( A Ten Minute Read)

What will Sparks’ it?

Will artificial intelligence bring us utopia or destruction?

Some of hypotheses are undeniably hysterical, for sure, but the consequences will be more terrifying, and indefensible, than we have ever seen before.

It’s always tempting to predict death and destruction, because you’ll be at least a little bit right and no one will fault you if you’re wrong.

So will it be a clash of civilizations, severe climate change resulting in climate mitigation; resource depletion, a populist uprising. The development of robotic soldiers with the ability to wage war without putting troops on the front line. Computer glitches causing corporations wars; or diplomatic misunderstandings, all of which can lead to war. Terrorism, inequality, and internal political or civil strife can also create the pressure for war.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were only a few hundred Islamist fighters in the Hindu Kush mountains. Fast forward through 16 years of the war on terror costing some $4,000bn (£3,300bn) and leaving 1.3 million dead, and the number of terrorists is currently about 100,000. Even on its own terms, the war on terror has been an abysmal failure. How on earth did this happen?

If civilization conflicts are not the least of our worries there are indeed a vast verity of triggers.

The Trump transition is likely to exacerbate US-China tensions. Trump has threatened a trade war with China. Kim Jong Un decides to attack his neighbors in the South Pacific and Trump decides to fire back.

The Ukrainian crisis was preceded by two decades of NATO expansionism up to the borders of Russia and now it is widely recognized that Russia is waging a campaign of covert political manipulation across the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

The original post-war European Union project was based around peace, social justice and harmony. The unraveling of this project might be Brexit accompanied by rising nationalism, which is likely to exacerbate the dangers of war on a continent with a fraught history of bloody conflict.

The Middle East cauldron centered around Isis and the Syrian war.

The Syrian war has seen allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – arming and funding radical Jihadist groups, such as the al-Nusra front. The terrorist attacks in Europe have demonstrated the difficulty in containing the spill-over. The Syrian war has seen the return of great-power politics with the involvement of Russia. This contamination has the potential for a wider conflict in which western countries could be drawn in.

India and Pakistan could go to war

Take your pick.

Mine is in keeping with the default operational mode of capitalism.

One might even argue that capitalism often resolves systemic economic crises through war. After all, a war economy with militarization, mobilization, full employment and jingoism can be viewed as the ultimate solution to economic woes and social unrest.

We are now at the beginning of Technology that is overseeing an extraordinary re-distribution of wealth that is tilting society off its axis.

The richest 1 percent have almost 40 percent of our worlds wealth, while the bottom 90 percent have 73 percent of the debt.

This is largely the result of technology.

And just wait until the work force is truly affected by the rise of robots and automation.

You don’t have to look too far back into history to see that when the marginalized have had it with the system, it doesn’t take a lot to set flame to tinder.

The emerging technologies like industrial robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are advancing at a rapid pace, but there has been little attention to their impact on employment and public policy. So technology is likely to be at the center of the next major geopolitical battle.

The anti-immigration, anti-one percent, anti-capitalism and anti-everything else we’re seeing right now isn’t just going to go away in a society where people feel their voices are not being heard.

The next major war, wouldn’t be fought with bombs, men, or even robots. It wouldn’t be waged on a battlefield or in the sky.

Instead, it will be a silent war.

During the past couple of decades, most of the world’s private and public infrastructure had become predominantly digital.

The next major war will decimate that infrastructure.

Water-treatment facilities, oil pipelines, dams, electrical grids, telecommunications platforms, food shipments, public and private transportation, traffic lights, prisons, every single drip of media—and a long, long list of other things we need for survival but take for granted—will all be vulnerable.

Our smartphones and computers will be black rectangles. The Internet: poof! Water infrastructure will stop working, power plants will go offline. Crops, which are now operated by digital irrigation systems, will die.

And that will all be in the first few hours.

Imagine what will happen in the coming days, weeks, and months. We will essentially be sent back centuries. Computer hackers—possibly from an adversarial country—taking down power plants, water systems, the Internet, or private infrastructure. Real cyber warfare could destroy actual machines.

The first technology revolution caused World War I. The second technology revolution caused World War II. This is the third technology revolution.

So could it in fact trigger a Third World War.

As soon as 2025, large parts of the world will experience perennial water shortages, by 2050, the world’s populations will be a third to a half again as large as today. Put rising population and rising incomes together and, experts tell us, by 2050 global food needs will double, with water requirements going up accordingly.

[It takes 2,400 liters to produce a hamburger, common in many middle-income diets, it takes about 40 liters of water to produce a slice of bread, a staple of low-income diets.] On a humanitarian level, the possibilities are devastating.

Climate change requiring a shift in the way we think about the global distribution of resources.

Some will say that technology will help to get us out of the sustainability jam, but it will be nothing more than a quick fix to the vast graveyards of abject inequality created by algorithms for profit.

This is why we must now create a new World Organisation to vet all technology. (See previous posts)

World leaders have a duty to educate people to prevent the pain caused by a rapid rise in automation and artificial intelligence.

Instead we see the transition of Western democracy to oligarchy and the descent into soft fascism is under way. Citizens will need to participate actively, rather than as passive consumers, to demand an end to this cycle of violence from governments and to defend the assault on democratic processes which are already having its foundations rocked by Social Media filtered platforms that have profit as their mantra.

In today’s ultra-globalized and ultra-specialized economy? The level of economic adaptation — even for large countries like Russia and the United States with lots of land and natural resources — required to adapt to a world war would be crushing, and huge numbers of business and livelihoods would be wiped out. War could break out in a number of places, drawing in combatants in unpredictable ways. Combatants very rarely start a global war on purpose; the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations need to be vigilant about the threat of crisis escalation.

The spread of internet technology and social media has brought the world much closer together. Today, people from enemy countries can come together in cyberspace and find out that the “enemy” is not so different.

YouTube and Facebook makes it much more difficult for governments to carry out large-scale military aggression’s, but on the other hand all it took during World War I was one shot. Maybe all it will take for World War III is one line of code.

We shouldn’t scoff at the warnings that something like this could happen one day.

Statesmanship must go beyond diplomacy, in particular to championing new agricultural technologies. Without growing more food with less water (land, too) the water-war surprises will come, perhaps not in one year, perhaps not in four, but soon, and long into the future. Even the big threats—nuclear warfare or an ecological catastrophe, perhaps following from climate change—aren’t existential in the sense that they would wipe us out entirely. And the current bugaboo, in which our electronic progeny exceed us and decide they can live without us, can be avoided by unplugging them.

The new technologies may be self-accelerating, but they are not self-determining. I would say that the odds are good for our survival, providing that AI does not acquire the ability not just to think like us but to self-replicate.

The revolutionary potential of future technologies is to change Homo sapiens itself, including our bodies and our minds, and not merely our vehicles and weapons. The most amazing thing about the future won’t be the spaceships, but the beings flying them. 

The truth is that from the standpoint of morality, like many other standpoints, we are hardly adapted to the world in which we live.

Technology will be the result of ever renegotiated agreement with society. Because they are so potent, their paths may undergo wild oscillations, but I think the trend will be toward the dynamic middle: much slower than the optimists expect, much faster than the pessimists think humanity can bear.

However the cold war may be over, but the Doomsday Machine that came out of the confrontation with the Soviets is still with us—and on a hair-trigger.

As global conflicts grow increasingly messy, narratives spun by propagandists and troll factories will wreak havoc via social media, state news organs and even the global free press.

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

( 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.