Category Archives: What is shaping our world.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. CIVILIZATION WITH CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BE A VERY THIN VENEER.

21 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by in Climate Change., CO2 emissions, Dehumanization., Environment, Green Energy., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Life., Reality., State of the world, Telling the truth., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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.( Twenty minute read) 

There are no words to describe the present state of our world.

Here below is a recent picture from Australia, it more than adequately does the job. Millions of dead fish float were seen floating on the Lower Darling in Far west NSW.

A thousand fish per square metre (caused “severe deoxygenation”)

We seen conflict raging for decades across the world, as if war is always and forever an ordinary routine, limited to developing third world nations, however wars are no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. With the Coming Climate Change we ent seeing nothing yet when it comes to wars.

IT IS THE DEFINING ISSUE OF OUR TIMES, WITH PROFOUND CONSEQUENCES, FOR THE FOOD CHAIN, ENGERY  DISEASES, DWINDELING RESOURSE AND FUTURE WARS.

To date we have had summit after summit with countries promising to reduce their carbon emission at varying degrees and rates of time, with 60% not in the west returning home, PROBALY THINKING WHY SHOULD THEY BE CARRYING THE CAN WHEN ITS IS THE COUNTRIES IN THE WEST THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Vermillion Cliffs at Paria Canyon Wilderness in Arizona

We are already in a pivotal moment in deciding our planets future, which requires significant societal changes to mitigate it.

Why?

Because our current global political economy solves problems through business as usual growth, wasting precious time to effectively reduce emissions to prevent human suffering and ecological system collapse at an unimaginable scale.

Because we are unable to put the common good in front of short term profit.

Although we have been raising public awareness on climate change for years, this is not enough; the global temperature increases day by day.  Unless greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature are reduced within years, the world will face demanding consequences.

Because the fragility of life as we know it, will be shattered by Climate change.

——–

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. What we fail to remember is that we ourselves live in the very world we do not seem to care what happens to.

We do not realise is that with each day that passes without any action, the number of natural resources available also decreases significantly.

Take the Fashion Industry’s for example.

10,000 litres of water are used to produce just one kilogram of cotton.

WITH OVER 5 BILLIONS PAIRS OF JEANS PRODUCED A YEAR  – 60 PAIRS A SECOND USING – 1000 LITERS OF WATER PER PAIR = A MIND BLOWING WASTE OF WATER. 

The average jeans collection needs 36,250 litres of water. Hoodies and sweatshirts need 23,450 litres. T-shirts and shirts require 15,000 litres, while our undergarments combined use 45,950 litres of water. The average person drinks 691 litres of water per year.

This means that our jeans collection has used 52.5 years of drinking water for one person.

The next time you put on your best threads, think about the environmental cost of your outfit — you may just be dripping wet.

 

——

” We are now entering in the politics of eternity and the politics of inevitability.”

How is the Earth going to survive, if the only species it has the chance to lean on, turn their back to it?

Climate is the envelope within which all other environmental conditions and processes important to human well-being must function. ANY TIPPING POINT COULD opened the floodgates.

Inevitability politicians portray history as a journey from savagery to civilization and assume this trend will continue to their desired outcome.

We have witnessed in the past 30 years the degradation of liberal democracy, the spread of Islamic terror across borders, and the resilience of the illiberal Chinese political system.

Up to now very form of society has been based, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes…This is why Capitalism combined with democracy has provided the perfect balance for governance, and as a consequence took root in most countries.

The liberal arrogance shown at the end of the 20th century paved the way for the blowback of the 21st.

Liberals failed to confront the innate inequality of the post-war international order so liberal inevitability politics sealed its own fate. By failing to address the problems of the now rapidly collapsing global order, and those who are committed to democracy and strong institutions have spent this century trying to pick up the pieces.Vladimir Putin sits angrily at desk

Where eternity politics is best on display currently is in the Russian narrative on their invasion of Ukraine.

To the Russian eternity politician, the West is simply repeating its century-old tactic to assault Russian values and Russia’s greatness, as they did in the Crimean War, Great Northern War, or any other conflict they may pick.

But the eternity politician makes the same mistake as the inevitability politicians, they remove agency from individuals and movements with personalized beliefs, motivations, and tactics.

Herein lies the problem with both the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity:

They ignore the fact that developments in the political and social conscience of individuals and societies determine history, not the other way around.

As an entire nation of people is stripped of its agency the war in Ukraine is boiling down into a proxy war between two great powers. However, what cannot be done is to create a single coherent narrative about the historical past, the political present, and the prospective future, because of the simple fact that human beings do not have omniscience.

We cannot possibly isolate the individuals and communities that shape historical development. We cannot aggregate history, and we should not try. Revolutions did occur in China and in Russia (along with many other places), regimes committed atrocities with impunity, as everything they did was in service of the righteous and inevitable world revolution, just as the dogma told them.

The most dangerous facet of the politics of eternity and politics of inevitability is not the gross oversimplification of history they embody, but rather the societal implications they necessitate.

In the case of liberal capitalist democracies, it leads to a small group of wealthy individuals amassing such great control that it threatens the very institutions liberals revere as eternal.

For the Marxist, it leads to the justification of mass arrest, disenfranchisement , and slaughter in the name of an inevitable world revolution that will never arrive. And for the nationalist, it means a constant paranoid struggle for dominance against their neighbours, no matter the cost.

So with the arrival of the Internet /Social media / The smartphone, are we in an “intellectual coma.” left with a form of Capitalism that is no longer working.

In denying historicism, we shouldn’t deny that progress is possible, rather we should accept that progress is not pre-determined, and relies on all of us as active participants to truly make history.

Climate change with out a doubt will lead to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.

I shudder to think about this impromptu utterances.

———-

Earth on psychiatrist's couch.

 

It’s not that difficult to see that, says mass migration, it will provoke more conflict in the world.

Our tribalism will become more apparent over the next decade or so. Social Media reflects this with the pervasive mentality in western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa, south Asia, and Latin America, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, your name it and it is perversely turned into entertainment.

