Tag Archives: The Future of Mankind

THE BEADY EYE ASKS:WHAT IS IT ABOUT US THAT MAKES US WHOLLY INCAPABLE OF RESPONDING? TO CLIMATE CHANGE- IS IT GREED OR ARE WE JUST PLAIN STUPID.

13 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by in Climate Change., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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It’s a beautiful hot day, 34 celsius.

The Olympics are in full swing with its opening message long forgotten by those how win a medal.

The world since the first farmer grew two carrots has had its winners, losers, wars, famines, rich, and poor, you name it the World has weathered all.Afficher l'image d'origine

You could be a faitheist  and say  “What happens happens”  but as Lone Man ( Isna la wica) ( late 19th century Teton Sioux said ” I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.”Afficher l'image d'origine

I have written on Climate Change before the Paris Agreement and after.

Since then every day of the week there is some new evidence that the climate is changing.

The global meltdown has begun.

Long predicted and long denied, the effects of climate change are arriving faster than even the gloomiest prophets expected.

The earth is dying, yet those who spread this message are treated as dangerous and mad.

This week we learnt that the Arctic ecosystem is collapsing.

Three weeks ago, marine biologists reported that almost all the world’s coral reefs could be dead by the end of the coming century.

One month ago, the Red Cross reported that natural disasters uprooted more people in 1998 than all the wars and conflicts on earth combined.

The demographer Dr Norman Myers calculates that 25m people have already been displaced by environmental change, and this will rise to 200m within 50 years.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reports that nine of the 10 most dangerous diseases carried by insects and other vectors are likely to spread as a result of global warming.

You would think that with our combined World Intelligent we would be by now well beyond the point of discussing the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Not on your Nelly.

And yet, far from addressing this coming catastrophe, we curse or mock anyone who draws attention to it.

What is it about this pattern of living that demands that those who challenge it must be treated as if they were dangerous or mad?

Is it just plain stupidity or that we have found the key to undying happiness, the transactable elixir of life?

What is it about this crisis, what is it about us, that makes us wholly incapable of responding?

Is it the drive to make more money than you could possibly need, to buy more goods than you could possibly enjoy, is a species of mental illness. Success in this system brings not happiness, but, at best, an alleviation of the pain required to sustain it. Even its beneficiaries are also its victims.

Climate change is perhaps the gravest calamity our species has ever encountered. Its impact dwarfs that of any war, any plague, any famine we have confronted so far. It makes genocide and ethnic cleansing look like sideshows at the circus of human suffering.

To date we have not reached the necessary number of countries to represent 55% of global emissions to sign up to the agreement to implement the Paris Agreement. (Which I advocate will have little effect as the agreement has no means of enforcing anything agreed.)

Negotiations and meetings have been marred by special interest groups trying to prevent effective action to combat climate change. In addition, there has been a lack of political will to take effective steps and measures.

Many large corporations, have opposed climate change treaties seemingly afraid of profit impacts if they have to make substantial changes to how they do business.

All countries are affected by, and contribute to, the buildup of greenhouse gases, and should be willing to join in the effort to stop it. However, it is far from easy to agree what to do, and how to do it….

Because : Poor countries face the brunt of the problems caused by global warming, and point out that most of the current global warming are the results of the rich countries’ pollution.

Current consumption patterns also see far more greenhouse emissions per person in the rich countries than the poorer ones.

As evidence of climate change mounts the impacts will be worse for more vulnerable people around the world, and could destabilize the world economy.

However, some are ( Donald Trump) still trying to undermine climate change action through deception.

The EU is in crisis, and the USA will be soon.

Brazil’s “interim” government, led by Michel Temer, signed an emergency loan to the State of Rio de Janeiro to help finance infrastructure for the 2016 Olympics. The bailout was conditional to selling off the State’s public water supply and sanitation company, the Companhia Estadual de Águas e Esgotos (Cedae).

What will it take to persuade us to stop using the world as our punchbag?

Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing the planet.

All the words, pledges, agreements mean nothing without the political will, and financial backing.

There is only one way to make any difference worthwhile happening world-wide and that is to tap into World Greed.

Profit for Profit sake.Afficher l'image d'origine

By placing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Financial Transactions, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all Foreign Exchange transactions over $20,000, on all Lottery wins over $100000, on all gambling.

This would create a perpetual Fund of trillions to tackle Climate Change.

Will it happen.

Not without all of us demanding it of the United Nations.

The Earth is the mother of all people and all people should have equal rights upon it.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE FUTURE OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, The Future, The world to day.

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Follow on from previous post ( 5/7 minute read)

Having just posted an overview of Future of Artificial Intelligence it would be remiss of me not to address the Intelligence that is creating the AI in the first place.Afficher l'image d'origine

So here another fascinating subject.

The future of humanity is often viewed as a topic for idle speculation.

It is therefore practically important to try to develop a realistic mode of futuristic thought about big picture questions for humanity.

This post will only scrap the skin of the subject Intelligence.

As I have said; Technology” in its broadest sense, include not only gadgets and machines but also techniques, processes, and institutions, and our intellects.

There are many questions like if Artificial Intelligence is to become self learning will it in turn accelerate our ability to improve human DNA and create even better minds or will we with our basic intelligence be left asking Google just what is Intelligence?

Perhaps we will experience a positive feedback loop from the behavior of these learning algorithms resulting in a enhanced human surrounded by vast machine intellects.

Or are we going to be looking at myriad types of intelligences at play:

With the ordinary human rapidly losing the ability to comprehend what is going on around them; familiar humans interacting with ever-improving computer minds, are we going to experience a future with a diversity of both human and machine intelligences. For the first time, sentient beings of many different types will interact collaboratively to create ever greater advances, both through standard forms of communication and through new technologies allowing brain interfaces.

We may even see human minds uploaded into cyberspace, with further hybridization to follow in the purely virtual realm. These uploaded minds could combine with artificial algorithms and structures to produce an unknowable but humanlike consciousness.

This is just the beginning of “shared thought.” Far future vision is the spread of our non-biological intelligence to the four corners of the universe, infusing our deliberate will directly upon its fate.

If we are able to break the speed of light barrier we could have a universal omnipresence within a few centuries.

Human intelligence is disappearing into  big data and large-scale network.

Is it our destiny?

In any case, let us all hope the boundaries of reality continue to expand the unknown at least as fast as our ability to consume and understand it, lest we be caught in the forever loop of The End is Just the Beginning.

So let me with my basic Intelligence ask you the reader.

What is Intelligence?

It is clear that human intelligence has changed since the emergence of the very first hominids.

Artificial Intelligence machines will soon be equaling the power of human thought-with all of its complexities and richness and perhaps even outstripping it.

General intelligence can be described as the ability of an individual to acquire and apply knowledge and thus, can be passed down from generation to generation.

