AS IF WE DID NOT KNOW it is posing that fundamental profound question once more.
Are we going to care of the Earth so it can care for us?
It is impossible to say which way the disease will go however there is no doubt that it is creating the biggest restriction of civil liberties “in peacetime”.
We know that we all tracked by Google. Behind all the restrictions governments will adopt powers that they will loath to relinquish when the crises are over.
There is every like hood that the pandemic will strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism. What won’t change is the inequality and greed, rather it will create a less open, less prosperous and less free world.
Of course, it did not have to be like this but it will be the straw that brakes the camel’s back of globalization and it will probably result in uncontrolled Co2 emissions.
In the short term, with decoupling and rivalry coming to the forefront driven by a cascading sense of vulnerability there will be a race to return to full production.
However the Pandemic is proof of our interdependence but we are not or are we heading for a poorer, meaner, and smaller world.
If the Pandemic shocks us into recognizing our real interests in cooperating multilaterally on the big global issues facing us all it will have served a useful purpose.
We all know that it is not enough to think of one nation’s power over another when it comes to climate change. The key is learning the importance that we have all to act together and Covid -19 is going to show that we are failing to adjust our strategy on many fronts to this new world.
Either way, this crisis will reshuffle the international power structure in the way we can only begin to imagine.
If we don’t support each other the result will be instability and widespread conflict within and across nations.
We know that there is a dramatic new stage in global capitalism on the horizon with supply chains be brought closer to home. We are going to see failed states with billions of economic refugees on the move.
We are going to see the USA no longer as an international leader.
To date, international collaboration has been woefully insufficient.
What is needed it targeted assistance that provides hope that men and woman can prevail in response to this extraordinary challenge.
If it gets Airborne the white full personal-protection suits that presently strike fear into the hearts of us all will be worthless.
AS IF EARTH DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS THE NEXT NASA PROJECT TO MARS IS SCHEDULED TO LAUNCH IN JULY.
NASA’s 2020 Mars rover.
The rover will collect and cache promising samples for eventual return to Earth.
The first pristine pieces of Mars won’t be coming down to Earth for at least another decade, but the time to start preparing society for the epic arrival is now.
This is an extremely grave point.
On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defences against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high.
Martian rock that has already arrived on earth contained structures resembled the fossilized remains of bacteria-like lifeforms.
What if such samples turned out to be dangerous, and contagiously so?
Are there some Mars-oriented lessons to be learned from COVID-19.
Here on earth, it is gruelling and potentially lethal work to identify a virus never mind virus from other planets.
It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unknown viruses in birds and mammals. Of these, it is thought between 600,000 and 800,000 are zoonotic, meaning they have the potential to jump from animals to people.
Virulence, contacts and the length of time for which people are infectious are the three factors that determine what is called ‘the basic reproductive rate’ – how far and fast the epidemic will spread.
There may be a staggering 3,200 different types of coronavirus harboured in bats alone.
As with historical infectious disease epidemics, the coronavirus that’s spreading currently is another example of why it’s so important to understand the consequences of interacting with environments humans rarely contact and then distributing widely whatever [they] picked up.
If one looks at the outbreak in Africa, of Ebola and the HIV/Aids pandemic – which to date has killed 35 million and infected 70 million – started about a century ago in Cameroon when a chimpanzee virus was transmitted to a human who almost certainly killed, butchered or consumed it.
Markets were closed during both outbreak, but they are now once more doing a roaring trade selling tropical game including monkeys, chimpanzees, cane rats, bats and snakes. Bushmeat is entrenched in local culture and is often a vital form of subsistence, hence why the authorities are unwilling or unable to announce an outright ban.
Last, with or without artificial intelligence we continue at our collective peril to make imbalance’s in the ecosystem.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
I know that humans are the only type of species that are suitable to manage the earth but it does not make them the right species!
Apparently not.
Did we ever think that we would be living in a world where it is life-threatening to go our side and I am not talking about terrorists or any other Hollywood science fiction movie scenario?