Everything will have to adapt to the changing times.

As culture change, so does the way we consume it – all digital and virtual viewing merging into a digital and physical worlds with  interactions changing into an endless cycle of content discovery, co-creation and sharing, which will deepen the emotional impact of content or by- pass it completely. This extends beyond our screens and newspapers and easily bleeds and blends into politics.

Righteous outrage immediately mounted online.

Xenophobia is an efficient tool to keep people divided. Colonial powers knew this early on. By separating people based on superficial characteristics, such as skin colour, and then assigning qualities to these features (such as being civilized vs. barbarian, or intelligent vs. backward), people started to believe that they were different from each other based on these highly unscientific classifications. To eradicate racism, we must become aware that our ancestors invented the notion of race for self-fulfilling reasons rooted in unscientific assumptions.

The question becomes how we classify people as strangers. This changes over time. Therefore, the classification of people as strangers is culturally constructed, with racism being one of its many forms.

Race and racism were non-existent during most of human history. To be human has always meant one thing -to be civilised. One was not born human. One had to become human.

Racism is a recently invented classification system that triggers xenophobia.

——-

After demonizing and abusing refugees, especially Muslim and African refugees, for years., now if one does not look like a refugee the chances of being excepted anywhere is almost zero.

You can see it already in Europe.

I suspect we’re going to see more nativism, more xenophobia, and more talk of building walls on our borders. Neighbour helping neighbour is a dying falsify.

Very concept of providing refuge is not and should not be based on factors such as physical proximity or skin colour.

The idea of granting asylum, of providing someone with a life free from political persecution, must never be founded on anything but helping innocent people who need protection. That’s where the core principle of asylum is located. If not we are showing ourselves as giving up on civilization and opting for barbarism instead.

On the one hand, there is something to be said about the idea of mankind as a group defined, beyond gender, race, or class, by a characteristic shared by all humans.

The history of the idea of human nature since the 5th century BC represents the history of Western violence and domination. It bears witness to some of the deepest conflicts and divisions the earth has seen.

The West identifies capitalism, liberalism and democracy as markers of civilisation and progress against Islamic fundamentalism, theocratic rule, and what it irresponsibly calls ‘the Muslim world’.

——–

These things exist with or without climate change, but the effects of climate change — migration in particular — will exacerbate them and help fuel reactionary movements around the world.

Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict — people come up with narratives to justify whatever they’re doing in the political world. But if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.

We can say with some confidence that climate change will render huge parts of the world less hospitable to human beings, and that as a consequence, humans will have to change how and where they live.

Are we prepared?   NO!

Do we have the institutions, the structures, the systems of cooperation we need to deal with this problem?  NO!

Have we existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions?   NO!

Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, change its destructive relationship with nature?  NO!

Modern liberal democratic societies are successful at improving the lives and freedoms of people who live in them. The problem is that these systems are based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, and we’re sort of trapped in this paradigm.

The lessons for those of who lived through the coronavirus pandemic today, it that Civilization is a very thin veneer. That your well-being as individuals really depends on the flourishing of the greater society.

Why?

Because under even slight amounts of pressure, that social contract starts to break down, and [when] people lose that veneer … that can be very dangerous. If a pandemic finds a society that is fractured, where there is distrust, where the public health system is neglected or in decay … that is going to be revealed, as it was with profiteers during the pandemic “willing to make money off human misery”

——–

Putting the pandemic into perspective as a terrible episode, but nonetheless just one episode, in a much longer story. This however  is not an option when it comes to Climate Change. Overwhelmed by the disaster, people will see what our system of Capitalism has become.

I think one of the things that is clearly exacerbating matters is when the issue is what we’d call politicized.

With technology and social media we humans – we become the stories that we tell ourselves. Our stories are never just stories. They are self-fulfilling prophecies.

That’s because we tend to use history, which is at its heart the study of surprises, as a guide to the future. This should however not stop us from aiming to better understand the future: the knowledge gained through planning is crucial to the selection of appropriate actions as future events unfold. We don’t know the answer, but we can at least ask useful questions and catalyze the conversation!

It’s important to remember that technology is often value-neutral: it’s what we do with it day in, day out that defines whether we are dealing with the “next big thing”.

Is there a way to think of the human being beyond the opposition between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘barbarian’?

Or is such an idea of mankind yet to be invented?

 

Watch and weep.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS; WHEN ARE WE GOING TO WAKE UP TO THE POWER OF PERSONALIZE TECHNOLOGY THAT IS CREATING AN OPEN AIR (INVISABLE) PRISON – WHERE THE FUTURE IS NO LONGER THE FUTURE?

12 Saturday Nov 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Biometric technology., Climate Change., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution., Facial Recognition., Fake News., GPS-Tracking., Human Exploration., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Privatization, Purpose of life., Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Society, Speed of technology., State of the world, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The cloud., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., VALUES, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Ten minute read)

Technology is here to stay and we are supposedly on an unstoppable path towards driverless vehicles, fully automated internet-connected “smart homes”, and godlike artificial intelligence, when if fact we are on a path to the oblivion of our private lives.

As society is moving away from social interactions we take these technologies for granted and lose sight of reality.

So when are we going to wake up to the the pitfalls of personalized technologies that are targeting our lives, and what it is all ready doing, to what is left of what are supposed to be democratic societies.

It is difficult to manage the awesome power that is embedded in today’s technology however should we just sit back and let it exploited us with unregulated profit seeking algorithms and unauthorised data collection.

Its never to late to start asking questions.

We are so used to hearing that technological progress is smooth and inevitable these days, that it just seems like common sense.

However this idea may not be unrelated to the fact that the people who promote personalized technology are mainly the people with a large financial interest in the adoption of new technology -Facebook-Twitter-Google-Apple- LinkedIn – Instagram – Snapchat – Pinterest – Reddit and the rest.

Today, a plethora of personalization software tools, including AI and machine learning algorithms that are destroying individualism.

