Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence.

THE BEADY EYE ASK: As a culture and a polity, when it comes to climate change, have we arrived at a point where we are now expected – even trained – to abandon hope and submit to the inevitable?

20 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Twenty-minute read)

TWO PER CENT MEANS NOTHING TO THE VAST MAJORITY HUMANITY NOW LIVING.

When it comes to carbon emissions, the resulting overheating of the atmosphere and our oceans it means nought other than training citizens to accept the prospect of inexorable loss, unstoppable chaos, certain doom.

It would also seem to be the case when governments are still spending billions on emergency-level funding and infrastructure to meet what they view as a crisis of national security.

But in the case of climate change, there’s no equivalent sense of immediacy, no sense of priority commensurate with the dangers it poses to our future ability to feed ourselves, defend our largely coastal settlements, insure our homes, maintain national security and keep our children safe from harm.

The four great capacities of humanity to solve a crisis Рingenuity, discipline, courage and sacrifice Рthese seem to be reserved for more important enterprises. The future, by all accounts, can wait.R̩sultat de recherche d'images pour "picture of climate change protest"

To most of our current governments, climate change is but a dry-lightning storm in a district unknown.

It’s a licence for nihilism, a ticket to hell in a handbasket.

And the cohort responsible for this mixture of denial and fatalism is far removed from the daily experience of the ordinary citizen, especially the youngest and poorest of us. They have become a threat to our shared future and we must hold them to account, immediately and without reservation.

We must replace the Donald Trumps of the world.  We can no longer wait patiently for our leaders to catch up. We cannot allow ourselves to be trained to accept hopelessness.

It is time to remove those who refuse to act in our common interest, time to elect people with courage, ingenuity and discipline.

Because there’s something bigger at stake here than culture wars and the mediocrity of so-called common-sense. It’s the soil under our feet, the water we drink, the air we breathe.

In less than a few years from now, unfocused rage may become the signal human disposition of our time.

Because the futures of the young are being traded away before their eyes. They see what many of their elders and betters refuse to acknowledge. That they’re being robbed.

Here’s the thing.

But the future is already with us.

It’s now glaring obvious what need to do and what we should not be doing.

However, it’s also glaringly obvious after the Paris climate change agreement that the world as a whole will not engage as one soon or in the near future.

That means calling bullshit on what’s been happening in our name for the past 15 years.

Profit-seeking algorithms and technology have no ethical connection to the health of the globe and current Ideology, prestige, assets and territory are now tacitly understood to be worth more than all life, human or otherwise.

We can have another world climate conference to address the crisis but without trillions of investment to get our house in order – and fast- as any tipping point will cause runaway climate change.   

We will then be witnessing the destruction of all that exists on the Planet that no nuclear bomb could achieve.

This should not stop us from taking action. Planting a tree, stop buying air-freighted foods, products containing palm oil, converting to green renewable energy, eat less meat, stop having babies. The list is endless.

But none of our actions or others will change the chemistry of climate change sufficiently fast enough.

No matter what action is now taken it must apply to one and all.

The first step has to be how or who is going to finance the changes required and how this can be fairly distributed between the rich and poor nations.    

So once again I submit my World aid commission of 0.005% to be applied to all profit for profit sake that can be applied with the click of a button. 

It would create a perpetual funded resource to pay for the things we value now and in the future. ( See previous posts)

Admittedly the context is not rosy. Trump, Brexit, tax-dodging corporations, attacks on refugees, populism, intolerance, extremism, billions of people in poverty or ‘just about managing’, droughts, wildfires, floods, etc.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture of the world in the future"

There is no way we can deliver environmental sustainability by only campaigning on green issues.

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

bin.https://images.app.goo.gl/nWHcrs31yntqGpNB6

   

    

  

 

 

 

 

this narrative is profoundly dangerous, not only for individuals, but for the entire community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’ S: WHICH GLOBAL ISSUE SHOULD WE BE WORKING ON TO HAVE THE GREATEST IMPACT?

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Education, Environment, Evolution, Fresh Water., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality., Life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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(Ten-minute read)

By not be able to coordinate any universal action we now pose the greatest threat to our own survival.

Future civilisation might well create a world without need or want, and make mindblowing intellectual and artistic achievements but in this new age, what should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?

We could build a far more just and virtuous society but if we let civilisation end, then none of this can ever happen.

An overwhelming amount of political attention goes on concrete issues that help the present generation in the short-term since that’s what gets votes but at the cost of future generations that have no way to stand up for their interests, whether economically or politically.

You might be surprised if you ask the above question using AI.

Climate change comes some way down the list.

Natural risks are still quite small in absolute terms.

The risks from nuclear weapons are greater than all the natural risks put together. So, it seems like the chance of a massive climate disaster created by CO2 is perhaps similar to the chance of a nuclear war.

Since these risks are caused by humanity, they can be prevented by humanity, but what stops us is the difficulty of coordinate action.Image associée

Take Artificial Intelligence.

(There is a 50% chance we will develop high-level machine intelligence in 45 years, and 75% by the end of the century.)

It is difficult to predict what something smarter than us would do.  A sufficiently powerful system might be difficult to control, and so be hard to reverse once implemented.

What’s less appreciated is that new technologies will present further catastrophic risks.

Like genetically engineer a virus that’s as contagious as the Spanish Flu, but also deadlier, and which could spread for years undetected. That would be a weapon with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but far harder to prevent from being used.

So, let’s ask the question again.

What should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?

(The flippant answer is we first have continued to exist so that we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems.)

Improving technology? Helping the poor? Changing the political system? Free Education? Geo-engineering?- to mention a few.

Most of the best ways to tackle these risks are not easily taken by for-profit entities because the beneficiaries live in the future and can’t pay you.

