If you look at the direction the world is going in life itself is about to break out of organic life into to nonorganic life.
If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Another word we will have different biological classes of people with new types of gods with new tec religions that produce new bodies, brains, and minds.
There will be no more going to heaven.
It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world. There will be new stories, new thinking to match the new technologies.
Algorithms will be the new form of Communism.
These days we die not because it is in our DNA or Genes but because of Techo problems.
Calico a Google subsidiary is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.
Its ambition is to solve the problem of human health/death.
It’s all being done right before our eyes.
Algorithms can now detect personalities via human language conversation.
What’s next? Will WW3 be launched via algorithm?
Perhaps not but inequality will be the norm with Fundamentalism gone.
The power of algorithms has spread far beyond Wall Street and now touches all of us–starting with today’s young innovators.
Algorithms are doing a lot more than automating stock trades.
Most people don’t know that there are algorithms that decide how customer service calls get routed or how customer service requests will be treated. When people call these big companies like their health insurer or telecom company, they’re actually being categorized, sliced, diced and parsed by a bot.
It’s incredible to think that the words someone chooses on a given morning will forever change how that company treats him or her.
These algorithms don’t just affect people involved in computer science.
No-one would doubt that Google system has made searching a whole lot easier, but at what price? As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.
Algorithm change because they know they’re getting gamed.
Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.
They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos but are they putting too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity, and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment.
How far Google’s data-crunching algorithm go in harvesting our personal data and shaping the web will be the Story of the Future and because our brains are becoming more and more reliant on the internet for memory
The Google story could well be the god of the future.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
( A twelve-minute read that could be the answer to Poverty)
You don’t have to be Einstein to recognize that inequality in all its forms is what wrong with our world. It haunts every minute of our lives no matter who you are, however ‘Ending world poverty is an unrealistic goal’
It is policy not aid which matters most in today’s world.
Why?
Because the politics of inequality in the future will be as important as the economics of the Future.
Relative poverty is unpreventable without tackling inequalities.
The aspirations of delivering a world where the quality of education, healthcare and national infrastructure available to every person is sufficient to bestow on them meaningful hope and ambition is hopefully the aim of “development”. I emphasize the word hopeful.
In a world in which a billion people live on $1.26 a day, with climate immigration increasing and technology Algorithms blundering the world’s wealth.
We’re going to have to realize sooner than later that if we are to avoid or end violent conflicts ( That these days has inequality as their triggers) there is only one course to follow and that is to spread the wealth of the world fairly.
Poverty is a perception – it is a status which is bestowed on people who have relatively little – even in societies of plenty. Just look at the prevailing political view on aid to middle-income countries that contain hundreds of millions of desperately poor people.
We all know that the chances of ending poverty altogether are zero.
It would potentially cost some of the world’s biggest businesses billions and would need to be agreed by a group of world leaders who, if they all went out to dinner, would be sat around the table with their calculators out arguing about how to split the bill.
In a world driven by Greed, Advertising, and now more and more by filtered Social Media, we are becoming increasingly desensitized to the blight of others.
For those working in organisations that are dependent on official development assistance, it is hard to talk about ending their dependency, but the 21st century demands the challenge is not ducked.
Too much negativity and accusation of not making any progress with aid money. Comments like Shit Holes, which imply that aid is no longer necessary are undermining our Aid agencies, which are becoming an increasingly endangered species.
So if we accept that we won’t be satisfied if we overcome absolute poverty, where do we go next?
The closer we get to ending extreme poverty, the harder it is going to be to do it.
Imagine how different the world would be if the focus of aid spending was not “ending $1.25 dollar a day poverty” but “creating a fairer and more equitable world”.
Relative poverty will always exist and it should always be at the forefront of efforts to improve our world because it demands more than the bare minimum solution, or Asshole Trumps.
Decisions taken on tax regimes, remittance flows and trade concessions are now not the fastest route to assist poor countries in their development. Inequality is at the root of the reasons why.
So in this world of inequalities is there any way of assisting development in a meaningful way.
