Tag Archives: Power of Social Media

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHERE IT THE TRUTH TO BE FOUND? CERTAINLY NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

12 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Communication., Fake News., Google, Social Media, Technology, The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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( A Fifteen minute read)

The internet has loosened our collective grasp on the truth.

It is a fact of the internet that ( with a new social media user, every 15 seconds,) every click, every view and every sign-up is recorded somewhere.

So what exactly is Social Media:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media"

Is it a term relating to gatherings of people that prefer to exist in groups?

Or

Is it the dustbin of idle world gossip.

Not on your Nelly> With billions of people glued to Facebook, Whats App, We Chat, Instagram, Twitter, Weibo and other popular services, social media has become an increasingly powerful cultural and political force, to the point that its effects are now beginning to alter the course of global events.

This is what it is to-day:

Social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising in 2015.

  • A 2011 study by AOL/Nielsen showed that 27 million pieces of content were shared every day, and today 3.2 billion images are shared each day.
  • On WordPress alone, 91.8 million blog posts are published every month.
  • It’s estimated that video will account for 74% of all online traffic in 2017.
  • Google processes 100 billion searches a month.
  • 91.47% of all internet searches are carried out by Google.
  • 60% of Google’s searches come from mobile devices.
  • To carry out all these searches, Google’s data centre uses 0.01% of worldwide electricity, although it hopes to cut its energy use by 15% using AI.
  • By 2014, Google had indexed over 130,000,000,000,000 (130 trillion) web pages.

    social sites

    Facebook statistics

    • Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second.
    • 79% of all online US adults use Facebook.
    • 76% of Facebook users check it every day.
    • The average (mean) number of friends is 155.
    • Half of internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does.
    • Of those, 24% say that they look at posts or photos on that person’s account.
    • There are an estimated 270 million fake Facebook profiles.
    • The most popular page is Facebook’s main page with 204.7m likes. The most liked non-Facebook owned page is Christiano Ronaldo’s with 122.6m.
    • There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook.
    • Facebook has 5 million active advertisers on the platform.
    • Facebook accounts for 53.1% of social logins made by consumers to sign into the apps and websites of publishers and brands.

    Twitter statistics

    • 500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in.
    • There is a total of 1.3 billion accounts, but only 328 million are active,
    • Of those, 44% made an account and left before ever sending a Tweet.
    • The average Twitter user has 707 followers.
    • But 391 million accounts have no followers at all.
    • There are 500 million Tweets sent each day. That’s 6,000 Tweets every second.
    • Twitter’s top 5 markets (countries) account for 50% of all Tweets.
    • It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to go from the first Tweet to the billionth.
    • 65.8% of US companies with 100+ employees use Twitter for marketing.
    • 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to.

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    You tube statistics

    • 300 hours of video are uploaded to You tube every minute.
    • People now watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day.
    • More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.
    • The average mobile viewing session lasts more than 40 minutes.
    • The user submitted video with the most views is the video for Luis Fonsi’s song ‘Despacito’ with 4.36 billion views.
    • YouTube sees around 1,148bn mobile video views per day.
    • In 2014, the most searched term was music. The second was Minecraft.
    • 9% of U.S small businesses use Youtube.
    • You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population).

    Instagram statistics

    • There are 800 million Monthly Active Users on Instagram.
    • Over 95 million photos are uploaded each day.
    • There are 4.2 billion Instagram Likes per day.
    • More than 40 billion photos have been shared so far.
    • 90 percent of Instagram users are younger than 35.
    • When Instagram introduced videos, more than 5 million were shared in 24 hours.
    • Pizza is the most popular Instagrammed food, behind sushi and steak.
    • 24% of US teens cite Instagram as their favourite social network.

    data chalkboard image

    Pinterest statistics

    • Pinterest has 200 million active users each month.
    • 31% of all online US citizens use the platform.
    • 67% of Pinterest users are under 40-years-old.
    • The best time to Pin is Saturday from 8pm-11pm.
    • In 2014, male audience grew 41% and their average time spent on Pinterest tripled to more than 75 minutes per visitor.

    LinkedIn statistics

    • LinkedIn has 500 million members.
    • 106 million of those access the site on a monthly basis.
    • More than 1 million members have published content on LinkedIn.
    • The average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections.
    • Over 3 million companies have created LinkedIn accounts.
    • But only 17% of US small businesses use LinkedIn.

    Snapchat Statistics

    • Snapchat has 178m active daily users.
    • 60% of them are under 25.
    • In 2016, $90m was spent on Snapchat ads.
    • 47% of US teens think it’s better than Facebook, while 24% think it’s better than Instagram.

    That’s your fill of social media statistics for now, with just a tiny fraction of the weird and wonderful stats and facts available out there.

    It’s easy to get dragged into the drama and other negative aspects of social media.

    Social media is built for polarisation and extremes.

The basic engagement mechanisms of popular social media sites like Facebook drive people to think and communicate in ever more extreme ways.

Social media is a collective term for all the websites and online services that are erasing national borders and distances.

Social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.

They are used to spread information about dramatic events or to warn others about risky routes. When refugees reach a new country, they can also use social media to contact their fellow countrymen who are already there and find out about things like permits, authorities they can turn to or what things cost.

They have subsumed and gutted mainstream media.

They have undone traditional political advantages like fund-raising and access to advertising.

They are destabilizing and replacing old-line institutions and established ways of doing things, including political parties, transnational organizations and longstanding, unspoken social prohibitions against blatant expressions of racism and xenophobia.

They are helping to create surprisingly influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups. For Example : Brexiters in Britain to ISIS in the Middle East to the hacker collectives of Eastern Europe and Russia.

Each network in its own way is now wielding previously unthinkable power, resulting in unpredictable, sometimes destabilizing geopolitical spasms.

Through this new technology, people are now empowered to express their grievances and to follow people they see as echoing their grievances.