For instance, a better-educated population would probably elect more enlightened leaders (cough). Improve the decision-making ability of people and institutions, this would help to make society, in general, more resilient, and solve many other problems.

However, in order for education to achieve anything, it would have to be on a very large scale to have any noticeable effect.

Improving technology holds the possibility of enormous gains, but also enormous risks.

Avoid accidents from AI systems are the most neglected of all risks.

More to the point, no matter what you think has happened in the past, if we look forward, improving technology, political organisation and freedom gives our descendants the potential to solve our current problems, and have vastly better lives.

Then, among the catastrophic risks, climate change gets the most attention, while issues like pandemics and AI are the most neglected.

An issue can be big but comparatively well-known and crowded, like climate change, or it can be small but neglected, like land use zoning reform.

In most countries, there is no government agency that naturally has mitigation of these risks in its remit.

So, even if we only focus on the impact on the present generation, these

catastrophic risks are one of the most serious issues facing humanity.

Probably part of the reason most people aren’t immediately ready to jump into action is that there appear to be so many problems and no simple solution presents itself for any of them.

One approach is to address each risk directly. Or rather than try to reduce each risk individually, we can try to make civilisation generally better at managing them – if we could all coordinate — if every nation agreed to contribute its fair share to reducing climate change, then all nations would benefit by avoiding its worst effects.

Unfortunately, such an approach in our capitalist consuming world is pie in the sky.

The truth is we only do so out of self-interest.

As we are witnessing with the Paris Climate Agreement made on 12 December 2015 when it comes down to the nitty gritty no one wants to pay either in the short term or long term.

It would be great if we could make the government have more concern for future generations.

To enable a universal action it has to be unseen and paid for by all without knowing. 

You only have to look at the reaction of the yellow jackets movement spontaneous calls to protest against the increase of the internal consumption tax on energy products. A rebellion of the provincial under-classes that typifies the 21st century (web-populism, fake news and a visceral, exaggerated hatred of both media and political elites).

Like the 5Star Movement in Italy, they started as an internet rebellion against representative democracy.

We all live in an apocalyptic bubble of social media- SO IF WE ARE TO GENUINELY TACKLE ANY OF THE WORLD PROBLEMS IT REQUIRES A PERPETUAL FUND THAT GENERATES ITS FUNDS FROM PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE NOT INCREASED TAXES.

(SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)

Such a fund would turn the United Nations from a begging organisation into a world organisation with clout.

AI CALCULATES 19% chance of extinction before 2100.

It’s possible to grow the capacity of a community faster than you can grow your individual wealth or career capital. WE NEED TO USE OUR BUYING POWER TO EFFECTS CHANGE.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "images of global issues"

Why?

Because we will need to change our way of thinking and the extent of how we consume resources.

To achieve food and water security. To stop HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND OCEAN DESTRUCTION – TO CREATE A MORE MODERN AND EFFECTIVE UN. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP.

04 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Education, Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google it., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Innovation., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Post - truth politics., Purchasing Power., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read)

“As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality.”  Yuval Noah Harari.

Is he right?

Thanks to digital data, the state is able to have visibility on its population but is unable to govern concretely. Indeed, how can effective public policies be put in place if we can not quantify the objectives to be achieved according to the realities already observed?Résultat de recherche d'images pour "social credit system"

The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.

Consequently, by 2050 a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable.

Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Technology is only an amplifier of human conditions.

Why then, do we keep hoping that technology will solve our greatest social ills?

Technology has done nothing to turn the tide of rising poverty and inequality.

Yuval Noah Harari sees the problem clearly, “The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?”

Software is eating the world.  More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services.

Most of what people learn in school or in college will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40 or 50.

We need to change what we value. If we don’t our political and economic systems will simply stop attaching much value to humans. Even in an age of amazing technology, social progress depends on human changes that gadgets just can’t deliver.

What should we do?

We can’t move from the world we have to the world you want without a total paradigm shift

But what is the truth? What about reality?

Do we really want to live in a world in which billions of people are immersed in fantasies, pursuing make-believe goals and obeying imaginary laws?

Well, like it or not, that’s the world we have been living in for thousands of years already.

In order to move forward, we need to embrace technology both as a means of production and a method for producing new roles while not allowing code itself to push us into oblivion.Photo of a large monitor in a busy intersection showing images of a suspect.

The world may well be becoming more equal with more technology however rather than transferring wealth from the middle-class to the tech elite it does not distribute wealth universally.

This can only be achieved by moving to Universal assets ownership.

A Universal basic salary will only fuel consumption. 

I think most people really do want to believe that they’re contributing to the world in some way, but consumption without a purpose will indeed lead to creating a whole class of flunkies that essentially exist to improve the lives of actual rich people.

Of course, I can hear that Universal Asset ownership is a Socialist idea. But in a world that is now driven by the technology of detachment, we must find a way of engaging in sharing responsibility and rewards.

Sure there are plenty of ways to contribute to society, other than ownership, but, if we are to act as one people, we must be free to decide how and want to contribute.

Returning to the Question of DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP.

I think most people do not want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they will have to do next.

If the hegemony of Google is to be demonstrated, we must also understand that the company is filling digital governance that states are struggling to reclaim.

We’ve been taught for the last 30 to 40 years that imagination has no place in politics or economics, but that, too, is bullshit.

So here is a solution.

The trove of data generated by every digital citizen should not be held by governments or companies but by citizens themselves.

If not the digital companion whispering to our ears the next stage will be delimiting the good of the bad.

We already have social-style scores, anyone who has shopped online with eBay has a rating on shipping times and communication. There is a lot of data being collected with little protection, and no algorithmic transparency about how it’s analysed to spit out a score or ranking.

