Tag Archives: Google ambitions

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: GOOGLE IS MAKING OUR KNOWLEDGE VALUELESS.

13 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Technology, The Internet., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

( A five-minute read if you don’t want to be Googled)

Artificial intelligence is changing the world we live in but are we all going to end up scratching our behinds wishing we were dead. Turned into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Our thoughts and actions scripted as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm.

Image associée

As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

The perfect coordination and optimization of our day- to – day lives controlled by Google Monopoly inc.

Google is draining of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,”

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of people using google"

Why because we will be in a state of constant Google observation with the entire world connected to the world they wish to present.

At the moment Google control over 65% of all searches, ( WHICH NO ONE KNOWS HOW IT WORKS)

Google is not required by Law to serve everyone nor for that matter is Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter.

Nearly every iPhone operates on its Android operating system.

WE ARE ESSENTIALLY SENTENCED TO A GOOGLE DIGITAL DEATH.

They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind.

The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.

Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism.

Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work.

Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well.

Google, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does.

Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it.

What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind.

The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”

In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling.

It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

And because we would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” we would “be thought very knowledgeable when we are for the most part quite ignorant.” We would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” This is not good, as the world is in need of wisdom more than ever.

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

If we lose  quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:

As Richard Foreman so beautifully describes it, we’ve been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google net. Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Will this produce a new kind of enlightenment or “super-consciousness”? Sometimes I am seduced by those proclaiming so—and sometimes I shrink back in horror at a world that seems to have lost the thick and multi-textured density of deeply evolved personality.

Reading, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is.

The media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains.

Circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

The tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies.

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today.

Where does it end?Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of people using google"

Mr Page of google said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.”

The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.

The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought.  It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

There’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine.

Google as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”

I know that Google will argue the toss and indeed other than they becoming a monopolizing influence I would have great praise.

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

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: ITS TIME WE ALL STARTED ASKING SERIOUS QUESTIONS WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

( A Fifteen minute read)

John McCarthy, inventor of the programming language LISP, coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955. The notion of intelligent automata, as friend or foe, dates back to ancient times.

You might think with the state of the world we live in that this is some what a naive subject.  If you are like me, when it comes to Algorithms I have little or no understanding other than they are beginning to reshape my living life.Afficher l'image d'origine

Ironically, in the age of the internet and unparalleled access to information, the most critical questions are out-of-bounds.

While the web has broken down the boundaries between different nations, so you can read a blog by anybody, anywhere in the world, on the other hand all our laws and governments remain in national boundaries. Outside of that we have very limited amount of effective governance, collaboration and co-operation and understanding.

Moreover, while we are clearly pretty good at producing knowledge, using this knowledge – that is separating the wheat from the chaff and integrating this together into something useful – is a big problem particularly in fields such as global sustainability.

One of the things we ought not to do is to press full steam ahead on building super intelligence without giving thought to the potential risks. Even if the odds of a super intelligence arising are very long, perhaps it’s irresponsible to take the chance.

As far as I am aware there are no current regulation or laws governing the use of AI. It is penetrating all nooks and nannies, de-privatizing us, turning us into points at job interviews, with algorithm replaced the loan officer.

They are fundamentally reshape the nature of work.

So what will happen when a computer becomes capable of independently devising ways to achieve goals, it would very likely be capable of introspection—and thus able to modify its software and make itself more intelligent. In short order, such a computer would be able to design its own hardware avoiding any laws, ethics, or any human morality.

A case in kind is in the area of autonomous weapon systems ie Drones.

While I am fully aware that the world faces many problems that could be solved by Artificial Intelligence we must before it’s too late give AI a set of values. And not just any values, but those that are in the best interest of humanity. This is the essential task of our age and since humans will never fully agree on anything, we’ll sometimes need it to decide for us—to make the best decisions for humanity as a whole.

How, then, do we program those values into our (potential) super intelligences? What sort of mathematics can define them? These are a few of the problems.

We’re basically telling a god how we’d like to be treated. How to proceed?

It’s tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction,” Hawking and others wrote in a recent article.” But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake ever.

There is no doubting in many ways, AI innovations could simply help scientists to do their jobs more efficiently – thereby cutting the crippling time lag between science and society. They would have the insight and patience (measured in picoseconds) to solve the outstanding problems of nanotechnology and spaceflight; they would improve the human condition and let us upload our consciousness into an immortal digital form.

Algorithms that ‘learn’ from past examples relieve engineers of the need to write out every command.

Indeed if humanity has to leave earth there will be a need for such machines.

For example, could machine learning algorithms delve deep into the previous five assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, based on research published since the last report, provide rudimentary conclusions of the sixth report?

Potential future uses of AI programs like AlphaGo could include improving smartphone assistants such as Apple’s Siri, medical diagnostics, and possibly even working with human scientists in research.

AI could have many benefits, such as helping to aid the eradication of war, disease and poverty.

But if we want unlimited intelligence, we had better figure out how to align computers with human needs before the intelligence of machines exceed that of humans—a moment that futurists call the singularity. It is vital that humans programme robots to understand the “full spectrum of human values”, because the stakes are very high. After all, if we develop an artificial intelligence that doesn’t share the best human values, it will mean we weren’t smart enough to control their own creations.

Technology is take on increasingly personal roles in people’s daily lives, and will learn human habits and predict people’s needs. Anyone with an iPhone is probably familiar with Apple’s digital assistant Siri.

For example, AI could make it easier for the company to deliver targeted advertising, which some users already find unpalatable. And AI-based image recognition software could make it harder for users to maintain anonymity online.