Gadgets like tablets, smartphones and not-so-smart phones are multiplying five times faster than we are, with our population growing at a rate of about two people per second, or 1.2% annually.
The world is home to 7.2 billion gadgets, and they’re multiplying five times faster than we are.
The Mobile phone has done more for Africa than all Aid. No other technology has impacted us like the mobile phone.
The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019. In 2016, an estimated 62.9 percent of the population worldwide already owned a mobile phone.
The mobile phone penetration is forecasted to continue to grow, rounding up to 67 percent by 2019.
By 2019, China is expected to reach almost 1.5 billion mobile connections and India almost 1.1 billion.
The number of smart phone users worldwide is expected to grow by one billion in a time span of five years.
It’s not that every person in the world has a mobile device, far from it; more than half of the population don’t have a mobile phone.
There are around 250 million machine-to-machine connections.
That may only be a fraction of the total number of mobile connections, but it was enough to knock us people off our perch in the man vs machine superiority stakes.
Just imaging what would happen if we were to equip everyone in the world (of voting age) with a mobile phone that could receive a basic income on a monthly basis.
Each phone with its unique pin.
With a phone that supplies a basic income we would witnessing a transformation in the way people relate to their governments.
A game-changer.
Not just a safer way to store money, but to reduce the need for Aid, to cut out corruption, to empower the poor, to eradicate inequality, to encourage closing the digital divide with the rest of the world. To give a sense of a future, information, opportunity and choice. To lift young people are currently trapped in poverty, often exacerbated by the need to contribute to their family incomes.
Explosive growth in mobile broadband use across continents would improve transparency and give a voice to citizens.
They would have a major economic, social and political impact.
So instead of the World Bank, the IMF, the Warren Buffets, the Bill Gates, the Mark Zckerbergs, the UN, Oxfam, the WTO, technology has the potential to lift people out of poverty.
There is no reason that a mobile money basic income could not be achieved with the application of a world aid commission of 0.05%. ( See previous posts)
Applying such a commission: (On all profit seeking Algorithms, on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $50,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions, to mention just a few of the existing Capitalist instruments that are solely designed for Profit.) would create a perpetual Fund of trillions.
Traditional banking is out of reach for many people in rural areas of developing countries, but mobile is bringing people into the financial system in droves. Financial inclusion, starting with a humble savings account, enables people to start businesses, invest in education and weather bad times.
Mobile still has hurdles to jump before it can reach all the lives of people most in need of the technology: Namely, reliable, affordable energy and comprehensive network coverage. However you can rest assured if aid was directed to placing a communication satellite in orbit to service Africa or Latin America cell, phone use could help developing the countries within these Continents to plan electrical infrastructure.
There are in the world already a enough used mobile phones to supply most of Africa ( Pop. 1,273,903, 985)
Unfortunately there seems to be a major barrier to people turning in their old phones to be recycled.
To give a couple of examples, a recent survey found that 63% of Canadians have an unused phone at home. And in the UK alone, people are holding on to an estimated 76.8 million unused phones.
How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life?
Not as much as you might think.
Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work.
You could say that: The world of work is in a state of flux.
There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality.
However the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution.
The development of automation enabled by technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence brings the promise of higher productivity (and with productivity, economic growth), increased efficiencies, safety, and convenience. But these technologies also raise difficult questions about the broader impact of automation on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work itself.
Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not:
Every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. We have yet to reach the full potential of digitization across the global economy.
More than half the world’s population is still offline.
Greater interaction will raise productivity but require different and often higher skills, new technology interfaces, different wage models in some cases, and different types of investments by businesses and workers to acquire skills.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. 40–50% of all jobs will be taken by robots in the next twenty years.
By 2025, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers.
Developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets. For example “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being.
The thing is: we’ve heard this all before. Time and time again, we underestimate capitalism’s extraordinary ability to come up with new meaningless jobs. (It’s 37% in the UK right now, but it could be 50%, 60% or even 100% in the future.)
Unless we update our ideas about what ‘work’ even is. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and much the same whether the volume of work, were to increase, diminish or even disappear.