THE QUESTION IS:

IS SOCIAL MEDIA NOW THE JUDGE AND JURY AND THOSE THAT RUN ITS ALGORITHMS ARE NOW THE REAL WORLD POWER BROKERS.

If it wasn’t for social media, I don’t see TRUMP AS PRESIDENT OF THE US.

This has to be the scariest ACHIEVEMENT about Facebook/ Twitter.

Not that Facebook may be full of lies (a problem that could potentially be fixed), but that its scope gives it real power to change history in bold, unpredictable ways.

But that’s where we are.

It’s time to start recognizing that social networks actually are becoming the world-shattering forces that their boosters long promised they would be — and to be unnerved, rather than exhilarated, by the huge social changes they could uncork.

This should come as no surprise.

Facebook and Twitter have become the new TV, where businesses can’t control their messaging as they once were able to do with TV ads.

In a way, we are now living through a kind of bizarro version of the utopia that some in tech once envisioned would be unleashed by social media.

Online campaigns directed at GOVERNMENTS OR FOR THAT MATTER AGAINST BRANDS can be a lot more effective than writing. Pay-to-play strategy by letting posts run and gain organic traction before boosting them.

Efforts to fight this dismaying trend are obviously worth pursuing, but is it time to give our due to the new political activism – Social Media. The king of communication.

As it becomes increasingly commercialised there is a risk that people – particularly young people – will see social media content as being politically and commercially independent.

What it means to get caught in a Twitter storm. Facts tell, but stories sell.

In actual fact, the very opposite is true.

When you sign up for Facebook, you also accept a business model that can use information about what you do and how you feel, for example in marketing.

One terrifying example is how the terrorist group ISIS uses social media to recruit new supporters. Potential ISIS fighters can be invited to join private Facebook groups where they are put into contact with individuals who are active in Syria.

However if used in a responsible manner it s also a new tool for democracy.

More people can express their views and form opinions. There are also examples of individuals who have quickly succeeded in raising large sums of money for those in need.

The Impotence of Social Media is in its nucleus accumbens. 

People tend to follow the behavior of the group.” If other people have liked a post, new viewers will be more likely to like it too. And that popularity can feed on itself, changing their behavior to try to get social approval, respond to headlines without any in-debt knowledge of what the headline refers to. 

A single ‘like’ can make a social-media post more popular.

Many social media sites share more of the higher-ranked — or more popular — posts. As a result, “people are more likely to see what others have positively rated,”  what’s in those photos is socially acceptable.

Skip pictures with few likes.

Likes can have a subtle but significant effect on how teens interact with friends online.

The important take-home message here, is that Social media shapes how we perceive the world around us.

When people express themselves through social media, they communicate collectively.

Members of social media communities direct raw emotions into particular interests. These audiences show their interest and approval by liking, sharing and commenting. And those mechanisms drive future social media behavior all driven by algorithms that drive participation and attention-getting in social media, the addictive “gamification” aspects such as likes and shares, invariably favoured the odd and unusual.

What are the results?

How polarised and divided nations are becoming.

The smartphones and web applications were increasing people’s

passions while also driving them to polarising extremes.

Political figures around the world are more polarised.

Language is more crude.

Sharing is becoming competitive, pushing participants to one-up each other.

Where Facebook or Twitter (viewed on mobile devices) has become for many people the sole source of news. Article will have a MUCH higher chance of converting to a sale!

You’ve engaged them, you’ve educated them, you’ve entertained them with social networks. (Communities of people (or animals) that are interrelated owing to the way they relate to each other.)

In humans, this can involve sharing details of their life and interests on Twitter or Facebook, or perhaps belonging to the same sports team, religious group or school.

I rest my case.

The functions of social media have transformed into something we have never anticipated.

Social media has transformed into political tools, increased global awareness, and offered a quicker way to spread information.

People have the power to abuse social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to promote radical ideas. So what.

Once you gag people’s right to speak freely, you place a mental shackle on the subconscious mind.

If you want to influence others to act upon what you have to say, treat social media communications with the same degree of importance as those that are face-to-face.

Social media to a great extent is a reflection of life. Without education for the sake acquiring knowledge the mind looks for it else where.

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

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: JUST WHAT IS THE DAMAGE FAKE NEWS IS DOING TO SOCIETY.

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Fake News.

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( A seven minute non fake read)

The idea of “fake news” came to prominence during the 2016 US Election.

However fake news can be traced far back as the 1930s. Actually, the world has suffered from it since gossip has ever existed.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of fake news"

The problem is gossip has being turned by technology ( Social Media/Smart Phones)  into written pieces and recorded segments promoting false information or perpetuating conspiracy theories.

Little is known, however, about the dynamics of the life cycle of a social media rumor. Users appear to be less capable of distinguishing true from false rumors when their veracity remains in question. Citizens are frequently misinformed about political issues and candidates but the circumstances under which inaccurate beliefs emerge are not fully understood.

Social media makes it very difficult to correct misinformation. Facts mingle with half-truths as we have all seen resulted in England seeking to leave the European Union to the dethronement  of its economy, its political power, its self image.

One could argue that the majority has been tipped towards the Leave camp by exaggerated promises made by the Leave campaign, for example on redirecting money to the National Health Service that so far flows into EU budgets.

Is this a purposeful use of fake news?

Whether it did or did not is not the point.

In today’s world, online social media plays a vital role during real world events, especially crisis events.

Why? Because we share knowingly or unknowingly, with friends and others unverifiable information.

However at this point, claims that fake news is a serious threat to democracy are highly speculative and exaggerated, and claims that extremely invasive political measures are necessary to protect democracy are not supported by empirical evidence.

It is also doubtful whether restrictions of free speech enacted as government-sanctioned deletion of fake news will actually be an effective remedy for biases in individual political decision-making.

On the other hand should we be demanding Digital trust in a platform’s ability to protect and promote the interests of its users.

I would say, Yes we should be.

Algorithms are becoming more and more powerful at persuasion, creating hyperbolic articles around a major political events:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Algorithms are shaping the world of Technology, changing the ways news information is being accessed, and in doing so creating new attitudes about what it means to be informed.