Just as our past futures need not be dead to us, our present future, with our reliance on devices, are becoming habitual, and if  not already could be compulsory.

There’s is no app for that.

On a social level, the two dimensional world of the flat screen does not support the development of communication.

It’s just sad that people really don’t even have to use their brains anymore. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

It is estimated that as much as 93% of communication is non-verbal, leaving only 7% to the words themselves.

( Not much less alarming, and far closer, is the moment when “deep fakes” – computer-generated pictures and video – become indistinguishable from the real thing.) People who buy into this garbage is being taken for such a ride every month.

The vast majority of people were simply never given the choice to accept the trade-off between personalized technology for profit or technology for the common good. For example tracking due the Covid Pandemic against tracking for profits.

Not convinced?

It is now increasingly clear that many, if we had understood what was at risk, would have never agreed to tracking Apps.

For example, back in 2018, Amazon filed a patent that would allow its Echo device to detect when someone is ill from the change in their voice, nasal tones, and stuffed nose. When synced with Amazon’s website personalization engine, this is invaluable information to make personalized recommendations for cold medicine, recipes, etc.  It allow them to achieve 1:1 personalization like never before. 

 Mobile devices themselves are truly turning people into mindless zombies and simpletons with personalized technology turning into the enemy. Yet most people are too blind to see it.  89% of businesses are investing in personalization.

I.E.  Target the right person, at the right time, with the right offer. Analysing every aspect of the customer journey, companies can incorporate real-time dynamic pop-ups.

 Here’s a fraction of the stats showing the power and importance of personalization:

80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

The idea of greater convergence and connectivity between personal electronics is correct. One only has to look at the smartphone that trigger customised adverts or programme your phone based on where you are.  A company could tie itself to the Apple ecosystem, using an API to acquire data captured by each user’s Watch device into its own cloud-based system.

———————————-

As society pressures leaders for a more environmentally-friendly agenda the world of 2050 will be unimaginably different in many ways –  other than climate change.

Carbon management solutions will be an integral part of emission reductions.

For that, real-time measurement, abatement, and offset integration will help ensure companies not only talk the talk but also walk the walk and transparently meet their net-zero targets. Setting a target is just the first step; the second is to understand and quantify the real emission baseline into measurable units.  This can only be achieved with massive data collection. and analyzation

———————————–

The amount of information we share shared on social media networks is phenomenal.

A media company is now any company that helps pass information across the globe.  Before mobile technology, you had to search through a dictionary to understand the meaning of a word. Now you can look words up in a dictionary app or quickly search the Internet. Communication has even evolved beyond mobile devices and personal computers. We can now send messages through tablets, voice assistants, smartwatches, and more. That’s right. Your fridge needs a Facebook account. It can e-mail you when your shopping time comes around with what all groceries you need to buy.

So one can see so clearly that society is not going to stop moving away from using technology as our primary communication methods, but here is a word of advice do not rely heavily on technology to live your lives, learn skills.  Your life is yours to control.  Because without them, you will struggle to move on as a society.

It is said that by 2050, “computational machines will have surpassed the processing power of all the living human brains on Earth.

It is said that a AI – a machine that can do everything a human can do – will arrive, they think it’s about 50/50 whether it will be before 2050.

By this time if we dont tackle climate change the cloud will have absorbed the thinking of the many dead brain on Earth.

If we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds won’t be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen – we build a better world for nothing?

It is said that AGI will develop. If it does, every other prediction we could make is moot, and this story, and perhaps humanity as we know it, will be forgotten.

With the destruction of genuine human interaction you know, that technology will  happen anyway, so I predict that we will see a lasting cooperation between the human race and the computational machines of the future.

However we are mow just beginning to see the down side to all of this  technology.

Technology has changed how we entertain ourselves, meet each other, and consume all types of media.

We might be walking around with biometric healthcare data chips on your clothes, in a world in which mega scale injections of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere turn the heavens a milky-white, and a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky, in order to reflect more of the sun’s rays and pause the greenhouse effect. Artificial intelligence brains simply cannot cope with change and unpredictable events such as the climate change will create, whole cities that are abandoned and populations relocated, to avoid the worst effects we can’t prevent. We all need to work together to survive.

Society used to be able to make a long-term plan, now it is driven by data with its chaotic effect on our lives shows no sign of abating, it is at least predictably unpredictable.

We need a cultural change in values, to enable more deliberate decision-making.

Future technology is sure to transform our lives in unbelievable ways, but how among us wants to live a life based on private data collected – by the fridge – the smart TV – your clothes – your mobile devices -whether you looked left or right – how many shits you had a day- face recognition – what emotions you had at looking at an emoji- what your are eating, reading, saying- what twitters you like or don’t,- where you were, where you going – all analysed by an invisible algorithm that has no oversight, or conscious.

Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do with this information and data except hope that people come to realize it needs to be regulated.

The changes in the world over the next 30 years, wont be down to technology nor will they be online, thanks to climate change they will metalize mostly through low-cost smartphones receiving increasingly ubiquitous cellular connections as the world fights for resources that are necessary for life.

Remember when people used to sleep and dream at night?

Now all we do is zone out in front of a computer screen all night. It’s time to unplug from all this craziness and go back to nature.

Nature does not spy on itself , in order to evolve. PRISM -- It's the end of the Internet as we know it

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail,com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. TO SECURE A FUTURE ALL OF US MUST FIGHT THE RIGHT WAR RIGHT NOW.

19 Wednesday Oct 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Disconnection., Earth, Education., Energy, Environment, Evolution, Extermination., Human Collective Stupidity., Human Exploration., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Nuclear power., Our Common Values., Profiteering., Purpose of life., Real life experience's, Reality., Renewable Energy., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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If humanity wants to hope to contain global warming below 1.5°C – Governments must close the gap between net zero rhetoric and reality.

There can be no more hiding, and no more denying deluding yourself with a lot of greenwashing.

