in the UK. The results in Northern Ireland are utterly grim for the many women each year who need an abortion

They are climate change deniers, using their role in government in Northern Ireland to set up a subsidy scheme for biofuels, which gave those who bought into it more money than they had to pay out. The Northern Irish exchequer ended up paying out around half a billion pounds to those who knew about the scheme, leading to a scandal known as ‘cash for ash’, and a major investigation into whether DUP staff and supporters personally benefitted.

They have fought to stop equal marriage, making Northern Ireland the only part of this archipelago without equal relationship rights.

The party backed Brexit.

We don’t know what the DUP will demand from the Tories in exchange for supporting them but if the Queen had any decency she would have shown the door of Buckingham palace to Mrs May and her new friends before she sells arms to the IRA.

THE REVERENT Ian Paisley must be chuckling in his grave.

( A ten minute read)

Too often technology is discussed as if it has come from another planet and has just arrived on Earth.

I have dedicated quite a few posts to the need for a New World Organization to vet all Technology, Software, AIs, prior to their release into the world, to ensure that they all complied with our core human values. (see previous posts)

So where do you fit into all of this TECHNOLOGY:

The ways that we as users and consumers experience devices will change greatly; every touch, scroll, pinch, zoom, tap, click and so on will be rich with unique animations and feedback – attention devoted to the most minute of interactions may well  create far more engaging experiences for us all but the whole notion of an organized professional ethics is an absurdity when it comes to AI.

This is why it is so vital to think about humanity’s new agenda. 

No one is an expert on seeing the full picture. Different fields of technology are now effecting other fields. Artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, big data, genetics, you name it.  No one understands the System any more so no one can stop it. Nobody can can absorb all the latest scientific discoveries.

Nobody has the slightest clue where we are heading in such a rush.

Never mind the expense of loosing our identity, or privacy, the world around us is changing – there is no doubt about that – yet the inexorable march of time and technology is at times so profound, so alien, and so overwhelming, that we often retreat to our safe spaces – of comfort and ritual and practice – rather than embracing those changes head-on as they come.

It is becoming abundantly clear that humanity’s relationship both with nature and technology needs to be undertaken by cooperative, collective action at all levels – local, regional, and global.  

Our products are becoming increasingly anonymous, autonomous, automated and homogenous, but we’re still to see a push back from the users. The significance of trust in digital products has yet to be fully realized. With growing concerns over security and data we are loosing sight of what Technological AIs are doing to society and the world as a whole.

Dozens  if not hundreds of virtual machine brains are making decisions inside AI Algorithms for you, and every other facet of your daily lives. 

Artificial General Intelligence is still the stuff of science fiction — but lesser, more practical AI’s, virtual assistants and digital concierges are right at our doorstep — most notably Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Echo, Alexa, Cortana, Google Now, Jibo, M, Clara, Amy and S Voice.

These personal “intelligent” assistants are entering our lives at a staggering pace — everyone that owns a smart phone has access to at least one of these AIs, and the world is coming to terms with the reality that AI is here to stay. As we begin to welcome multiple AIs into our lives, we’re beginning to find that our intelligent helpers aren’t being so “helpful” with one another.

Why?

Because these smart helpers are not designed to negotiate any division of labor amongst one another, leading to redundancy, contradiction, and overall dysfunction when their original purpose was to simplify things.

The world of apps and services is becoming increasingly more granular with us the users left in the dark — powerless and confused — caught between seams.

Are we going to be forced to interact with content in a fixed order along a linear path or are going to see the intelligence of the user being given more paths to navigate through, more decisions to make throughout each process, and more divergent ways to complete each touchpoint other than LIKE.

Every time we open Facebook or visit LinkedIn, we are subconsciously engaging in dozens of microinteractions—many invisible, too small to even notice.

We’re moving towards further atomization of microinteractions, where individual interactions are being broken down into even smaller segments within a greater interaction.

Over half the world’s population is now online and the enormous influx of new users will bring about a disproportionate amount of digital-novices, such as the elderly and the Global South. Unfortunately, the people of these nations also bear the brunt of some of the greatest challenges facing the international community in the next millennium: poverty, environmental degradation, human and civil rights abuses, ethnic and regional conflicts, mass displacements of refugees, hunger, and disease.

It won’t be long before we’ll be passively engaging in thousands of micro-mini interactions every time we take out our phones: with conflicting messages exist for us to truly communicate our message and see it implemented in the workforce. Even worse, our message is becoming abstracted, reduced to bullet points and slide shares, our ideas included solely for the benefit of others’ SEOs.

Designers will find new ways to capitalize on newfound user-engagement, both in terms of designing new features around these “interactions within interactions”, as well as devising new interfaces for the abundance of new interactions that the apps of tomorrow will bring!

Where the real paradigm shifting trends of tomorrow lie in wait, is anyone’s guess. It is not enough to look in front of you—you must look ahead to the future.

All of this is giving  birth to a new era of mobile friendliness and device agnosticism, and the web as a whole experienced. A shift in consciousness as sites became easier to use, apps became more intuitive to navigate, and services became all the more delightful and engaging to interact with.