If we look at current state of affairs a 2013 study by Oxford University estimated that Artificial Intelligence could take over nearly half of all jobs in the United States in the near future.  Automation has become an increasingly common sight the number of robots in factories across the world rose by 225,000 last year, and will rise even further in the coming years – and it is not just in manufacturing.

AI is only getting better, as computational intelligence techniques keep on improving, becoming more accurate and faster due to giant leaps in processor speeds.

Perhaps we should first ask, does science need disrupting? Yes.

Access to reliable knowledge – the academic literature – is becoming a fundamental bottleneck for humanity. There are now over 50 million research papers and this is growing at a rate of over one million a year. Over 70,000 papers have been published on a single protein – the tumor suppressor p53.

How can any academic keep up? And how can anyone outside of academia make sense of it all – the public, policy makers, business people, doctors or teachers? Well, most academics struggle and the public can’t – most research is locked behind pay walls.

With techniques like deep learning (Deep learning,” that allow a computer to do things such as recognize patterns from massive amounts of data. For example, in June 2012, Google created a neural network of 16,000 computers that trained itself to recognize a cat by looking at millions of cat images. For a computer to recognize a picture of a cat, the machine has no volition, no sense of what cat-ness is or what else is happening in the picture, and none of the countless other insights that humans have.) laying the groundwork for computers that can automatically increase their understanding of the world around them.

However possessing human like intelligence remains a long way off and what is called the singularity,” when machine intelligence exceeds human intelligence is still in the realms of science fiction.

That said Stephen Hawking has warned that because people would be unable to compete with an advanced AI, it “could spell the end of the human race.”

AI misunderstand what computers are doing when we say they’re thinking or getting smart.

Considering that the singularity may be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity, not enough research is being devoted to understanding its impacts.

In some areas, AI is no more advanced than a toddler.

Yet, when asked, many AI researchers admit that the day when machines rival human intelligence will ultimately come. The question is, are people ready for it?

Regardless of how artificial intelligence develops in the years ahead, almost all pundits agree that the world will forever change as a result of advances in AI.

The AI genie has already been released from the bottle and there is no way to get it back in.

No one is suggesting that anything like super intelligence exists now. In fact, we still have nothing approaching a general-purpose artificial intelligence or even a clear path to how it could be achieved. Recent advances in AI, from automated assistants such as Apple’s Siri to Google’s driverless cars, also reveal the technology’s severe limitations.

The problem is that a true AI would give any one of these companies( Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name them) an unbelievable advantage.

For example, Google has the Google app, available for Android phones or iPhones, which bills itself as providing “the information you want, when you need it.

Google now can show traffic information during your daily commute, or give you shopping list reminders while you’re at the store. You can ask the app questions, such as “should I wear a sweater tomorrow?” and it will give you the weather forecast. Given how much personal data from users Google stores in the form of emails, search histories and cloud storage, the company’s deep investments in artificial intelligence may seem disconcerting.

Advances in technology will push more and more companies to favour capital over labour, they will leave the majority behind.

That may be about to change. Here below are five ways AI looks set to disrupt science.

1. Science mining #1: Iris.AI

2. Science mining #2: Semantic Scholar

3. From miner to scientist

4. Science media: Science Surveyor

5. Open Access AI: Open.ai

The short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”

After all, AI systems aren’t consumers and consumers are the sine qua non of economic growth. Hairdressers are judged to be less likely to be out of a job in 20 years than economists.

Perhaps the problem is in the description ( Artificial Intelligence)  AI intelligence will not necessarily lead to sentience.

But what if intelligent machines are really just a new branch on the tree of evolution that has led us from the original Protists to where we are today?”

A species to be aided in its evolutionary process by another species called us.

The idea that computers will eventually develop the ability to speak and think with a conscious.

It’s a race between technology and education.

The mindset of the government and people have not adjusted to view the future, even though technology is exploding this decade into a world of the Internet of Things and the propulsion into artificial intelligence.

No one gains if the world’s Intelligence ends up in the hands of a few.

As artificial intelligence becomes a much more “dominant” force in future it will poses “commercial and ethical questions”

What, after all, is an android but a puppet with a computer program pulling its strings?

When I tell my phone I’m hungry and feel like eating Chinese it raises a really interesting question: Who is Siri working for? Is Siri working for me? Is it Siri’s job to find me the best Chinese meal or is Siri working for Apple and trying to get as much money as possible for Apple by auctioning the fact that they have a hungry consumer attached to it and desperate for food? The ethical debate is about who does AI work for.”

Every time you open a new social media site you can create completely new rules of the road and I think we’ll move beyond some of the things we have today.

One of the big challenges will be preserving those existing identities while creating a global culture.

We need a global culture to be able to talk about refugees and finance and tackle issues like global warming and science, and cure cancer. For these huge challenges we need to use the web to work as a whole planet, like one team.

What will make a massive difference is if we manage to design democratic, and scientific and collaborative systems which allow us to function as a planet.”

David Levy believes that, in the 2050 age, human and robots can be able to marriages with each other and it will be legal activity in many countries. But that’s was only a someone’s opinion, not a theory based or any legal law.

Why most AI are Female’s ? “.

What is hard is imagining how we humans will fit into a robot-filled future.

Finally, there is no end to the ways that humans can productively work with one another if they are no longer driven by the conflicts of scarcity.  Perhaps we will learn to love our robots.

 

 

An after thought. 6/Oct/ 2016.

There is extraordinary potential for AI in the future.

But it’s not the future that I wish to address rather the present.

AI is already making problematic judgements that are producing significant social, cultural, and economic impacts in people’s everyday lives. AI and decision -support systems are embedded in a wide array of social institutions from influencing who is released from jail to shaping the news we see.