Political leaders, blinded by capital and powerful private interests, have long decided Earth is a small price to pay for the yachts, mansions, private jets and record profits of the one percent.

In Glasgow at the COP26 climate conference we watched as world leaders came up with new excuses, symbolic targets and new ways to silence the progressive voices who opposed them.

Global heating is supercharging extreme weather at an astonishing speed, this life-altering issue which we are NOW all witnessing daily – Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, is not getting the urgency and attention it demands.

Exploitation and development of new oil and gas fields must stop this year.

If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.

It’s Now or Never.

A huge part can be done with existing technologies.

These technologies can and will create billions of jobs to drive a sustainable world, but it remains a fight of David against Goliath, because of how we measure our well being.

How we evaluate what we are doing needs to change.

GDP is a totally numbers-driven index that does not produce the true picture.

There are growing calls to find GDP alternatives to measure countries’ wealth and welfare.

GDP can’t accurately represent the wealth of a country when it ignores how money is divvied up.

Considering GDP alone, a rich country where 10% of the population controls 75% of the wealth (looking at you, United States) may rank higher than a poorer country with a more even distribution of wealth.

One of GDP’s biggest flaws is that it counts tragedies as economic bonuses. If a hurricane or tornado hits and a country spends millions of dollars rebuilding, those expenses boost GDP, even though people lost their homes, jobs, and lives.

GDP ignores many crucial ways to measure the wealth of a country: clean air, health, life span, gender equality, opportunity, education, and more. This is understandable – GDP wasn’t developed to rank countries’ welfare, but simply to measure money as the world recovered from the Great Depression.

Of course GDP cant be replaced over night, but it can be complemented by a Thriving Places Index (TPI) and this index could easily be expanded to other parts of the world.

TPI’s primary focuses are sustainability, equality, and local conditions. Unlike GDP, this index measures equality by investigating how evenly distributed life expectancy and wellbeing are across a country.

Interestingly, the U.N. encourages nations to use it alongside their gross national income data. They say that it can help governments assess national policy by “asking how two countries with the same level of GNI per capita can end up with different human development outcomes.”

By factoring in the ecological footprint, inequality, wellbeing, and life expectancy of a country, it provides a simple but rounded glance at the wealth of a country.

This alone will not however solve the problems that are now on the horizon.

We must implement measurements by monetising environmental damage factors to help countries better understand exactly where they stand environmentally.

The Green GDP is a noble effort to factor in the cost of climate change in a way that people whose focus is money can appreciate. While subjective data can immediately turn some financially conservative parties off, putting a number on the impact of environmental negligence could potentially hit home.

Our Profit driven societies focused too much on an idea that futuristic technologies will save the world from climate chaos, rather than focusing on what can be done today. If cuts to carbon are left to the future and not made in this decade, it will be too late to stay within the 1.5C limit.

What are the crucial new technologies in development for combatting Climate Change?

Clean energy is perhaps the biggest issue to tackle.

Convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source using sunlight.

There are numerous projects trying to achieve this, but most of the hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas NG00, -3.93% in a process that emits carbon dioxide as well as the more-fleeting, but more-potent, methane.

Electrical transport and advanced batteries?

Particularly for use in electric vehicles; hydrogen; and carbon capture appears to be the miracle solution to reduce the heavy ecological impact of transport. This technology is not all green under the hood. Even before having driven a single kilometre, the electric vehicle has emissions almost twice as high as those of a thermal vehicle.

Big data has big implications in creating awareness about the consequences of climate change but it’s harvesting with the use of non transparent and unregulated algorithms.

Crowdsourcing for environmental solutions by gathering journalists, scientists, technologists, and people passionate about sustainability is creating a new wave of environmentalism.

Mobile apps such as Oroeco is an app that tracks your carbon footprint by placing a carbon value on everything you buy, eat, and do. However most Apps are profit seeking and like Big data they remain un -transparent and unregulated.

Interactive maps really drive home the point of climate change.

All of these technologies use microchips in order to operate and these are made from rare finite resources.

For the first time, a mining company is preparing to mine the seabed to collect rocks rich in metals for the batteries of electric cars. A practice that promises to destroy ecosystems that are still unexplored and that could constitute a ticking “climate bomb”. Poisoning of fresh water reserves, artificialization and loss of biodiversity, toxicity for humans, radioactive pollution, occupation of agricultural land… The extraction and transformation of raw materials are much more polluting than for the fossil car.

In the end here is where we are.

Some of the highlights included a prediction of violent conflicts and civil wars, extreme poverty and the loss of several points of gross domestic product in some developing nations, mass extinctions, and an intense, regular pattern of natural disasters.

The average decline of the species analysed was 68% in 2020, and 60% in 2018, revealing an accelerating collapse of biodiversity around the world. “We can tell ourselves that 1% is not much, but losing 1% in two years is absolutely colossal. The mere fact that this index is not improving is a disaster in itself

Taking into account a global population rise of about 2 billion people, as well as the need to supply electricity to 785 million people who do not have access to it, and clean cooking to the 2.6 billion people who currently lack it there is no more time for multinationals to obtain justice.

Governments must fine them.

Instead we see governments like the UK licensing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea and has also mooted a new coalmine for coking coal alongside introducing fracking.

Instead we see Energy being use a a weapon of war.

We all know what is necessary for life however in the age of instant gratification, we have little appreciation of where it all come from and we remain unwilling to pay for a future that only exists on the planet we all inhabit.

A large-scale nuclear war would, by all scientific projections, be a planetary disaster of the highest order.

A large -scale climate event would be far worse. Here to day gone to morrow against watch our demise over a few generations.

So every one of us must engage now. ( See previous posts as how this can be achieved)

The simplest thing you can do is educate others.

Tell people there are other ways to measure a country’s wealth.

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

Contact: bobdillo33@bobdillon33

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. HAVE WE ALL GONE BONKERS WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Environment, Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Natural World Disasters, Reality., State of the world, Telling the truth., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Four minute listen.

( Five minute read)

The message is clear Climate Change is here and is already having a significant impact.