There’s a lot of bad news out there but this is not a death sentence.
It’s time to save the world. ” We can use it as we wish”
No one owns the earth. No one has the right to do whatever they want.
We’re not the only thing that lives here, nor are we more important in any way.
We cannot use the world as we please as our actions are endangering not just us but other species.
Our Earth was meant to be lived on in union with its Ecosystems and we cannot allow that to be broken.
The Coronavirus ( Covid 19 ) is illuminating what is wrong with our world.
So our most crucial life questions are:
What Kind of World Do We Want to Leave to Our Children?
Whatever your interest — whether it’s the environment, health care, poverty, or education — there are simple steps each of us can take to make life better not just for someone in our own community.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” now needs an Earth Declaration.
Here are the top six of my non-legal binding the goals.
Use Global Warming to Solve Global Warming.
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
Sustainable Development Goals which will take years for a critical mass of governments to actually rally behind.
The allocation of resources to fight climate change and other environmental issues over the next decade can be achieved by making a profit for profit sake pay. ( See the previous post on a 0.05% World Aid Commission. How it could be implemented so the costs are spread fairly)
End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
Global poverty. Reduce inequality within and among countries. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Expand access to clean drinking water, green energy.
Artificial Intelligence and Automation.
The 2020s sounds like such a radical futuristic decade however to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development requires a coherent and plausible conception of social justice. Abasic income, a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.
Stop the sale of arms.
The estimate of the total value of the global arms trade in 2017 was at least $95 billion.* However, the true figure is likely to be higher. On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world — even if you’re only hearing about a few of them on the news.
There are an estimated 11-12 million refugees in the world today with between 12-24 million Internally Displaced Persons.
Electoral Reform with Citizens’ Assemblies.
These aren’t just focus groups or consultations though but for the members to engage in serious, informed reflection on important policy matters with people they may never normally meet.
As Hubert Reeves ( Canadian-French Astrophysicist) say’s, ” Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and Destroys a Visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping “
Feel free to have idea sex between your ideas and mine so we can come up with even better ideas. It’s a way of saying: “We agree that these are the world’s top priorities right now.”
The Internet is an incredibly spectacular thing, and only now — after so many years — we are understanding its power.
In spite (and many times because of) all the social media and internet news, we tend to have a skewed view of the world around us.
But there is one thing that is certain.
It has given rise to highly profitable digital platform monopolies, ‘superstar firms’ which are able to use aggregation and analysis of data to make supernormal profits which are disappearing into the cloud.
But what’s really happening in the global economy?
These multi-conglomerations dominate not just the current digital markets but future ones in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with workforces which are relatively small proportional to value-added, putting downward pressure on labour’s share of income.
It is becoming easier and cheaper to replace human work by increasingly
capable robots and artificial intelligence, this automation will accentuate existing trends in the capital and labour shares.
Whatever the future path of the global economy, with growing automation in
the economies of the world substituting capital for labour more and more
of the wealthiest fortunes are held almost exclusively in financial assets.
—-
We’re not just entering into a period of severe distress with climate change
we are also entering a period of a new uneven distribution of capital
ownership that is now the driver of inequality.
It’s a “new, harsh reality”, ( from weapons of mass destruction, water crises, large-scale involuntary migration and severe energy price shock, extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, interstate conflict with regional consequences and major natural catastrophes) that the spending power of governments is dimensioning.
Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening.
Isn’t it absurd that we, 7 billion of us living on the same planet, have grown further apart from each other? Everything is going through change and that most of us are unaware of that.
What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands, maybe millions, of people living around you in the same city on the same planet in poverty?
You might be lead to believe that the Internet is taking down mass control and the small are no longer speechless. This might well be true when it comes to the rising failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation or if you look at the Arab Spring, Brexit, and the people’s climate revolution/ pollution.
But its not true when one looks at how and by whom the economy of the world that is driven by growth at all costs.
Why?
