Tag Archives: Facebook

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: CAN AMERICA BLAME ITS ANTIQUATED VOTE SYSTEM OR DID TWITTER AND FACEBOOK ALGORITHMS ELECT TRUMP.

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Brexit., Elections/ Voting, Facebook, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Modern Day Democracy., Politics., Social Media., The Internet., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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( A three-minute read for all Americans and all of us who value the freedom of a  Vote)

This week, Americans elected a new president who had essentially no support from mainstream politicians or media, SENDING THE CAPITALIST WORLD INTO A FRENZY OF VERBAL DIARRHEA.

How on earth did this happen?

Something else (aside from the design of the Electoral College) was needed to put Trump in the White House.

You don’t get people to see things your way by calling them idiots and racists, or sorting them into baskets of deplorables and pitiables, but with the help of Twitter and Facebook you can sow the seeds of discontent whether true or not.  Its called virtual community manipulation of what they do rather than where they are.

To speak the truth is no longer needed to gain power.

If you bend your values in challenging, strained times they’re not worth much at all when the going gets better.

In that sense, this posting may seem futile, but to any Americans reading this who are presently frustrated by a political system that does not necessarily reward the candidate with the most votes I would pass on this observation.

It is very interesting that the great symbol that is situated in the harbor of New York City, the Statue of Liberty, is a woman, carrying a torch, with her book of wisdom in hand, the crown of light atop of head, and a torch of light held high with her right hand.

She is the keeper of lost wisdom and the guide for lost souls. 

She is also a painful reminder that the liberty she promises is now becoming enslaved to a world of algorithm systems.

Trump was much better than Hillary Clinton at social media use.

Trump’s Twitter — full of ranting tweet storms and things he regretted — looks in broad outline like the account of a human who likes Twitter. Clinton’s looks like a brand.

Plainly, Trump’s election and the Brexit vote are rebellions against elite opinion — that is, against political orthodoxy and its defenders.

In both cases, the question is, how does one account for the uprising?

There’s no single reason.

What they have in common is anger at the existing economic order, and the use of social media.

You might think that after a price tag of $6.8 billion in vested interests (That’s more than what consumers spend on cereal ($6 billion), pet grooming ($5.4 billion) and legal marijuana ($5.4 billion),  would produce a leader better than a man who has spouted misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and climate change-denying views.

Not so.

As we’ve learned in this election, bullshit is highly engaging, with Mr President Trump not giving a flying toss whether he Tweeted the truth or otherwise, but it means that Twitter is harmful — it provides an echo chamber that confirms and intensifies dangerous false views — then there’s not as much it can do about it.

Tweaks to the algorithm won’t help.

As a result we can all look forward to having the biggest megaphone in the world in Jan of next year.

We are entering dangerous times not because of Trump’s Election but because Facebook and Twitter algorithms, of a shapes and sizes are now deciding the government of the United States not the vote.

Both Facebook and twitter news feeds were responsible for fueling “highly partisan, fact-light media outlets” that propelled Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

But Facebook is just a clicks-and-shares company.

Its mission, its ethos, is that people should tell their friends and family what they’re up to. If what they are up to is making videos of cats doing funny things, Facebook doesn’t care if the videos were staged. And if what they’re up to is sharing anti-Semitic memes and fake news, then … I mean … what?

Facebook’s DNA is in the sharing business, not the truth business, and its thinking about how to deal with the truth and harm of what it shares is inchoate and muddled.

It is not far off the truth that both of these companies optimize their content for popularity and profit rather than truth. Behind the scenes, Facebook has been studying and analyzing its effect on news consumption.

They are as old as for-profit media. In general these companies start with an ethic of truth-seeking and fairness that then may or may not be compromised by the quest for clicks and shares.

Where does all of this leave modern-day democracy.

With the unwinding of economic linkages the planet’s wealthiest and most powerful countries face a slow-moving but potentially devastating political and economic crisis.

If we all stay silent when men brag about sexually assaulting women. If we accept lies and hate speech about women, or migrant, refugee and Muslim communities.

If we stop pushing to prevent catastrophic climate change.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” It’s easy to lose something you don’t even know you had.Afficher l'image d'origine

Mr Obama would do well during the transition of power to bring the President elect to see the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The liberty she promises is not slavery to world’s system of Facebook, Twitter or the Internet of everything. 

It is so that humanity as a whole can muster the courage to seek the truth.

This can only be achieved by the simply use paper ballots not The Electoral College. Not computerized voting machines.

The problem with algorithm systems is that one can’t guarantee that the software is doing what it is supposed to do. (see previous posts)

It is time we pulled aside the cloak, and take a good look at the real facts, and what they mean for us, today.

The United States electoral system remains a work in progress, as it has for more than 230 years. Surely it time to remove the power of the $ and save the rest of us from eighteen months of bickering.

All comments welcome. Or if you like join the silent brigade and press the like button.

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ARE ENTERING THE ERA OF MASS DISTRACTION.

22 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Communication., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Technology, The Future, The Internet., What Needs to change in the World, WiFi communication.

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An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images is rendering us manic information addicts.

Every single minute on the planet, YouTube users upload 400 hours of video and Tinder users swipe profiles over a million times.

Each day, there are literally billions of Facebook “likes.”

Online Social media outlets are now publish exponentially more material than they once did, churning out articles at a rapid-fire pace, adding new details to the news every few minutes.

Blogs, Facebook feeds, Tumblr accounts, tweets, and propaganda outlets repurpose, borrow, and add topspin to the same output.