It is inconceivable that we still have people refusing to accept the facts that surround them,  even if they saw 100 more years of it plain and apparent they and unfortunately many of our present world leaders are blind to what is happing and what is to come.

How much more evidence do they and us need ?

MAKE YOUR MINDS UP!

The Evidence for Rapid Climate Change Is Compelling:

I’ve not noticed any changes in the weather outside of the norm or I don’t give a Fuck what is happing. I’d rather live on another planet, than on one where every aspect of your life is subject to rigorous scientific control is not possible.

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.Rivers and reservoirs have shrunk dramatically in the past 20 years

Right now there’s nothing like enough understanding.

Observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.

Human activity is the principal cause. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system.

However if there was meeting tomorrow of world leaders they would as before, argue that its not their responsibility, making promises that cannot be kept.

To have any chance of drilling into them the urgency of tackling climate change on a global scale perhaps it would be best to invite them all together in Gautama bay, take their mobile phone, starve them for a week and get them to write their last wills and testaments.

This might fired the starting gun on what will become a global race to eliminate fossil fuels.

At this point you might be asking why is it so difficult for the world to take action.

The effort to control climate change impacts virtually every element of a country’s economy “so countries have traditionally been nervous about what they’re going to be asked to do.”

The idea that every five years countries would be asked to come up with more ambitious targets, ramping up their efforts is therefore bull shit.

“We are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake,” says Xi.

Hybrid wind-solar plant at Zaozhuang, China“All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles.”

“We should embrace the vision of a community with a shared future in which everyone is bound together,” he continues.  He is right!  Heart-stirring stuff, eh?

A cynic might think his reassuring words were partly a ploy to reingratiate China with the climate-conscious Europeans, and isolate a climate-sceptic US President MR DUMP. 

But there is a much more important broader context for his announcement:

Let’s be clear what it means:

China, the most polluting nation on earth – responsible for around 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions – is saying it is going cut that back to virtually zero within 40 years. The commitment is of significant because China has never promised anything near as bold as this on climate before. President Xi’s 2060 pledge was notably unconditional – China will move ahead whether or not other countries chose to follow.

Why?

Because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing – the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

It looks like Xi has judged that the economics of clean energy mean that decarbonising is now the most sensible choice for the Chinese economy as well as for the world’s climate.

So can we stop worrying about climate change?

Sadly we cannot.

It is going to take eye-popping investment in wind, solar and nuclear power.

Even as the economics tilts in favour of renewables the task of decarbonisation is still enormous. However once half the world is on-board with the project of decarbonisation it is hard to see how the rest could hold out.

Evidence of environmental damage and climate change everywhere. It’s the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Tackling it means changing how we do virtually everything.

We are right to be anxious and afraid at the prospect.  Remember that by  2050 urban centres will hold 75% of the world population and 40% of them have no resilience plans in place, and have no plans to develop one in the hear future.  

Currently accounting for 70% of the worlds population and 70% of global GDP and 70% of CO2 emissions.

Don’t get me started on the food crisis.

You’ll be even more apprehensive if I was venture down that online rabbit hole.

Consider this conundrum:

When you talk to climate scientists you quickly discover they are far more worried about the dangers of global warming than most of us. Some tell you privately that they have had counselling to cope with the psychological effects of knowing the world is facing an impending disaster and not enough is being done.

Yes at this moment in history were in a mess.  Wars, Natural disasters, Energy, Rampant Inequality etc. On the right, I am alright Jack on the left just of a scream that will before defang in the next few years.

Leadership is action not position.

As Henry Miller said  ” No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance. “

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

Contact: bobdillon33gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT IN TODAYS WORLD IS THE VALUE OF A HUMAN LIFE?

23 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Algorithms.,  Attention economy, Capitalism, Civilization., Dehumanization., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human Exploration., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Money in Politics., Our Common Values., Profiteering., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., VALUES, What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World, World Economy.

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( Five minute read)

A profoundly ethical issue.

“What makes a life worth living?” “What is a life worth? ” are both questions that nobody can answer and should perhaps remain unanswered.

These questions once came pre-answered—by culture, by religion, by tradition—but these days, because of capitalism we each have to ask and answer for ourselves, with an answer not in poetic words or any words but an answer in pounds and pence or dollars and cents.

The “real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life?”

The task of valuing life has many competing truths with no simple answer.

“Price tags are being continuously placed on our lives. If we care about equity, we need to ensure that the science behind these estimates is not oversold and that fairness is always a consideration when cost-benefit analysis is performed.”

Howard Steven Friedman

Valuing some lives more than others seems logical and natural to many of us.

We value human life in a way that assumes we possess a sacred something.

Aristotle concluded that we should value human life, due to our inherent capacity for reason.

So what reasons can we give for calling human life valuable?

The question’s complexity resides in the fact that how we arrive at a price tag on human life says a great deal about our priorities. A lot of the value we attribute to human life comes from religion. However, when you remove religion, what philosophical arguments are left?

This is were it gets tricky.

The philosopher’s job is not to accept the assumed inheritance of our forebears.

Do we determine the value of a human life based on the value we place on our lives in private decisions, and do we accept policy choices that puts future generations at risk.

Do we continue to value human life, especially above and beyond animals? If you value rationality, why is that? And does rationality, alone, bestow value on a human life?

How should we proceed?

We teach each generation that human life is valuable beyond all else.

.Is this good enough today?

Government officials are supposed to put numbers on the pros and cons of these questions but how to assess the value of a human life in financial terms is riddled with conundrum based on our behaviour which has no common denominators to adjust our assessment of a life’s value based on its quality or the probability of death?

How much should we pay today to prevent an event that would result in the loss of ten billion human lives in 50 years?    Climate Change.

So, how much is a life worth?

It seems so inhumane to put a monetary value our modern sentiments tell us that costs should not dictate life-and-death decisions. But those modern sentiments do not fit our modern experience.

We know that not all lives are valued by society equally.