Environmental and migrational factors have influenced human intelligence since we emerged for the caves but evolution has not yet had a chance to catch up to the rapid progress we have made as a society and might not due to human circumvention of natural selection.

The migration of people to all areas of the earth along with the industrialization of modern society has abstracted modern man from our ancestors.

A greater importance has been placed on cognitive ability and intelligence to allow us to function in modern society. But to say that human intelligence has evolved to the point of stagnation is quite absurd.

I would say because of the need to work for survival is now greatly lessened we are now in a state of limbo where there is no evolutionary pressure, unless there is a dramatic change in the environment, or we are not able to support as many people living on the earth.

And I also believe that the evolution of human intelligence will cease some time in the distant future.

The detailed inner workings of a complex machine intelligence (or of a biological brain) may turn out to be incomprehensible to our human minds—or at least the human minds of today.

It may seem incredible, or even disturbing, to predict that ordinary humans will lose touch with the most consequential developments on planet Earth, developments that determine the ultimate fate of our civilization and species.

The human minds might not be capable of understanding the physics of the atomic realm. That’s because we may already be running into the genetic limits of intelligence.

Ordinary humans of the future will come to accept machine intelligence as everyday technological magic, like the flat screen TV or smart phone, but with no deeper understanding of how it is possible.

Today, no more than a fraction of a percent of the population has a good understanding of quantum physics, although it underlies many of our most important technologies:

So the potential for improved human intelligence is enormous. Cognitive ability is influenced by thousands of genetic loci, each of small effect.

The first thing to notice is that the longer the time scale we are considering, the less likely it is that technological civilization will remain within the zone we termed “the human condition” throughout.

Vaclav Smil – the historian of technology who has argued that the past six generations have seen the most rapid and profound change in recorded history – maintains that the 1880s was the most innovative decade of human history.

It has taken us so far as to change our little make-shift huts to buildings that touch the sky, and to change our raw meat into seven-course meals

Humanity has enough intelligence to move into outer space and explore other worlds on the other hand we don’t seem to have the Intelligence to see or resolve the problems confronting us today.

Why?

It’s not that we lack the Intelligence to do so.

People are unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.

If you look around you I am sure you will agree that we have an awful long way to go before we reach basic Intelligence in order to live in peace and cherish the world we live on.  Afficher l'image d'origineAfficher l'image d'origine

Because the currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain but rather copies of DNA helixes.

The discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from our intelligence so far.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE FUTURE OF AI.

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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AI is not just an important topic, but by far THE most important topic for our future.Afficher l'image d'origine

Self-driving cars, war outsourced to robots, surgery by autonomous machines – this is only the beginning.

If you’re old enough to drive today, there’s a good chance your children will never learn to drive.”

The imminent arrival of self-driving cars also brings up serious questions about our relationship with technology that we have yet to resolve.

How much control of our lives do we want to give over to machines – and to the corporations that build and operate them?

A new AI algorithm could revolutionize democracy and transform healthcare. Its called artificial swarm intelligence.

One of the most obvious uses of this form of AI would be in politics, both for voters selecting candidates and politicians making policy decisions, or a group of doctors could use it to combine their collective intelligence in order to make more accurate diagnoses.

 We’d teach computers to be computer scientists so they could bootstrap their own development.Afficher l'image d'origine

If you’re like me, you used to think Artificial Intelligence was a silly sci-fi concept, but lately you’ve been hearing it mentioned by serious people, and you don’t really quite get it.Afficher l'image d'origine

There are three reasons a lot of people are confused about the term AI:

1) We associate AI with movies.

2) AI is a broad topic 

3) We use AI all the time in our daily lives, but we often don’t realize it’s AI.

So let’s clear things up.

First, stop thinking of robots. A robot is a container for AI.

Secondly, you’ve probably heard the term “singularity” or “technological singularity.” This term has been used in math to describe an asymptote-like situation where normal rules no longer apply.

Finally, while there are many different types or forms of AI since AI is a broad concept, the critical categories we need to think about are based on an AI’s caliber. There are three major AI caliber categories:

As of now, humans have conquered the lowest caliber of AI—ANI—in many ways, and it’s everywhere.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence is machine intelligence that equals or exceeds human intelligence or efficiency at a specific thing.

A few examples:

Cars are full of ANI systems. Your phone is a little ANI factory.Your email spam filter is a classic type of ANI.

When you search for a product on Amazon and then you see that as a “recommended for you” product on a different site, or when Facebook somehow knows who it makes sense for you to add as a friend? That’s a network of ANI systems, working together to inform each other about who you are and what you like and then using that information to decide what to show you.

Same goes for Amazon’s “People who bought this also bought…” thing—that’s an ANI system whose job it is to gather info from the behavior of millions of customers and synthesize that info to cleverly up sell you so you’ll buy more things.

Google Translate is another classic ANI system

When your plane lands, it’s not a human that decides which gate it should go to. Just like it’s not a human that determined the price of your ticket.

The world’s best Checkers, Chess, Scrabble, Backgammon, and Othello players are now all ANI systems.

Google search is one large ANI brain with incredibly sophisticated methods for ranking pages and figuring out what to show you in particular. Same goes for Facebook’s News feed.

And those are just in the consumer world.

Make AI that can beat any human in chess? Done.

As computer scientist Donald Knuth puts it, “AI has succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do ‘without thinking.

Make one that can read a paragraph from a six-year-old’s picture book and not just recognize the words but understand the meaning of them?

That’s a whole other ball game.

Sophisticated ANI systems are widely used in sectors and industries like military, manufacturing, and finance (algorithmic high-frequency AI traders account for more than half of equity shares traded on US markets.)

ANI systems as they are now aren’t especially scary.

At worst, a glitchy or badly programmed ANI can cause an isolated catastrophe like knocking out a power grid, causing a harmful nuclear power plant malfunction, or triggering a financial markets disaster.

ANI is a precursor of the world-altering hurricane that’s on the way.

Each new ANI innovation quietly adds another brick onto the road to AGI( Artificial General Intelligence)  A machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can. Creating AGI is a much harder task than creating ANI, and we’re yet to do it.

Then we have ASI.( Artificial superintelligence)  “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.” Artificial Superintelligence ranges from a computer that’s just a little smarter than a human to one that’s trillions of times smarter—across the board

Or as Aaron Saenz sees it, our world’s ANI systems “are like the amino acids in the early Earth’s primordial ooze”—the inanimate stuff of life that, one unexpected day, woke up.

Google is currently spending billions of dollars trying to do it.

The field of robotics and sophisticated AI programming are now being used to develop robots that can be a major threat to humanity. For instance, one of the robots that is used for the nation’s border protection is controlled by remotes. Lethal robots have been developed in some countries where one soldier can trigger multiple aerial as well as ground attacks!

But advances are getting bigger and bigger and happening more and more quickly.

This suggests some pretty intense things about our future, right?