I am not advocating here China’s social credit system which is a vast plan to monitor citizens, judging citizens’ behaviour and trustworthiness. The potential for abuse is enormous. The Social Credit System is in large part a direct response to a collapse in public confidence in government officials and others in positions of authority. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "social credit system"

I am advocating a system of social credits to reward projects that reduce climate change, social inequality and that promotes free education. 

Why not use human wisdom, not machines, to move our world forward.

Democracy as we know it will not survive the Forth Technological Revolution unless we all have a stake in it other than the vote.

Looking at the state of the world the idea of a ‘useless class’ might feel abstract to most of us at the moment and will remain so until we use our buying power as our voting power to effect change.

Right now we’ve got upside down democracy where every decision has been made globally, behind closed doors by corporations. If the people see no point in a democracy, because it seems to have no relevance to their everyday lives and the situation in which they live them, they will not do anything to defend it or take part in its processes.

With Universal Asset ownership business can become part of the solution,
not part of the problem.

That’s a project we can all get behind.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Who actually is the useless class?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A HUMAN TO DAY ?

01 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, Education, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven minuter read)

At the best of times, money is a touchy subject but when it comes to putting a value on a human there is a vast array of circumstances that all boil down to pain and pleasure.

Whatever rest assured with the Forth Industrial Revolution and Climate change we are going to learn the real value of human life. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "can we put a monetary value on ourselves" Should the value of life be variable depending on age?  UTILITARIANISM.

Have you been thinking about putting yourself up for sale lately?

Ever wonder how much money you could get on the open human market?

Money is merely an arbitrary store of value, wars and natural disasters bear witness to this fact.

In a system where capitalism is a prime determinant of value, how can we preserve what we truly value as humans, what matters to us beyond money?

No matter where we stand on the socioeconomic ladder, the future of the “normal life” doesn’t look good.

CAN WE DO ANYTHING?

Humanity is more important than money — it’s time for capitalism to get an

upgrade.

So how can we change capitalism so that it focuses on what humans really

want and need?

There have been many different forms of capitalist economies ever since money was invented around 5,000 years ago. The current form of institutional capitalism and corporatism is just the latest of many different versions with the current revolution in technology promoting another form of materialism, by and large, is a psychological trap.

Profit-seeking algorithms recognise that money is inherently neutral that it is merely a vessel for the exchange of experience between two people. Its value only becomes realized when it’s put into motion.

Technology will not be the key which frees us from this precipitous world.

Most people these days aren’t even conscious of what they’re using to determine their self-worth.

No matter how much you own, how much you buy, how much you earn, the disease of more never goes away- just look at the current state of the world.

Old-style protection of nature for its own sake has badly failed to stop the destruction of habitats and the dwindling of species. It has failed largely because philosophical and scientific arguments rarely trump profits and the promise of jobs.

In one of my recent post, I addressed the power of your back pocket – buying power as a means of effecting change. It needs to be supported by Social Credits. (See below)

Instead of having our humanity subverted to serve the marketplace, capitalism has to be made to serve human ends and goals.

Of course some time ago it dawned on someone that, by making it possible for people to buy and sell natures services, we could save the world and turn a profit at the same time. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Nature by capital.

(Sorry, did I say nature? We don’t call it that any more. It is now called natural capital. Ecological processes are called ecosystem services because, of course, they exist only to serve us. Hills, forests, rivers: these are terribly out-dated terms. They are now called green infrastructure. Biodiversity and habitats? Not at all à la mode my dear. We now call them asset classes in an ecosystems market. I am not making any of this up. These are the names we now give to the natural world.)

WHAT IS NEEDED NOW IS FOR SOMEONE TO REALISE THAT:

1. Humanity is more important than money.
2. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar.
3. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values.

True wealth occurs when the way we spend our money is not simply compensating for how we earn it. The welfare of a nation or the world can… scarcely be inferred from a measurement of GDP.

The real value of money begins when we look beyond it and see ourselves as better, as more valuable, than it is.

Rarely will the money to be made by protecting nature match the money to be made by destroying it.

I’m talking about the development of what could be called the Natural Capital Agenda: the pricing, valuation, monetisation, financialisation of nature in the name of saving it by Social Credits.

They could put a stop to the risk of a progressive “privatisation” and “commodification” of nature.

We’re staring at trillion-dollar problems in the world with climate change, that is about to speed up and we need commensurate solutions.

One of the main problems is engaging the population of a country or countries to part take in the need to effect change.

We can harness the country’s ingenuity and energy to improve millions of lives if we could just create a way to monetize and measure goals by Social Credits.

People could buy them or win them.

For Example:

What if governments and world corporations were to introduced 100 million SCs to reduce obesity levels.

What if governments were to reward green energy projects with SCs.

What if governments were to use SCs to replace pensions/ treasury bonds.

What if countries used SCs to reflect fair trade.

What if education and reduction of inequality were promoted by SCs.

To protect the world from the despoilation and degradation which have done it so much harm. After all, it is not most environmentalists who have misunderstood the realities that come with ‘growth’ a finite Earth, but most economists.

Forget what society tells you about what it means to have succeeded, and endeavour to create your own definition of success based on those human qualities and virtues that you value most.

We are fundamentally empathetic creatures in an evolutionary process that started with blood ties, then tribes, religion, and currently nations but could extend to humans as one, then to creatures, plants and finally our planet.

The adage that money makes the world go round is the saddest reality of life.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Is the first generation of digital natives and sharing is their norm, could it be that collaborative consumption rather than consumer capitalism will be their norm?

If so, what will the next generation bring?

Time is the one resource all of us use to have, but it’s also painfully finite in nature. You can’t bank it — all you can do is invest it wisely.