We are guided to these info-nuggets by myriad little interruptions on social media, all cascading at us with individually tailored relevance and accuracy.Afficher l'image d'origine

We all distracted by a constant stream of things to annoy, enlighten, or infuriate; a niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation; and a way to measure success — in big and beautiful data — that was a constant dopamine bath for the writerly ego.

Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on.  We are all close to helpless.

Silicon Valley’s technologists and their ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow. No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.

The modest mastery of our practical lives is what fulfilled us for tens of thousands of years — until technology and capitalism decided it was entirely dispensable.

By rapidly substituting virtual reality for reality, we are diminishing the scope of interaction even as we multiply the number of people with whom we interact.

We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.

GPS, for example, has led to our not even seeing, let alone remembering, the details of our environment, to our not developing the accumulated memories that give us a sense of place and control over what we once called ordinary life.

New technology has seized control of around one-third young adults’ waking hours.

Afficher l'image d'origine

The result is yet to be seen and we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, in wars, movement of people, erosion of democracy, surveillance and where to find the truth.

As we are  being methodically filled with more stimulus and noise and this new epidemic of distraction is our civilization’s specific weakness.

The amount of time we spend cruising vastly outweighs the time we may ever get to spend with the objects of our desire. Virtual living is creating a mental climate that will be maddeningly hard to manage.

Beyond mere doing, there is also being;

We are becoming each other’s “contacts,” efficient shadows of ourselves.

We hide our vulnerabilities, airbrushing our flaws and quirks; we project our fantasies onto the images before us.

Why is any of this important.

Take the smart phone for example.

When someone next to you answers the phone and starts talking loudly as if you didn’t exist, you realize that, in his or her private zone, you don’t.

They are robbing  us of a silence that was previously regarded as integral to the health of the human imagination.

The device went from unknown to indispensable in less than a decade.

Once you disappeared down a rabbit hole, but the smart phone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing.

Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives. All the hazards of real human interaction are being  banished.

Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance.

These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.

The smart phone revolution of the past decade can be seen in some ways simply as the final twist.

We are reducing our human contacts into a world that exists largely free of the sudden eruptions or encumbrances of actual human interaction.  A Facebook “friend,” an Instagram photo, a text message — in a controlled and sequestered way that makes integration of cultures impossible.  This, evolutionary psychologists will attest, is fatal. An entire universe of intimate responses is flattened to a single, distant swipe.

Walk down the street, and I’m the only person not plugged in. Or lunch where the first to person to use their phone pays the whole bill?

Here to the frazzled digital generation if they believe that $3 billion of Mark Zuckerberg Facebook profits will put an end to Disease.

Who does he think he is fooling.  Facebook is a Disease.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS YOU TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE LIST OF WHAT IS BAD ABOUT FACEBOOK.

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Modern Day Communication., The Internet., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Where's the Global Outrage.

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Yesterday day I was surprised by the interest in my post which asked:  Is Facebook destroying Relationships.

So while the subject is fresh in my head have you by any chance noticed yourself feeling less friendly toward Facebook lately?

If so, you’re not alone.Afficher l'image d'origine

Facebook knows practically everything about me.

Its facial-recognition software is so good, it recognizes me in photos.

The more Facebook feels like a big stage, the less inviting it becomes.

You’ve probably noticed how the “friends” who show up in your News Feed most often aren’t the ones whose lives you’re most interested in but simply the ones who have a lot to say.

Now that Facebook is an enormous, everyday part of our existence on this rocky sphere, I think we have to ask if its growth is making us happy or encouraging us to do things that make us, ultimately, not happy.

So let’s see if Facebook takes any notice of what is wrong by compiling a list to see if ultimately, Facebook doesn’t care what kind of content gets shared or who’s sharing it, as long as it’s able to capture an ever-larger share of its users’ attention minutes.

There’s no question that Facebook is changed our lives.

It has ingrained itself into the daily lives of digital-age users in a way that is affecting all of us. When Facebook was founded in 2004, it began with a seemingly innocuous mission: to connect friends. Some seven years and 800 million users later, the social network has taken over most aspects of our personal and professional lives, and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.

As with any new (or newly discovered) technology, the impact of the end product is largely in the hands of the user. We are, after all, only human — with all the joy and sadness, decency and ugliness that that entails.

But here are some of the things I dont like.

I am sure that sooner or later, each Facebook user has occasion to ask the same questions.

Which is not to say it’s all “likes” and “shares” and happy kid pics, wedding announcements? Thing of the past. Birth announcement?

Just as ordinary users once got the unpleasant sense that Facebook was becoming a venue for professionally produced corporate content.

I don’t like their timeline.

I don’t like that Facebook is fundamentally positive, with no dislike button.

I don’t like that it is becoming a major contributors to career anxiety for the Young.
I don’t like that it steer you toward certain online behaviors.
I don’t like that it is filling our heads with the Hypnotoad from Futurama.
I don’t like that it is creating a form of social television. Pitching itself as a parallel Web, based on relationships and sharing rather than content (the value is in the connections).
I don’t like that it is building immense value off all sorts of emotional and psychological inadequacies?
I don’t like that it is creating an online culture of competition and comparison. In a sense it is a kind of socially powered online game that is actually making us miserable.
I don’t like it reminding me that I am getting old. Nostalgia is part of life. But, with Facebook, getting nostalgic represents detailed updates on your mundane day are mind-numbing.
It is cramming more and more features onto your page. It is becoming ever clearer to the content makers how little Facebook cares about what any of them do. That’s what all this boils down to.
I don’t like the fact that it is attempting to monopolize your eyeballs and associated personal data to what it thinks you like.
That’s what Facebook will become tomorrow ANAlOG CRYSTAL Ball based on unverifiable data.Afficher l'image d'origine
Facebook is what people make of it.
Remember it can be hacked and that in a hundred years from now it will be full of dead people. 
ALL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LIST WELCOME. IF WE MANAGE TO GET A WELL SUPPORTED LIST; WE WILL SENT IT TO FACEBOOK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: FACEBOOK IS DESTROYING RELATIONSHIPS.