The results or impact is hard to see. It is critical to find rigorous ways to make them visible and accountable. We need to know when automated decisions are materially affecting our lives, and if necessary , to contest them.

This won’t be achievable by the United Nations, or National Governments.

Any suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

technological unemployment”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

Will there be enough good jobs to keep the global economy growing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not the same as acting as a food stuff, where the existence of an earlier species acts as the food or fuel that allows those higher up the chain to exist and evolve.

selective breeding (unnatural selection), where human intervention is used to provide a characteristic,

the first option [is the] the evolution of some very clever tools, weapons, and body parts that become an integral part of the human species tree; or the second option … a new branch on the tree of evolution; or the third option an extension of the human branch.”

 

The greatest worry is the number of jobs that artificial intelligence systems are poised to take over.

 

Most of the best jobs that will emerge will require close collaboration between humans and computers.

As some professions become obsolete, more knowledge may not lead to higher pay either, because everyone will be bidding for the same work, which could drive wages down.

 

 

such as the promise of a guaranteed income to ensure people do not fall into the cracks. Others argue that a negative income tax would be better because it incentivises work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S ARE WE ALL GOING TO END UP GOOGLEFIED.

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Google it., Google Knowledge.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

GOOGLE is currently the world’s most visited website but is it destroying the gymnasium of our collective minds? 

Essentially, Google has become our collective mental crutch.

Google is a publicly traded company owned by a group of shareholders.

Founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, own most of the shares of the company.

It’s almost impossible to live without interacting with a Google product in today’s world. Google owns an incredible number of companies and, at times, was even buying a company a week!

As of 2015, Google had 75% market share in searches. People use Google to search nearly 13 billion times per month, which averages to 26 searches per person per year.

There are very few products in the world with this ubiquity and dominance.

Using complete data from the 2014 fiscal year, Google raked in revenues exceeding $66 billion.

With $64.4 billion in cash and having spent almost $5 billion on acquisitions in 2014, Google doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to slow down.

This means Google is richer than pretty much everyone, and everyone includes the majority of the world’s nations such as Iceland, the Bahamas, Guatemala, Bulgaria and Sierra Leone.

This figure does not take into account Google’s expenses for 2014, which bring the company’s total net profit down to a measly $14.44 billion. However, since the gross domestic product, or GDP, of a nation does not incorporate its debt, the revenue figure is the most accurate number to use when comparing the income of corporations to the wealth of nations.

In 2015, Google Incorporated is worth $370 billion.

(Google is not even the richest company. In fact, based on revenue alone, Google trails pretty far down the list. Wal-Mart tops the chart with revenues exceeding $485 billion, and other corporate giants such as BP, Apple (AAPL) and Bank of America (BOA) rank somewhere in between.)

Google wield astonishing power in the United States and around the world.

Google Incorporated is the third largest company, in terms of market capitalization, in the United States; Its market cap is $373.79 billion, only being edged out by Microsoft Corporation and Apple Incorporated.

With most businesses being directly or indirectly controlled by a relatively small number of global mega-companies, almost everything a consumer buys or interacts with is connected in some way to companies such as Google.

Google makes money from searches by selling promoted advertising based on search keywords.

The ads are more powerful than traditional advertising because they can be targeted by interest and geography. Advertisers like the program because they can get real-time feedback on the effectiveness and engagement of their ads. This continues to be the backbone of Google’s business and its major source of revenue.

Google Gmail today has over 425 million MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS.
Afficher l'image d'origine

THE QUESTION IS:

If the Google was a nation and declared sovereignty, issued a currency and joined the United Nations tomorrow, where would it rank on a list of the wealthiest countries?

It turns out Google’s $66 billion revenue plants it squarely at number 70 for the 2014 fiscal year.

Only 69 of the nations of the world outrank the Internet-technology giant.

While economic superpowers such as the United States and China far outstrip Google, for now, the number of countries with GDPs dwarfed by Google’s massive wealth is staggering.

The phrase “to Google” is so popular that the company is actually worried about losing trademark rights if the term becomes generic, like “escalator” and “zipper,” which were once trademarked.

It has changed our brains. Even if we aren’t conscious of it, our brains are primed to think about the Internet as soon as we start trying to recall the answer to a tough trivia question.

It has taken over our cell phones. Since the first Android phone was sold in 2008, Google’s mobile operating system has bulldozed the competition. Today it claims nearly 85% of market share, nearly doubling its hold over the last three years.

It has transformed the way we use e-mail. Gmail was invented a decade ago, before bottomless in boxes were a sine qua non. It’s hard even to remember those dark ages when storage space was sacred—and deleting emails was as tedious-but-necessary as flossing. Today our accounts serve as mausoleums, housing long-forgotten files, links, and even whole relationships. Google itself has touted alternative uses for Gmail, such as setting up a virtual time capsule for your newborn—though in practice accounts can’t be owned by anyone under 13. But even that last point is about to change.

It’s changed how we collaborate. Back in 2006, Google acquired the company behind an online word processor named Writely. With that bet, Google created a world where it’s taken for granted that people can collaborate on virtually any type of document, whether for work, play, or (literally) revolution.

It has allowed us to travel the globe from our desks. Yes, Map Quest was popular first. But Google Maps (and Earth) has become much more than a tool for measuring travel routes and times. Since Google Street View came onto the scene in 2007, it’s been possible to “visit” distant destinations, give friends a virtual tour of your hometown, plan ahead of trips, and waste even more time on the Internet.

Of course, the more popular a tool, the more useful it is to those who’d like to spy on us.