Over the past four centuries, generations of black people have asked the question: What is a black life worth?

The summation of historical facts and statistical data clearly shows that the prices of black bodies in America are worth more imprisoned, enslaved, and dead than educated.

Here in Europe depending on all sorts of assumptions arisen by the Covid pandemic and now the war in the Ukraine there are a lots of conversations (right now) that seem to pit economics against life and health.

The result is the cost of living is mounting day on day while its value is descending but don’t worry your value is being look after by  the invisible hand of the market  run algorithms is giving your value the finger.

Unfortunately GDP distribution issue are now surfacing, like where is the GDP growth actually coming from?  Who’s losing income?  Does it increase equity in society?

How much a person is willing to accept to risk their own life – Climate change.

In the end the answer is my life is worth everything to me.

How much money do you get for losing a limb? It depends on where you live.

How much body parts worth workers compensation 4

Foot note . What’s wrong with killing people?

Abortion kills babies, and its advocates are loudly telling us the value they place on human life.

The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means.

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

Contact:  bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS THE WORLD IN THE STATE IT IS?

24 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Biotechnology., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, Human Collective Stupidity., Imagination., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Wars, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World View.

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( Twenty minute read) 

Following on from the posts under the heading of what shaped the world lets look at the state of the world as it is to day.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, with ever more political, social, cultural, financial and commercial relations transgressing nation state borders but the convergence of issues facing the earth are now so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.

The recent pandemic served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness.

When we start thinking about constructing a model of the world it’s better to say that while you are living in the world, it’s fairly difficult to judge it objectively or even understand all of its moving parts.

In addressing that issue I will note that many of today’s issues have legacies 100 years old and will not be addressed in this post.

If anything has brought us together over the last year and a half, it is our feeling of vulnerability about the present and uncertainty about the future.

Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures and this action must encompass an ethic of care, reciprocity, and solidarity.

But to translating and contextualizing these actions in a collective effort it requires a synopsis of the current state of the world.

It is only when the mess it is presented as a whole not news flashes that we have any concept of the state of the planet. 

The whole structure of today’s world, much of it inherited from an earlier era, is up for serious discussion.

Thinking of the present state of the world its remarkable what can be achieved when leaders are prepared to lead.

To achieve the maximum benefits from the extraordinary possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) and Robots will usher in tomorrow. 

                            _______________________________

There are many factors behind what I call ‘the disillusioned society’ but greed and fear, two of the ancient enemies of human kind are the big drivers of Earth’s ecological and human systems which are now in severe crisis.

Climate change is a trend that affects all trends- economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted. And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year.

Our throwaway society, which in part drives markets and GDP, is continuing to damage the environment. 

A key decision to changing our thinking and attitudes to polluting activities and endless growth is to dump Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the universal measure of progress. It is a totally inadequate measure of societal progress.Who is more powerful – states or corporations?

That said here is an overview of the current state of the world. 

Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh—the water on which the world’s terrestrial life depends. Around 70% of this fresh water is frozen in ice or permafrost. An estimated 4 billion people, nearly two-thirds of the world population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.

Agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally, a ratio that’s only going to increase – to an estimated 85% – as the population grows and agricultural production rises to meet it (by an estimated 50% before 2050).

About 43% of over 7,000 of the world’s languages are endangered. Just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s people, inhabiting upwards of 85% of the land surface of the globe.

In 2015, an estimated 2.1 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion lacked access to safely managed sanitation services. Over 80% of all wastewater returns to the environment without being treated.

Population, pollution, greenhouse gases and deforestation are creating never before seen changes in Earth’s living systems—including a cultural and species extinction rate that is the highest in the planet’s history.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, mainly as the result of human use of fossil fuels, have been determined to be the predominant cause of earth’s changing climate.

Sea levels are already rising by 2mm a year—faster than during the past 5,000 years.

Evidence is growing that the thermohaline circulation, driven by temperature and salinity, could be slowed or stopped by cold fresh water inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.

Our oceans are full of plastics. Sea ice and glaciers are melting throughout the globe. More than 93% of the enhanced atmospheric heating since the 1970s has been absorbed by the ocean.  

Over 90% of plastics produced are derived from virgin fossil feedstocks—about 6% of global oil consumption. This is equivalent to the total oil consumption of the global aviation sector.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

An estimated 75% of the Earth’s land surface has been degraded through human activities, negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction, and costing more than 10% of the annual global gross product in loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The failure to reduce world hunger is closely associated with the increase in conflict and violence in several parts of the world. In addition, gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition are being eroded by climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes. Approximately one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption—nearly 1.3 billion tonnes—gets lost or wasted every year.

In 2020, nearly 144 million children under 5 suffer from stunting (under height), 47.0 million children under 5 were wasted (underweight) , and of those, 14.3 million were considered severely wasted.

Industrialized civilization is still dependent upon cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy. There is a limited amount of fossil fuel. It is not “renewable” and there is no known way to make more.

The current humanitarian crisis in Ukraine may be in the spotlight right now however there are currently 27 ongoing conflicts.

A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. 84 million people were forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. This year, it is estimated that at least 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance.

The cost of war is almost unfathomable.

Just imagine what the world could do with that money if conflicts were to end worldwide. 

Conflict drives 80% of humanitarian needs and in 2016, the cost of conflict globally stood at an astonishing $14 trillion. That’s enough to end world hunger 42 times over.

Nearly 11 years after it started, the Syrian refugee crisis remains the largest displacement crisis worldwide (13.2 million, including 6.6 million refugees and more than 6 million internally displaced people). At least 2 million people are living in tented camps with limited access to basic services.

Lasting more than 60 years, the conflict in Myanmar (previously called Burma) remains the longest ongoing civil war in the world.

The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after 20 years of US-led conflict more than half of the country’s estimated 40 million population face “extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine.

Wars are constantly in the news. 

While we tend to hear more about refugees there are actually twice as many internally displaced persons around the world. In 2013, for instance, there were 16.7 million refugees and 33.3 million internally displaced persons. it’s easy to dismiss them and forget that we’re talking about individual people whose lives have been completely disrupted.