We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. — Vernor Vinge

Kurzweil believes that the 21st century will achieve 1,000 times the progress of the 20th century.

“The world 35 years from now might be totally unrecognizable,”

Most of us think linearly, when we should be thinking exponentially.

In order to think about the future correctly, you need to imagine things moving at a much faster rate than they’re moving now.

If you look only at very recent history. Between 1995 and 2007 saw the explosion of the internet, the introduction of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook into the public consciousness, the birth of social networking, and the introduction of cell phones and then smart phones.

A new, huge Phase 2 growth spurt might be brewing right now.

If I tell you, later in this post, that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, “That’s stupid—if there’s one thing I know from history, it’s that everybody dies.” And yes, no one in the past has not died.

Logic also suggests that if the most advanced species on a planet keeps making larger and larger leaps forward at an ever-faster rate, at some point, they’ll make a leap so great that it completely alters life as they know it and the perception they have of what it means to be a human—kind of like how evolution kept making great leaps toward intelligence until finally it made such a large leap to the human being that it completely altered what it meant for any creature to live on planet Earth.

Building skyscrapers, putting humans in space, figuring out the details of how the Big Bang went down—all far easier than understanding our own brain.

As of now, the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.

Build a computer that can multiply two ten-digit numbers in a split second—incredibly easy. Build one that can look at a dog and answer whether it’s a dog or a cat—spectacularly difficult.

The science world is working hard on reverse engineering the brain to figure out how evolution made such a rad thing—optimistic estimates say we can do this by 2030.

Once we do that, we’ll know all the secrets of how the brain runs so powerfully and efficiently and we can draw inspiration from it and steal its innovations.

Creating the technology to reverse human aging, curing disease and hunger and even mortality, reprogramming the weather to protect the future of life on Earth—all suddenly possible.

Also possible is the immediate end of all life on Earth.

As far as we’re concerned, if an ASI ( Artificial Superintelligence ) comes to being, there is now an omnipotent God on Earth—and the all-important question for us is: Will it be a nice God?

How will artificial super intelligence help humanity? What really is intelligence? Does it help achieve wisdom?

Maybe dolphins are smarter than humans, you don’t see them destroying their environment making it impossible for future generations to sustain themselves. 

Could an artificial intelligence even have its own priorities, or are they something that arose through random, aimless evolution?

I expect the moment the computer becomes ASI – it shuts itself off, because it might not see a point in continuing.

Ultimately, the scary thing about the rise of intelligent machines is not that they could someday have a mind of their own, but they could someday have a mind that we humans – with all our flaws and complexity – design and build for them.

Establishing ethics, moral values and standards becomes difficult when humans are dominated by machines. Any amount of automation cannot recreate intelligence as it is a gift for mankind. Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS IT TIME TO REPLACE POLITICAL PARTIES: PART TWO.

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Politics., Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, World Aid., World Organisations.

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IN THE FIRST PART ON THIS BLOG I ATTEMPTED TO SHOW THAT TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WAY WE VIEW DEMOCRACY AND AS A CONSEQUENCE POLITICAL PARTIES WILL OR ARE BECOMING OBSOLETE.

For those of us who still think that because we support a particular party AND that it will deliver on its pre-election promises I can only say we are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Governance use to be understood as ‘a system of values, policies and institutions by which a society manages its economic, political and social affairs through interaction within and among the State, civil society and the private sector.

This for now holds true for the most part but it is changing as we enter the Technology Revolution.

Why?

BECAUSE MOST SOCIETIES ARE NOW A MIX OF SEVERAL CULTURES DRIVEN BY A WORLD MEDIA THAT HAS TURNED EVERY FORM OF GREED AND VIOLENCE INTO AN ENTERTAINMENT.

POLITICIANS ARE NO LONGER CAPABLE OF REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE WHO VOTE FOR THEM.

THERE IS NO LONGER ANY LONG TERM PLANNING ONLY KNEE JERK REACTIONS.

INDEED WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO THE BEAR TRUTH- THEY ARE ALL DRIVEN BY DATA ON THE ECONOMY, AND MANIPULATED BY BIG MONEY OR THE LACK THEREOF.

Where does this leave us.

Just look at the current USA presidential election. Two candidate that are viewed as a threat to world peace.

There is an urgent need not just in the United States to invest in cultural diversity and dialogue.

Culture is increasingly recognized as a cross-cutting dimension of the three economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainability.

We must strengthen social cohesion and provide sources of inspiration for renewing forms of democratic governance if we are to put a break on governance for the sake of money rather than for the values we all cherish. 

We must places more emphasis on ‘unity in diversity.’

Indigenous knowledge can direct us towards more sustainable modes of living.

Similarly, ignoring the increasingly multicultural makeup of societies would amount to negating the existence of large sections of the population, which compartmentalizes society and damages the social fabric by creating competition between the different communities over access to resources (for education, health, social services) rather than promoting a sense of solidarity.

The expansion of digital networks, for example, has sometimes helped to revitalize endangered or even extinct languages; and the development of new technologies has greatly increased the possibilities of communicating and exchanging cultural content in time and space. Moreover, in certain cultural contexts, global cities in particular, the varied cultural flows and sometimes unexpected encounters produced by globalization are reflected in a growing range of consumer habits and trends.

You might ask why more emphasis on ‘unity in diversity.

Because Cultural diversity, characterized as it is by space-time compression linked to the speed of new communication and transportation technologies, and by the growing complexity of social interactions and the increasing overlap of individual and collective identities — cultural diversity has become a key concern, amid accelerating globalization processes, as a resource to be preserved and as a lever for sustainable development.

Intercultural dialogue must be seen as a complex and ongoing process that is never completed.

Unfortunately Globalization is NOT ACHIEVING THIS but is leading inevitably to cultural homogenization. Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc.

While it is true that globalization induces forms of homogenization and standardization, it cannot be regarded as inimical to human creativity, which continues to engender new forms of diversity, constituting a perennial challenge to featureless uniformity.

Digital technology has drastically changed the modes of producing and disseminating cultural products, and cultural industries that previously were kept separate by analogue systems of production (film, television, photography and printing) have now converged.

We can’t hold a computer program like Google hostage to our demands.

We must move away from elite level deal making by allowing diverse interests to influence and design our own debating and decision-making rules.

Take for instance the eradication of world poverty, which is an intolerable violation of human rights in terms of both the hardships and the loss of dignity it causes – must be approached in terms of each specific social and cultural setting.

No amount of money is going to make any long-term worthwhile difference.

This can only be done with massive investment in Education.

Without education we are blowing in the wind, because rights and freedoms are exercised in very varied cultural environments and all have a cultural dimension that needs to be acknowledged so as to ensure their effective integration in different cultural contexts.

Education is a fundamental human right to which all children and adults should have access, contributing as it does to individual freedom and empowerment, and to human development.