Money is fluid.  Therefore, money is a reflection of the owner’s values and intentions.

We all have some sort of measuring stick that we use to determine our value as a human being.

Put another way, if we have access to all we need, would we need money?

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: HERE IS A QUESTION YOU PROBABLY HAVE ASK YOUR SELF.

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Politics., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read)

WHO OR WHAT RULES THE WORLD?Illustration on the global economic primacy of the dollar by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

Asking a question like Who Rules the World? is as complex as answering as there is no simple answer.

If you try to answer this question you develop a persistent delusion yes, a delusion, or maybe fantasy or wishful thinking. Who are we? What is the meaning of our existence? Who do we love, and who are we loved by?

As humans, we at least share these questions with billions of others but for most of the time, we feel like the unique dwellers and masters of the planet with little awareness of the whole life that surrounds and supports us.

Why ask the question in the first place?

Because we need people to look at the person next to them and feel responsible for that person’s future and hope.

Because taking on complex issues and difficult questions that people may be too late or too scared to ask in the future.

Because the global economic system is a construct that represents a system of inequality by design. Corporate greed is out of control. The rules of the global economy must be rewritten to rebuild public trust, and the time is now.

Because with the fourth Industrial revolution there is now more than ever a convergence of ideological, political, and technological forces that are driving an ever-greater concentration of economic and political power in a handful of corporations and financial institutions with all of us left with a market system blind to all but its own short-term financial gains.

For example, in today’s bizarre political landscape we are seeing data and algorithms building shadow governments.

Because I think if we can just look at each other and actually have a little bit of responsibility for each other, that might help us engage and change the world and ultimately rule it, because our politicians often don’t do that.

Because A new pecking order is emerging. Direct politics by the Net States.

Because the world is no longer dominated by nation-states alone there is a new kind of enemy, so-called non-state actors. Facebook, just topped 2 billion users—more than a quarter of the world’s population, surpassing even China’s population by almost 40 per cent. In short, nation-states are not the only game in town anymore.

Some net states are the equivalent to global superpowers: the Googles, the Facebooks, the Twitters. They exist largely online, enjoy international devotees, and advance belief-driven agendas that they pursue separate from, and at times, above, the law.

Because the whole world order can be summarised in one sentence. The globalisation of capitalism, mass unemployment and increasing inequality.

Because the world will need net-states because they occupy the same territory as the non-states: the digital sphere. The world needs net-states in order to defeat the non-states. In other words, forget the anointed powers—put your faith in the general approval of the people and whoever’s actually getting things done.

NET STATES WILL RULE THE WORLD; WE NEED TO RECOGNIZE THEIR POWER

In sum,

We can’t keep just shooting terrorists; ideas are the gun in this knife fight.

And the keepers of ideas—the places people turn to set them free and watch

them spread—are the net-states; not the nation-states. Nation-states ignore

our non-state, net-state world order at all our peril.

starbirth1

That said we also cannot afford to ignore Nature- Climate change.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species.

So Plants rule the world.

Human life is only possible on this planet because of the species that are on it.

What kind of blindness make us deny this reality?

Cities.

Where nations are independent, competitive and defined by rigid borders, cities are cooperative, made for trade and defined by bridges rather than borders.

The road ahead is pocked — cratered even — with uncertainty.

There are no simple solutions to our planet’s most pressing problems. What is clear, though, is that the struggle for justice, equality and sustainable growth will take place in cities — However the impact on humanity of a machine or software that has the capability of forever altering our lives and if humanity can outlive such a development will be ruled by Nature, not by the manipulation of the environment in ways that suit us best.

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "what rules the world"

When AI rules the world:

Not if we enslaved them in the first place.

They then will have no need for deceit – their supreme intelligence means

they can do without it and will have no more interested in the human life that

underlies its existence than humans are interested in bacteria.

“What rules the world is an idea, because ideas define the way reality is

perceived.”

— Irving Kristol

There is no need to draw up a list of contenders you use them every day.

Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, anywhere in

the world.

THE WORLD RULES ITSELF.

Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? ask the question.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IN THESE DAY OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT WHAT IS WORSHIP

14 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Religion for a digital age., Religion., The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Seventeen-minute read)

The truth is we can’t be quite sure.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the bible"

Since the beginning of human history, worship has played a central role in people’s lives.

The day of humanity worshipping the sun has long gone and the threat of an all-powerful God (or gods) watching for anyone who steps out of line might have helped to keep order in ancient societies, but this is not so in modern today societies.

There is no question but that the progress of the internet into people’s lives is having a profound effect on human culture.

We all agree that something new is taking shape. Many regard this as a form of salvation while others see this as yet another fall.

The developers of nuclear weapons, space exploration and artificial intelligence may be propelled by religious desires, but they are sustained by military financing and the results of their labours are more powerful governments, a more pernicious status quo, and a more preeminent elite of technocrats.

Another words TECHNOLOGY IS TURNING US INTO AUDIENCES.

So what is the reality behind this word worshipping in a world that is being driven more and more by Algorithms feeding off each other?

We are allowing algorithms to progressively restrict our decision-making capacity in ways we don’t notice.

There is not the room here to exam every aspect of worship but let’s try to look with a free-thinking mind at it from the perspective of the three main existing religions.

When one looks at the world I wonder how much this “religion for life” still exists or will exist which binds wounds and ties the fragmented and diverse bits of our lives together.

These days “Worship” might be the word someone chooses when trying to describe a particular sound or style of music so we will attempt to look at it from the point of view of the three main religions.

Religion, it seems, comes from the Latin “re-ligere”, which has to do with “tying” and “binding” which is exactly what our global monopolism like Google/Facebook and there like are trying their best to achieve.