The World Bank and the IMF can pursue their loans in perpetuity, regardless of the loans having been given to dictators or incompetent borrowers, and regardless of whether the money actually benefited the poor.

The current depletion of biological diversity and, in particular, the prospect of severe depletion, if not virtual elimination of tropical forests, wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs that have been the “engines of biodiversity” for hundreds of millions of years, may have profound effects on the evolutionary processes that have previously fostered re-diversification.

Before 1961, the entire Earth satellite population was just over 50 objects. Since 1957, about 9,600 satellites have been launched and about 5500 are still in space—and 2300 of these are still functioning. The total mass of all space objects in Earth’s is more than 8800 tonnes. Earth’s orbit is now cluttered and dangerous with: ~34,000 objects bigger than 10 cm; ~ 900,000 objects from 1cm to 10 cm; and 128,000,000 objects from greater than 1 mm — 1 cm.

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, four acres of rainforests in Brazil (i.e. about three football fields) will be replaced with farmland, largely to grow cattle and animal feed.

The commercial exploitation, militarization and weaponization of space around the earth is ongoing.

Space Tourism is just getting started but the impact of bioengineering is what is going to have profound impacts on society in the near future.

The development of bioengineering issues in tandem with overlapping

technological areas such as artificial intelligence are what is going to shape

the world for the next generations, if climate change does bot wipe us of the

globe.

(Biotechnological discoveries are increasingly facilitated by automated and roboticides, private ‘cloud labs)

These issues will shape the future of bioengineering and must shape modern discussions about its political, societal and economic impact.

Technology is in the infancy of creating a world state. 

                                   ————————————-

The Bioengineering Technologies to Look Out for in the Next Decade – The Wire Science

Bioengineering is a discipline that applies engineering design and principles

to biological systems. Some examples of this fusion are artificial organs or

limbs, the genetic synthesis of new organisms, gene editing, the

computerized simulation of surgery, medical imaging technology and

tissue/organ regeneration.

Bioengineering brings with it both huge potential for good, and risks to

regulate. Like any other technology, bioengineering has damaging potential,

whether it be through misuse, weaponization or accidents. This risk can

create significant threats with large potential consequences to public health,

privacy or to environmental safety.

We need critical thinking to understand what they are, what their impact is and how they are related, with ethical and regulatory frameworks, climate change, inequalities, technological convergence and the misuse of technology, in order to drive informed policy decisions.

Below is by no means a comprehensive list. 

<5Years 5–10 Years >10 Years
Artificial photosynthesis and carbon capture for producing biofuels Regenerative medicine: 3D printing body parts and tissue engineering New makers disrupt pharmaceutical makers
Enhanced photosynthesis for agricultural productivity Microbiome-based therapies Platform technologies to address emerging disease pandemics
New approaches to synthetic gene drives Producing vaccines and human therapeutics in plants Challenges to Taxonomy-Based description and management of biological risk
Human genome editing Manufacturing illegal drugs using engineered organisms Shifting ownership models in biotechnology
Accelerating defense agency research in biological engineering Reassigning codons as genetic firewalls Securing the critical infrastructure needed to deliver the bioeconomic
  Rise of automated tools for biological design, test and optimisation  
Biology as information science: impacts on global governance
Intersection of information security and bio-automation
Effects of the Nagoya Protocol on biological engineering
Corporate espionage and bio crime

Additions.  

  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Animals
  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Plants
  • Using Bioengineering to Create Eco-friendly Materials
  • Using Bioengineering for Greenhouse Gas Sequestration and Removal DNA technology, makes insulin much more accessible to people with diabetes by producing human insulin using bacteria instead of animals.
  • Veggie burgers using bioengineered yeast.
  • Altered yeast to produce collagen, the animal protein that is the main component of leather. 
  • To produce anti-malarial compounds. (Every year, 200 million people are affected by malaria.)
  • Bioengineered yeast to make beer and palm oil.
  • Genetically engineered bacteria that reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
  • Biodegradable product that eliminates both the unsustainable practices
  • Manufacturing biosynthetic indigo could reduce the use of petroleum and the release of toxic chemicals by a factor of five
  • Genetically engineer microbes to actually pull greenhouse gases – such as CO2 and methane – from the air. 
  • Use bacterial fermentation to turn that methane into a biodegradable polymer called poly hydroxy alkanoate (PHA).
  • To  provide nutritious and non-toxic feedstock for farmed fish that doesn’t require overfishing AND removes CO2 from the atmosphere. 

                          ———————————————-

What happens if a world state is reached?

It is natural at this point to ask whether a world state would be desirable— But quite clearly many areas of social life still remain outside state control.

First, all states are sovereign, which means that both domestically and internationally they recognise no jurisdiction superior to their own.

Secondly, all states are equal and should therefore be accorded equality of treatment before the law. 

A world state would not be a utopia in which there was nothing left to struggle over.

But once a world state has emerged those struggles will be domesticated by enforceable law, and so for purposes of state formation will be no longer important. Rather than a complete end of history, therefore, it might be better to say that a world state would be the end of just one kind of history. Even if one telos is over, another would be just beginning.

At the micro-level world state formation is driven by the struggle of individuals and groups for recognition of their subjectivity.

At the macro-level this struggle is channelled toward a world state by the logic of anarchy, which generates a tendency for military technology and war to become increasingly destructive.

The process moves through five stages, each responding to the instabilities of the one before — a system of states, a society of states, world society, collective security, and the world state. Human agency matters all along the way, but is increasingly constrained and enabled by the requirements of universal recognition.

The struggle for recognition is about the constitution of individual and
group identities and thus ultimately about ideas,

Hobbes (1968) justified the state on the grounds that only through
obedience to a common power could individuals escape a ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ life in the state of nature. A common power is necessary because of the physical equality and vulnerability of human beings — since even the weak can kill the strong, it is in everyone’s interest to accept the security provided by a state.