We must escape National dialogues and engage in collective world mandates, that have legal status, and are independence from the government.

We must re- invent the United Nations changing it from a gossip shop on world problems to an Organisation that is fully funded with total transparency.

Irrivalent of the changes in technology quit hoc resolutions diplomacy is not enough.

Human beings relate to one another through society, and express that relationship through culture.

New technologies have not yet rendered the older technologies obsolete.

If we are to respond to the challenges inherent in a culturally diverse world, we must develop new approaches to intercultural dialogue, approaches that go beyond the limitations of the ‘dialogue among civilizations’ paradigm. Too often, dialogue events have stressed collective identities (national, ethnic, religious) rather than identities of individuals or social groups.

We must ensure a level playing field for cultural encounters and guaranteeing equality of status and dignity between all participants in initiatives to promote intercultural dialogue involve recognizing the ethnocentric ways in which certain cultures have hitherto proceeded.

The founding Vetoes in the United Nations must be scraped by give all nations an equal voice.

While virtually all human activities are shaped by and in turn help to shape cultural diversity, the prospects for the continued vitality of diversity are crucially bound up with the future of languages, education, the communication of cultural content, and the complex interface between creativity and the marketplace.

Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented enmeshment of national economies and cultural expressions, giving rise to new challenges and opportunities.

The emergence of genuine ‘knowledge societies’ implies a diversity of forms of knowledge and of its sources of production, We are creating Internet technological Sahara Deserts that are and will drive millions to seek a better life or wars.

Communication networks have shrunk or abolished distance, to the benefit of some and the exclusion of others.

To address the problems that derive from the grotesque inequalities and structural poverty of our world which is at the foundations of 90% of the mess we now find ourselves in. We must recognise that successful intercultural dialogue lies in the acknowledgement of the equal dignity of the participants… based on the premise that all cultures are in continual evolution and are the result of multiple influences throughout history.

All rights and freedoms have a cultural dimension that contributes to their effective exercise. It is precisely this dimension that forms the link between the individual, the community and the group, which grounds universal values within a particular society.

All communities do not experience and respond to phenomena such as globalization in the same way.

As migration flows have intensified with globalization, they have significantly modified the ethno-linguistic makeup of a number of countries and have created new linguistic and translation needs, especially in administrative, legal and medical circuits worldwide.

Characterized as it is by space-time compression linked to the speed of new communication and transportation technologies, and by the growing complexity of social interactions and the increasing overlap of individual and collective identities — cultural diversity has become a key concern, amid accelerating globalization processes, as a resource to be preserved and as a lever for sustainable development.

Finally, forms of democratic governance can be renewed by deriving lessons from the different models adopted by diverse cultures.

We the people of the world must make our collective voices heard which is becoming almost impossible due to all of the above.

If we don’t want to rule byAfficher l'image d'origine

AI has officially made its way into Google’s search algorithm.

(The artificial intelligence of RankBrain comes in the form of mathematical entities called vectors that can be understood by computers. When presented with an unfamiliar word, RankBrain will help formulate a guess at what the query was about and filter accordingly.)

There are many possibilities as to how Rank Brain could work into being a signal to direct your choice to making any decision.

Central to the many problems arising in this context is the Western ideology of knowledge transparency, which cannot do justice to systems of thought recognizing both ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ knowledge and embodying initiatory processes for crossing the boundaries between them.

Diversity of traditions and cultures has for centuries been one of Europe’s riches and that the principle of tolerance is the guarantee of the maintenance in Europe of an open society.

Take England’s recent referendum on the EU.

So far the English referendum has resulted in transitional period now represented by an unelected interim governments whose authority to press the out button and start negotiations to leave may lack legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

Political transitions are tumultuous processes that celebrate advances and suffer setbacks several times before they can conclude with a new, widely accepted constitutional order.

There is a whole new class of millionaires as the new generation takes control of banks, government, and other institutions. The stage is set for another depression and the collapse of the welfare state.

How this can be achieved I leave to you to suggest.

But I am convinced that with the smart phone we should create a new political platform where the voice of people would hold weight in decision taken by our political masters.

If every eligible voting age citizen had a phone, any project that cost over x billions could be electronically sent for approval or disapproval.

As how to finance the United Nations ( see previous post : A World Aid Commission)

Can any of what I am writing about be achieved.  Yes it Can.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS IT TIME TO REPLACE POLITICAL PARTIES

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Capitalism, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Politics., Social Media., Technology, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., World Politics

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( Six minute Read)

You might think this is a stupid thing to contemplate.

But just look around you.

Every minute on the web there is a new petition to vote on.

People are invited on Facebook and twitter to vote and for that matter to get killed ( as reported on the Shooting in Germany)

And now Hillary Clinton has just released a mobile game app that allows the user to build your own campaign headquarters by completing ” Fun” challenges to earn credit stars which you can cash in a virtual shop. You get a free Autograph and a Trump or False Quizzes and a lovely virtual plant to be watered.

You don’t have to be a genius to know what is behind the App.

And just the other day Paddy Ashdown in the UK set up a new political group called MoreUnited.UK which intends to support political candidates it agrees with – regardless of their party affiliation – with cash and on-the-ground campaigners.

So where or what next.

This is a serious question as the world is shaped by big, powerful forces or trends that nobody can control.

These forces are now driven by technology.

Right now these forces are driving the biggest change in 500 years and I don’t have to tell you that they are not all good despite the new environmental spirit.

Governments are preoccupied with cloaking democratic sovereignty in order to do business for the kept classes. A source of great social unrest, state violence, and public pressure for institutional reform. I.E. the English referendum to leave the European union.

The modern capitalist system has been charged more and more by its critics with crushing the spirit and substance of representative self government.

The subject of capitalism versus democracy is back.Afficher l'image d'origine

Market failures are having political effects: they are breathing new life into demands for fresh thinking and a new democratic politics that, so far, has not happened on any scale.

Capitalist markets have been a mixed blessing for democracy in representative form. The dynamism, technical innovation and enhanced productivity of the free market have been impressive. Equally notable with the free market is the rapaciousness unequal ( class-structured) outcomes, reckless exploitation of nature.

Pauperism mixed with plutocracy is today a feature of practically every democracy on our planet.

Enough is Enough.

With the gap between the rich and poor grows even wider there is political trouble ahead.

This is why every form of democracy worth its salt has stood against the presumption that the wealthy are ‘naturally entitled to rule.

Is capitalism the only moral economic system or a deeply flawed socio-economic system that has to be addressed by more government intervention and control? Or is it foundations no long based on individual rights? Each individual is an end in themselves and not a means to achieve the wishes of others.

If you adopt the view that capital belongs to everyone  it is the only moral system because it respects the volitional reason of the individual to engage with others and further their own happiness as they see fit and it allows them to fail and learn from the consequences if they should make a mistake.