Resulting in Social Media  pandering to youth preference for opinionated rather than objective news.

70% of Facebook users read only the headline of science stories before commenting.

So the question remains: are medias best equipped to debunk false news?

I don’t think so. “Fake news” is a term that can mean different things, depending on the context.

It can be used by authorities for effective disaster management or by malicious entities to spread rumors and fake news.

There are both positive and negative effects of social media coverage of events. For me it is the fake imagery that has the potential to do the most damage.

Because the imagery becomes the substance while fake news causes confusion about current issues and events.

For instance Catalonia fake images are fostering turning a political situation into something much more serious creating feelings of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism.

We play around with our new internet toy with no thought of the consequences.

Our brains should be the decisive tool to fight fake news and hoaxes. That tool need to be trained, optimized through promotion of critical thinking as early as primary school.

The main problem resulting from fake news will not be persuasion, but confirmation.

Individuals may demand fake news in order to confirm settled beliefs that they already hold.

Predicting that social media will pose a threat to the functioning of democracy by allowing the creation of tight filter bubbles, and thus the self selected segregation of citizens into distinct groups that find it difficult to identify common ground.

Open debate, and persuasion in a positive sense – in the sense that individuals concede to better arguments – would then be threatened.

Think before you share. Analyse before you speak.

Fabricated stories are not likely to go away as they have become a means for some writers to make money and potentially influence public opinion.

The term has now been co-opted by politicians and commentators to mean anything they disagree with – making the term essentially meaningless and more of a stick to beat the mainstream press with than a phenomenon in itself.

Donald Trump’s has been calling out major media outlets several times a week for being ‘FAKE NEWS’ via his Twitter feed.

Perhaps all communication platforms should labeling suspicious stories as such.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of fake news"

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

social media giant is under increasing pressure to tackle the problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS IT TIME TO STOP THE FREE FOR ALL ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Social Media

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( A seven minute read )

What are the serious civic consequences for a world where information flows largely through social networks?

Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organism are algorithms a, and life is data processing. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Social media inhibiting our ability to explore our thoughts and feelings so we can develop as individuals?

When one looks at the current state of the world is Social media tearing apart of the fabric of our societies … We’re getting countries where one half just doesn’t know anything at all about the other. Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything.

When we click ‘share’ what exactly are we saying.

More often than not, the stories we all decide to share seem utterly random.

 

But it might also be true to say that it is indirectly responsible for terrorists acts. It certainly contributed and was a product of the so-called Arabian spring.

It can spread extremists’ messages virally in minutes. Imagine getting news about middle East issues presented only by Jihadists, because somehow they’ve managed to manipulate social media. There is no “magic algorithm” for identifying terrorist rhetoric and recruitment efforts on the internet.

They say that Social media have revolutionized the ways in which people get involved with causes. In short, it hasn’t. But it has certainly changed the ways in which people can influence others. The more people disclosed about themselves on social media, the more privacy they said they desired.

It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security.

The rise of Donald Trump is ‘a symptom of the mass media’s growing weakness’,especially in controlling the limits of what it is acceptable to say”. (A similar case could be made for the Brexit campaign.)

These  issues underpinning digital culture, and realise that the shift from print to digital media was never just about technology. Technology and media do not exist in isolation – they help shape society, just as they are shaped by it in turn.

Social media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. But the consequences go far beyond journalism.

One thing is for certain with “Filter bubble” the pathway into the digital future is not going to be a linear journey up a ladder or pyramid.

If we are all not to become chips feeding algorithms Facebook, Google and Twitter must deal more effectively with the darker elements of the platforms they have created.

Algorithms such as the one that powers Facebook’s news feed are designed to give us more of what they think we want – which means that the version of the world we encounter every day in our own personal stream has been invisibly curated to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs.

ISIS has a well-established playbook for using social media and other online channels to attract new recruits and encourage them to act on the terrorist group’s behalf.

Why are we allowing this to happen?

One reason for the companies’ fragmented approach to purging videos that support or incite terrorism is the lack of a universal definition of “terrorist” or “extremist” content—social media companies are unlikely to want to rely solely on the judgment of the CEP or their peers.

Those running social media platforms should ensure that “their algorithms priorities countervailing views and news that’s important, not just the stuff that’s most popular or most self-validating.”

It’s also because we’re mainly interested in ourselves but the problem is that if you reveal everything about yourself or it’s discoverable with a Google search, you may be diminished in your capacity for intimacy.

It feels like theft when someone tells your secrets or data miners piece together your personal history — using your browsing habits, online purchases and social networks — and sell it.

Facebook, are the single fastest-growing source of news referrals online—with more than a billion items shared each day

.No longer do we balancing this type of news exposure with exposure to news that is pertinent to world events?

The problem is the sophisticated algorithms that filter what you read or see.

Are we being entirely closed in on ourselves and our personal world or are we making an effort to step outside of ourselves and become informed about the world at large?

Increasing narcissism of mankind. Self-enhancement and social promotion. Or is sharing really grounded in very basic human motives.

Somebody wants to relate positively to somebody else. This argument might not hold much longer. Social media has created a dilemma around how we reach people.

Each individual may share for a different specific reason: which is really related to how we evolved as a race.

Social media may constitute a force that drives citizens to read news, or at least headlines and abstracts but it is desensitizing us to the problems we all face such as Climate change, Inequality, Wars, Refugees, to the extent that most of us don’t really know where we fit into the greater scheme of things.

Digital crowding, or data grabs perpetrated by Internet companies, or Surveillance, or our vulnerability to cybersnooping which is incompatible with a free society.

They all demonstrate less individuality and creativity.

Social endorsements fundamentally alter the way news is consumed
and shared on the internet. The ever-growing digital native news world social media doesn’t always facilitate conversation around the important issues of the day.

While we are exposed to more information each day because of social media venues such as Facebook and Twitter, we may not necessarily be more informed about critical issues occurring in the world.