29 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Modern Day Communication., Technology, The Internet., The world to day., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A three to four-minute read)

I suppose before I write this post I need to declare I am a Facebook user. One of every 13 people on Earth is a Facebook user.

Among 18-to-34-year-olds, nearly half check Facebook minutes after waking up, and 28 percent do so before getting out of bed.

The idea that a Web site could deliver a more friendly, interconnected world is bogus.

When the telephone arrived, people stopped knocking on their neighbors’ doors.

Social media bring this process to a much wider set of relationships. Social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years.

Facebook, of course, puts the pursuit of happiness front and center in our digital life.

Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill.

A considerable part of Facebook’s appeal stems from its miraculous fusion of distance with intimacy, or the illusion of distance with the illusion of intimacy.

The real danger with Facebook is not that it allows us to isolate ourselves, but that by mixing our appetite for isolation with our vanity, it threatens to alter the very nature of solitude.

We are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us.

We look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy.

We don’t want to intrude on each other, so instead we constantly intrude on each other, but not in ‘real time.

Facebook imprisons us in the business of self-presenting, and this, is the site’s crucial and fatally unacceptable downside.

Facebook creates loneliness.

The depth of one’s social network outside Facebook is what determines the depth of one’s social network within Facebook, not the other way around. Using social media doesn’t create new social networks; it just transfers established networks from one platform to another.

For the most part, Facebook doesn’t destroy friendships—but it doesn’t create them, either.

Our Internet connections are growing broader but shallower.

I think Facebook is primarily a platform for lonely skulking.

WHY?

Because Internet communication allows only ersatz intimacy.

Surrogates can never make up completely for the absence of the real thing.” The “real thing” being actual people, in the flesh.

One-click communication — the lazy click of a like. Passive consumption and broadcasting — correlates to feelings of disconnectedness.

We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible.

Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment.

In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society.

We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.

We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.

The effects of Facebook on a broader population, over time.

On whatever scale you care to judge Facebook—as a company, as a culture, as a country—it is vast beyond imagination.

Facebook is interfering with our real friendships, distancing us from each other, making us lonelier; and that social networking might be spreading the very isolation it seemed designed to conquer. Facebook encourages more contact with people outside of our household, at the expense of our family relationships.

In the face of this social disintegration, we have essentially hired an army of replacement confidants. We have outsourced the work of everyday caring.

Facebook capacity to redefine our very concepts of identity and personal fulfillment is much more worrisome than the data-mining and privacy practices that have aroused anxieties about the company.

We are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are.

Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity.

We are underestimating: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect.

Sending out a friend request, then waiting and clicking and waiting and clicking—a moment of superconnected loneliness preserved in amber. We have all been in that scene: transfixed by the glare of a screen, hungering for response.

It’s the quality, not the quantity of social interaction that counts. Social capital—the strength and value of interpersonal networks.

Loneliness is not a matter of external conditions; it is a psychological state.

The question of the future is this:

Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating.

Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet?

Facebook is merely a tool, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact,it increases social capital. Casting technology as some vague, impersonal spirit of history forcing our actions is a weak excuse.

We make decisions about how we use our machines, not the other way around.

So here is some advice:

The beauty of Facebook, the source of its power, is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the embarrassing reality of society— Is it taking liberties by reminding your so called friends that your Birthday is arriving, by posting your memories, by passing your data to other servers.

A connection is not the same thing as a bond, and that instant and total connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity.

The relentlessness is what is so new, so potentially transformative. 

Facebook never takes a break.

Instead of  sending a private Facebook message is the semi-public conversation, the kind of back-and-forth in which you half ignore the other people who may be listening in you should be using it as a signpost to what is wrong with the World.

Click the like button and Face book will log it. Make a comment and Facebook might take note.

 

 

 

 

 

 

have the lovely smoothness of a seemingly social machine. Everything’s so simple: status updates, pictures, your wall.

 

 

 

 

 

Today, the one common feature in American secular culture is its celebration of the self that breaks away from the constrictions of the family and the state, and, in its greatest expressions, from all limits entirely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technology is making us conscious of the need for a new society.

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

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In my last post I said that “Technology is making us conscious of the need for a new society.” It was a thought without an explanation.Illustration

It seems pretty obvious to most observers that our social networks have changed in the past few decades thanks to technology. The widespread use of cell phones, the increasing affordability of air travel, the rise of the Internet, and the advent of social media have changed the way we work, the way we live, and the way we make and maintain friendships, the way we view the world.

Our increasing on-line connectives is and has changed our perceptions of our social world for the better and to the determent of reality. The world of social networking sites is changing every day and is going to have more impact on the lives of generations to come. Because television and other popular forms of social media shape our perception of reality.

Nothing epitomises the anonymity of the Internet more than Anonymous.

Anonymity can be extremely dangerous, particularly to governments.

On the other hand sharing is all the rage these days.  Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow people across the globe to broadcast every detail of their lives with the rest of the world through the mediums of text, audio, photo and video. Nowadays, the internet has simplified everything to the extent where you’re never more than a few minutes away from what you need.

However is the on-line world truly distinct from the off-line one?