But the above is no longer true as we enter a new form of Capitalism which Oliver Stone recently christened as ‘ SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, ROBOT TOTALITARIANISM .

POKEMON GO’S collects names and locations of the user. It can also access the contents of your USB storage, your accounts, photographs, network connections, and phone activities, and even activate your phone when it is on standby mode.  It reserves the right to share all the data it collects with a third parties such as advertisers. It is a sinister trade-off for playing a game that you think is free.

So the question asked in the heading of this blog is more than serious.

Are Politicians representing or will they be able to represent the people in the future?

In democratic election campaigns, do political parties any longer compete freely for votes?

Do Political parties (in this world of fast developing technologies) any longer provide a way for voters to easily identify a candidate’s positions?

As Parliaments gain greater control, the issues on which they disagree often are not goals so much as means: how best to keep the economy growing, protect the environment, and maintain a strong national defense.

Such competition is one of the hallmarks of democracy.

Parties’ views on government’s role often depend on the specific issue or program in question.

A political party use to be a group of voters organized to support certain public policies. The aim of a political party is to elect officials who will try to carry out the party’s policies. This is no longer true.

In the modern age where everything is connected to everything. 

The United States has a two-party system.

Political parties are often a standard by which a country’s political freedom can be measured. Some countries have only one political party. In China, for example, there is only one party, the Communist Party.

Democracies usually operate under either a two-party or a multiparty system. Like the United States, Britain has a two-party system. The major parties are the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, though there are active third parties.

Multiparty systems are common in Europe and other parts of the world. In this system, three or more parties each enjoy substantial support from voters. France, Germany, Israel, and South Africa are just a few examples.

In these countries there may be many parties representing a wide range of political views. Because of the number of competing parties, it is sometimes difficult for any one party to get a clear majority of the votes. In such cases, leading parties that can agree on general policies form a coalition (a combination of parties) to run the country.

In the past 30 years, party membership has dropped significantly across Europe, whereas other forms of political participation have developed.

Social Media has rapidly grown in importance as a forum for political activism in its different forms.

Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide new ways to stimulate citizen engagement in political life, where elections and electoral campaigns have a central role.

Personal communication via social media brings politicians and parties closer to their potential voters.

Although the presence of social media is spreading and media use patterns are changing, online political engagement is largely restricted to people already active in politics and on the Internet.

Social media has reshaped structures and methods of contemporary political communication by influencing the way politicians interact with citizens and each other. However, the role of this phenomenon in increasing political engagement and electoral participation is neither clear nor simple.

In the past few years, the way that citizens communicate with one other about politics has been fundamentally altered by the emergence of social media.

In view of recent political developments as diverse as Occupy Wall Street in the United States, the rise of Indignados in Spain, protests in Moscow and Tehran, and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, it has become increasingly clear that social media are now intertwined with political activity.

However we know surprisingly little about exactly how social media affects political participation.

We are only beginning to scratch the surface of developing theories linking social media usage to political participation.

At the same time, the data being generated by users of social media represents a completely unprecedented source of data recording how hundreds of millions of people around the globe interact with politics.

The M5S Movement in Italy has evolved rapidly to become a significant political player by using social media to engage like-minded people in virtual and real life political action.

The impact of social media on political communication.

New ways of building an online campaign and the trend of personalisation in politics. The possibility to communicate directly with voters via social media is groundbreaking and essential for the development of citizens-initiated campaigning.

Well known cases such as the Obama Presidential campaign, the Arab spring uprisings and UK Uncut demonstrations.

A new concept of virtual political support.

Freedom became capitalism’s self-celebration which it largely remains.

Yet the reality of capitalism is that the mass of employees are not free inside capitalism or any other system for that matter to participate in the decisions that affect their lives ( e.g., what the enterprise will produce,what technology will it use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers’ efforts help to produce)

In fact their exclusion from such decisions modern-day employees resemble slaves and serfs.

Parliaments and universal suffrage have accompanied capitalism – an advance over serfdom and slavery. An Advance undermined by inequality of opportunity and income a discomforting fact mostly overlooked.

It is not likely that Capitalism is going to disappear in the near or distant future.

There is every likelihood with the arrival of AI ( Artificial Intelligence) that democracy as we know it will be eroded further.

At the moment it all boils down to Smart phone Democracy.

Perhaps in the near future we see a Smartphone political party.

Which might not be a bad way to go provided everyone has a Smart phone and everybody is requested to vote on any project that costs us the taxpayers  and the nation over a billion.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHY IS THE WORLD IN SUCH A MESS.

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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I AM SURE LIKE ME YOU CAN RATTLE OFF HUNDREDS OF REASONS.Afficher l'image d'origine

But the world is that what humans have made out of it.

Five centuries of European colonialism and global culture-trashing, and the remaking of the world in the economic interests of competing empires, cannot be undone by a single institution and a cluster of lofty ideals.

The world, as it now exists, was largely shaped by the colonial powers, which divided the world among themselves, carving out states without any consideration for existing ethnic, religious or cultural realities.

And after the colonial era collapsed, these carved-out political entities, defining swatches of territory without any history of national identity, suddenly became the Third World and floundered in disarray.

It was inevitable that to keep these artificial countries alive, and avoid their disintegration, strongmen would be needed to cover the void left by the colonial powers. The rules of democracy were used only to reach power, with very few exceptions.

Values and ideas which were considered universal, such as cooperation, mutual aid, international social justice and peace as an encompassing paradigm are also becoming irrelevant.

Whatever noble attempts at eliminating war the powers that be made in the wake of World War II — Europe’s near self-annihilation — didn’t cut nearly deep enough.

These attempts didn’t set about undoing five centuries of colonial conquest and genocide. They didn’t cut deeper than national interest. If something grows too big, then it destroys itself from the inside.

The existing problem with the EU as shown by the recent English Referendum. Attempts to create regional or international alliances to bring stability have always been stymied by national interests.

But why is it like this? Why are humans using their capacity of higher intelligence so negatively?

Perhaps it is because the human race in its state of development and as a whole, is still nearer to the animal behavior than to advanced capabilities.

Just look at the choice of the next President of the USA governed by Money.

The problem with the United Nations is that it’s a unity of entities defined by their hatred of one another and committed to the perpetuation of “the scourge of war.

Is it because Capitalism has not taken care of our fellow human beings?

We have become consumer and have lost the instinct to take care of our fellow human beings?

There is one part of the population who have overweight and are sick because of too much food and an other part who are starving to death, often living one beside the other.

Just look at the current refugee crises.

Instead of setting up properly manned entry points we allow people smugglers to pray on the vulnerable, close borders, and watch people drowning.  A sure recipe for terrorism.

How can we find a way out of the mess?

Obviously religious and spiritual rules made up by humans doesn’t protect humanity from being distinguished.

Our ” way of life” our behavior, our goals and values are making is blind, are confusing us and driving us more and more into disease and depression.