Labor which was once the capital of working men will be longer true.
Again: it’s not about the technology, it’s about the choices we make as a society.
When it comes to universal basic income: we don’t have to wait for the robots. We are more than rich enough to do it right now – in fact, we should have done it forty years ago!
Technology is not destiny, education is.
Everything depends on the choices that we make as a society.
If history is any precedent, we already know the answer.
MOST OF US ARE NOW SURROUNDED WITH A PORTION- DISTORTED EMBARRASSMENT OF NOT JUST FOOD BUT GOVERNMENT SIZE.
It’s time for taxpayers to remind themselves just how much the cost of government to run us is..
Let’s take the cost of running the UK as an example.
The House of Commons with 650 Mbps at £76,000 pa costing the tax payer £156 million a year.
Add in the £6.4m pa given to opposition parties (Short Money), and support items like IT, and the overall total for each MP goes up to £242,000 pa.
But that’s only part of the bill: we also need to add in the costs of running the Commons itself. According to the HoC Administration Resource Accounts 2006-07, those costs total £210m, which is a further £325,000 per MP.
Oops I nearly forgot the gold-plated final salary pension guaranteed by taxpayers.
The official cost of MPs’ pensions is under 12 per cent of their salary, after 11 per cent contributions from MPs themselves. This adds up to total pay and pension for an MP of £85,000 (their £76,000 salary and £9,000 pension).
So with 650 MPs, that means each one costs us £85,000 pa in salary, pension contributions and employment taxes. Those troublesome “staffing allowances” cost us an additional £57.9m pa- £90,000 for each MP. Then there’s incidental expenses, additional cost allowances, and travel expenses, totaling a further £30.7m (£48,000 each).
Then you have 814 unelected Peers in the House of Lords at £83,000 pa. Costing the tax payer £67,932,000 a year plus £462,510 in tax-free expenses. Members can claim £300 or £150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. The dining rooms and bars are all subsidised by the taxpayer.
Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill, who has claimed £220,000 of expenses over her 27 year career on the red benches, has never spoken in a debate.
The total cost of members’ allowances and travel is around £20 million per annum.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
Then you have the Civil Service 418,343, (316,792 full-time and 101,551 part-time.) Gross annual earnings (excluding overtime or one-off bonuses) for Civil Service employees is around £25,350, pa.
You dont have to ask why people are lying on the floors of hospital corridors.
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‘What do you do when there is nothing left to do?’
What should a government faced with an unmanageable level of unemployment do when conventional policy has failed to resolve the issue?’
Perhaps then a seemingly radical solution, such as universal basic income (UBI), becomes plausible. Universal Basic Income (UBI), a form of social security paid to individuals, not households. It is paid to everyone.
It would give individuals the freedom to say ‘yes’ to jobs. Individuals will not have to do that which they do not wish to do. Fewer people will engage in menial and unsatisfying work. Employers may be forced to increase the wages for underpaid or unpaid jobs.
UBI creates a floor (minimum level) on the income distribution curve, alleviates poverty, and gives bargaining power to the ones who have it least.
Forgetting about work for a moment (if you can), think about what you should do when your physiological needs are no longer a concern. If you’ve had a passion at the back of your mind then you might finally pursue it. If, on the other hand, you’ve passed life going from one kind of busy to another, then you might have missed opportunities to reflect and figure out what you would like to be doing. The cost of failure may have been too high if it meant putting you or your family’s livelihood at risk.
Assuming UBI ensures a basic livelihood for everyone in a community, do these citizens have a duty to give back by working? Do individuals have a duty to accept paid, available employment?
I would say Yes: Individuals should have a duty to do something, providing it is socially beneficial. There was something about people helping each other for its own sake that makes for a good society. A society is not well-functioning if it’s members are not interested in actively improving each other’s well-being.
Caring for the those who cannot care for themselves (such as the elderly, children and disabled). One could volunteer for various causes they care about, whether they be social, environmental, tech-related or so on.