We must start taking responsibility for creating the kind of world we want to live in by lobbing the formation of a new World Organisation that vet all technology and AI Algorithms to ensure they abide to our core human values. ( See previous Posts)    

We were going to live online. It is going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this?

The opportunities for scholars exploring social media effects are vast in scope ( The psychic toll of the current data free-for-all.) and critical to our understanding of how communication is evolving.

Not “liking” anything on Facebook or following anyone on Twitter, making their social networks and preferences harder to track.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "algorithms pictures"

All comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS SOCIAL MEDIA ALL ITS MADE OUT TO BE.

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Social Media, Social Media., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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( A seven to ten minute read)

I know that there are already many opinions out there about the effects of social media, but they all seem to miss the most important fact when addressing the subject.

Social media or as I like to call it Living Algorithms Intelligence feeds on beliefs not truths, till these beliefs become collectively believable, turning Social Media into a new form of religion. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media"

You might think that this is a heresy, but the definition of religion in regarding its association with science is on the whole misunderstood.

Just how does science/ technology relate to religion? They don’t know each other and never will.

However most religions argue that you simply cannot understand the world without them.

This is no longer true.

Social media is now woven into the texture of the relationships in people’s everyday lives.

Social media being used to actually reinforce traditional groups, such as family, castes, and tribes, and to repair the ruptures created by migration and mobility.

Religion is defined by its social function and is anything that confers superhuman legitimacy on human social structures. Religion asserts that humans are subject to a system of moral laws that we did not invent and that we cannot change.

Through filters Social media is becoming a toxic mirror of religion.

Social media favors the bitty over the meaty, the cutting over the considered.

It is not just us but our religious and political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens. Time and again we are informed that the Internet is transforming human life towards a more enlightened and creative existence.

The public is constantly told that Big Data and the Internet of Things are about to revolutionize human existence. Claims that digital technology will fundamentally transform education, the way we work, play and interact with one another suggest that these new media will have an even greater impact on our culture than the invention of writing, reading and religion.

Just a few years ago, social media was a fairly obscure concept. Now Social media is a broad category that includes social networking sites, blogs, online review sites and photo- and video-sharing sites. It also includes sites where users can “check in” at their location, such as a restaurant or movie theater, and share their experiences and opinions.

Social media includes both sites run by the company, such as its own blog or website, and third-party sites where users can “friend” or “follow” each other.

Predictably the Internet is also an object of glorification by its technophile advocates.

The culture of everyday life has become entwined with the Internet. There is little doubt that the digital technology and social media has already a significant impact on culture.

(Take the example of radicalized jihadist youth in the West. In many cases the Internet has been represented as a powerful technology that incites young Muslims to become radicalized. Often the term“sudden radicalization” is used to highlight the power of social media to swiftly convert otherwise confused young Muslims into hardened extremist jihadists.

The social media provides a medium through which pre-existing sentiments can gain greater clarity, expressions and meaning. It provides a medium for the kind of interaction that can throw up new ideas, new symbols, new rituals and new identities. In this sense it has helped stimulate the emergent Western jihadist youth sub-culture and arguably its online expressions have exercised an important influence on its offline trajectory.)

Through the Internet the segmentation of social experience is refracted and given greater momentum through its powerful technological dynamic. This amplification and intensification of social trends constitutes the immediate impact of the Internet on the everyday culture. If the experience of printing serves as a precedent, it is likely that digital technology will not simply intensify prevailing cultural trends but also provide resources for reinterpreting its meaning.

Authority and respect don’t accumulate on social media; they have to be earned anew at each moment.

However today, with the public looking to smartphones for news and entertainment, we seem to be at the start of the third big technological makeover of modern life both politically/ electioneering and religious beliefs.

The Internet and the social media are powerful instruments for mobilization of people is not in doubt.

However, it is not its own technological imperative that allows the social media to play a prominent role in social protest. Rather the creative use of the social media is a response to aspirations and needs that pre-exist or at least exist independently of it.

This technology ought to be perceived as a resource that can be utilized by social and political movements looking for a communication infrastructure to promote their cause.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to find and connect with just about anyone making it difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media.

All this provides an illusion of control: The line between a “like” and feeling ranked becomes blurred.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media"

It’s not about don’t spend time on Facebook, but just be aware of what it might be doing to you. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.

We have all witness the election of  Donald Trump with a vast web audience—four million followers on Twitter alone is the first candidate and now president optimized for the Google News algorithm.

Even though the ease of social media communication brings major benefits to previously excluded populations, this may not have any overall impact on social differences, or oppression offline.

Poverty restricts the amount of time people can spend on the internet. People avoid political and religious postings. Social media serve local purposes, instead of breaking down international boundaries.

Populations in different parts of the world may use local or regional platforms and their own online “dialects” which keeps people separated and distinct, not united. For some people living away from their family, it can become the main place they live, where they spend most of their time. 

Once you send out a message like this one via social media, you can’t take it back even if you delete it. In addition, anything you post is considered public information, and you could see it quoted in the media.

Yet, social media certainly adds crucial new elements:  Technology, along with globalization and economic trends, has made “power easier to get, but harder to use or keep” and that brings us to the present dilemma.  We now know how to disrupt, but we still have no clear formula for bridging the gap from disruption to legitimacy. Memes have become our moral police.

 Power is no longer absolute, but must be grounded in shared principles.  If the social contract is breached, there will be a heavy price to pay and social media will play a major part in exacting that price.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THE SOURCES OF POLITICAL POWER IS CHANGING. SOCIAL MEDIA IS RUNNING POLITICS.

24 Thursday Nov 2016

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

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( A ten minute read)

Some posts back I wrote a piece asking if there was any Intelligence between Donald Trump’s ears and a subsequent post on what a vote is worth. ( see previous posts)

We live in turbulent times and the structure of the source of power is changing.

Gathering political information via social media brings an increased risk of digesting information from questionable sources.

Why?