With the transfer of state sovereignty to the global level individual recognition will no longer be mediated by state boundaries, even though as recognized subjects themselves states would retain some individuality (particularism within universalism).

The question remains, however, whether a world state would be a stable
end-state, or be itself subject to instabilities that ultimately undo it.

Since even a world state would remain an at least partially open system, such
shocks could cause it to fall apart.

Equilibria are always vulnerable to exogenous shocks.

Going forward You have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once: the world is getting better and it’s not good enough”. (Dr. Hans Rosling.)

But we must keep trying. The past is not coming back. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT HOW THE MICROCHIP IS SHAPING THE WORLD.

15 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Nanotechnology, Reality., Speed of technology., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The Microchip., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Seven-minute read)

How Has The Microchip Changed The World?

The impacts of the microchip have been enormous.

They are either the savior of the world or the annihilator. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say the world would not be able to continue without the Chip that drives technology. 

They are around us everywhere.  Our phones, of course, our laptops, our iPads – all of those things we’re now surrounded by this technology.

More than likely.

THEY WILL END UP BEING IMPLANTED IN OUR BODIES IF WE ARE TO STAY OR EVER LEAVE THIS PLANET.

THEY ARE NOT ONLY SHAPING THE PLANET BUT OUR EXPLORATION OF THE UNIVERSE (WITH THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE RECENTLY SENDING THE DEEPEST PENETRATION PICTURE OF SPACE.) 

                      ————————   

Despite being a piece of real estate no larger than a fingernail, the modern microchip is home to billions of transistors, miles of metallic interconnects, and layers of structures stacked on top of each other like skyscrapers.

Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.

One or more microchips run every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.

Every time we make a Zoom call, between our personal devices, routers, data centers, satellites, and peripheral devices, at least a quintillion microchips were called to work.

Unfortunately, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste.

The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon.

The arduous task of turning these disc-shaped, purple-colored wafers into microchips and memory devices falls on the fabs,(a fab or fabs is a term commonly used to describe a fabrication plant responsible for making semiconductor devices) which are high-tech facilities scattered across the world, with the majority in Southeast Asia.

A “fab” that processes 50,000 wafers—the silicon platform on which chips are built—per month consumes over 1 TWh of electricity a year.

That’s as much power as is required by a city of 100,000 residents.

Moreover, a rough estimate pegs the water consumption of a fab at over 19 million liters per day. That’s the amount of water consumed by a city of 60,000—for a whole year! In addition, these facilities utilize tons of chemicals, most of them expensive and toxic, and generate tons of waste, which include greenhouse gases like SF6, CF4, NF3, and C4F8.

There are over 1,000 semiconductor fabs operating globally today.

They make $450 billion worth of microchips a year and generate 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

This complex semiconductor fabrication process is nestled at the heart of an elaborate web of international assembly lines. The company that makes the wafers and the fabs that create the microchips can be located in different parts of the globe. The assembly of the actual device likely takes place in a different company at a third location, and the end user could be anywhere in the world.

This means that the company whose name is on the final product might have very little control over the conditions and practices of the fabs.

Further, different parts of the semiconductor lifecycle are regulated by different environmental legislation, making not just the implementation of sustainability efforts, but also the tracking of their environmental footprints, complicated.

The elements of lithography, sand and silicon crystals, sit atop a silicon wafer

Given the size of the microchip, these numbers seem extraordinary.

However, this could very well be the price that we pay for the complexity of a chip, and the comfort it brings into our lives.

                       ———————————–

Advances in the technology sector have seen revolutionary gadgets surfacing because of this little mysterious device.

Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such in personal, social, political, and economic spheres.

Microchips are clearly being utilized for several other purposes.

In military applications, the microchips were used to build the Minuteman II missile in the 1960s. To add to that, a Z-40 semi-automatic pistol with a microchip embedded in its grip was released to avoid the use of the pistol by any unauthorized user.

In Industrial applications, scientists have employed the use of a microchip-based technology to detect the type and the progression of cancer in patients. Because of this technology, patients can now be informed of their prognosis within a few hours.

Chip improvements have led to increased computing power and incredible memory function.

Microchips have enabled applications like on-device artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual augmented reality to come to life.

Gains in data transfer such as 5G connectivity have been enhanced by the microchip technology.

Microchip technology has made huge advances in technology.

Objects and devices such as communication devices, vehicles, personal entertainment devices, GPS tracking devices, weapons, identification cards, micro-ovens, supercomputers, and many other applications use microchipMicrochips’ distinctive mode of collecting data and transmitting data to its exact destination has made information easier to handle.

The epic and revolutionary manufacturing techniques of microchips have created a storm of microchip-embedded devices that affect our daily lives, both positively and inevitably negatively  

Regardless of the industry, modern electronics use thousands, millions, or even billions of semiconductors on a single chip.

As a result, today as consumers demand more electronics, one of the most important components of any circuitry has become something of a scarcity. is that there is a massive shortage.

This has happened over the past year, largely due to a significant shortage of the most basic building block of technology:

Semiconductors.

                     ——————————

It is likely that microchip manufacturing will continue to be a major consumer of electricity, water, and chemicals.

So in shaping our world we could ensure that the energy is supplied by renewables, that the water is recycled, and the chemicals are processed without damage to the environment. In other words, we must be relentless in our efforts to make microchips more sustainable. And we should never forget that the comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.

Microchips act as a key unit for programming the conversion of the car industry to electric cars, which is increasingly dependent on electronics, the lithography industry, the smartphone industry, and the internet to name just a few of the trillion applications over the past several decades.

The microchip industry filled by the need for big science is growing exponentially year on year. 

The problem is embedding them in objects is one thing, deciding in which devices to embed them and what systems to build around them is another matter altogether.

Laws governing their application are literally in human hands for now but not much longer.  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IF YOU WERE ASKED TO NAME WHAT HAS SHAPED THE WORLD YOU LIVE ON WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

14 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Colonialism., What is shaping our world.

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