Your recognition that you have alleviated the suffering of others might make you feel like you have done something meaningful.
UBI provides the opportunity for you to try contributing to your community in different ways. This freedom lets you find a way to contribute that is most satisfying for yourself.
It would remove fear replacing it with dignity.
UBI would also reduce the cost of citizens relying on the state for assistance.
There are many pending environmental crises hanging over us, but human wastefulness can be avoided. Can you imagine a world of 7.6 billion people no longer struggling for food or shelter and now focused on bettering the world for their children? That’s universal basic income. That’s a legacy we can all leave.
So why is it not being done?
Because it would downsize our consumerism lifestyle and remove inequality.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
I can hear you saying where will the money come from?
Vat, Negative Interest rates, Earnings from investments, Decreasing militry spending, Sovereign wealth funds, etc.
It would ensure that the distribution of the fruits of technology advancement are distributed fairly.
As Jeremy Howard said: ” In a post-scarcity world , why hold back wealth from people just because they can’t provide labor inputs just to create wealth.”
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin>
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
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So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
We live in a world that is being connected and disconnected at the same time.
Two related facts.
But don’t worry we now have Algorithms that both filter and recommend.
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
The reality is that there’s no way of knowing where our generation is going in terms of technology and our reliance on it.
The year 2018 will be the year in which human interaction decreases the more technology increases. While social media fosters an environment of connectedness and belonging in the digital world, it also forces a disconnect between people in the real world.
With false news and social media, words are on their last legs, with print for the high jump, we will have more arse holes 2018 twittering shaping the world.
Where two or three words gather together there is a great danger that thought might be present. However we once again don’t have to worry because we have the option to log off and unplug anytime we want, so it’s up to us to decide if we want to engage with the actual world or the virtual one.
Technology may well be is a societal advancement that has enabled our generation to do things previous generations never would have thought possible.
However:
The biggest problem we have is accepting each other’s differences.
“Technology makes us forget what we know about life.”
82 per cent of smart phone users said they rarely (if ever) powered off their phones last year, while less than 43 per cent of 13- to 18-year-olds saw any value in ever going unplugged.
Why?
This is the Eternal Question to which there is no answer, and yet the only one that has to be asked.
Take a look around you.
Every day we becoming more and more desensitized. Save this Save that while saving the planet is being left to technology.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans.
But the real problem is how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely.
This is very poorly understood.
Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and it is more likely it could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.
It seems that most of us are in a mental wasteland inhabited by those upon whom the portcullis ( A sudden blotting out of all normal thought) has fallen.
How did we get to a place where the content on our phones is more interesting than the world around us?
In today’s society, scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram has taken precedence over the real events scrolling through our daily lives.
Being “connected” to machinery 24/7 is affecting our ability to connect with our lives and the people around us.
Mechanical devices bait us into a make-believe life, as we are slowly being pulled away from a sense of who we are and what really matters.
Modern life is making us lonelier.
It’s not the technology that’s the problem; it’s us for abusing it.
We’ve become more and more antisocial by relying on technology too heavily.
Maybe if we look up and away from the flashing images and colors on our most recent Safari search, we will actually enjoy the company of those around us. So instead of counting the number of likes, count the memories in your life, because at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
For the foreseeable future, it won’t be possible to take people out of the decision-making process, but the year 2018 will with the power of Profit Seeking Algorithms push us further down the road of hypnotic trance.
Technology is a valuable tool when used correctly. However, the law has to catch up with privacy and safety issues, not mention profit seeking algorithms.
We’ve all heard about the power of algorithms—but Algorithms to Live is in my book to be avoided at all costs, if we are to value what is vital to us all.
They are creating a world of such inequality that the scariest thing is the immense possibilities of these unregulated Algorithms will turn us and all that is necessary for a sustainable life into commodities to be exploited.
What can be done:
Education, Education is the only solution.
By this I mean education not for the market place but for the foundation of knowledge. Not just a narrow streamlined pipeline of mundane thoughts which doesn’t let you think outside the box and do things on your own.
Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Ecology, to name a few.