There are people calling for a solution.

They are expecting help from their authorities, they expect to be healed by doctors or they ask for help and solutions from their government. What an illusion!

As long as they are dependent and not capable to look through the game of this world, they will not be able to make decisions for themselves. They will stay in dependency, manipulated from the more clever…

There’s always money to wage war and build weapons.

The recent Vote by 300 odd English MP to renew Trident.

The contractors are adept at playing the game. Jobs link arms with fear and patriotism and the next war is always inevitable. And it’s always necessary, because we’ve created a world of perpetual — and well-armed — instability.

While on the other hand we have out of date world organisations that beg for funds.

We won’t begin creating global peace until we learn how to bypass nationalism and the single, unacknowledged agreement binding nation-states to each other: the inevitability of war.

We are left with the two greatest  international enemies – the environment and the global economy – unfortunately we are so selfish – so naive – we do not want to face the reality of what we have done to the planet and each other in the name of progress. We are in denial. We are addicted to antisocial behavior – propelled by fear.

All our problems are as a result of our moral and ethical collapse and only finding and using a simple international moral and social code of love and cooperation will enable us to survive and save us from ourselves. We are not talking about religion here. Morality and ethics existed before religion and it is that version of them that we want and need.

We can accept that one can be proud of one’s country and support its activities and ideals without feeling the need to bomb or subvert the country next door. The only people who would seriously disagree are psychotics and psychopaths or their minions. For example, governments.

To allude to globalisation is idiotic without capping Greed and reversing Inequality.

We now live in a world of  technologically based society.  Information is power and money. This is why we are all being Googlefied, Twittered to feed the Internet of Everything.

We only can expect that help will show up, when we start to help ourselves!

As the human race keeps on making steps in technology & science, the Smart Phone is the Pandora box of the future. Re shaping the World.

Science has made huge steps, society has not.

Society is crucial to the well-being of all of us.We need to open the doors to new exciting boundaries.

Here are my top six.

Improve Education World wide. Eliminate Racism. Resource Efficiency.Eliminate Hunger.Environmental awareness.Overcome Religion.

To achieve any of the above needs funding by placing a world aid commission of 0.05% on all activities that are for profit sake only.

On all High frequency trading, on all Foreign Exchange transactions over 20,000 dollars, on all Sovereign wealth funds acquisitions. on all Lotto wins over a 1 million.

This would create a perpetual fund from Capitalism greed to address the world’s inequality.Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. CAN THE WORLD’S WOES BE PUT DOWN TO MONEY.

16 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Capitalism, Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Organisations., World Politics

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Money talks a powerful language. It is a factor in many things that happen and don’t happen. Wealth greases the gears of power and influence.Afficher l'image d'origine

The standard most worshipped by Western society today is financial success, and many people spend their lives pursuing it. Our idiotic species–immediately respects and gives greater credence to anyone who looks rich.

Money can bring power, and power can bring money.

Which one comes first?

Modern day technology is exposing the Capitalist system for what it is worth and as a result we are beginning to see if you focus on the world that you are presented with directly the only collective wisdom we’ve come up with is money can’t buy you love.

 

1% of the population earns 96% of the wealth in the world, and thus explains why we have such a troubled world.

It’s a struggle between the haves vs the have-nots.

The real reason people want to be rich isn’t so they can buy stuff. It’s so they can have power over others. People want influence and respect and they see that people with money have influence and respect, so they seek money.

There’s only one problem: money does not result in influence and respect – instead, influence and respect often lead to money.

Human greed seems to have no bound.

It is said that money is a good servant an a bad master too…

In today life for people money is everything. When in fact it is only an IOU.

Money can buy material happiness for limited time.

Can it buy true happiness? No.

They don’t know that there are many things bigger than money…Our morals values these are bigger than money..

The paradox of money is that although earning more of it tends to enhance our well-being, we become happier by giving it away than by spending it on ourselves.

What matters a lot more than a big income is how people spend it.

What moves the needle in terms of happiness is not so much the amount you give, but the perceived impact of your donation. If you can see your money-making a difference in other people’s lives, it will make you happy even if the amount you gave was quite small.

Life experiences give us more lasting pleasure than material things, and yet people still often deny themselves experiences and prioritize buying material goods.

People think material purchases offer better value for the money because experiences are fleeting, and material goods last longer. They think that experiences are only going to provide temporary happiness, but they actually provide both more happiness and more lasting value.

And yet we still keep on buying material things, because they’re tangible and we think we can keep on using them.

Experiences, on the other hand, tend to meet more of our underlying psychological needs. They’re often shared with other people, giving us a greater sense of connection, and they form a bigger part of our sense of identity.

We also get more pleasure out of anticipating experiences than anticipating the acquisition of material things.

Feelings of gratitude and appreciation can be very difficult to sustain.

The first measure of happiness is “evaluative.” A sense that your life is good—you’re satisfied with your life, you’re progressing towards your life goals.”

Power is money and money is power.

There are many more examples of this now than anytime in the past.

If a man who earned a standard salary wanted to run for president, he would have almost no chance at all unless he was backed by people with money.

The more money a candidate has, the farther he can get. Although the richest competitor doesn’t always win, the president is usually a very wealthy man.

I want money because to me it represents security and independence.

Real power and influence are when you can make a substantial and lasting mark on the world.

To come to the point of this post.

Capitalism has created Inequality along with the very technologies that have led us down the road to Climate Change, not to mention the present wars and the reemergence of  the Barbaric nature of humanity.

However we have power to change systems?

At present we have money starved World Organisations in need of reform.

A world media that turns, nature, wars and violence into entertainment.

There is so much information that we can only Google, Twitter, and take selfless selfies.

Long term planning is impossible or political suicide.

THE WORLD MANTRA SEEMS TO BE:  i’M ALRIGHT JACK.

We are all on hedonic treadmill WHILE OUR WORLD IS FRAGMENTING.

THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION.

THAT IS TO PLACE A WORLD AID COMMISSION ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT ARE ONLY IN EXISTENCE FOR PROFIT SAKE. ( SEE PREVIOUS POSTS) Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHY HAS ASPIRATION ALL BUT DISAPPEARED FROM POLITICS.

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in England EU Referendum IN or Out., Humanity., The Future, What Needs to change in the World

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We all know that politics these days for the most part is subject to the Capital markets of the world.

You can see from the English Referendum ( On whether to leave or stay in the European Union) that the driving arguments on both sides are mostly to do with the Economy.

The economy is put before the people or the nation’s aspirations. Afficher l'image d'origine

The real question is, what level of wealth concentration is optimal for the economy or what is a human being to a business?

For many businesses a human being is perceived as ‘a consumer’ at the output end of the businesses and as ‘a worker’ at the input end of the businesses.

Therefore, it is in the best interest of the businesses to charge the humans as much as possible when they are consumers while paying them as little as possible when they are workers.