Illegal activity such as drug distribution or human trafficking are handled through the ‘deep web’, areas of the internet not indexed by search engines. The worldwide group of self-proclaimed ‘hacktivists’ whose actions have had a number of significant impacts on corporations around the globe are another example.

General internet opinion is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of establishing a consensus on something, with businesses or Governments ignoring public opinion doing so at their peril.

Technology hasn’t undermined our social relationships, although it has certainly affected them.

The prevalence of social media has, as a result, fundamentally changed the way we read and watch: we think about how we’ll share something, and whom we’ll share it with, as we consume it.

So what impact does Facebook have on today’s technologically advanced society?

Facebook’s effect on today’s society is not difficult to distinguish. … Facebook opens up other questions about today’s society, too. … in the age of digital communication when we can follow our state and national politicians on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But it remains nothing more than a medium for communication, and yet, it is so much more than that. At a glance, a user can learn everything from what gender a Facebook member is, to what religion they believe in, what school they attend, and their likes and dislikes, all with the click of a mouse.

In other words, the world of constant connectivity and media, as embodied by Facebook, is the social network’s worst enemy.

The time of mentally entertaining ourselves, is disappearing. We’ve forgotten how.” Whenever we have downtime, the Internet is an enticing, quick solution that immediately fills the gap. We get bored, look at Facebook or Twitter, and become more bored.

Getting rid of Facebook wouldn’t change the fact that our attention is, more and more frequently, forgetting the path to proper, fulfilling engagement. And in that sense, Facebook isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.

The number of things we have pulling at our attention, the less we are able to meaningfully engage, and the more discontented we become. What Facebook does to our emotional state may be in simply looking at what people actually do when they’re on Facebook. What makes it complicated is that Facebook is for lots of different things—and different people use it for different subsets of those things.

Topics such as cyber bullying, addiction to cyber porn, and overall addiction to Internet games are something we need to study more.

The Internet may increase the overall frequency of communication but it is opening a new forum of disconnection to what really matters in our lives. The internet doesn’t just offer information in comprehensive fashion, it offers it instantaneously.

It is an ongoing record of human history – regardless of how much it continues to grow, individuals will always be able to access some obscure story from the earlier nineties, for instance, ensuring that almost anything we create today will never be lost to future generations.

Sites that mix professional and public criticism together, such as Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic, are now regarded as highly important by the likes of film and game manufacturers, as negative reception spreads more quickly than ever and sales are impacted as a result.

Crowd sourcing is allowing projects to source investment, interest and possible custom from a huge user base.

E Bay is providing a medium for consumers to make exchanges with other consumers, allowing people to sell their unwanted goods rather than throwing them away.

YouTube, Sound Cloud or U stream, is used to distribute either pre-recorded or live material.

Trip Advisor, where everything from restaurants to hotels are looked at in meticulous detail.

Netflix and catch-up services. Tailored marketing, literature, games, films and television have outgrown the need for a costly physical medium such as a book or disc, and are accessible in an instant on the likes of e-book readers.

From car-sharing and house-hunting to dating and charitable donation sourcing, somebody somewhere seems to have come up with an online solution that makes things easier, and long may it stay that way.

What is lacking (for lack of a better word) is an Internet World Political Party.MapBoxOSM

A rallying point to bring the power of the Internet to address the Inequalities in our world.

To increases social trust and engagement—and even encourages political participation. It would impart a feelings of bonding with a general social capital increase that could be used to pressurize change for the good of us all.

We live our lives immersed in technology, surrounded by cell phones, computers, video games, digital music players and video cams.

The Internet of Things : ’The home of the future. Your own personal digital ‘nanny’ to control almost every element of your life through apps or a web browser.

People will not only make their entire home web-connect and use it for personal benefits they will also become addicted to their Digital Nanny. 

The Internet of things will become central to society than the internet as we know it today, its role will probably be reduced in the future.

Nonetheless, it’s definitely exciting to see what the future brings other than –                                                     “Liking.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knock, Knock, Who there? 2015

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Happy New Year to one and all.

As a species, we are social beings who live out our lives in the company of other humans. We organize ourselves into various kinds of social groupings, such as nomadic bands, villages, cities, and countries, in which we work, trade, play, reproduce, and interact in many other ways. Unlike other species, we combine socialization with deliberate changes in social behavior and organization over time.

Consequently, the patterns of human society differ from place to place and era to era and across cultures, making the social world a very complex and dynamic environment.

The ways in which people develop are shaped by social experience and circumstances within the context of their inherited genetic potential.

We are increasingly dependent on one another through international economic systems and shared environmental problems. The growing interdependence of world social, economic, and ecological systems makes it difficult to predict the consequences of social decisions. Changes anywhere in the world can have amplified effects elsewhere, with increased benefits to some people and increased costs to others.

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All year I have advocated that Greed is the curse of Capitalism. It is at the root cause of Inequality.

One hundred and six billion of us have being born since the dawn of the human species. Making the current population 6% of all the people who ever lived on the planet. ( 7,283,314749)  With 2.8 Billion of us living on less than two dollar a day, with over a billion not having access to healthy water, with 876 million of adults illiterate, with ½ a million murders a year, with 30,000 children under 5 die every day from avoidable diseases it’s no wonder we have terrorists.

Currently we have 20% of the global population with 90% of the wealth.

Christmas is over and all the words of peace to mankind have been sung once more, but the canvas of the World remains weeping. It is time to return dignity to the world. Which can only be achieved by capping greed to create a perpetual fund. ( see previous postings)

Here is the current painting.

A round revolving ball in the vastness of space teaming with life, with 1.35 billion of us spending 20 minutes each day of Facebook each month. The new slavery of our age leading us to the globalization of indifference, born out of ego selfishness, removing our sense of compassion and dignity.