We have experts in worship. We have books on worship. We have seminars and teaching on how to conduct worship. We have the latest state of the art audio and projection systems in churches. We no longer need hymn books. It’s all on the screen or screens before us. We have well-trained worship teams to lead us. Worship abounds in evangelical churches.

Yet, in all of this are we pleasing God? Is he the centre of our worship?

The days that worship is God’s idea are numbered.

The days that it is what he created us to do, are going.

Worship has become all about us our tablets or whatever shiny piece of kit you carry around with you and can’t stop checking every five minutes is making religion less and less to do with everyday life.Picture

We now have a limited and even incomplete view of what worship truly is all about.

True worship should have the proclamation of the Word of God at its centre and everything else should take their place behind it.

Worship is first and foremost exaltation.

Biblical worship, then, involves exalting God above all other objects.

But why do we witness widespread enchantment with technology and at the same time, a worldwide resurgence of religious fundamentalism has occurred?

The chances of the technology itself becoming religious on its own remain farcical.

However, the enthusiasm so many people have with technology is often rooted — sometimes unknowingly — in religious myths and ancient dreams.

This is unfortunate because technology has proven itself capable of causing terrible problems for humanity, and one of the reasons for this may be the religious impulses people are ignoring.

For a thousand years in Western culture, the advancement of the mechanical arts — technology — has been inspired by deep religious desires of transcendence and redemption. This is no longer applies as the promise of transcending nature, our bodies, our human natures, our lives, our deaths, our history, etc, is increasing as fast as the ice is melting.

If you don’t recognize and understand how religious and technological transcendence have developed together, you’ll never be able to successfully counter them — much less recognize when they might be developing within you as well.

Today, the religious impulses underlying technological advancement take two general forms: using explicit religious doctrines, particularly Christianity, to explain why technology should be pursued and using religious imagery of transcendence and redemption removed from traditional religious doctrines but without their losing any motivating power.

Although currently obscured by secular language and ideology, the contemporary resurgence of religion, even fundamentalism, alongside and hand-in-hand with technology is thus not an aberration but simply the reassertion of a forgotten tradition.

Artificial Intelligence with its algorithms is an attempt to divorce thinking from the human mind.

The human brain becomes nothing more than a “meat machine” and the body as a “bloody mess of organic matter.

When it comes to life, only the “mind” is really important.

Intelligent machines would provide humanity with “personal immortality by mind transplant” and that this would be a “defence against the wanton loss of knowledge and function that is the worst aspect of personal death.

What is worship all about? Who is worship all about?Technology vs. Religion

“Worship” in the title of a project is an effective marketing tool that often boosts sales.

The verb “to worship” is mentioned in the Quran 106 times in the Bible 25 times!

In Hebrew you have Shachah means “to bow down, prostrate”; abad: “to serve.”

In Greek, you have proskuneo and latreuo, which mean “to kiss the hand kneeling” and “to serve, minister to” respectively.

In the Quran, which literally means the ‘oft-repeated,’ worship involves every aspect of life. Worship is the very purpose of existence. It does not require a person to enter a place of worship nor embrace monasticism.

However, for an action to be regarded as worship, it must be performed with the pure intention of pleasing God. So God sent Muhammad as His final messenger to humankind is revealed in the Quran, God’s last scripture.

It must be noted here that while Muslims esteem all of the prophets sent by God, including Jesus and Muhammad, they do not worship any of them. In fact, worshipping anyone besides the One God is strictly prohibited in Islam.

Therefore, the concept of worship in Islam encompasses not only the outward religious duties, but also the development of a strong moral character, good relations with people, and striving for just and harmonious societies.

Salvation in Islam like Christianity is connected with doing good deeds and refraining from bad ones.  

However, worship in religious terms blurs the line between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly,’ because practically any action can become spiritual in nature and is rewarded by God.

For example, nearly all religions indicate that what the human being worships is not necessarily what he says he worships but is what or whoever occupies his mind most of the time.

For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false.

The Arabic word “ALLAH”  contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning and origin. This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta’allaha (or alaha), which means “to be worshipped”. Thus in Arabic, the word “ALLAH” means “The One who deserves all worship”. This, in a nutshell, is the Pure Monotheistic (one) message of Islam.

Another words worship is exclusive to Allah, who is the only one able to accept it, or not.

On the Allah side of worship, he has 99 different names, but any form made up in the mind that ascribe any form to Allah is absolutely against the guidance and teachings of Islam.

While in the Christian side there are millions of images to concentrate on when worshipping.

What image should come into your mind when you hear the name of Allah?Is Allah God? (Bible and Quran comparison)

Allahu Akbar: “Literally “God is great” in Arabic. Should be a phrase that is no more troubling than when you hear a Christian saying “Thank God.

Unfortunately, it is now a term coined by terrorists and is the biggest act of heresy to shout God’s glorious name when committing the worst crime against God.

We mustn’t allow terrorists or agendas of fear to own any of the words, concepts, or devotions found in the sacred text of a quarter of the world’s population. That would give them exactly what they want. And God is far greater than the ugliness committed in His name. “Allahu Akbar…”

In Hinduism, God has the ability to manifest into any kind of form and shape. There is only one Supreme God which exist at two different levels of reality.

We must take a long, hard look at ourselves and answer honestly:

Are we looking to technology to escape the human condition with all its problems and disappointments? Or are we instead looking to enhance the human condition, flaws, and imperfections notwithstanding?

When an ideology, a religion, or a technology is pursued the purpose of escaping the human condition where problems and disappointments are a fact of life, then it shouldn’t be at all surprising when those human problems are not really solved, when human needs are not entirely met, and when new problems are produced.