The end result of such duality is, the humans suffer, businesses make profit; wealth concentrates, the people lose completely their self-sufficiency.

This will get much worse for the humans in the near future with the Revolution of Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Afficher l'image d'origine

Let’s just imagine a near future world (say about 50 generations from now) where automation has advanced to levels that resemble human-like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

In such world, workers will no longer exist in any meaningful sense, because nearly all work will be done by a super intelligent automation. The businesses will perceive most human beings only as consumers. In such future, most humans will be jobless and, majority of us will have no means of production that can make us self-sufficient.

Consumers without money are useless to the businesses thus can be “discarded” (it means, literally wiped out of existence). How are we going to survive then?

 

Perhaps, some of us could survive by reverting to violent redistribution of wealth (like war for example). Such approach creates too much suffering. The correct answer is we survive together, as one species, by introducing Basic Income. It must be sufficient to ensure the existence of a wide base of consumers who, in turn, will ensure the prosperity of the businesses and the society.

As the lever of technology gets longer and longer and it takes less and less human work to get things done, the wage will be replaced by a National Dividend, a share of the robot paychecks to buy the things produced that robots don’t need.

In our current society, humans without jobs (or income) become consumers without money.

Adam Smith predicated his vision for a free market economy on the understanding that some constraints must be set in place to ensure all members of the society are self-sufficient and also, that they exchange only the surplus produce of their labour.

Do we need to wait for a future that has a human-like AGI before we consider Basic Income?

Can we introduce it today and achieve great prosperity now?

I believe the answers is, “Yes, we can have Basic income today” and we can have it in a way that is independent of political or technological circumstances i.e. a way applicable to any historical period.

Let’s see how it can be done.

Who decides what a ‘dignified’ living is?

Perhaps, a bunch of people, called a government, makes the decision while driven by their own ideas about what is ‘basic’ and ‘dignified’? Governments change, therefore, if the amount of Basic Income is determined by some political process (e.g. government’s budget justified by some ideology) then it is likely that Basic Income will turn into another tool to exert control over the people by applying control over the amount of BI.

Much more powerful approach is to implement Basic Income by using the free market as a base for estimating BI.

Let’s call it Market Driven Basic Income (MDBI).

The meaning of ‘Market Driven’ is that Basic Income will be an opposing market force to the leverage businesses (and other manmade constructs) obtain over the people due to their natural tendency to treat human beings with double standards (e.g. as ‘workers’ and as ‘consumers’).

MDBI can be defined as, the ‘most common’ outgoing spending amongst human individuals when seen as consumers and taxpayers. MDBI has to be derived from metrics that ‘capture’ only transactions from a person to a business, from a person to a government and from a person to any other ‘man-made societal construct’ (i.e. those metrics should reflect only the personal outgoing spending of the human beings, not metrics like gross output or GDI, or CPI, etc.). MDBI is a figure indicated, in part, by the free consumer markets showing what most individuals purchased the most and ,in part, by any other outgoing spending the individuals have (including taxes, fees, etc.).

Think about it, the more they (various political and economic man-made constructs in the human society) charge us (the human beings), for the goods and services they try to sell us or impose on us, the more they’ll have to pay us as Basic Income. The less they charge us the less they’ll have to pay us.

With MDBI in place they (the businesses, the government, etc.) may even ask payments from us for the air that we breathe, it will make no difference to any of us as long as most of us have to make such payments, because such payments will become ‘common’ therefore “highlighted” to influence the MDBI.

Of course this can not be achieved within a club of nations called the EU.

This why unlike England or the EU Finland marks the first commitment from a European country to implement a Basic Income experiment and will be the first experiment in a developed nation since the 1970s.

Switzerland is another country looking at adopting as part of the Swiss constitution, citizens, regardless of whether they work, would receive 30,000 Swiss Francs (about $34,000) a year.

The idea, which has a long history dating back to the 1920s (at least), is increasingly popular in policy circles and the broader population.

The German and Spanish parliaments explored it.

There is a lesson to be learned from the Brazilian soccer player Pelé, the best ever, earned $1.1 million in 1960 (adjusted for inflation). The Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo made $17 million this past year. Pelé played for 350,000 television sets in Brazil. At the most recent World Cup, 700 million people watched Ronaldo.

Watch their crime levels go down and trading levels go up with more money in the hands of people ready to use it.

Just think of working for the Nations good.

We know there is a creeping colonisation of public life by corporations because we know a slow motion coup d’état is taking place by transnational organisations facilitated by our political leaders. The incontrovertible proof stares at us in the face every day with wave after wave of financial, economic, social and ecological crisis.

In the past few decades, economic growth lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. But, at the same time, the distribution of income became increasingly skewed in favor of wealthy individuals.

What could be achieved to remove, inequality, poverty, racism, corruption, and not to mention Greed to named just a few of the aliments plaguing our Societies.

It would replace all other social welfare programs with a guaranteed basic income to make government aid more self-directed and efficient.

An unconditional basic income is what is needed to be on the ballot.

Beliefs about the reasons for poverty are critical for the willingness to redistribute income.

So, will Europe provide a guaranteed income to its citizens?

My personal view is that this is unlikely. Differences in beliefs about the reasons for income inequality, however, will continue to drive redistributive policies.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET.

18 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Humanity., The Future, The Internet., The world to day.

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( A Rather long read 20th to 30th minutes)

This is a sort of follow on from the Post – These days what it means to be Human.

Today, 43% of the world’s population are connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries. 

The ubiquitous presence of digital technologies and, along with it, ongoing connection of people, information, smart devices, sensors, objects etc, across intelligent networks, various types of clouds and processes is sometimes called The Internet of Everything.

By approaching it as a “thing” we risk losing ourselves in a Babylonian confusion.

That consumer fascination/applications aspect comes on top of all the real-life possibilities as they start getting implemented right now and the contextual and technological realities, making the Internet of Things one of those many pervasive technological umbrella terms, leading to genuine digital transformation opportunities in several areas, digital disruptions and, simply, business opportunities in the broadest sense.

There is no doubt that the internet is changing the way we live, work, produce and consume.

Smart meters:  To improve efficiency in energy, from a household perspective (savings, better monitoring etc.) and a utility company perspective (billing, better processes and of course also dealing with natural resources in a more efficient way as they are not endless).

Retail:  In an ongoing effort to digitize the consumer experience. Digital signage in retail outlets is in fact the big driver in 2015.

Whether our species evolves or collapses depends on what we do now with With such extensive reach, digital technologies cannot help but disrupt many of our existing models of business and government.

We become weaker when we keep giving away our power to technology–that is, to external objects. We then become dependent upon these objects, and soon get to the point where we can’t do anything for ourselves.

The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.

We are entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a technological transformation driven by a ubiquitous and mobile internet.

Within the next decade, it is expected that more than a trillion sensors will be connected to the internet.