Because the natural resources industry is owned by sovereignty wealth funds with financial instability around the world as the net result.
But don’t panic.
With Climate change and Ai, and with all of us exchanging half-truths civilisation is in for a rough ride.
However, technological crises have yet to impact economies or securities in a systemic way.
Which panic button to press?
The only category not to feature in the above harsh realities is algorithm profit from profit technological that is spreading inequalities between individuals and families, between countries, generations and genders, as well as between people from different ethnicities and class backgrounds.
Normally revenue, as you know, is generated by profit/taxes but most revenue sources are already accounted for in government budgeting except the supernormal profits made by in no particular order – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco Systems, Intel, to mention just a few.
It’s sometimes hard to fathom the sheer scope of profits made by the world’s most profitable companies.
1. Saudi Aramco: $304.04 M daily – Earns $1 M in 4.7 minutes
2. Apple: $163.1 M daily – Earns $1 M in 8.8 minutes
3. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China: $123.29 M daily – Earns $1M in 11.7 minutes
4. Samsung Electronics: $109.3 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.2 minutes
5. China Construction Bank: $105.48 M daily – Earns $1 M in 13.7 minutes
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co.: $88.97 M daily – Earns $1 M in 16.2 minutes
7. Alphabet: $84.21 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
8. Agricultural Bank of China: $83.99 M daily – Earns $1 M in 17.1 minutes
9. Bank of America Corp.: $77.12 M daily – Earns $1 M in 18.7 minutes
10. Bank of China: $74.59 M daily – Earns $1 M in 19.3 minutes
and these are not Sovereign Wealth Funds.
They exist somewhere between the murky grey of return-maximizing, mega-cap asset managers, and clandestine government agencies quietly used to further sovereign agendas.
It is estimated that SWFs combined to hold more than $7.4 trillion in AUM, (Assets under management) representing approximately 6% of global assets under institutional management.
And you wonder with government print trillions to stimulate sagging economies why the world is and still is in a state of meltdown not just climate-wise but capitalistic wise.
We now have both the EU and the UK floating the idea of establishing Citizens wealth funds.
The trouble is that existing wealth funds have already bought up most of the world. Latecomers like THE UK/EU will have nothing to invest in other than technologies that produce profits.
The character of a sovereign wealth fund depends on its purpose and is shaped by how it is capitalised and governed, how it invests its funds and how returns are spent.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund is a state-owned investment vehicle established to channel balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, proceeds of privatizations, government transfer payments, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts from resource exports, into global investments on behalf of sovereigns and in the advance of goals that are not transparent.
Economic theory wise, it is important to understand that SWFs form part of their respective country’s total national capital base, where total national capitalis defined as the total combination of net financial assets, total physical capital stock (e.g., real estate, machines, infrastructure), unexploited environment, human capital, and unexploited natural resources.
Commodity SWFs are financed from the proceeds of non-renewable commodity exports (oil, gas, precious metals), which grow the AUM base in times of high prices but destabilize their source economies and budgets in times of low. Non-commodity funds, on the other hand, are typically financed from currency reserves or current account surpluses, driven by corporate or household saving rates.
They were once the mainstays of the global investment landscape.
Despite is name the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal.
We are now experiencing the political consequences of this great deception with the rise of popularism.
This blog has been suggesting for some time the setting up of a perpetual funded World Aid fund by applying a 0.05% commission on all profit for profit sake seeking financial activities. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
These days we are allowing Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook do whatever the hell they want. The US sees them as winner-takes-all markets as the law of the capitalist jungle; the EU sees them as an intrinsic threat to consumers.
Because four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. They have aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history.
Because the concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power. Their massive size and unchecked power have and are throttling competitive markets and are keeping the economy from doing its job—namely, to promote a vibrant democracy.
Because all of them have managed to preserve their monopoly-like powers without heavy regulation.