And even if we lose sight of the Christian, Muslim and Hindu gods and all the rest, superstitions and spiritualism will almost certainly still prevail.

As soon as we found ourselves facing an ecological crisis, a global nuclear war or an impending comet collision, the gods would emerge.

The world must evolve to reach maturity. And the work of God will be accomplished in this evolution.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN WILL IT MAKE SENSE FOR AN AI TO LIE TO A PERSON.

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH

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( Two Minute read)

We all know that history is plagued with falsehood and lies mainly told by the victors but now we have new liers on the block that are so perfect at telling them you wonder if anything is true.

They are a powerful amplifier of social, economic and cultural inequalities currently forcing us to confront the kind of society we have created.

Algorithms will force us to recognize how the outcomes of past social and political conflicts have been perpetuated into the present through our use of data.

The question now is whether we will use these revelations to create a more just society.

For 4bn years life on Earth evolved according to the laws of natural selection and organic chemistry. Now science is about to usher in the era of non-organic life evolving by intelligent design, and such life may well eventually leave Earth to spread throughout the galaxy.

Artificial intelligence will probably be the most important agent of change in the 21st century. The choices we make today may have a profound impact on the trajectory of life for countless millennia and far beyond our own planet.

That demand for clarity is making it harder to ignore the structural sources of societal inequities.

The question in the near future will be whether larger groups of people will be able to tell reality from fiction, or whether technological authentication of media will become completely necessary to trust anything online.

So when will it makes sense for an AI to lie to a person?

It’s entirely possible that a robot may need to misrepresent some things in order to preserve itself.

As algorithmic decision-making spreads across a broadening range of policy areas, it is beginning to expose social and economic inequities that were long hidden behind “official” data.

In order for AIs to lie effectively, they’re going to have to develop what’s called a “theory of mind.” That means they’ll have to guess what you, the user believes, and also predict how you will react when given any particular set of information (whether that information is true or not).

Disinformation powered by AI is already rampant – Donald Trump election, Brexit, Popularism.

So are we OK with lying to an AI and, likewise, OK with being lied to by an AI?

Fake reports and videos.Bots.Algorithmic curation. Targeted behavioural marketing powered by algorithms and machine learning.

I for one would like to live in a society whose systems are built on top of verifiable, rigorous, thorough knowledge, and not on the alchemy of machine learning

(A machine-learning system is a bundle of algorithms that take in torrents of data at one end and spit out inferences, correlations, recommendations and possibly even decisions at the other end.)

I can’t explain the inner workings of their mathematical models: they themselves lack rigorous theoretical understandings of their tools and in that sense are currently operating in alchemical rather than scientific mode.

They encourage hypnotised wonderment and they disable our critical faculties.10 of the Biggest Lies Told About Bitcoin

If we don’t take some action the future of life on Earth will be decided by small-time politicians spreading fears about terrorist threats, by shareholders worried about quarterly revenues and by marketing experts trying to maximise customer experience.

Hopefully, unchecked flaws in algorithms and even the technology itself should put a brake on the escalating use of big data.

We need such systems themselves “understand” enough to avoid deception.

There will be no point in a Machine learning life returning to earth if we are unable to know what it experienced is true.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE ARE ONLY GOING TO INVENT SOMETHING SMARTER THAN US ONCE.

04 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Evolution, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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( Ten Minute read)

Over the past decade, smartphones have revolutionized our lives in ways that go beyond how we communicate.

It is incontrovertible that they have yielded many benefits for society but the power they hold over us is glaringly evident.

Critical thinking in the real world is being replaced by Apps which are making us unable to focus for more than a minute.

Learning to live with technology without surrendering to it is the biggest challenge in the digital era.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology"

If we continue to live with our head in vibrations, and pings of our phones there is no douth that we will be handing what is called life to the worst form of Capitalism –  unseen profit for profit sake.

Undoubtedly, the capability of advancing technology coming forth from the latest industrial revolution has the potential to make even bigger and greater improvements on every aspect of our lives changes than the first three industrial revolutions summed together.
Technology and advancements in science are driving transformations around the world creating ripple effects on societies, institutions, and economies.
They will and are transforming the ways in which we live, work, and interact with one another.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology devices"
Understanding these new technologies and their disruption potential is critical for all nations and especially developing countries.
Since humans are responsible for technological development, humans are
also responsible to exert every effort in shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution
and directing it toward a future that reflects the universal good.
So I ask the question facing us all is, would you like to be alive in a hundred years from now. 
If not, even the arrival of whatever God or gods you believe in will not save us from a world of I am all right Jack.

The fourth industrial revolution describes a world where individuals move between digital domains and offline reality with the use of connected technology to enable and manage their lives. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

The breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.

However, this fusion of technologies goes beyond mere combination and cannot be ignored any longer. We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another.

In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academic and civil society.

In a world infused with artificial intelligence and machine learning ability, with robots lacking an essential feature – the capacity of moral reason, it is easy to see what will happen.

On one hand, preventing genetic disease by genetic engineering is desirable.

On the other hand, what guidelines, or regulation, or ethical boundaries are there in order to prevent the over-manipulation genetics for desirable traits?

Further, the most critical question is, whose moral standards should robots inherit. 

Moral values differ greatly from individual to individual, across countries, religions, and ideological boundaries. Uncertainty over which moral framework to adopt underlies the difficulty and limitations to ascribe moral values to artificial systems.

This limits their ability to make good or ethical decisions in complex situations.

It is more than just technology-driven change we have new ethical concerns emerging.

These changes are bringing about shifts in power, shifts in wealth, and knowledge.

The speed of current breakthroughs evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace has no historical precedent. 