Dramatic changes are inevitable, we need to accept the fact on ground level that our education models are broken and paralyzed.
Perhaps we might well need computer algorithms to select the best candidate?
There’s no magic formula, freedom and dignity will not be found on social media, nor computed by algorithms.
There are too many parts of today’s conversations that can not be translated through technology.
Tearing apart the nation states and the world with ALGORITHMS is a
Disaster waiting to happen. No Robot with a brain full of algorithms is
going to have the the ability of an artist to have human empathy and an
appreciation of history; while also having the savvy self-awareness to
understand that their work merely takes its place in a greater culture
at large. Such art brings comfort in our modern secular world: where
spirituality seems to live in a foreign universe of yesteryear.
You’re more than a number.
how the mythical and quotidian usually overlap to
the point where the two become indistinguishable.
So join a club and organizations to make real friends.
Happy New year.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits: Not because they are becoming all-powerful, that might turn into a source of repression, but because they are exploiting us all for profit.
They make decisions about us and on our behalf.
They are now integrated into our lives. We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything. As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them. They will ensure the 1 per cent-99 per cent divide gets larger.
If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.
On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf, but the problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines we are really outsourcing thinking to the organizations that run the machines.
At the moment ignoring the fact that they are driving the cost of living up it is not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy.
As technology evolves, everything is going up in price.
Raw materiel’s are going up leap and bounds because of a dictatorship of data, that is concentrating on how to generate the most profit.
As profit seeking algorithms power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.
They do so not out of the goodness of their little algorithmic hearts, but rather because they earn a “fee” for this service.
There are many different types of algorithms at play, with different intentions and impacts, however there is one thing that is becoming quite clear day by day that they are driving the human market makers out of business by being smarter and faster.
They are upending the nature of business, how government works and the way we live, from healthcare to education.
We should not allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use. It’s impossible to do this perfectly. How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?
It won’t be long before big data denies us a bank loan or considers us unfit for a surgical operation, but we can’t learn the explicit reasons because the variables that went in programming them were so myriad and complex?
There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms.
Big data is even change how we think about the world and our place in it. (Penalizing people based on what they are predicted to do, not what the have done.)
Taken in the widest sense, algorithms OWNED BY MONOPOLIES are now responsible for the vast majority of activity on modern stock markets.
The well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries.
Retail algorithms don’t scare me as we still have free will. However Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures.
Wherever we use computers, we rely on algorithms: With so much data around, and the ability to process it, big data is the bedrock of new companies profit.
Can we regulate them? I think not.
If you were leader of your country, what would you do?
I would have, Science, technology and inclusive innovation through education, on the national agenda. Education free and equal for all.
Unfortunately this will not happen. Even if it did Profit seeking Algorithms will still be exploiting every weakness.
There is only one defense.
WE MUST RE NATIONALIZE OUR SOCIAL SERVICES, SO ALL BENEFIT NOT JUST THE FEW. Nationalize what is important, Health, Power, Water, Education.
The key outcome of nationalization is the redirection of revenues to the country’s government instead of private operators who may export funds with no benefit to the host country.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We are becoming less and less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change. Deforestation, Freshwater Species Extinctions, Climate Change and Destruction of Natural Resources, Large-scale Wars and Religious Conflicts.
“human cost” of the current system:
Not to Mention Technology.
What we prioritize, the way we shape our lives, affects the evolutionary future of our species, so we would do well to start asking some simple question about the untended consequences of technology?
Is it likely that in the near future humans are going to speciate? ( Humans one species and robots another. )
If you can’t explain Artificial intelligence/ Machine learning stored in the cloud and what it is doing to the public, there’s a good chance it doesn’t merit doing.
The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.
That is only 30 odd year away.
We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation that is robbing us of the essence of our humanity.
Driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet, we are perhaps witnessing the end of human evolution as we know it.
Up to now human evolution proceeded extremely slowly and within historical memory, man has exhibited aggressive territorial behavior. Even as we bask smugly in the comforts of our smart phones natural selection to-day still ensured that only the fittest survived.