A world on which we have 26 countries in a state of conflict , with 170 Militias, Guerrillas, Separatist, Anarchic, are all represented by a world of 31% Christians, 23% Muslims, 15% Hindus, 7% Buddhists, 6% Folk religionists, 1% Others and 0,02% Jews.

A Disposable world full of Ego Centrism in which man was probably happiest when he was swinging from tree to tree.

A world with 20/30 million in modern-day slavery ( A slave in 1850 in America cost the equivalent of $40,000 in to days money, to-day an average of $90.)

A world that has this much fresh water.  

Fresh groundwater and surface-water make up the bubble over Kentucky, which is about 252 miles in diameter. The sphere over Georgia reresents fresh-water lakes and rivers (about 34.9 miles in diameter).

This much gold. 171.300 tons.

Gold piled up on Wimbledon's centre court

Just enough oil to last the world 53.3 years at the current production rates.

Just enough gas in proven reserves to meet 58.6 years of global production at the end of 2010.

That will run out of phosphorus in 50 to 100 years unless new reserves of the element are found.

That has enough coal to meet 188 years of global production.

A world that when you take a deep breath the chances are, the air filling your lungs is far from pure. Even if you live in a clean, ecologically conscious area, you may be inhaling pollutants from faraway, less-pristine locales. Your hometown air may contain microscopic particles of mercury-coated coal dust from China, diesel from Europe, ozone from Los Angeles, or carbon monoxide from India—or possibly a cocktail of all of the above.

Where Scandium and terbium are just two of the 17 rare earth minerals that are used in everything from the powerful magnets in wind turbines to the electronic circuits in smartphones. The elements are not as rare as their name suggests but currently 97% of the world’s supply comes from China and they can restrict supplies at will. Exact reserves are not known.

Where we are told by the Artists not to don’t worry,( the Artists being our World Leaders places in power by us the people with black x’s in square boxes) because the Economy and World Trade, is turning people into merchandise for trade while depriving its victims of all dignity.

Where there is 75 trillion dollars in circulation. A billion Cars. With roughly 10/11 million standing soldiers between 10 countries.  While 86%-91% of the 8.7 million(± 1.3 million) species that we share the world with still await description before we are all swimming.
Photo: Woman wading through flooded Venice plaza

Where Scientific research indicates sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 0.14 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year since the early 1990s.  The trend, linked to global warming, puts thousands of coastal cities, like Venice, Italy, (seen here during a historic flood in 2008), and even whole islands at risk of being claimed by the ocean.

A world where we now need more than ever to apply different brush strokes if the painting for 2015 is to have any chance of been appreciated in the future.

Day after day I follow news reports of the enormous suffering endured by many people in the Middle East. It is not enough to contain wars, or international terrorism, which displays deep disdain for human life and indiscriminately reaps innocent victims we must stop the bankrolling of these conflicts by the unchecked traffic in weapons.

There seem little point to continue to catalog the illnesses that are plaguing the world. You could continue to list all the shortcomings till the end of the earth.

Communications is about informing people – not collecting “hits.” In order to progress towards the future we need the past. However in doing so we need to move away from the present World model that is more prone to make demands than to serve humanity. 

We all know that the human family, must be grounded on respect, cooperation, solidarity and compassion. That it must be built on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, respect for fundamental human rights, and the participation of all in public affairs and the building of trust between people’s.

None of our present political systems are coming up to the mark ( Democracy, Republic , Monarchy, Communism , Dictatorship) because of Greed.

If we are to break out of the structures that hold us back from a recognition, we must share and share a like. Update our out of date World Organisations that are unable to function due to lack of funds, United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the World Health Organisation,that are run by our of date Government Systems (see post: Is Democracies outdated and Disfunctional)

If we are to reduce the Inequalities of the future a Global ethic is needed.

We all deserve a peaceful world order based on unity of purpose. Their dignity is your dignity.

As Pope said. ” It (the earth) is the greatest resource which God has given us and is at our disposal not to be disfigured, exploited, and degraded, but so that, in the enjoyment of its boundless beauty, we can live in this world with dignity.”

We need profound roots, sustainability, not a disposable society, which can only be achieved if we use the power of social media to effect change (see previous posts)

So there you have it a master piece deserving of to be hung in the Louvre, beside the Mona Lisa.

If your have by any chance read this post, I am not interested in receiving your like tick. I am Interested in any suggestions as to how we might go about setting up a grass roots Organisation to apply pressurize where needed by using the power of Social Media ( Not a Petition site.) more a name and shame site.    Happy New Year.

 

 

What will money look like in the future.

06 Saturday Dec 2014

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At the moment there is a lot of hysterical futuristic crap been written, about the money of the future.

” We will be making payment with the blink of an eye”  and the like.

” The cash register is coming to an end?” Not so far-fetched.

When it comes to money, there’s a lot of change going on.

Over 5000 complementary monetary experiments are already under way around the world…

Everybody knows that electronic currencies is changing the form of our conventional national currencies. (smart cards, e purses,etc.)

It seems more than likely that our current model will be replaced by electronic payments.

However the question remain whether today’s governments will allow money to disappear or we have to wait for them to fade out – or be thrown out – of existence. One way or the other there is no doubt that in a few years or several decades the hardened walls of the banking and government institutions running our economies are in for a shock when a new monetary system arises that is entirely private and not run by states.

Its shape and features will ultimately be decided by the market.  Free market monetary systems, in which the supply of money is outside political control, are likely to be systems in which money proper is a commodity of limited and fairly inelastic supply.