It has influenced the news we read. Ranking high in Google search results is serious business and can have a profound effect on the success of companies, media outlets, and even politicians. When I just Googled “how SEO affects journalism,” this link was at the top of my search results. How is that significant? Well, for one, that story itself has been so successfully search engine optimized that it still tops the list despite being four years old.

It has turned users into commodities. We all love free stuff, but it’s easy to forget that services offered by companies like Google and Facebook aren’t truly “free,” as data expert Bruce Schneier has pointed out. Remember that all of your data (across ALL of the services you use, and that includes Calendar, Maps, and so on) is a valuable good that Google is packaging and selling to its real customers—advertisers.

It’s changed how everyone else sees YOU. Unlike your Facebook profile, the links that turn up when potential employers (or love interests) Google you can be near-impossible to erase. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google uses the fear of embarrassing search results to encourage people to manage their image through Google+ profiles.

Next stop:  

Self-driving cars along with a Google computer that is so artificially intelligent that it could program on its own transmitting, too Google glasses which will surely Googlefie their owners.  

Leaving little room if any for self conscious or search engines? Aren’t they all dead? —

Recent research has confirmed suspicions that 24/7 access to (near) limitless information is not only bad for human discourse— it’s also making us worse at remembering things, regardless of whether we try.

Thanks to Google we now have for lack of a better word the “wisdom of the crowd” or “social proof” (which you can “buy”) which sums up how superficial and shallow our society has really become.

Social Proofing is a phrase that applies particularly well to the large social environment created on the internet and the power of a group to come together and make a decision collectively.

(i.e. other items customers buy after viewing this item’ display or review summaries Booking.com Recommendation engines in shopping sites like Amazon.com rely on other people’s feedback to help drive sales and refer people to products they will like based on the buying behaviours of people like them.)

It doesn’t necessarily always lead to the “wisest” decision, because it can be a blind choice, made because other people made it, not necessarily based on sound rationalisation looking at the facts.

Social proof is everywhere.

Comments are indicators that enough people are paying attention to what you are writing to reply. The same can be said for things like Facebook “like” and Twitter “tweet” buttons.

We are pack animals, no matter how independent we think we are, unless you live in a cave, you are conditioned by other people around you.

Today the very nature of the Internet, being such a social environment, has resulted in social proof becoming by far the greatest force when it comes to buying decisions.

Google has recently 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.

With the European Union recently beginning an investigation for monopolistic business practices, diversification might be in Google’s best interest.

Using Google to navigate the web remains the preferred method by which most people find information online. However, Google is far from a monopoly in terms of the entire gamut of Internet services. The perception of Google being a monopoly is derived from the fact it happens to have dominance in the most lucrative area of the Internet.

On the other hand.

When Google was just a start-up business in Palo Alto, Calif., it did not have enough money to pay its employees the high wages of today’s Google, so they offered them stock in place of a massive salary. Those original employees, including the head of the culinary staff, now either still own a good chunk of shares or have cashed in and enjoy a life of extreme wealth and prosperity because of Google’s explosive growth.

Google Incorporated now offers some of the best employee benefits and even death benefits. If a Google employee dies, the deceased’s spouse or partner receives half of the deceased employee’s salary for 10 years. Children of the deceased employee also receive $1,000 per month until age 19, or 23 if the children are full-time students.

It has contributed quite a bit of its income to various charities. In 2012, Google reported charitable donations exceeding $144.6 million. In addition, it gave away approximately $1 billion in free products.

Why have any concerns?

Google launched its Google Print division, now known as Google Books, which scans books into its application and website. Google intends to scan all existing books before 2020. To date, Google has scanned over 20 million books.

They are not doing this for the love of books or reading.

pirate-piracy-malware-ss-1920

Project Loon proposes to provide internet connectivity from balloons floating at a height of 20 km above the earth’s surface on a pilot basis. The idea is to connect remote areas of the country using LTE or 4G technology through the balloons, which can transmit as far as 40 km from their diameter.

If you believe that this is all they want to achieve with their Balloons you can pull my other leg.

Should we ban the wearing of Google glasses in public places.

  • As a practical act which creates areas free of surveillance or highly intrusive surveillance.
  • As a symbolic act showing concern for privacy.
  • As a way of exerting social pressure to establish norms around usage.
  • As a way of exerting market pressure to discourage people from buying and companies developing these systems.
  • Questions over machine monitored surveillance have existed for decades,

Fears over AI overlords may be groundless, but the use of machine learning to mine personal information is a worrying development, artificial intelligence experts have warned.

There is a broad consensus that technology has the potential to improve education and make it more personalized, but it is never going to come to pass if we don’t set higher standards for student and data security.”

A digital textbook is a textbook that lives on a desktop, laptop or mobile devices and is easily editable to provide educational content that is as timely and relevant as possible.

It wont challenge them to think about the knowledge, skills and abilities they’ll need to solve that problem.

But when does personalized learning get too personal?

Google researchers claim they’re working on a supercomputer that harnesses the power of quantum physics to calculate in one second problems that would take a regular machine 10,000 years to solve.

The change unlocks more computing power, allowing quantum computers to consider untold variables compared to conventional machines.

If they’re right — some people have raised questions about their claims — then the world could be at the dawn of a new age of über-powerful computers.

High-frequency trading helped cause the so-called “flash crash” of 2010, To the extent they can be speeded up even by a microsecond, it will make the problem that much worse.

On February 26th, 2015 Google’s Webmaster Central Blog announced a mobile algorithm update for April 21st, 2015. This is the first time Google has ever given an exact date for an algorithm update, so the digital world was expecting big things, dubbing the event ‘Mobilegeddon’.