However it may not be long before computers are hooked up to the human brain with genetic trade-offs till we can’t be improved any further,
Then evolution will really have come to a stop for us. We will be the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.
Stopping natural selection is not as important, or as depressing, as it might sound — because our evolutionary process will then be cultural.
One way or the other by the time we get there our current social, political and economic systems will have driven inequalities with profit seeking algorithms off the map, rather than reducing them.
The challenge is to manage this seismic change in a way that promotes the long-term health and stability of the planet.
The writing has been on the wall for some time.
So where do we stand:
Since 1992 CO2 emissions have jumper 62% and the global temperature is up 29%. Fresh water is down 26%. Ocean dead zones up 76% . Forestland down 300 million acres. People up 35%.
You would think that we the biggest dimwit on the planet looking at this evidence would conclude that there is something very wrong. If you dont know what it is, we have evolved beyond our needs, trampling other species in the process.
We are now at a turning point we can either push ahead on our path to destruction or we can reshape our place in nature and prosper or we can face a humongous environmental crisis.
You would think that with everything connected by the internet, it would transform how we do business and help us manage resources more efficiently and sustainable.
As you can see this is not the result.
On the contrary the way we’ve set up corporations, world organisations, where even a majority vote cannot demand that a corporation’s or world organisation policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use.
That’s because profit is the one and only motive.
It’s up to government and it’s up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations and world organisations are simply not allowed to.
Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet. By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.
However today, 43% of the world’s population are connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.
In a world driven by short-term profit, the connectivity theory is and will remain so far off the mark it can only be believed by artificial intelligence.
Growing unease over globalization, which is evident from the number of questions being asked about the power of corporations and the adequacy of the regulations governing employment, environmental issues and taxation, is causing economic and social ills, ranging from low consumption to social and political unrest, and is damaging to any future.
There is no need for me to tell you that we are living in turbulent times.
It is clear that the old stories are dying and if we continue to poison ourselves and the planet by self-interest, fragmentation and profit for profit sake there will be no point to the age of technology other than becoming slaves.
However evolution is going on invisibly all the time. Species evolve in response to whatever environment they encounter. No despots have ever set out to select for increased or decreased longevity in the populations they control.
By 2050, the world must feed 9 billion people. Yet the demand for food will be 60% greater than it is today.
The scale of the employment challenge is vast. Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. These advances could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.
This might be the most important transition of the next century – either ushering in an unprecedented era of wealth and progress, or heralding disaster.
But it’s also an area that’s highly neglected: while billions are spent making AI more powerful. The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. It is estimated that there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.
If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur.
It’s generally agreed that, among the forces that led to the immense sophistication of the human brain, the most powerful was a kind of feedback loop between the growing complexity of our ancestors’ physical and social environment and the ability of our ancestors to adapt to it. But why, you may ask, has the enormous increase in complexity of our recent technological environment not had a measurable physical impact on our brains?
The rate at which we are changing our environment now has outstripped even the fastest biological evolution.
However the ineluctable laws of evolution will continue to operate, probably even more strongly, in the overcrowded, ecologically damaged world of the future. And if things get really bad, the evolutionary consequences could be extreme. Any survivors of a nuclear holocaust or an ecological catastrophe are likely to be a small and highly selected subset of today’s population.
If, for example, destruction were so widespread that people could not form viable social groups, the evolution of our descendants would inevitably be driven in the direction of brutishness.
If our technologies fail to protect us against these forces of nature our genetic heritage could fail us too, meaning human evolution will return with a vengeance.
Then again if everyone had exactly the same set of genes controlling the brain’s development, there would be no genetic differences among people on which natural selection could act–and evolution really would come to a stop!
War then would be the strong life; it is life in extremism; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
There is no doubting the force of [the] arguments above, call me back in 3 million years time, because I may well be wrong on that one.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
They say we have free will, but there are many types of tyrannies in our world.
You could describe our hand-held devices which are keeping us connected to anything, anytime, anywhere as one.