But it also seems improbable that a completely free market would grant any private entity the right to produce (paper or electronic) money at will and without limit. The present system is unusual in this respect and it is evidently not a free market solution. Neither is it sustainable.

Future economic historians will pity us for having worked under a strange and inefficient global patchwork of local paper currencies – and for having naively believed that this represented the pinnacle of modern capitalism.

Today, every government wants to have its own local paper money and its own local central bank, and run its own monetary policy (of course, on the basis of perfectly elastic local fiat money). This is naturally a great impediment to international trade and the free flow of capital. They are parastatal dinosaurs, joined at the hip with the bureaucracy and politics, bloated and dependent on cheap money and state subsidy for survival. They are ripe for the taking.

The world is ready for an alternative monetary system, and when the present system collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies, there will be something there to take its place.

Money however is one of society’s most embedded, ancient institutions anchored in trust and the race to win that trust is on.

So there are many questions to be answered.

How will own the money?  How much freedom will they allow, when freedom is so attainable? How will they treat banks when, with merely a download, anyone can be their own bank?  What will they have to say about currencies which compete with their own?

What exactly is money?

Economic Textbooks define money by what it does, not by what it is – e.g. Functions of Standard of Value, Medium of Exchange, Store of Value, etc…. Money is an Agreement, within a Community, to use something as a Medium of Exchange.

Take the dollar.

It has lost over 92% of its value since its initial issuance in 1913. After the revaluation in 1934, the dollar dropped another 41%. The very volume of dollars in the world has given many people a conviction that the currency is worthless and doomed to lose its status as a global reserve currency and turn into toilet paper money by letting the printing presses run wild.

“Short-termism” is programmed by the interest feature of our conventional money.

1.3 trillion of it is traded in foreign exchange markets every day. 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stock markets of the world combined.

Only 3% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to real goods and
services. 97% is purely speculative.

What happened is that ‘speculative’ trading (i.e. trading whose sole
purpose is to make a profit from the changes in the value of the
currencies themselves) has all but taken over the foreign exchange
markets. The currency market has become the biggest single market in the
world. Foreign exchange transactions purchases and sales of
currencies) today dwarf the trading volume of all other asset classes,
even of the entire global economy.  

2/3 of all human beings who ever reached the age of 65 are alive today are looking at unfunded pensions liabilities now $3.5 Trillion in the OECD countries alone. Three times the GDP of the USA.

Not to worry as long as all major corporate decisions are made with a short-term horizon => long-term sustainability is going to be an illusion.

85% of all insurance payments worldwide compensate natural disasters. For times more people die in natural disasters than in all war and civil disturbances combined.

69% of professional biologists say we’re in ‘sixth extinction’ – we are in the process of losing 30%- 70% of the planet’s biodiversity by 2030 due to the actions of humanity!

Back to Money:

The latest smart phone technology is revolutionizing the payment process with the death of the wallet not far off.

Remittances are a gateway drug to Twitter, Facebook, Google, to achieve financial inclusion in the future.

Facebook is readying itself to provide financial services in the form of remittances and electronic money. It wants to become a utility in the developing world.

If Ireland’s central bank becomes an “e-money” institution it will allow Facebook to issue units of stored monetary value that represent a claim against the company.

Obtaining an e-money authorization in Ireland would require Facebook to hold capital of €350,000 and segregate funds equivalent to the amount of money it has issued. Facebook is already authorized for some forms of money transfer in the United States, allowing it to process payments for developers who charge users for in-app purchases.

Facebook takes a fee of up to 30 percent for such payments, and these fees account for about 10 per cent of its revenues. It recently reiterated its commitment to expanding its mobile payments and wallet products, which have yet to be widely adopted by consumers.

In 2013, the company facilitated $2.1 billion worth of transactions, almost exclusively from games.

I personally am not surprise that it is viewed with skepticism as a payment vehicle, when you look at all the crap one sees on Face Book – Would you trust Facebook to handle your money.

Google is registered in the UK to issue electronic money, in a process similar to the authorization which Facebook is seeking in Ireland.

Google and its NFC-driven Wallet, and PayPal are well on the way to providing digital payment that can move between two people as they pass each other on the street, or between two people on opposite sides of the Earth – with no difference between the character of the two payments.

Vodafone has acquired an e-money licence for the phone company to operate financial services in Europe.

Twitter, Square, PayPal, Apple are also in the race to replace Money.

The question of ‘what’s next?’ Depending on how it’s answered by governments, it might be very exciting or very frightening.

The importance of digital – potential changes in payments, branch banking, financial advice and the use of social media will accelerate change in the industry, most likely to the benefit of fast-moving incumbents.

New technologies are threatening to disrupt existing models in retail financial services; the pressure of increased operating and capital costs reducing capacity in wholesale banking; and a struggle for growth and profitability in insurance waning customer loyalty as their biggest challenge.

The banking system fundamentally makes money by keeping customers confused, making the lion’s share of profits from fees and charges, not from banking. They will have to think no longer of themselves as mere providers of financial products and services and enablers of transactions. They will need to be solution providers that play a greater role not just at the moment of transactions, but before and afterward as well.

The global e-payments value reached $256 billion in 2012, and is expected to grow three-fold by 2014 to a total of $796 billion. An average person touches his / her smart phone 150 times in a day.

So it’s no wonder that the single biggest area of investment is mobile apps for tablets and smartphones, with the ultimate target to consolidate everything you carry on you till financial transaction that involve buying something is paid for by simply saying your name.