Google is in such a dominant market position on mobile, that their decision to ban legitimate apps from Android amounts to Internet censorship.

The message from Google is clear, if your website is not optimised for mobile, it’s likely that your search ranking will suffer. Google cares most of all that people keep coming back to use their search engine.

The choices Google makes about what apps are banned and allowed appear in many cases to be dangerously anti-user.

The update will effectively penalise websites which Google does not deem to be mobile friendly and the impact is expected to be widespread.Google is not one to joke around so it is a definite ‘watch this space’ as the full impact of this algorithm is yet to seen…

Ethics concerns in conjunction with porn viewing and the internet cloud are presently in the news.

THINK WITH GOOGLE. 

New and expecting parents are 2.7x more likely than non-parents to use a smart phone as their primary device. So it’s not surprising  that Mobile searches related to babies and parenting have grown 25% since 2013

Searches about baby development were 72% mobile in Q1 of this year

In fact, views of parenting videos on YouTube were up 329% on mobile this year.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm.

We come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

If we fill our BRAINS  up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

20111211-google-wordle

FALLING OUT OF LOVE WITH GOOGLE.

Understand what they’re doing, taking away time we could be using to shape our content in interesting ways.

Google’s increasingly invasive technology WILL BE IT’S DOWNFALL.

Apple’s policy is to collect no personal data, (this is of course apart from your iTunes account details allowing you to make purchases) a surprise from a huge company who aren’t exactly squeaky clean in other areas, like the working conditions for overseas workers for example.And they don’t do search – or do they? Installed on all almost 1 billion Apple devices worldwide,

Search with no ads and no data collection. So those of us with Apple devices can sidestep the issues with Google and still not have to add them to the To Sort Out list!

The fast changing pace of tech companies shows no sign of letting up and can both drive change and perhaps cause their downfall as consumers move with the tides as well.

Who would foresee Google tumbling from their great height? But perhaps this is what we are witnessing as this world of rapid changes throws up other surprises.

We are using these devices every day so we care and influence the battles outcomes.

So what we can do to get Google to re-commit to their mission of doing no evil.

We are letting the opportunity of a lifetime—of our lifetime and theirs—pass us by.

DuckDuckGo who offer search with no data collection.

They are an Open Source company who decided early in their life to offer Search with no personal tracking, no collection or sharing of your personal information. They’re a built-in search page option in Safari and Firefox, but not of course in Google Chrome!

Does any of this matter?

I suppose in the long run nothing will matter, but in the mean time Google which lives off our daily lives has a responsibility away beyond it Billions.

As humanity we will no doubt be reduced to a chip in a AI robot if we are to have any chance of escaping the planet before its demise.  ( Providing we last that long which looking at the current state of affairs it is highly unlikely.)

So perhaps it is for the best that we are all becoming Googlefied.

Google it and see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE WORLD: PART THREE COMMUNICATION.

28 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Education, Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Social Media., The Future, The Internet.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

 

You might think that with all the problems in the world that communication is of little importance.

You would be wrong.  Now more than ever we need to be able to communicate.

Unfortunately it’s under attack by the Internet, leading to wars, inequality, abuse of power. It is disconnecting the world rather than connecting it.

Why do I say this?

Because through the Internet we are loosing physical touch with not only ourselves but with the foundations of the human mind’s perception of harmony.

The Net is turning the world upside down.  Into them and us cultures.

These day it might be somewhat difficult to get your head around the history of communication.

From the first vision to the first grunt ( which were probably both misinterpreted then, as they are now) to its Ground Control to Major Tom.

Communication has come in all form of life.

Afficher l'image d'origine

Nonverbal sign language, eye contact, sound, silence.

YOU NAME IT AND ITS TRYING TO COMMUNICATE.

The problem these day is that it has become so complicated that we are not communicating but disconnecting. Without a physical presence its impossible to communicate other than send a message.

When I say Happy New year to you without any physical input I could be a computer that is wishing you happy new year with no understanding of happiness or time.

Afficher l'image d'origine

 

Let’s start with the digital world of Communication.Afficher l'image d'origine

Afficher l'image d'origineLike any other technology it undeniably makes parts of life so much easier and is here to stay.

We are bombarded by information, thanks in large part to the internet and its allied technologies.

But exposure to unlimited information is not the same thing as the ability to capture it as knowledge or synthesize it as understanding.

“We are living in a state of perpetual distraction,”

Everything is moving so fast that we’ve got to adapt to it, keep up with it!

It takes all of one’s energy & speed to simply remain in one place while running.

But what sort of life is that? How much depth does it really have?

Yet the digital world constantly makes us break life into discrete, interchangeable bits that hurtle us forward so rapidly & inexorably that we simply don’t have time to stop & think. And before we know it, we’re unwilling & even unable to think. Not in any way that allows true self-awareness in any real context.

We are fast arriving at the point of confusion of information and personal knowledge.

There’s no app that makes you tolerant — it happens person by person.

Different media encourage different ways of thinking, and helped tie together a number of broad ideas for me regarding the evolution of human cognition and the influence of the tools we use.

On one hand the Internet is short-changing our brain power. It is making us shallower creatures, diverting our attention and fragmenting of our thoughts.

On the other it has made the information universes of all of us much larger.

It has and still is altering the way we read, and the way we pay attention.

Our relationship with technology is just beginning, but we do not need to be the slaves of the predominant technology like the smart phone or be lead by the hypnotic Internet, where portals lead us on from one text, image, or video to another while we’re being bombarded by messages, alerts, and feeds.

Not only are we thinking differently with different media, the Internet is frying our brains?

Reconfiguring our brains, we are also forging a “new intellectual ethic”.