Because Facebook now dominates the news being read by young people and its domination is not just national – it is global.

It may well be time to think about what societies need to do to counter this growing, global news monopoly. Facebook may not be in the business of news production but its impact on news is already profound and not always positive.

Because it is provided by organisations or politicians that are paying Facebook for their attention. Gone are the days of the blind following the blind it’s now the misinformed following the distracted reading their news on their Facebook/Twitter feeds.

Ever since the so-called Facebook Obama election of 2008, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens, where we find cover political campaigns more like a horse race, rather than focusing on the issues.

Donald Trump, he’s the first candidate optimized for the Google News algorithm.

Donald Trump got the equivalent of about $55 million in free advertising space from the eight major media outlets.

Trump a vast web audience—four million followers on Twitter alone.

The best way to dominate the online discussion is not to inform but to provoke which is the changing dynamics of political races. You’re only as relevant as your last tweet. What’s important now is not so much image as a personality that bursts into focus at regular intervals without ever demanding steady concentration.

The more visceral the message, the more quickly it circulates and the longer it holds the darting public eye.

Elections are pivotal in shaping that world – for better or worse.

Up to recently elections were the voice of the people expressed by voting.

Hopefully this will remain so, however fears of a robot apocalypse mask the actual problems that we face by increasingly letting our lives be run by algorithms.

AIs will have and are having a knock-on effects that we have not prepared for.

When a computer spits out an answer we are typically unable to see how it got there.

There are algorithms all around us they may seem neutral and objective and unbiased but in a world of pervasive connectivity AI is the key to harnessing the power of electrical data prior to voting. It allows for millions of election related options that are posted online to be classified automatically and analysed to understand the pulse of an election.

Algorithms are now being used to make life-changing decisions such as when a prisoner should be given parole, or who gets elected. So it is time to forget everything you know about democracy.

Microsoft is building an A.I. empire and will appoint its leaders.

Twitter did exactly that : Producing a man who bankrupted his companies not once, not twice, but six times.

( The Trump Taj Mahal, 1991, Trump Castle, 1992,Trump Plaza and Casino, 1992, Plaza Hotel, 1992, Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, 2004, Trump Entertainment Resorts, 2009,) and Trump America in 2020, which currently has a National Debt bordering on 20 trillion. 

Since his election to be the next President of the US the media headlines are littered with the rhetoric of powerful people in the form of CRINGING WORLD POLITICAL LEADERS CHANGING THEIR SPOTS IN ORDER TO LICK UP TO A MAN THAT HAS MANY CHARACTERISTICS OF A FASCIST.Afficher l'image d'origine

Mr Trump’s views are some of the most extreme in American politics.

[He has:

  • advocated deporting nearly 11 million undocumented workers.
  • called for a border wall to be built between the US and Mexico.
  • said he would force Mexico to pay for the wall by threatening to ban Mexicans in the US from sending remittances home.
  • Mr Trump changed his position on abortion at least five times, alarming many social conservatives. This flexibility has convinced many social conservatives that Mr Trump cannot be trusted to appoint a Supreme Court justice who would oppose abortion rights.
  • Mr Trump has aggressively criticised international trade agreements.
  • He has repeatedly said the US should rethink its commitments to Nato, saying other member countries do not pay their fair share of the organisation’s budget. He has also floated an idea that South Korea and Japan could arm themselves with nuclear weapons – eliminating the need for US protection.]Afficher l'image d'origine

In the last few years the Internet has borne witness to and facilitated a great deal of social and societal change.

While undoubtedly carrying the potential to do great good, the Internet has been plagued with numerous impediments NONE WORSE THAN ITS ASSISTANCE IN THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP.

I am aware that the Internet cannot be blamed in isolation.

The inequalities of the Capitalist system is a major contributor, but the dumbing down by the smart phone Apps are also influencing the reasons why we cast a vote.

If you not convinced the only thing that might be more perplexing than the psychology of Donald Trump is the psychology of his supporters. It isn’t just that they are misinformed; it’s that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed.

We now find ourselves looking a man and his team of advisors that has an ultimate goal to pursue national greatness in disrespect of the cost which will take the form of a state that will be anti-democratic and totalitarian. The state needed to fulfill this goal is a state that breeds ( As did all major fascist regimes that have ever existed) political parties that spend more time arguing than implementing policies.

At the same time, there is a paradoxical here with a resurgence of interest in universalism within the international legal context and the discourse of human rights, which at this point lack a firm philosophical foundation.

With a world facing problems that requires a vast resurgence of interest in universalism.

Power use to be what goes on in the head, and what goes on is a recognition of a reason – or better and more often: various reasons – to act differently than one would have without that reason…Power rests on perceived and recognized justifications – some good, some bad, some in between.  A threat can be seen as a justification, as can a good argument.

We are turning a blind eye to the day when we will have websites that are themselves artificially intelligent .

This type of power is not accountable and nobody can make it accountable. All AI decision-making is by definition, unknowable and will remain so till 2018 when a new European union comes into force giving citizens –  right to an explanation.

This however will not be of much use as AI processes data in ways we can’t. Ask its creator how it achieves a certain result and you get a shrug.

These  AIs brain responses are automatic, and not influenced by logic or reason.

What does it mean to act, and to act well?

We now have software writing software and soon we have unsupervised learning.

Even with all the technological advances we have seen over the last few years there still remains a large disconnect between technology and the general public.

How do we determine which actions are those which are moral, and which fall outside this sphere? And how do we negotiate the priority of all of these questions?

In fact, digital technology, particularly the internet, offers potential complications into human beings’ discussion and understanding of free will; even as the internet appears to open up options and capacities for individuals to exercise increased autonomy, it also has the potential to change the very ways in which human beings think, thereby impeding human capacities for meaningful self-reflection, a necessary if not sufficient criterion for rational autonomy.

The Internet, we’ve often been told, is a force for “democratization.

It’s worth asking, though, what kind of democracy is being promoted.