And before I sign off we have Cryptocurrencies,

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency with no centralized authority

Bitcoin is regulated by code, which determines how quickly new Bitcoins are generated without the intervention of humans. Bitcoins are stored in a wallet that resides on your computer – or a hosted wallet service off in the cloud, if that’s your preference – and transactions are nearly instantaneous. It’s the prototype for whatever improved implementation overtakes traditional currency in the future.

In the meantime, the debasement of paper money continues.

In the end, It’s great news that non-banks are challenging the traditional banking monopoly.

I leave you with a few Quotes;

“Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want. ” Lillian Hellman.

“Money is the only substance which keep a cold world from nicknaming a citizen “Hey You”. Wilson Mizner.

“Money is the poor people’s credit card. Marshall McLuhan.

“Money is what you’d get on beautifully without if only other people weren’t so crazy about it” Margaret Case Harriman.

” Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase. As to corporal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues of pleasure, nor block up the passages of anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or promoted by softness,. With respect to the mind, it has rarely been observed that wealth contributes much to quicken the discernment or elevate the imagination, but may,by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity.” Samuel Johnston.

 

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“Remember money has no sign of human worth.” Robert de Mayo Dillon.

Who do you think you are?

22 Monday Sep 2014

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If I was living some considerable time ago and was asked this question depending who I was I would have said I am Inuit named Bob. An Inuit was then a Inuit.

These days given the intense interest in identity and identities across a broad spectrum of disciplines your identity is under attack by whatever you, buy, eat, and view.

Since we all know how to employ the word one might initially expect it easy to find simple and clear statements of what people mean when that ask how are you and there would be need for explanations?

So why Bother? So that we don’t all end up Categorized as Consumers.

Identity is acquiring a highly successful life of its own in ordinary language and many social science disciplines.

In popular discourse identity is often treated as something ineffable and even sacred, while in the academy identity is often treated as something complex and even ineffable.

In our world of today’s Interconnections it is being ignored with your Identity being connected and linked to likes that are decided upon by computers.

Therefore it is not so surprising when ask the question one might answer the question“who are you?”entirely differently in different circumstances.

It has ceased to perform the function of a verbal sign of contact.

So what does this word mean as we use it now?

I argue below that the word “identity” as used today has two distinct but intertwined meanings.“social” and “personal” identity.“

Social – American,” “French,” “Muslim,” “father,” “homosexual,“worker,” “professor,” or “citizen” as identities.”

Personal identity is a set of attributes, beliefs, desires, or principles of action that a person thinks distinguish her in socially relevant ways and that (a) the person takes a special pride in; (b) the person takes no special pride in, but which so orient her behavior that she would be at a loss about how to act and what to do without them; or (c) the person feels she could not change even if she wanted to.

I will argue, the (a) meaning applies, so that for usage in ordinary language personal identity can typically be glossed as the aspects or attributes of a person that form the basis for his or her dignity or self-respect.

Used in this sense, “identity” has become a partial and indirect substitute for “dignity,” “honor,” and “pride.” 

This is perhaps not true.

Almost every one evokes a sense of recognition, depending on the context.

For example,

If asked by ISIS I would be inclined to say a Muslim to save my head, not my dignity honor or pride. In some situations I might even give my social security number.

So what is Identity these days.

Is it how I define who I am?

or

Is it how one answers the question “who are you?”

or

Is it the sameness of a person or thing at all times in all circumstances?

or

Is it the condition or fact that a person or thing is itself and not something
else; individuality, personality,” “national identity” or “ethnic identity?

What ever it our present understanding of “identity” lie in the academy. 

A concept which is now quite common in popular discourse as our identities are going out the window into BIG Data.

So here is my first cut at a definition.

An identity is something that fits as X in the sentence “I am an X.”

In logical terms, an identity is a predicate that applies (or may apply) to a person, that is, a quality or property of a person.

Whoops that not good enough!

Since X allows things that clearly would not qualify as “legitimate” (that is, recognizable to usage) so identities, even take on a  broad sense of the word.

For example, consider X = a person with nine fingers, or X = a person with a moles on my right arm, or X = a person who saw the dentist last Tuesday.

So an identity must be a particular sort of predicate attachable to a person.

The same might be said of national identity, if I change national affiliations.

So I still need a qualification on the definition that says an identity is an X that
satisfies.

Lets try again.

One might have multiple identities, understood simply as answers to the question “who are you?”

In ordinary speech and most academic writing, “identity” means either (a) a social category, defined by membership rules and allegedly characteristic attributes or expected behaviors, or (b) a socially distinguishing feature that a person takes a special pride in or views as unchangeable but socially consequential (or, of course, both (a) and (b) at once).

This isn’t enough either.

For example, if you lose a finger we would say that you are the same person as before; if you suffer from an advanced state of Alzheimer’s, we might not.

I might say that a crucial part of my identity is that I like to listen to rock, but if I stopped liking this music I would not think that I was literally a different person –I would not imagine that I ceased being Elvis even though I might understand my identity to have changed.

In this philosophical sense, personal identity is those predicates of a person such that if they are changed, it is no longer the same person, the properties that are essential to him or her being that person rather than being merely contingent.

Consider, then, a simple definition that says an identity is just a social category, and to have a particular identity means to assign oneself to a particular social category or perhaps just to be assigned to it by others.

Is that it?  No!

To begin with, a social category is a set of people designated by a label (or labels) commonly given to, or used by, a set of people.

Social categories have two distinguishing features.

First, they are defined and by implicit or explicit rules of membership, according to which individuals are assigned or not to the category.

Second, social categories are understood in terms of sets of characteristics – for example, beliefs, desires, moral commitments, or physical attributes – thought typical of members of the category, or behaviors expected or obliged of members in certain situations, as in the case of roles, such as a professor, student, or police officer.