Greater access to knowledge is not the same as greater knowledge.

– An ever-increasing plethora of facts & data is not the same as wisdom.

– Breadth of knowledge is not the same as depth of knowledge.

– Multitasking is not the same as complexity.

What are the consequences of new habits of mind that abandon sustained immersion and concentration for darting about, snagging bits of information? What is gained and what is lost?

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

It can be reshaped, and the way that we think can be reshaped, for good or for ill.

Thus, if the brain is trained to respond to & take pleasure in the faster pace of the digital world, it is reshaped to favor that approach to experiencing the world as a whole. More, it comes to crave that experience, as the body increasingly craves more of anything it’s trained to respond to pleasurably & positively. The more you use a drug, the more you need to sustain even the basic rush.

It comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at our capacity for concentration and contemplation.  Our mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.

Once you were a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now you zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

The individual seeks out ‘virtual worlds’ that simplify interactions because the ‘real world’ is difficult to access, but when confronted with the ‘real world’ problems, that’s when the individual becomes turned off from dealing with their ‘real’ life, further perpetuating this vicious cycle towards isolation.”

Our future tools and tech may offer a new playing field, but we’re the same old players. Sure, we may wear robotic fighting exoskeletons — but we’re still going to war and falling in love and arguing with our moms.

When relationships become out of balance, would technology really fill the void or is it a vapid substitution?

While fully recognizes the usefulness of the Internet are we buying into the attractive fashionable modern viewpoint that just being exposed to a lot of information via technology will make us smart.

I am afraid not. There is a sleazy, materialist shallowness about it that most of us don’t enjoy called Porn.

Foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

The Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through your eyes and ears and into your mind.

The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded.

However it’s not communication.

Thinking, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way we quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online.

“I can’t read War and Peace  anymore, I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

As our reliance on ever brighter and faster Internet content increases, a new force is taking hold across the culture of the Web-connected world, leading to changes in reading habits and even in human brains.

The Internet trends of today foreshadow the surfing, the teaching, learning, and thinking of tomorrow.

The picture of our intellectual future, rendered thoroughly, convincingly, and often beautifully

I suppose  it all boils down to so long as we aren’t stupid enough to stop cultivating our individual minds regardless of technology changes, media itself will not make us stupid.

The wisest will still turn off the TV and other distractions when sustained concentration is called for, and they will understand the difference between various conditions and different kinds of media in general and will use each to its best advantage.

They though when the printed word was invented or the radio, or Television there would be adverse consequences.  However none of these things has had the dire consequences that culture critics predicted, we have adapted in turn in some way to each of them, more or less successfully.

Then again if all knowledge ends up store in the Cloud along with our modern-day History.  ( History illustrates our failures, and without history, we do not have the tools to create a successful future.) and we have deserts of Technology the art of communication will be lost to generations to come ruled by Holograms and Algorithms of the Internet.

But to think that we “learn” from history is somewhat of an illusion when you look around the world.  I feel that we only learn selective elements in history and probably pay more attention to history when it cost resources such as time, money or material. Think of the number of times genocide has happened in our recorded history and despots–even today–continue genocidal practices falsely believing that their regime is justified.

The neurological effects of the Internet are still to come.  This is why we should  incorporating the best of the latest technology in a way that improves education.

Education is Communication. Afficher l'image d'origine

Will we do anything? Are we capable of recognizing the dangers? We should be look at the world. We all living in our private clouds designed by The Smart Phone Communication.

If we want a more rewarding life we have to let the whole world know. (see previous posts)

I hope this post is not too long for you to leave a comment rather then pressing the like button.

The Beady Eye looks at Google Knowledge.

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Google it., Google Knowledge., Social Media., The Internet.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Out of the seven billion people in the world how many really understand quantum mechanics, cell biology, or macroeconomics?

Knowledge is power.

The real test of knowledge is not whether it is true, but whether it empowers us. Consequently, these days truth is a poor test for knowledge. The test seems to be utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge.

Knowledge is a the root of many (dare I say most) challenges we face in a given day and I have to admit I could do with a large refresher course.

Once you get past basic survival we’re confronted with knowledge issues on almost every front.

These days most of us are becoming reliant on Google it.

But when you get an answer is that answer universal knowledge or is it Google cods wallop.

It’s not possible to completely shed all our lenses which color our view of things and so it’s not possible to be certain that we’re getting at some truth “out there.” If all beliefs are seen through a lens, like Google how do we know the postmodernists beliefs are “correct?”

In order to have certainty, postmodernists claim, we would need to be able to “stand outside” our own beliefs and look at our beliefs and the world without any mental lenses or perspective.

If we do not fully understand what it is, will we not fully understand ourselves either?

But then again knowledge — can ever be fully understood.

The nature of knowledge is answerable to intuitions. This means that what may count as knowledge for you may not count as knowledge for me. An other words what you know may not be something I know even though we have the same evidence and arguments in front of us.

The bottom line is that “universal knowledge” – something everybody knows—may be very hard to come by.

I think, therefore I am.

Truth, if it exists, isn’t like this.

Truth is universal. It’s our access to it that may differ widely.

Okay, a definition is tough to come by.

But philosophers have been attempting to construct one for centuries. Over the years, a trend has developed in the philosophical literature and a definition has emerged that has such wide agreement it has come to be known as the “standard definition.”

As with most things in philosophy, the definition is controversial and there are plenty who disagree with it. But as these things go, it serves as at least the starting point for studying knowledge.

The person believes the statement to be true
The statement is in fact true
The person is justified in believing the statement to be true

Belief:

They’re in your head and generally are viewed as just the way you hold the world (or some aspect of the world) to be.