People skimmed headlines and posts, seeking information that reinforced their biases and rejecting contrary perspectives. The Internet inspired “participation,” but the participants ended up in “cloistered cocoons of cognitive consonance.”

The social networks operated by companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google don’t just regulate the messages we receive. They regulate our responses. They shape, through the design of their apps and their information-filtering regimes, the forms of our discourse.

All social networks impose these kinds of formal constraints, both on what we see and on how we respond. The restrictions have little to do with the public interest. They reflect the commercial interests of the companies operating the networks as well as the protocols of software programming.

With the instantaneous transmission of information, the internet has revolutionized the way we do business, obtain knowledge, vote, and communicate with others. Instead of a one-way relationship in which the human agent has total control as the sole actor and the tool is merely the object acted upon – a mere means to an end which the human agent has in mind, it would be more accurate today in the face of digital technology, specifically the internet, to recognize that tools also act on their users. When we create things to use for our own purposes, these tools can and do indeed act back on us, in some cases changing the very ways we think.

It is especially poignant to make this observation in the face of the development of the internet because of information technology’s potential to dramatically augment or infringe on human autonomy.

While the internet may indeed open up choices and opportunities to people that were never there before, it also has the potential to degrade individuals’ deep reading capacities, which is a dangerous threat to these individuals’ claims to free will since deep reading is necessary for meaningful introspection which is necessary to claims on rational autonomy.

On the other hand as we continue to enter the digital age, the neutrality of the internet becomes a resource that we must fight to protect, or we risk our further advancement.

Maintaining net neutrality is not simply a matter of protecting existing standards and preventing the extension of authoritative powers, but instead is a matter of establishing a new fundamental human right in the digital age. We can only hope that in unity we can break the barriers which stand between us, and in so doing, provide a living and evolving blueprint for our mutual future.

The Internet is changing the way we think about power and its interaction with economic and international relations.

A blind acceptance of a narrative provided by the Algorithmic world is not acceptable.

Therefore before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant, and to make good that propriety which by mutual contract men acquire in recompense of the universal right they abandon.

As a matter of urgency must establish a world governing body to overlook all technology. ( see previous posts)

When it comes to Algorithms the stakes for society are too high because AI may have arbitrarily negative consequences. Algorithms are a source of power and how they manifests themselves in the world cannot be let to the wimp of Capitalism.

If we are to read beyond the archaic dichotomous representation of international conflict, daring to create your own mind on the matter, doing so involves more than simply good intentions and determination.

It requires obtaining a new type of dignity as “selfs.”

Moreover, a willingness to engage in a dialogue concerning Being will allow for a creative and broad interpretation of man’s relationship to his world, and the responsibilities and interconnectedness that characterize it when it is not defined simply as an atomistic “standing reserve.”

This shallow consideration of the context plagues the headlines and propagates a facile belief in domineering great powers as the ‘be all and end all’ saviors of world conflict. The two leading competitors for the prize of… (peace?) in Syria leads one down a dangerous path that bolsters a bellicose Waltzian ‘balance of power’ attitude and neglects the voice of the people. This can be seen in the unacceptable bloodstains of millions around the world to this day.

The implications of Internet Freedom and its assistance or impediment has a knock on effect for International Relations as a whole.

The internet has become such an indispensable part of our everyday life that it is incredibly difficult to imagine life before it. Luckily the general public can align with interest groups via the web, thus making such groups much larger and more powerful than ever before. Unfortunately Ethicists are still confronted by the traditional questions that have plagued them since the ancients. They have been cut adrift from the context out of which they developed, searching for a foundation which is not forthcoming.

The disproportionate impact of the internet on the presidency and special interest groups only furthers the gap of influence between the public and the president.

As we move forward into an era of increasingly powerful digital technologies we have to ask the question WHY IT IS that the electrical system of one of the most powerful country can only produce two candidates that endeavored to buy with billions of $ the position of USA President.

WHEN YOU OBSERVE what are the power dynamics and systems of knowledge in our modern world, and what are their relationships to concepts of morality in general? All men having right to all things: power only exists when such an acceptance exists. Therefore where there is no commonwealth, there nothing is unjust.Two Jewish men lean against a barrier with the New York skyline behind them

The power to decide how things shall be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to each other, relate to people, or relate to corporate enterprises, control over security, production, finance, and knowledge.

What is authenticity? In that respect, like all forms of honesty—intellectual and other— a principle of authenticity stems above all from a powerful sense of universal respect and love.

 

 

Charismatic’ domination derives from a population that perceives their leader to be virtuous and deserving of their dedication.

Furthermore, because people perceive their leader’s charisma as being the basis for the validity of the state’s legitimacy, one may infer that they also view their leader as a virtuous person who they understand has an inner calling to lead.

That the supporters and friends of a charismatic leader orient their interests to be in line with his/hers because they genuinely believe in the allure of their leader’s personal qualities.

Hence, because a charismatic leader is someone who many people favor, and due to them believing in his/her devotion to the state, it follows that the validity of a state’s authority under a charismatic leader is dependent on their charisma.

Efforts to engage the public are meant to sidestep the special interest groups that have dominated governmental discourse over the past several decades. The dominant theme according to the “We The People” rollout is to open a dialogue directly between the people and the administration, one that will meaningfully impact policy and legislation. Yet, the website has not led to any significant legislation at present and so far it has failed to promote meaningful interaction between the people and the presidency.Afficher l'image d'origine

 

 

Parliament is problematic because This weakens the state and, ultimately, the nation

This writing has merely touched the surface of the issues at hand.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37999969

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37999969

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Beady Eye looks at the benefits and non benefits of Social Media.

20 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Social Media., Technology, The Future

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I would like to think you’re here not necessarily because your agree or disagree with what I write, but that you think it is worth hearing and want to learn, interact and debate with me. If you like pressing the like button this is not the place to find the like button.  Lets hear your views.Eyes Robot Cyborg wallpaper background

Social Media a vast and complex subject far to large to cover all aspects.