Because they have effectively ripped the heart out of the journalism, publishing, music, and entertainment industries but, even worse, they are demolishing the ranks of both corporate middle-management and entry-level service jobs and crushed commercial real estate and retail shopping malls, all for the enrichment of a very few.
Because they’re tracking your movements — or, even better, getting you to track yourselves for them, whether it’s “checking in” on Facebook or leaving your cell phone switched on while you travel (and who doesn’t?).
Because as we have seen the harvesting of the personal data use for political purposes.
Because the amount of money they generate, and the volume of content they accumulate, most of it provided voluntarily by you, for free, is stupefying.
Because with the coming of 5G technology they will have too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.
Because using black-box algorithms to surface content to users they will have control over the way we use the Internet.
Because they are exploiting their monopoly power to stifle competition; they are spreading fake news; their fantastically rich owners portray themselves as right-on yet go to a great deal of trouble to minimise their corporate tax bills; they are ripping the heart out of communities through the closure of brick-and-mortar retailers.
Because social media is an increasingly key part of how we communicate. Yet legally, nothing stops Facebook from simply banning users from its platform, for any reason it wishes.
Because we’re heading for an Orwellian nightmare the shape of which is just now becoming apparent with climate change is being turned into a product.
Because this isn’t just abstract concern about what could possibly happen in the future – market power of this magnitude isn’t unprecedented.
Because with a sprawling array of loosely related businesses under one roof they are becoming worldwide conglomerates.
Because no one or any company is now going to penetrate online shopping or the search market.
Google, Amazon, and Facebook are colossal companies. Together they make up almost 10% of the S&P 500. Together, they have a market capitalization of the GDP of France.
These are the 3rd-, 4th-, and 6th-largest companies on earth. Combined, they are worth over $2 trillion. And they’ve grown 470%, 175%, and 95% over the past five years.
Because they will take our choices away.
Because they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.
Because country and companies that dominate technology will gain more power with time and 5G technology, gene editing, nanotechnology, creating what only can be called a profitable circle of global oligopolies.
Because they will soon be introducing their own cyber currencies.
Because our existing computers can’t even scratch the surface of what quantum computers will be able to do via the cloud quantum computers will. Those who own this technology will make supremacy an arbitrary goal.
Such computing power will change the way we do business and the security we have in place to safeguard data, how we fight disease and invent new materials, and solve health and climate problems.
Just like humans, artificial intelligence machines powered by the insights from quantum commercialising technology computers that will learn from experience and self-correct.
They’ll be able to use quantum simulations to design entirely new molecules for use in medicine making it possible for chemists to determine viable drug options quicker. Instead of troubleshooting issues bit by bit as we do now with classical computers, they will allow for a person’s genes to be sequenced and analyzed much more rapidly tackling the entire problem at once.
How do they do it?
By creating what we now perceive to be free platforms run by algorithms.
( To Big Tech, you’re not the customer, you’re the product they’re selling to others:)
Google offers a vast bounty of free services in order to maximize its data collection and optimize its advertising capabilities. Similarly, Amazon is credibly accused of hurting suppliers, hurting competitors, and even hurting its own employees — but nobody can deny that it’s a cheap and convenient way to shop for a staggering array of things.
Amazon is keeping tabs on you, monitoring your purchases, pushing other products on you and, in the form of the hideous Alexa, listening in on you while you sleep. Throw in the electronic snooping of Facebook, Google and your iPhone.
We know the problems; they’re easy to diagnose, however shaping the solutions is going to be more difficult.
So what if anything can be achieved to restrain their coming power?
The difficulty lies in defining what the real harmful effect is of these companies and establishing a causal link between their creation, their products, behaviour, and trends such as populism, depression, and manipulation. The contribution to society of these companies’ products is not as black and white as some would like them to be.
We’re heading down an entirely new field of physics, and by its very nature, there will be discoveries, innovations and solutions we have never dreamed of yet.
However we’re living in a capitalists world we should be empowering people to choose where to sell their information, personal data so it would no longer be monopolised by the tech giants.