It implies that what you think could be wrong. In other words, it implies that what you think about the world may not match up with the way the world really is and so there is a distinction between belief and the next item in our list.

People will generally act, according to what they really believe rather than what they say they believe

Truth:

Truth is not in your head but is “out there.”

When you believe something, you hold that or accept that a statement or proposition is true. It could be false that’s why your belief may not “match up” with the way the world really is.

Justification:

If the seed of knowledge is belief, what turns belief into knowledge?

This is where justification comes in (some philosophers use the term “warrant” to refer to this element). A person knows something if they’re justified in believing it to be true (and, of course, it actually is true).

Justification is hard to pin down because beliefs come in all shapes and sizes and it’s hard to find a single theory that can account for everything we would want to claim to know. Even so, justification is a critical element in any theory of knowledge.

So.

  • Everyone comes to belief with a cognitive structure that cannot be set aside.
  • Our cognitive structure serves as a lens through which we view the world. Because of this, knowledge is said to be perspectival or a product of our perspective.
  • Since the evaluation of our beliefs is based on our cognitive lens, it’s not possible to be certain about any belief we have. This should make us tentative about truth claims and more open to the idea that all of our beliefs could be wrong.
  • Truth emerges in the context (or relative to) community agreement. For example  if the majority of scientists agree that the earth is warming and that humans are the cause, then that’s true. Notice that the criteria for “truth” is that scientists agree.

Are you now any more knowledgeable.   Google it and see.

There is one thing without doubt:

The fact that you are a thinking things.

In order to doubt you have to think. (The very reason that it’s not possible to doubt something without thinking about the fact that you’re doubting it). Thinking then you must be a thinking thing and so it is impossible to doubt that you are a thinking being.

If you know it all leave a comment, otherwise press the like button. Ignorance is bliss.

Some further reading and viewing>

Knowing how to Google something is not enough. 2014/09/02

Google is a business. 2015/03/02

The Imparting and Acquiring of knowledge. 2015/03/03

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google is a business – and like all businesses, its bottom line is the bottom line.

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Technology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

The power of Google is considerable, and wielded in many different ways.

Few companies have had as large an impact on our daily lives as Google. The company is everywhere, powering our access to information and how we connect to others.

It has grown to set the world’s standard of information and how it’s managed.

Google is not Life:  It’s hidden algorithms have the power to make or break reputations and fortunes, to shape public debates, and to change our view of the world.

Google’s immense resources mean that it can wield its power in many more ways than a mere internet monopoly. Lobbying, both open and hidden, is a big deal – the amount of effort put into shaping the reform of the data protection regime so it suits Google better has been colossal.

It has infiltrated our daily routines with its products and services including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even financial organization solutions. Through these devices and offerings, Google has influenced culture in a way that very few companies throughout history have.

The company can learn even more about people who use G Mail, the social networking site Orkut, or another of Google’s popular personalized services.

Google’s determination to change the way we access and use information is epitomized through their technological innovations.

Most recently, Google Glass, a groundbreaking technology, combines Google’s software services with day-to-day application. This product introduced the world to the possibility of wearable technology, as users are fed a constant stream of digital information via a mini screen that is fixed on a pair of glasses.

How they set their algorithms, how they index the web, what they include and exclude, what they rate highly – and what they rate as insignificant – matters in ways that are often hugely underestimated.

If you think that Google is are a purely neutral organisation, providing a service to the planet it is a very naive assumption. Google has a critical role to play in how technology functions, how businesses function – and in how the media functions., not how we function.

The question is whether the company is acquiring too much power over our lives – invading our privacy, shaping our preferences, and controlling how we learn about and understand the world around us.

“Searching” is no longer a neutral tool, but has become a social force in itself.

“A log of your search history is as close to a printout of your brain as we’ve ever had.” For this reason we should be wary of its power, before you end up doomed to join Google Slavery and become a genuine SELF E. 

Take for example if you wanted to remove a link; a request is made, and then Google can decide to delete or not to delete – deletions being if the information is old or irrelevant – and if they choose not to, the requester can either take legal action or ask the data protection authority to adjudicated.

In previous post I have aired the opinion that Google wants to capture all knowledge and its distribution, thus becoming the power of the market place world-wide. 

Google mission statement:  “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

With so much tracking power throughout the web, plus search, plus its toolbar and other services, Google can track ~70% of the Internet population.

It has the potential to vaporize the profits of any industry that traffic in bits and bytes and to shift the economics to the advantage of Google.

It could actually pose a national defense concern at some point simply by virtue of its singularly massive storehouse of data.

It is becoming the crude oil of the Information Economy.

Our lives are being mapped by the internet.

But is it wise to let the likes of Google decide what becomes of our culture’s collective memory? The place into which we appear to be pouring our culture for safekeeping. If we are putting all our eggs in one or two vast online baskets, shouldn’t we, the public, share a grip on the handle?

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world…

Should we allow search engines like Google to controls not only the future but the past…

Google has successfully built a platform that monetizes the content of other people, first though search, and then through a contextual network. It controls 60%+ of all advertisements that flow in contextual networks.

It’s influence over the Internet spans far beyond search. It goes right into the heart of the Internet – content. Google is like a giant spider who has spread its net all across the Internet, and each time you get on that net, you give more power to that spider.

Google knows more and more about us, but right now there’s almost nothing we can do to find out exactly what it does with that information.

The challenge is how to do this without undermining an online application that, even its critics concede, is one of the greatest learning and labor-saving devices of our time.

Google agreed last year to limit the amount of time it keeps personalized user information to 18 months and to cut the life span of its cookies from 30 years to two.