In this post I am going to try to address some of the more obscure effects it is having on all of us or could have in not the so distant future.

How much do we understand this new dictatorship we’re in?

IF YOU ASKED ME I WOULD SAY: WE DON’T HAVE A CLUE.

Technology has revolutionized the way people go about their daily activities..

Google received over 2 million search queries per minute. The Number of people who use Twitter 302 million monthly active users 28/04/2015. Apple in the last three months turned over 60 billion a 40% profit of 11billion.

Facebook its monthly active users cleared 1.35 billion — roughly equal the population of China, and 9 percent larger than that of India. By these numbers, nearly 20 percent of the world’s population logs into Facebook once a month. And if we just look at the worlds Internet users, roughly half of them — every other person with Internet on the planet — use the site actively. 936 million daily 22/04/2015.

Half of all Internet-users live in “Facebookistan”

In the time it takes you to read this sentence more than 684,478 pieces of content will be shared on Facebook, 100,000 people will tweet, hundreds of thousands more will “like” an Instagram photo…and that’s if you read very quickly.

Access to technology has become an integral part of education, socialisation and industry related requirements, and accordingly Internet usage is evolving and growing rapidly. It is changing the way we shop to the way we drop. It does not care about time or distance. Everyone can be online every time and communicate with everyone everywhere.

The internet is home to millions of sites, representing both commerce and the people who share their thoughts and experiences with anyone who visits. The internet users worldwide now represents 3.17 billion, or in other words half of the current world population.  

The question is whether the effortless, ever-changing world of online social life is in fact one that ultimately undermines the ability to explore narrative, and place people, ideas and events in wider contexts.

There is no argument that it is effecting the way we all live but if we don‟t act to enhance inter generational communication, we risk generating a culture structured by a digital/communication divide between young people, their parents and older members of the community.

Cyber citizenship, if it is to retain relevance and deliver benefits to the community, therefore, is a concept that would more usefully be applied to the community as a whole, rather than as a set of policies that target young people as requiring protecting – or protection from – in a digital landscape.

Our understanding of cyber citizenship must be more holistic, to fully encompass and resonate across all of the settings in which we live our lives – be that home, school, work, our local communities or our communities of interest.

So what effect is Social Media actually having on the world communicates and our life styles.

For example:

The internet is the place to interact with new people and a way to expose yourself to strangers. The partial anonymity available online can be used as a mask for sexual offenders and psychos;

Social media is being used as a tool by movie studios well ahead of a film’s release to help shape the marketing campaign.

Billions of Amateur videos, posted on social media websites.

Americans across the country took to social media to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision making same-sex marriage a right.

Its replacing communication by letter or phone.

Twitter and Facebook are only two of the online connections people use today to stay in contact with friends and family.

The entire purpose of setting up social media networks around the world is to allow and promote the world to communicate and connect with one another. However, the trend that seems to be following this widespread connection and communication is the exact opposite.

It all appears to boil down to you having no way of really knowing what is the truth and what is the lie. 

Someone’s life and personality neatly tucked away in the cyber-universe.

Do the dangers of online networking far outweigh the benefits?

Who knows.

One of the great dangers as far as I am concerned is the establishment of an economic order that would apply to all, everywhere.

No social animal is ever guided by the interest of the entire species to which it belongs.

Social Media allows cooperation with complete strangers who are imagined to be your friends. This could lead to the entire human race becoming a single unit governed by a single set of laws. These days we think of the planet as a single unit but for most of its history it was in fact an entire galaxy of isolated human worlds.

The ever tightening social media links will in the long run destroy individuality.  We are now living in an age of technology where the information contained on these sites is now being used against us.

So the benefits of SNS use are dependent on good internet and media literacy: having the skills to critically understand, analyse and create media content while avoiding addiction.

Young people are consuming, producing, sharing and remixing media.

This has led to the claim that today‟s young people are produsers‟ they actively produce and consume media. The importance of SNS in young people‟s everyday lives is indisputable: 90% of 12 to 17 year olds, and 97% of 16 to 17 year olds, use SNS

Social media has begun to create an unsociable disconnected generation of young adults… they lack awareness of the public nature of the internet. This include the management of personal information and privacy, the risk of predation and cyber bullying.  Can it be minimised?

It is compromising the development and maintenance of supportive friendships and involvement in institutions traditionally understood as the embodiment of “communities‟, namely school, sports clubs, families etc.

Social networking sites have become an important additional arena for politics. It increasingly important for the expression of identity.

What can be done if anything.

Education MUST increased internet and media literacy – ensuring all young people develop the skills to critically understand, analyse and create media content.

With the lack of parental supervision between the ages of fourteen to seventeen, which makes one of largest demographics using social networking sites, these teens ARE subjected to mature elements..

Teenagers are finding their identity in the world, they are the “my space generation” (Livingstone, 2008) the internet has allowed them to connect with people from all over the world but do they choose to do that…

It is presenting mankind with the biggest opportunity to change the course of history.  It is exposing the Inequalities and making the world aware of our common vulnerabilities.

Then there is growing power of Petitions not to mention the job market or trial by Social Media and the greed of the business world which is beginning to be recognized for what it is by targeting Advertising.

As I said don’t press the like button be an individual and leave a comment.

 

 

 

 

 

Part Two. Here’s a Question. Is it time to redefine what it means to be a Nation.

12 Friday Dec 2014

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Part Two:

Right:  In this post lets look at the question from a different angle, and I have to say that there are so many components to this subject that it is difficult to stay on one track at any given time.

The Statement below confirm the above.

The first democratic government was established in Athens in 490 BCE and we are still embroiled in the same controversies that have raged from the earliest days of the Holy Roman Empire. How much power should the church influence on the state? Where is the balance between personal freedom and interests of the state? How much regulation of religion should government impose?

I think it is reasonable to say that we will all agree that the role of the state has changed profoundly in recent years. So much so that it is insufficient that we simply need to find a new language to describe the changing interface between democracy and collective identity?