Competition authorities need to move beyond a reliance on prices towards an analysis of the impact of takeovers and mergers on societal welfare.
As we grapple with how best to protect ourselves against the risks of new, disruptive technologies, policymakers need to understand the roles that ethics and law can and should play.
If human rights are at risk, and existing law is found wanting, we may need new, legally enforceable rights and mechanisms to grapple with emerging technologies. Citizens should not need to rely on the “ethical conscience” of tech companies to know their fundamental rights are protected. Ethics are laudable—but sometimes they are not enough.
At their core, Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and while Facebook’s goal was to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” are both truly admirable and few people would disagree with them but ethical promises made by tech companies are not good enough.
Instead of adding value to our societies, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple have sucked the data out of us.
They or at least their free platforms which have become essential to daily life should be regulated as public utilities.
Failing to do so risks a backlash which will be bad for everyone.
Why?
Because there is one indisputable fact.
In front of every great fortune lies a great crime, Immense wealth translates automatically into environmental impacts regardless of the intentions of those who possess it.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Google does the same by using algorithms to decide what comes up on an internet search. They hardly pay any taxes and their business practices and technology will help crush industries and companies left and right.
“platform utility.” A platform utility would be barred from owning any of the participants on the platform.
The international community is a phrase used in geopolitics and international relations to refer to a broad group of people and governments of the world. It slips off the tongue of BBC correspondents and newsreaders as if it is just good old plain common sense.
The international society thinks this … believes that … is concerned about.
HOW OFTEN HAVE WE HEARD COUNTRIES APPEALING TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY.
Are they wasting their breath?
If you were to asked me I would say that activists, politicians and commentators often use the term in calling for action to be taken in order to deflect their own countries dismal response.
We all know what is meant by the term ‘international community’, don’t we?
It’s the west, of course, nothing more, nothing less.
Just look at the global issue of climate change which could not be more International which urgently requires a common strategy with binding targets that must be defined on a planetary scale. The central driver of climate change risk is mainstream economic (development) models which aspire to carbon-intensive industrialization.
It is speculated that our global interconnectedness, instead of (only) making us more resilient, makes us more vulnerable to global catastrophe.
Solving climate change will take a global effort not an international effort.
Take Aviation pollution alone it is forecasted to triple by 2050 if there are no global policy measures are agreed.
The Earth can not appeal to an International community but our world in whichno individual, and no country, exists in isolation, is now facing perhaps its final disaster.
The involvement of Muslim countries – and from contrasting traditions to those of the Arab world – would be most valuable.
It would also represent a most welcome redefinition of the “international community.
Take China for example:
In fact, the Chinese have their own definition of “international community” to counter what they see as a western-dominated and defined international community.
Take Lebanon, for example:
What did the beloved “international community” think:
Take War-torn Syria, for example:
It is one country where there are sharply divided views between the West on the one side and China and Russia on the other.
Take India, or Latin America, or Africa, or South East Asia?
What do they think?
We are never told. Nobody bothered to find out.
Take Brexit.
Everyone seems to have someone, perhaps some group of people, on whom he or she looks down or whom he or she considers inferior. That is why, for example, the west finds it almost impossible to win votes on many issues in the UN general assembly.
If we are brutally honest with yourself it comes from sheer ignorance.
There is no international community. There is merely a group of states motivated by self-interest.
The international community is a mythical joke.
There will never be one that is worthy of respect rather than a cheap joke.
What we got is a digital dictatorship in its infancy. A world run by Algorithms mostly for profit.
What is needed is an global awaking.
All Human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
By not be able to coordinate any universal action we now pose the greatest threat to our own survival.
Future civilisation might well create a world without need or want, and make mindblowing intellectual and artistic achievements but in this new age, what should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
We could build a far more just and virtuous society but if we let civilisation end, then none of this can ever happen.
An overwhelming amount of political attention goes on concrete issues that help the present generation in the short-term since that’s what gets votes but at the cost of future generations that have no way to stand up for their interests, whether economically or politically.