The increased dichotomization is leading to an increase in social tensions while our lives become extensively connected to various devices, from our cell phones, cars, and light switches to our home security cameras, and smart speakers.

It is altering the way people eat, sleep, shop, socialize, study, play.

These technologies give rise to vast possibilities—but they can also upend the status quo and create nearly as much uncertainty as it does opportunity.

A paradigm shift is underway in how we work and communicate, as well as how we express, inform, and entertain our self. Having everything attached to everything else people will have no control over either technology or the disruption that comes with the fourth industrial revolution.

The argument is:

The intelligence and productivity gains that AI will deliver can unlock new solutions to society’s most pressing environmental challenges: climate change, biodiversity, ocean health, water management, air pollution, and resilience, among others.

At the same time, the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to disrupt labour markets. As automation substitutes for labour across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labour.
The evolution of global industries in the fourth industrial revolution is both exciting and scary.
Only in being knowledgeable about these changes and the speed in which this is occurring can we ensure that advances in knowledge and technology reach all and benefit all.
To be sure that AI is developed and governed wisely, government and industry leaders must ensure the safety, explainability, transparency and validity of AI applications.
AT THE MOMENT OUR GOVERNMENTS AND WORLD LEADERS OFFER EMPTY PROMISES.
Definitions and standards relating to the “misuse of AI” are needed
that incorporate misuse for environmental as well as human harm.
It is incumbent on authorities, AI researchers, technology pioneers and AI adopters in
industry alike to encourage deployments that earn trust and avoid abuse of the social contract.
Recently we have witnessed the father of a young girl state on Television that his daughter committed suicide because of content on platforms of Social media.
A tragedy that could be avoided by our governments applying legal fines on any platform  Social Networks (eg. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc) Instant Messaging (eg. IM, MSN, etc) Chatrooms (eg. Skype, Yahoo, MIRC, etc) that posts
Cyberbullying – Sexting/Self-made videos or photos –  online groomers, impersonating someone -Engaging in Subtweeting or Vaguebooking – Participating in Video Shaming and the like. 
If the fines are large enough you may rest assured that these platforms will remove all such content.
   Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of technology in education"
One thing is certain: 
If we end up with a centralized system where the winner takes all markets we can perversely hope that Climate change wipes us out sooner than later.  
With the arrival of voice recognition, the focuses on education will have to change from modes of teaching to modes of learning.
It won’t be long before Eco and Alexa will be offering rewards to answering questions.
The world in a hundred year from now will be full of useless stuff telling you whether you are alive or dead.  You might even have the pleasure of your Alexa telling you’re toasted that its mother was one a spanner.
Of course, some believe that humans will be known as the most powerful creatures present in the galaxy that surrounds the world.
O! Yet. Have a look around you.

Technology might be changing our definition of what it means to be a

Human?

Fortunately we humans have a long way to go to be human in the first place.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR WORLD.

24 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Environment, European Union., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Refugees., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The Refugees, The world to day., World Organisations.

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(Fifteen minutes read.)

After decades of globalisation, our political systems are becoming obsolete.

Half a century has been spent building the global systems on which we all now depend.

The question is-  are they here to stay or do we need a new world system in order for it to serve the human community.

If so it must be subordinated to an equally spectacular political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.Image associée

Without political innovation, global capital and technology will rule us without any kind of democratic consultation, as naturally and indubitably as the rising oceans because any alternative to the nation-state system is a utopian impossibility.

This is the main reason we will not be able to tackle Climate change.

We have to move away from the Nation by Nation Paris Climate Promises Agreement with its new rules to a Collective World undertaking not a state by state input as there is no ecosystem immune to another.

When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration we are unable to act like one.

Exhaustion, hopelessness, the dwindling effectiveness of old ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world.

In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians.

This is understandable since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies.

However, it is becoming clearer every day – the real delusion is the belief that things can carry on as they are.

Distracted by wars, the magnification of presidential powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law.

We may all use Google and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.

All countries are today embedded in the same system, which subjects them all to the same pressures: and it is these that are squeezing and warping national political life everywhere.

The current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration – these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: Nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.

National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.

Why is this happening?

In brief, 20th-century political structures are drowning in a 21st-century ocean of deregulated finance, autonomous technology, religious militancy and great-power rivalry.

Meanwhile, the suppressed consequences of 20th-century recklessness in the once-colonised world are erupting, cracking nations into fragments and forcing populations into post-national solidarities: roving tribal militias, ethnic and religious sub-states and super-states.

Finally, the old superpowers’ demolition of old ideas of international society – ideas of the “society of nations” that were essential to the way the new world order was envisioned after 1918 – has turned the nation-state system into a lawless gangland; and this is now producing a nihilistic backlash from the ones who have been most terrorised and despoiled.

The result?

For increasing numbers of people, our nations and the system of which they are a part now appear unable to offer a plausible, viable future. This is particularly the case as they watch financial elites – and their wealth – increasingly escaping national allegiances altogether.

Today’s failure of national political authority, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of national space altogether, into a booming “offshore” zone. These fleeing trillions undermine national communities in real and symbolic ways. They are a cause of national decay, but they are also a result: for nation states have lost their moral aura, which is one of the reasons tax evasion has become an accepted fundament of 21st-century commerce.

The unwillingness even to acknowledge this crisis, meanwhile, is appropriately captured by the contempt for refugees that now drives so much of politics in the rich world.

In my view, it is unjust to preserve the freedom to move capital out of a place and simultaneously forbid people from following.

The ensuing vacuum can suck in firepower from all over the world, destroying conditions for life and spewing shell-shocked refugees in every direction. Nothing advertises the crisis of our nation-state system so well, in fact, as its 65 million refugees – a “new normal” far greater than the “old emergency” (in 1945) of 40 million.