National identity has also been weakened and is now just one of a number of significant ways in which people think about themselves.

Why should nationhood be understood as intrinsically tied to hegemonic notions of identity?

Are we all going to end up as Digital Citizen?

The worsening crisis of austerity is coming hand in hand with a collapse in democracy and the erosion of freedoms effecting  the very constitution of our identities, national or otherwise.

As second and third generation of immigrant children are born it modifies the political vision of nationhood – citizenship is the last step in the journey from immigrant to identity and there are a 1/4 million a year in the UK alone looking to do just that each year.

We need to think outside of the state and we need ‘the nation’ to do it.

States have become much more interdependent and are no longer able to regulate political, economic and social processes within their borders, despite a continuing pretense of sovereignty they are driven more and more by their Economies rather than by their people.

This also means that nation-states may constitute a terrain upon which the increasingly autonomous nexus of state and corporate power can be challenged, and some measure of democratic agency reclaimed.

If the nation-state can embody a heterotrophic space that permits identification through processes of willed negotiation and division, guaranteeing the possibility of the present to always be changed, then it might still serve as a tool for resistance against states becoming Corporate Bodies driven solely by profit at all costs.

Oil is what drove the industrial revolution and since then the world has already consumed half the available supply on the planet. Portable water is also running out, as are other raw materials.

In this scenario rags to riches story is the icing on a cake that few will actually taste. For those seeking to construct an alternative against the determined pursuit of infinite growth? We need to look into our own religious and national identities to find pathways toward peace and equality in the world.

Why?

Because Sovereignty of nations and Citizenship rights gained now present an impediment for profit-mongering for global business. They are a threat in the path of wresting complete control of fast dwindling resources. Sovereignty Wealth Funds are the glowing example of what is going on.

The ‘New World Order’ under WTO-GATT was launched to ensure that the rich would continue to get richer even as the pie began to crumble.

The destructive power of neoliberal globalization—which confidently pronounced nation-states to be redundant along with the modes of political agency associated with them—now seems not only willfully blind, but recklessly passive and reactive in the face of neoliberalism’s agenda-setting activism.

Nation-states are used by elites as key drivers of neoliberal globalization, often in concert with (rather than in opposition to) transnational structures and institutions.

To ignore the protestation over what it means to be national, is to play into the hands of those across the political spectrum who, precisely because of the two-faced trickery of the ‘neoliberal nation’, have found themselves abandoning democracy for the imperial illusions of certainty, security and purity.

Ever since 9/11 a new public enemy had to be invented. Islamic jihad stepped up just in time. Overnight, friends became foes and vice versa. The Bin Ladens were partners with George Bush Sr. in an oil company in Texas. Osama Bin armed and abetted by the CIA became a champion jihadi in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

After the defeat of the Soviets, Osama turned against America and soon graduated to the post of the elusive arch-enemy, taking care to pop up on videotape a few days before Bush’s precarious re-elections, to guarantee him victory.

In oil rich countries that dared to nationalize, the fatwa was out. So fell Mossadegh in Iran in 1956, Saddam Hussain in Iraq in 2003, and Gaddafi in Libya in 2011.

The coup in Venezuela to displace Hugo Chavez failed but in the Middle East the sectarian conflicts of Islamic jihadis could be used to weaken any nation-state.

Today Osama is dead but his Al Quaeda, morphed into ISIS, can still be used in various theaters to serve the interests of America, Saudi Arabia, Israel and their allies, as it was in Libya and now in Syria.

If occasionally they behead some white reporters it only adds to the dread of the Jihad and serves to sell weapons, or buy sovereignty.

In the 20th Century, of the estimated (and this is hardly a firm figure, understated if anything) 120 million people who were killed in wars and war-like acts (terrorism is war, generally upon civilians, by a non nation-state)

So faced with the fluidity of neoliberalism, what role remains for the nation?

These hasty observations of mine fail to acknowledge the continuing role of Capitalism in propping-up invisible forms of state domination and its function as part of a critical bio politics of the world.

It has being my option in other postings that the power of Social Media is going to lead to more integrated forms of urban protest and industrial action to combat the flexibility of neoliberal capitalism:  

As frustrating as it can be to define, and particularly for those ashamed to belong to a particular nation, ignoring the national as a key political category per se is to fall for a trick that the global citizens of the 1% have exploited in securing their version of globalization.

Take Europe for example.

Here we are all continuing in denying the basic reality that Europe’s tomorrow depends upon how immigrants and their children experience Europe today.

The functioning of the European welfare state depends upon the labor and indeed the civic good will of immigrants—which in Europe often means Muslim immigrants.

The problem for modern states is to reconcile state power and social diversity, so that the relation between the state and the individual can be more direct.  This is what Social Media is capable of achieving.

In the meantime we have Fundamentalist movements with symbiotic relationship with modernity. They may reject the scientific rationalism of the West, but they cannot escape it. Western civilization has changed the world. Nothing – including religion – can ever be the same again.

The global modernizing forces of technology and commerce are locked in a profound struggle against the backward-looking ethno-religious forces of religion and localised culture (“Jihad”).

Identity within a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives.  The more people manage to have their basic needs met, the more interested they become in actively self-governing themselves.

Another example is the birthplace of modern democracy. America It is systematically being dismantled through a crises of identity that is defining it image in the world.

Unfortunately its recent wars, torture, drones and the continuing existence of Guantanamo Bay all contribute to its present day image in the world as no longer a super power. Aquatically displayed by Putin in the Ukraine.(which by the way is a sovereign European country.)

To be fair previously displayed by the US and UK over their invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Because of this America seems unable to collaborating together to stalemate any functional democratic process that could substantially improve people’s lives and move towards a just, peaceful and fear-free future.

The very model of how democracy is supposed to work in America is not allowing it to be America again.

There is no argument that our Identities need to be reconfigured, as do our world organisations in order to put people first and material wealth second. (see previous posts)

Evolution requires us to demand more and better all the time.