We now use our hand-held devices for almost everything. More importantly, they use us for everything.
The extreme availability of information has not led to a more enlightened population, but to more confusion.
Connectivity is both a blessing and a curse.
It has become the pathway for almost all we do as we have become helpless without technology and the need for immediate data at our fingertips. But this is taking its toll.
The number of times we look at our phones daily would shock you: some studies say 50 times, others as many as 75 to 150 times. Most of our e mails are reactionary.
Information technology is all-pervasive in production and consumption.
Each time we look at the phone, we look away from what we should be or were focused on. Our collective ability to stay focused on anything is destroyed.
How does this connect to Growth.
It is too simplistic to attribute all of our economic problems to government: indeed, that sort of reasoning is counterproductive: it absolves everyone else responsibility.
Although part of the responsibility lies with forces that are outside a government, a significant share rests with the attitudes, preoccupations, we have to Artificial Intelligence that is now analyzing our every movement to the extent that advertising is becoming personalized.
I’m not saying that growth is bad but growth that destroys value just for profit is cancer that is driving inequality with a tendency to cluster around the short-term, issues while ignoring reality is going to bite us all.
I want to begin by touching on a crucial economy-wide factor
in the erosion of our economic strength which fosters short-term
thinking.
Advertising:
It is a major driver of unnecessary consumption.
This hasn’t always been the problem. Advertising use to inform you of the useful qualities of an object. Now it manipulates your emotions like anxiety and promises to improve social acceptance or class distinction.
It is now with a frenzy of social media advertising attaching its self to saving the world that is driving consumption to new dizzying heights.
Growth for growth’s sake, is an ugly word with even uglier connotations when it is using social media in the form of algorithms FOR PROFIT, regardless of the cost.
So what is driving it:
In the information age, time is compressed and events are squeezed into ever-decreasing periods.
We have governments encouraging a restless, fleeting mode of being, and a superficial, hurried culture, which is inimical to fundamental values.
They encourage growth programs, the benefits of which are available immediately, but the costs of which appear only at a later stage. They are less interested in public investments that have to be financed now but do not payoff adequately before the next election.
It’s as if human progress depends on economic progress.
At minimum, the kind of short-term oriented cycle in which we find ourselves behaves as though tomorrow is forever. And, in fact, a series of tomorrows will create a forever — a very predictable one — and not a very desirable or promising one.
Rewards which are heavily focused on short-term results, even if they make some financial sense, often do not deliver the economic promise or the synergy which is anticipated.
Perhaps it is true that the landmarks in human progress — in the arts, science, government, or elsewhere — have rarely been reached in societies in which the economy was unable to free most of its members from a daily obsession with subsistence needs.
On the contrary, wherever the economy is feeble or stagnant for
a prolonged period, where most people see their basic material
needs as unfulfilled and the prospects for improvement as
unlikely, the result is almost invariably either a dull fatalism
or political upheaval, neither of which is likely to be favorable
to liberty and freedom.
However we are now looking at a unremitting focus on economic growth. The drive to achieve growth at practically any cost and to the exclusion of all other measures of prosperity.
This focus on GDP growth as the prime measure of economic success is out of date. It’s not how big it is that counts, it’s what you do with it.
The distance to the future – is no longer the next election, it will be how much you are willing to pay the Cloud for information. The cumulative effects of almost five decades of constantly accelerating reliance on government regulation to address social inequities and problems is coming to an end.
The linkage between ownership and participation is changing.
Social Media is not just eroding the meaning of democracy but effecting our critical thinking skills. Polluted with consumption advertising it is adding to global inequality.
While there are hundreds of different marketing strategies, only one can bring in consistent sales from day one. Social media advertising. This is why global social ad spending doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and is projected to increase another 26% in 2017.
One of the fascinating things about social advertising is that there is virtually no limit to your ability to scale.You don’t have to wait for someone to search for your targeted keywords. You don’t have to wait for someone to run your promotion or read your blog.