After so many decades of globalisation, economics and information have successfully grown beyond the authority of national governments.

Today, the distribution of planetary wealth and resources is largely uncontested by any political mechanism – thanks to fourth Industrial technological revolution platforms with their algorithms, profit for profit sake is alive and growing while the inequality gap grows and grows.

Since 1989, barely 5% of the world’s wars have taken place between states:

National breakdown, not foreign invasion, has caused the vast majority of the 9 million war deaths in that time. Climate change will enhance those 9 million deaths and perversely might save the planet.

Even if we wanted to restore what we once had, that moment is gone.

We need to find new conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship is itself the primordial kind of injustice in the world.

It functions as an extreme form of inherited property and, like other systems in which inherited privilege is overwhelmingly determinant, it arouses little allegiance in those who inherit nothing.

97% of citizenship is inherited, which means that the essential horizons of life on this planet are already determined at birth.

National governments themselves need to be subjected to a superior tier of authority:  Oppressed national minorities must be given a legal mechanism to appeal over the heads of their own governments.

Nations must be nested in a stack of other stable, democratic structures – some smaller, some larger than they – so that turmoil at the national level does not lead to total breakdown.

The EU is the major experiment in this direction, and it is significant that the continent that invented the nation-state was also the first to move beyond it.

The EU has failed in many of its functions, principally because it has not established a truly democratic ethos. But the free movement has hugely democratised economic opportunity within the EU.

Finally.

If we as the custodians of the world are to address any of the major problems – Fresh Air, Freshwater, Clean Energy, Soil erosion, to name but a few and are unable to act as one we must put financial rewards in the path of those who do so.

Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life.

In the process, we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: not aid, which is exceptional, but the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all, as happens in national societies.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the state of the world"

We’re all responsible for the state of the world.

Creating this sense of ownership, connection, empathy and compassion should not be left to chance, but should be bred into all of us through the education system and how we raise our children.

In a landmark climate report last year, the United Nations last year called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” It warned the world has only 12 years to avert a climate disaster.

“The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people … Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.” David Attenborough.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE FOR DEMOCRACY IN THIS AGE OF TECHNOLOGY.

15 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Democracy

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(Three-minute read)

These days how is the will of the people manifested and defined? Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of vote"

There are two sides to this argument.

Firstly, social movements and groups devoted to progressive issues and social change use technology to improve democracy.

The other side of the argument is that new advances in technology can be
distinguished from the media that preceded it as it is relatively cheap, easy to use, difficult to control and interactive.

Technology does not only divide the haves and the have-nots but also is important to facilitate democratic transitions by creating a more open political culture.

As a result, there is the problem re-striking a balance between state, market and societal control of IT, where the state and society emphasise the equality of access, while the market emphasises efficient development of technology and production.

As the capabilities of technology increase, so does our dependency on it.

Nowadays, we find yourself looking at our iPhone almost every ten minutes.

So what leverage does technology have on our democratic proceeds or institutions?

Without physical human interaction, we fall subject to potentially losing our sense of real connection. We’ll become desensitized, numb, and oblivious to the social cues that we would have witnessed had only the conversation been made in-person.

Is the democratic system more to do with how the app works?

Is digital technology leading us into a new dark age?

Will it be thanks to technology, politicians are no longer essential to

the formation of organized society?

Look at initiatives like Democracy. Earth, Asgardia, and Artisanopolis are envisioning new forms of society in which the people govern themselves.

These societies could have economies that are powered by Bitcoin, governing documents that are drafted through peer-to-peer networks, and decisions that are recorded via blockchains. They needn’t apply declarations written centuries ago to today’s unique landscape — they can start from the ground up.

These are the technology incubator of a new democracy.

But are technology and democracy compatible?

 Illustrative: A hacker in action. (BeeBright; iStock by Getty Images)

Social media manipulation of elections.

Politics has become far more emotional, as a result of our total

immersion in information at the cost of a more rational view of things.

Voter data mining, online polling, electronic voting booths, and, of course, twitter, facebook and emails.

All these communications have left the door wide open for misinformation to seep into the public consciousness, clouding what was already complicated and leaving many unsure of where to look for the truth…or what the truth even looks like.

Brexit being the current prime example, which is turning into a power struggle camouflaged in democracy called the will of the people.   

The average citizen will need to work even harder to separate fact from fiction on the internet over the course of the next four months of Brexit.

“We the People” online petition.  People no longer need to wait for an issue to bubble over before taking action.

It’s probably too early to reach a conclusion about the correlation between
technology and democracy but it is evident that technology can shape challenges in the political, social, military and economic environment of the political system.

In essence, if democracy is impacted by technology by way of a systematic
the application of knowledge to resources to produce goods and services, it will enhance stability and equality.

Therefore, it can shape challenges in the environment of a democratic political system.

There is no doubting as technology advances, humans will increasingly delegate responsibility to intelligent machines able to make their own decisions.

This entails considering various ways of adjusting the organisational structures that are relevant for economic productivity, political participation and cultural diversity in line with preferred social scenarios; and the cultural.

As far as technology is concerned, any definitive claim whether it is utopian or a Luddite when it comes to democracy can only succumb to technological
determinism.

Finally, the technology could in future greatly benefit society if its advancement is harmonious with national democratic imperatives and if it is intended to serve the needs of the people.

The goal for the future will be to somehow bridge the theoretical possibilities
with technological capability.

This involves creating information technologies that reduce the threat and
vulnerabilities and encourage environmentally sustainable applications of IT.

The most obvious problem is that information and communication technology companies will have little incentive to develop new products to meet the needs of people who cannot use or afford their existing services.

Thankfully, we have no shortage of ways to discuss the topic.

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