”While identity-as-a-social-category captures much of what academics often mean by the term, this simple definition does not cover all that we mean by the word. In particular, “an identity is a social category” doesn’t work when we use identity in the sense of personal identity, which may be formulated in terms of a group affiliation but need not be.

So Social categories are socially constructed, but social categories change over time and are historically contingent.

Social categories generally are objective social facts beyond the reach of any one
individual to change.

Still don’t quite know who I am.

Even when the word does refer primarily to a social category – nation, gender, sexuality, for instance – it can mean somewhat more than just “social category” because of an implicit linkage with the idea of personal identity.

This is getting rather confusing. 

Because to ask about identities of such-and-such people is often to ask about the social categories in which they placed themselves (or were placed by others) and how they thought about their content or rules of membership.

In many cases it might be clearer and better to use “social category” rather than “identity.

The identity of a thing (not just a person) consists of those properties or qualities in virtue of which it is that thing. That is if you changed these properties or qualities, it would cease to be that thing and be something different.

Help!

I thought I knew who I was when I started this Post and who are you to say I am not what I am in the first place. Maybe I need a spliff  to find out, on the other hand you can rest assured that Doctor Livingston I presume is long gone. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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100 years from now Facebook is going to be full of dead people.

20 Saturday Sep 2014

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Lets ask the question?

Is Social Media going to turn out as the Ultimate Betrayal.

In a hundred years time there are going to be hundred of thousands on Facebook without any emotions, hundred of thousands of extinct Twitters, hundred of thousands of people linked to the dead, hundred of thousands Google searches never to be repeated, and billions and billions of e-mail that will never contribute to world history.

That’s BIG DATA: ( See previous blog)

Now it’s not possible here to cover all aspects of Social Media so I am going to concentrate on the most popular FACEBOOK.

The first and most important thing to make clear is that FACEBOOK is a Company, a public company for that matter and it has to find ways to become more profitable with each passing quarter.

What concerns me is the increased silence of what it will mean for a public who has no clue of what’s being done with their data.

I want to see users of Social Media have the ability to meaningfully influence what’s being done with their data.

I hate the fact that Facebook thinks it’s better than me at deciding which of my friends’ posts I should see or to suggest he or she wants to be a friend.

That Facebook algorithmically determines which of your friends’ posts you see.

That their everyday algorithms are meant to manipulate your emotions.

What factors go into this? We don’t know,  but it is obvious that they have some algorithm that show the content that people click on the most.

Anyone who clicks on a “like” button is considered to have “liked” all future content from that source. Anyone who “likes” a comment on a shared link is considered to “like” wherever that link points to.  

This is a form corrupt personalization.  They can be taught what to want.

Facebook is making these choices every day without oversight, transparency, or informed consent.

I hate that I have no meaningful mechanism of control on the site.

I also hate the fact that it is generating billions in profit without contributing ( other than taxes) to the relief of world poverty, to the environment problems, and any other Social problem you wish to name.

Yes of course it gives a platform to talk on these subjects only because Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook. It’s in Facebook’s better interest to leave people feeling happier.

The problem is that Facebook is a black box.

Here are a few of the questions to be answered when it comes to Social Media.

A ) Should we be worried that software tracks us through social media?

B) Should postings on social media be considered free speech?

C) How does social media facilitate mass demonstrations (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall street)?

D) Have social networks caused teens to become anti-social in the real world?

E) Should schools ban teachers from interacting with their students on social networks?

F) Does social media encourage democracy?

The term “social networking” does not exclusively belong to digital technology on the Web. On the contrary, social networks had been studied from the beginning of 20th century with the aim to comprehend how the members of a certain community interact and which mechanism can determine the interaction itself.

Social Media is a tool of direct marketing where the customers and consumers have the opportunity to participate in the process of exchange.

 It’s a blurring of work and private life 

Social Media is only just emerging, meaning that codification of acceptable and unacceptable practices has not yet taken place. The ability to collect and analyze information from the past as well as in real-time, as it is generated has far reaching consequences. 

Though it commonly is understood that conversations are generally public and open to viewing by almost anyone. It can have a profound effect on the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs of individuals who have no idea that they are under observation in the first place. 

This is what drives media entities to produce listicals, flashy headlines, and car crash news stories. To manipulate people’s emotions through the headlines they produce and the content they cover, regardless of the psychological toll on individuals or the society they represent.

You might say bull shit.

That technology companies can secretly influence our emotions?

Apparently so.“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”  The question is when does data science become human subjects research? 

”A social network proprietor can engineer emotions for the multitudes to a slight degree”

The Arab Spring as it was called. The recent Vote on Independence in Scotland, President Obama election,  ISIS one beheading. There’s no stable metaphor that people hold for what the news feed is. Emotions are being manipulated all the time, without informed consent, without debriefing. 

Information is being presented and it’s being manipulated [through social media interfaces] by definition.

The reality is, when it comes to studying human interaction or behavior (for profit or scientific glory), it is no more (or less) complicated whether we’re interviewing someone in their living room, watching them in a lab, testing them at the screen, or examining the content they post online.

So the answer the questions posed above:

 A)  YES.

B)   NO.

C)  BY manipulation of Emotions.

D)  YES&NO

E)  YES

F)   NO

 

What do you think? And O! just in case you think this was typed by one of our departed I want to be your friend.

If you e mail me your cannot be sure. The only way is living human contact.

Remember Like me at some point you will be the next person on earth to die.

Then Who or What will own your data? and what’s Social about that.?

 

 

 

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