You could say that we live in a time of exceptional opportunity, a time of rapid scientific, medical and technological advances.

BUT ARE WE?

LET ME ASK YOU THIS:

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SINGLE SYSTEM COULD MAKE USE OF COUNTLESS SPECIALIST SYSTEMS IN THE HANDS OF A SINGLE INVESTOR.

THE ANSWERS ARE CATASTROPHIC ON ALL FRONTS.

BACK TO NOW.

That social media is mobilizing citizens to take political action while technological advances are driving down the price of solar power and creating new market opportunities THAT WILL DEVASTATE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.

Reality is that Extreme global poverty persists, with 702 million people (9.6 percent of the world’s population) estimated to be living on less than US$1.90 a day.

Of the world’s poor, 72 percent (960 million) live in middle-income countries, where they do not experience the benefits of growth and lack access to opportunities and resources, including education, health care, financial services and formal employment—all of which limits socio-economic mobility.

Inequality is fueling violent conflict and political instability. Today’s conflicts are increasingly complex and harder to resolve, and they have a disproportionate impact on civilians.

Current patterns of economic growth are unsustainable and contribute to the acceleration of climate change, posing huge risks for the planet, including its people and their prosperity.

It is increasingly likely that the combined effects of rapid population growth in high-risk areas, environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change will increase the frequency and scale of environmental migration and displacement.

Worldwide, one in every 122 persons is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.

This is a staggering statistic.

In Jordan, for example, one in every 13 people is a Syrian refugee. In Lebanon, one in five persons are refugees.

For millions of people in developing countries, the effects of climate change, such as changing weather patterns and rising sea levels, directly jeopardize their livelihoods, health and security.

The United Nations’ global humanitarian appeal has almost quadrupled in the last 10 years, rising from US$5.9 billion to US$20.1 billion.

We will soon HAVE TO LOOK at the world in a whole new—and much more accurate—way.  A future born of new ideas as to how we create a world that is peaceful, prosperous, just and inclusive—a world where human rights are protected for all. We must urgently address climate change and support inclusive clean growth, including through support for clean energy and sustainable agriculture.

We must protect human rights, including for women and refugees, while promoting accountable governance, peaceful pluralism and respect for diversity.

We must generate new opportunities for youth, so that their despair does not become a risk for global stability and security. And we must continue to respond to human suffering and instability brought on by crisis and disaster, including the hardships facing refugees and displaced populations.

The challenges are clear.

Our collective challenge lies in giving practical expression to this fundamental understanding. For better or worse, weather is an integral part of our world. It impacts our every experience, however subtle, and is thus an omnipresent variable in the way we experience everything else in our lives – including the apps on our phones.

Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world’s sustainability and resilience. Widening inequalities of wealth and income.

The world-wide disruption of the physical climate system and the loss of millions of species that sustain life are the grossest manifestations of unsustainability.

We must find ways to protect and conserve as large as possible a fraction of the tens of millions of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms that make up the living fabric of the world.

We depend on them for the maintenance of the sustainable properties of the earth and for virtually every facet of our existence, and yet we have recognized only a very small fraction of them up to the present date.

If we don’t save them now, we clearly will not be able to save them later.

Up to now we’ve had a very fixed view of ourselves but globalization has expanded a country’s presence beyond its physical borders. No developing country has been able to reduce poverty without sustainable economic growth.

AI for Profit is going to ensure that they remain so.

This is where we fit into technology by developing an algorithm that can translate information culled from depth maps of virtual surfaces into dynamic tactile experiences. Another words real-time maps on our flat screen that show the state of the world.

The dramatic climate shifts of the near-future will bring about extreme environmental conditions that necessitate the need for ever more vigilant weather tracking maps.

In view of the persistence of poverty, the widening of economic and social inequalities, and the continued destruction of the environment is it not sensible that we get a handle on Technology before it condemns us all to slavery.

The evidence is that technology is destroying jobs and indeed creating new and better ones but also fewer ones.

Only through the empowerment and education of women and children throughout the world will we be able to attain a world that is both just and sustainable. We have a clear moral obligation to do this, and will benefit greatly by succeeding in this goal.

This will not be achieved by AI or technology.

So I leave you with these two further questions:

Who Will Own the Robots?

If the rewards of new technologies go largely to the very richest, as

has been the trend in recent decades, then dystopian visions could

become reality. The rapid advances in automation and digital

technology provoke social upheaval by eliminating the livelihoods of

many people, even as they produce great wealth for others?

——–

How can we get better at sharing the wealth that technology creates?

No one knows the answer.

As Algorithms become more intelligent and more powerful it is not only the the financial industry that will require safeguards against exploitation and risk, we all will.

But the machines are tools, and if their ownership is more widely shared, the majority of people could use them to boost their productivity and increase both their earnings and their leisure. If that happens, an increasingly wealthy society could restore the middle-class dream that has long driven technological ambition and economic growth.

If you want to get your head around any of this I would recommend that you read: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari ISBN 9781910701874.

All comments appreciated. All like click chucked in the Bin