You might be surprised if you ask the above question using AI.
Climate change comes some way down the list.
Natural risks are still quite small in absolute terms.
The risks from nuclear weapons are greater than all the natural risks put together. So, it seems like the chance of a massive climate disaster created by CO2 is perhaps similar to the chance of a nuclear war.
Since these risks are caused by humanity, they can be prevented by humanity, but what stops us is the difficulty of coordinate action.
Take Artificial Intelligence.
(There is a 50% chance we will develop high-level machine intelligence in 45 years, and 75% by the end of the century.)
It is difficult to predict what something smarter than us would do. A sufficiently powerful system might be difficult to control, and so be hard to reverse once implemented.
What’s less appreciated is that new technologies will present further catastrophic risks.
Like genetically engineer a virus that’s as contagious as the Spanish Flu, but also deadlier, and which could spread for years undetected. That would be a weapon with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but far harder to prevent from being used.
So, let’s ask the question again.
What should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
(The flippant answer is we first have continued to exist so that we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems.)
Improving technology? Helping the poor? Changing the political system? Free Education? Geo-engineering?- to mention a few.
Most of the best ways to tackle these risks are not easily taken by for-profit entities because the beneficiaries live in the future and can’t pay you.
For instance, a better-educated population would probably elect more enlightened leaders (cough). Improve the decision-making ability of people and institutions, this would help to make society, in general, more resilient, and solve many other problems.
However, in order for education to achieve anything, it would have to be on a very large scale to have any noticeable effect.
Improving technology holds the possibility of enormous gains, but also enormous risks.
Avoid accidents from AI systems are the most neglected of all risks.
More to the point, no matter what you think has happened in the past, if we look forward, improving technology, political organisation and freedom gives our descendants the potential to solve our current problems, and have vastly better lives.
Then, among the catastrophic risks, climate change gets the most attention, while issues like pandemics and AI are the most neglected.
An issue can be big but comparatively well-known and crowded, like climate change, or it can be small but neglected, like land use zoning reform.
In most countries, there is no government agency that naturally has mitigation of these risks in its remit.
So, even if we only focus on the impact on the present generation, these
catastrophic risks are one of the most serious issues facing humanity.
Probably part of the reason most people aren’t immediately ready to jump into action is that there appear to be so many problems and no simple solution presents itself for any of them.
One approach is to address each risk directly. Or rather than try to reduce each risk individually, we can try to make civilisation generally better at managing them – if we could all coordinate — if every nation agreed to contribute its fair share to reducing climate change, then all nations would benefit by avoiding its worst effects.
Unfortunately, such an approach in our capitalist consuming world is pie in the sky.
The truth is we only do so out of self-interest.
As we are witnessing with the Paris Climate Agreement made on 12 December 2015 when it comes down to the nitty gritty no one wants to pay either in the short term or long term.
It would be great if we could make the government have more concern for future generations.
To enable a universal action it has to be unseen and paid for by all without knowing.
You only have to look at the reaction of the yellow jackets movement spontaneous calls to protest against the increase of the internal consumption tax on energy products. A rebellion of the provincial under-classes that typifies the 21st century (web-populism, fake news and a visceral, exaggerated hatred of both media and political elites).
Like the 5Star Movement in Italy, they started as an internet rebellion against representative democracy.
We all live in an apocalyptic bubble of social media- SO IF WE ARE TO GENUINELY TACKLE ANY OF THE WORLD PROBLEMS IT REQUIRES A PERPETUAL FUND THAT GENERATES ITS FUNDS FROM PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE NOT INCREASED TAXES.
(SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)
Such a fund would turn the United Nations from a begging organisation into a world organisation with clout.
AI CALCULATES 19% chance of extinction before 2100.
It’s possible to grow the capacity of a community faster than you can grow your individual wealth or career capital. WE NEED TO USE OUR BUYING POWER TO EFFECTS CHANGE.
Why?