In the past several years, Google has spent billions on companies, research and projects ranging from YouTube to wind power. It has acquired over 170 companies.

It has changed our language. It has changed our brains. It has taken over our cell phones. It has transformed the way we use e-mail. It’s changed how we collaborate. It has allowed us to travel the globe from our desks. It has influenced the news we read. It has turned users into commodities. It’s changed how everyone else sees YOU.

Google Earth view

Google’s Android operating system is also the most widely used smart phone software in the world, further emphasizing their technological dominance in mobile computing markets.

The role of search engines as intermediaries or data controllers is not understood.

Indeed Google’s power to control the process and set the agenda is lacking vision.

Despite the growing number of photographers who use Google in their works, it remains unclear how this technology will influence our perspective in photography—and perceptions of spatial reality—outside the virtual world.

A small step in the right direction.

Instead of Google promoting its Logo as a biennial supporter of St Patrick’s Day or

 

 

google logosgoogle logos

 

It could with its Logo highlight the Inequalities of the world.  The abuse of People Trafficking, Poverty, Corruption. Its Logo could become a rallying symbol for change. Would it do it. Of course not because it suffers from the very symptoms it has or is creating.  Exploitation of the weakest, the gullible, the naive, the lonely, the very people who need to be one bar closer to Humanity.    

Whatever your opinions are about Google, you can’t deny their influence on the world around us.

Ultimately, Google must grapple with the essential paradox it embodies.

As a corporation, it’s often a cipher, its intentions and methods concealed by algorithms that look impenetrable and impersonal. Yet the search engine and the blockbuster business built atop it utterly depend upon millions of people sharing through searches their most intimate desires, and upon thousands of businesses willing to open their data storehouses to feed Google’s voracious digital maw

” It’s about humans. “

Google may have to listen to the rest of us about what Google will become next.

Old expectations of privacy might be fading but if we are denied the right to reply or remove links it could well lose the head-to-head battle between it and Apple.

“Google nets $115,150 of revenue in one minute, and converts $23,509 of that into profit.

Apple in 60 seconds,makes a dizzying $328,965 in revenue. Translate that into profit, and it’s still an insanely high $71,288. Per second, Apple makes over $1100 in pure profit.

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written or stored by Google.

 

 

Not long now when Machines will talk back to you.

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Not my usual subject matter but I could not resist imagining a world where every appliance starts talking.

Your man Jason Silva on You tube inspired this post by god wobbling on about the next big revolution of technology. Is he Bonkers.

The Concept of Everyday object aging and giving us feed back from their own consciousness he says ” promises to blur the distinction between self and world.” ” The entire World will have mind in it ”

He is right to suggests that it rattles his imagination.

He should stop waffling and pontificating utter dribble on the subject.  If he thinks humans need a link to tools to explore the Universe he has lost the capacity for long range imagination.

Man can barley communicate with each other never mind the internet of thing. It time he addressed the real world problems.

Have a look http://youtu.be/wL34vk-On3o

Anyway lets looks.

Lying in the vast Promised Land between connected things that are obviously useful and things that are uselessly awful, are connected appliances. Yes. Appliances. That connect to the Internet.

This night mare is not in the so distant future.

So lets imagine a sentient refrigerator that automatically inventories items as you load it, knowing not only what the item is but everything about it, such as when it expires or what it could be used for.

Start pulling out eggs and flour and chocolate chips and the home prompts you with a chocolate chip cookie recipe and tells the oven to pre-heat itself. (That’s right, oven. You listen up when ‘fridge is talkin’!) And, since we’re in the future, the recipe will display on the counter from an overhead projector.

You’d never misplace anything again, because your clothes will have RFID tags and the home will know exactly where your missing sock went. Of course, it won’t tell you, because your wife figured out how to program it and is screwing with you.

On the surface, you might scoff at the idea of a smart refrigerator. “Why do I need a machine to tell me that my milk has gone bad?! And maybe I like day old milk. Did the ‘smart fridge’ ever think of that?! The lumps are where the flavor lives! Not so smart now, are you fridge?!”

Web browsing and integrates with Google calendar, allowing the family to keep their schedules in sync. You can use the screen to keep tabs on items you need at the store, so you won’t forget that you drank that last of your Beer and desperately need more. You can also input items into the screen, letting the fridge know your food inventory. In turn, it can suggest recipes, generate supermarket coupons and notify you when something is about to spoil.

You can then use your smart phone to increase ice production prior to that big party, ensuring you avoid the humiliating “What do you mean no ice for my scotch?!”  The modules can also put the system into energy-saving mode during vacations or notify you of any service issues. Also, you can get an email informing you that a door has been left open, which is helpful if you’re still home but will fill you with dread all day long if you’re already at work. If you’re so smart, fridge, shut the damn door yourself!

As technology advances, the ability for the fridge to automatically know the food you have on hand – either via RFID or maybe just scanning your receipt – could be incredibly helpful; it might even find an answer to the eternal question of, “What can I make with four carrots, a jar of mayo, two tins of ketchup, something that is possibly with an onion and six cases of beer?” Also, the fridge could become like a personal diet coach, shaming you with stern texts as you go for that midnight ice cream or just locking you out altogether.

Isn’t the future amazing, and you wonder what Google ambitions are.

Do you really need a smart appliance? Probably not.

Do you think that’s going to keep appliance manufacturers from bringing more and more of them to market in the coming years? Of course not! This tech is on the horizon, whether we want it or not, so you may as well get ready for it. At the very least, it might make your daily chores a little less soul destroying.

If nothing else just think of all the fun that the Anonymous hackers can have!

O! and by the way that is only the fridge wait till everything starts communication with everything else.