( For Instance:
With more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, providing advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone and everyone. It provides free lead magnet like:
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Product coupons
Sitewide discounts
Limited-time offers
Giveaways
Free shipping
These leads can then be nurtured with a targeted autoresponder. Offering free products, download-ables and predictable discounts and coupons for her audience. Doing so has earned Facebook more than $1,000,000 in annual sales in just 2 years. Facebook allows more advanced targeting than any other advertising platform on earth. Advertisers can target by location (within a 5-mile radius), job description, interests, past activity, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.
Instagram now boasts more than 500 million monthly active users and commands one of the highest audience engagement rates in social media, 58% higher than Facebook and 2000% higher than Twitter.
Twitter with 328 million monthly active users, it remains one of the most popular social media platforms. Brands don’t need to pay in order to reach their followers, which enhances the platform’s value even when running paid ads.
Pinterest: With 175 million monthly users is highly targeted toward women with an 81% female user base.
LinkedIn : Where you tend to find the highest average disposable income, has an estimated 227 million monthly active users.
Snapchat Advertising:310 million users.
All Social advertising is incredibly measurable.)
(You can, in fact, control when you choose to look at your hand-held device.)
In light of this one easy solution to over-consumption would be to ban advertising- at least in pubic places and on Social Media where Profit seeking Algorithms are used.
Much of’ the crippling of our economic systems can find its roots in Algorithms for profit. (see previous posts)
The consequences of elected government’s short-range perspective are not difficult to understand. They are seen as having succeeded in undermining the economy through overbearing regulation, tolerance of inflation, indifference to the cost of environmental and social programs, and a pervasive anti-business attitude.
Government thus diminishes the private sector’s sense of responsibility —
both in economic and ethical terms — for its own conduct and for its own performance.
While I appreciate that degrowth will not happen as quickly as we need it to do and it will take generations to move our collective consciousness on most issue, we don’t have that kind of time any longer.
Technology that ostensibly should help people save time, has instead led to a situation where time is scarcer than ever.
When an exponential growth curve becomes vertical, time has ceased to exist as duration.”life stands still at a tremendous speed”, with serious consequences for culture, intellectual life and the very fabric of society.
What we do not know today is what it will take to send us to
the pumps.
The struggle now concerns the right to be unavailable, the right to live and think more slowly.
Choosing to live according to one’s own self-made conception of reality, human nature, and happiness is a recipe for tyranny.
It is about time that we ask what wireless communications and the Internet are preconditions for. They are problems need to be understood well, in order to be dealt with the political upheaval that is around the corner.
Relying on averages generate by computers is worsening inequality
within countries, and the world as a whole.
So is there anything that can be done legitimately that will have a positive effect.
Becoming more grounded in ones own true feelings and perceptions is a primary indication that one has begun to free himself from the “tyranny of the should.”
Assuring that investment in future profitability is not sacrificed on
the altar of quarterly earnings growth. Refocusing our approach to economic decision-making, to benefit all not the few.
Willingness to pay the price today for the health and vitality of the country tomorrow is the ultimate test of stewardship. To live with a view to the regime should not be supposed to be slavery, but preservation.
Finally, it is as we all know easy to point the finger, however we are the will in any form or symbol and we are identifiable as water.
However if we are to address any of our world problems and stop the self-perpetuating downward cycle, with all the suction of a whirlpool, from which there will be no escape we cannot and should not rely on technology to bail us out.
There is only one solution. Make Greed pay a World Aid commission of 0.05% ( See previous post)
Technology, if it has not yet become the de fac~o
decision- — . . . maker in the production process, has
certainly become a participant who cannot be
ignored.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.
However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.
Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.
It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.
It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.
It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.
The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.
You might think that this is all hog wash.
( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.
It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”
Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.
You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree. Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.
Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina. ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)
Back to the more serious subject:
It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.
The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.
Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.
This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.
Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.
Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.
Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.
This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.
So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.
The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.
As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.
Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.
THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:
All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.
It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.
Accountable, Transparent, Reversible.
If we are to have any hope of tackling any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
So reducing the size of the House by about 250 members would represent a significant saving to the taxpayer.
The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.
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