Because we will need to change our way of thinking and the extent of how we consume resources.
To achieve food and water security. To stop HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND OCEAN DESTRUCTION – TO CREATE A MORE MODERN AND EFFECTIVE UN.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Looking at the world right in front of our eyes it would be fair to say that it is currently falling asunder while we all turn inwards in the fourth technological revolution that is not just undermining world institutions but creating social inequality that is linked to racial inequality, gender inequality, and wealth inequality, not to mention world conflicts.
This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system and there is no justifying it.
So the question is as it has been for the last couple of decades is there enough being done to bring about a more equitable distribution of income on a global scale.
The answer is a resounding No. To the extent that it is now hard to imagine any kind of economic miracle that could shrink the worldwide income gap.
Where is global inequality going?
By 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth.
World lottos, created new billionaire every two days.
The world’s 10 richest billionaires, according to Forbes, own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.
Between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires it took to equal the wealth of the world’s poorest 50 per cent fell from 380 to 42.
But more than 65 per cent of the world’s millionaires continue to reside in Europe or North America.
WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – OR RATHER THE LACK OF IT.
It’s true that wealth inequality has always existed, no matter what the design of the society. Whether capitalist or communist, democratic, autocratic, or plutocratic, it will exist.
Yet many of the extremes we see today are avoidable.
Income disparities have become so pronounced poor health and poverty go hand-in-hand.
It is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology.
There is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality.
It is the result of an unlevel playing field, the direct consequence of certain government policies.
There is no longer any simple solution.
Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable.
Increasing the incomes of low-wage workers produces stronger beneficial economic ripple effects than boosting bonuses for the rich.
Excluding Quantitative easing, 97% of money has been created through lending. When somebody borrows money – even just by spending on a credit card – new money is created. No wonder our economy is so geared around finance.
Yet we penalise labour and subsidise both debt and the ownership of assets.
The question is, how fast can developing countries grow in the future? The answer, unfortunately, is not fast enough.
The richest 1 per cent of humanity reaped 27 per cent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 per cent, by contrast, got only 12 per cent.
If you ever wanted to understand where climate change came from, why there are so many wars and the unrest we are witnessing the above figures say it all.
This will only get worse in the near future with the most powerful force driving the distribution of income on a worldwide scale will be raw economic growth:
Will poor countries make sufficient progress relative to their rich peers to bring more balance to the distribution of global income?
Or will rising inequality within countries dominate?
It depends on three forces: countries’ economic and population growth, as well as the evolution of inequality within them.
This is no longer true. The forth Industrial technological revolution is going to require more aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers.
Why because social inequality is now very different from economic inequality, though the two are linked.
Areas of social inequality include access to voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing, travelling, transportation, vacationing and other social goods and services. In the quality of family and neighbourhood life, occupation, job satisfaction, and access to credit.
All of these areas are now been data mined for profit by you know who with us supplying the data scot free.
We all know that more inequality means less wealth for everyone. .. but are we seeing countries deciding to push vigorously back against inequality. No
Ballooning wealth inequality is a threat to society.
globalization has also upended the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many countries.
“In every country, just about, the disproportionate economic clout of those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly disproportionate influence on their countries’ political life and on its media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being ignored,” Obama said.
He is right!
Wealthy must contribute or be forced to the larger benefits of society.
Inequality is not inevitable – it is a political choice.
It represents social and political issues that no party or government can afford to neglect.
Foot Note: To us Europeans.
Europe, unfortunately, has not been at the forefront of this battle, at least not EU institutions.
On the contrary, it has for long remained complacent, as EU treaties require unanimity on tax matters and as the bloc includes countries such as Luxembourg that have benefitted massively from corporate and individual tax avoidance.
For decades, the EU was dominated by an unholy alliance among three types of governments: those that rejected the very principle of international tax coordination as an infringement on sovereignty; those that benefitted from tax competition; and those that used it as a way to overcome domestic reluctance to the reduction of redistribution.
For an institution that is supposed to be based on values and that hails the European social model, this is humbling, and the EU is now paying a political price for its long inertia.
Social inequality can also be established through discriminatory legislation.
Things have started to change.
Thanks to Yellow Jacks and Brexit we may witness only if we truly want it some improvements.
In the battle for fairer globalisation, with more and more Foodbanks and homeless people, it is far too early to claim victory.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :
WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?
There is no shortage of people who know what is wrong.
The most frequently cited reason is probably the decline of religion, specifically the religion of the person writing it.
The list is endless.
Lack of respect for elders, unregulated capitalism, greed, alcohol, the economy, the rich, attachment, premarital sex, liberals, the unemployed, pride, lawyers, apathy, Starbucks.
The planet itself is fine and does what it does best which is to exist, orbit, and rotate.
The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?
We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.
We live in a world where if you didn’t snapshot it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.
We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.
We live in a world where our tv’s and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.
What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?
What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors and didn’t fear them?
What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?
What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail?
What happened to the world as one nation under God?
The answer I suppose depends on seeing the world within framed views of rich and poor.
What is clear is that people’s desires are contradictory, so it becomes a matter of democracy.
The problem is that most people fail to see things from other peoples perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. Just different point of views. People have become greedy and have forgotten their own truth but what happens when people stop caring.
I’m going to assume almost everyone knows that poverty is a huge problem in so many countries across the world, you’re not starving right now but you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that are.
I thought by the end of writing this, I would know what was wrong with humanity, but I don’t and I would be most grateful to anyone that can offer an explanation.
I think it was Einstein who said that ” we seem to have found the way but lost the destination”. We all seek understanding and sympathy if not empathy.
Industrial Civilization leaves us slaves to nothingness and our last days are spent in a hospital where machines are our mothers.
The only thing that is certain in life is the depravity of mankind.
As a species, we generally are self-destructive, greedy, and overpopulated.
We are the only species that hunts on a full stomach, enact genocide, and create wars by selling arms.
Unfortunately, the current technological advances are not going change the fundamental problem of what we call civilization.
Ever since the dawn of our species through no fault of our own, we have been unable to act as one : (FOR THE COMMON GOOD).
EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.
We now enter a new age of TECHNOLOGY where data is feeding artificial intelligence that is, in turn, fanning advances in the world of scientific research, that is and will have far-reaching consequences on all aspect of living.
However, despite thousands of academic papers on the subject, our current civilization relies on trial and error.
The core of our present-day technology is flawed in as much as it is going to created greater inequality. While we are busy focusing on computer intelligence artificial intelligence might arrive in a living form first and bring with it unprecedented ethical challenges.
THE CORE OF SCIENCE SHOULD BE TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE THAT OTHER PEOPLE CAN TAKE AND BUILD ON.
We need to push the frontiers of our knowledge with deep knowledge far beyond cool social apps, and neural networks that are presently trampling over moral boundaries.
We need more minds thinking about where it’s all going to end up and not allow computers to figure out for itself.
OUR CIVILIZATION NEEDS TO WIN THE RACE BETWEEN THE GROWING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE GROWING WISDOM WHICH WE WILL MANAGE IT.
EVEN IF THERE IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO HELP HUMANITY FLOURISH THERE MUST BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERE.
As always it is our complacency that is the real threat to the world.
So I leave you with these questions.
How can we ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that benefit all parts of society, and serves the public interest?
How can we design meaningful public engagement around the future impact of AI technologies?
FINALLY, ANY AI THAT GAINS CONTROL OVER IMPORTANT SYSTEMS WITH UNSUPERVISED INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO POSE AN EXISTENTIAL RISK NOT JUST TO THE PLANET BUT TO HUMANITY AS A WHOLE. SO EMPOWERED IT WILL BECOME UNQUESTIONABLE.
The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the hands that serve a few instead of the many.
Most of today’s and past world problems have their roots in Inequality.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
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
—————————————————————————————
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.