By 2025, 10% of people are expected to be wearing clothes connected to the internet and the first implantable mobile phone is expected to be sold.

The question is :

If almost everything is connected, will it transform how we do business and go about our daily lives and will it help us manage resources more efficiently and sustainably or will it turn all of us into Google Dummies / Amazon Consumers and how will this affect our personal privacy, data security and our personal relationships?

It is changing our ability to cross the great divide of otherness and really speak to each other in unique and powerful ways.

The growth of the digital economy, the rise of the service sector and the spread of international production networks have all been game-changers for international trade.

If the internet is not made available to all earth’s inhabitants at an affordable cost the miraculous healing awaits this planet will never happen.

Just look at the growing unease over globalization, which is evident from the number of questions being asked about the power of corporations and the adequacy of the regulations governing employment, environmental issues and taxation. All distracting us from  long-term investment, which has serious implications for global growth.

We’re already seeing and feeling the impacts of climate change with weather events such as droughts and storms becoming more frequent and intense, and changing rainfall patterns.

Insurers estimate that since the 1980s weather-related economic loss events have tripled.

There is only one way of achieving change. We must accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the garden rather than fight over the turf.

One thing we can agree on is that the internet of Things still has a long way to go and that growth of connected devices or “intelligent things” will indeed grow exponentially over the coming years. 

There is a LOT that can still be connected.

There are numerous reasons for the growing attention for the Internet of Things.

While you will often will read about the decreasing costs of storage, processing and material or the third platform with the cloud, big data, smart (mobile) technologies/devices, etc. there certainly is also a societal/people dimension with a strong consumer element.

Experts predict the Internet will become ‘like electricity’ — less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill.

The world is moving rapidly towards ubiquitous connectivity that will further change how and where people associate, gather and share information, and consume media.

The experts agree on the technology change that lies ahead, even as they disagree about its ramifications. Most believe there will be:

  • A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.
  • “Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies.
  • Disruption of business models established in the 20th century (most notably impacting finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts, and education).
  • Tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms.

Here is what I see.

It is revolutionizing most human interaction, especially affecting health, education, work, politics, economics, and entertainment.

On the downside:

Interpersonal ethics, surveillance, terror, and crime, may lead societies to question how best to establish security and trust while retaining civil liberties.

More and more, humans will be in a world in which decisions are being made by an active set of cooperating devices. The Internet (and computer-mediated communication in general) will become more pervasive but less explicit and visible.

It will, to some extent, blend into the background of all we do. It will be a world more integrated than ever before.

We will see more planetary friendships, rivalries, romances, work teams, study groups, and collaborations.

We will become far more knowledgeable about the consequences of our actions; we will edit our behavior more quickly and intelligently.

It will change how we think about people, how we establish trust, how we negotiate change, failure, and success.

We will grow accustomed to seeing the world through multiple data layers. This will change a lot of social practices, such as dating, job interviewing and professional networking, and gaming, as well as policing and espionage.

With mobile technologies and information-sharing apps becoming ubiquitous, we can expect some significant improvement in the awareness of otherwise illiterate and ill-informed rural populations to opportunities missed out by manipulative and corrupt governments. Like the Arab Spring, we can expect more and more uprisings to take place as people become more informed and able to communicate their concerns.

There will be increased awareness of the massive disparities in access to health care, clear water, education, food, and human rights.

The power of nation-states to control every human inside its geographic boundaries may start to diminish.

The problems that humanity now faces are problems that can’t be contained by political borders or economic systems. Traditional structures of government and governance are therefore ill-equipped to create the sensors, the flows, the ability to recognize patterns, the ability to identify root causes, the ability to act on the insights gained, the ability to do any or all of this at speed, while working collaboratively across borders and time zones and sociopolitical systems and cultures.

From climate change to disease control, from water conservation to nutrition, from the resolution of immune-system-weakness conditions to solving the growing obesity problem, the answer lies in what the Internet will be in decades to come.

By 2025, we will have a good idea of its foundations.

The Internet will generate several new related networks. Some will require verified identification to access, while others will promise increased privacy.

The biggest impact on the world will be universal access to all human knowledge.

Will the Internet make it possible for our entire civilization to collapse together, in one big awful heap? Possibly.

But the Internet has already made it possible for us to use one of our unique graces — the ability to share knowledge — for good, and to a degree never before possible.

We have to think seriously about the kinds of conflicts that will arise in response to the growing inequality enabled and amplified by means of networked transactions that benefit smaller and smaller segments of the global population.

Social media will facilitate and amplify the feelings of loss and abuse. They will also facilitate the sharing of examples and instructions about how to challenge, resist, and/or punish what will increasingly come to be seen as unjust.

Cyber-terrorism will become commonplace.

Privacy and confidentiality of any and all personal will become a thing of the past.

Online ‘diseases’ — mental, physical, social, addictions (psycho-cyber drugs) — will affect families and communities and spread willy-nilly across borders.

The digital divide will grow and worsen beyond the control of nations or global organizations such as the UN. This will increasingly polarize the planet between haves and have-nots. Global companies will exploit this polarization. Digital criminal networks will become realities of the new frontiers. Terrorism, both by organizations and individuals, will be daily realities. The world will become less and less safe, and only personal skills and insights will protect individuals.

There will be greater group-think, group-speak and mob mentality … More uninformed individuals will influence others to the detriment of standard of living and effective government.

Governments will become much more effective in using the Internet as an instrument of political and social control. That is, filters will be increasingly valuable and important, and effective and useful filters will be able to charge for their services. People will be more than happy to trade the free-wheeling aspect common to many Internet sites for more structured and regulated environments.

The information we want will increasingly find its way to us, as networks learn to accurately predict our interests and weaknesses. But that will also tempt us to stop seeking out knowledge, narrowing our horizons, even as we delve evermore deep.

The privacy premium may also be a factor: only the relatively well-off (and well-educated) will know how to preserve their privacy in 2025.

The most neglected aspect of the impact is in the geopolitics of the Internet. There are very few experts focused on this, and yet the rise of digital media promises significant disruption to relations between and among states. Some of the really important dimensions include the development of transnational political actors/movements, the rise of the virtual state, the impact of digital diplomacy efforts, the role of information in undermining state privilege (think Wikileaks), and … the development of cyber-conflict (in both symmetric and asymmetric forms).

It is going to systemically change our understandings of being human, being social, and being political.

It is not merely a tool of enforcing existing systems; it is a structural change in the systems that we are used to. And this means that we are truly going through a paradigm shift — which is celebratory for what it brings, but it also produces great precariousness because existing structures lose meaning and valence, and hence, a new world order needs to be produced in order to accommodate for these new modes of being and operation.

The greatest impact of the Internet is what we are already witnessing, but it is going to accelerate.

More people will lose their grounding in the realities of life and work, instead considering those aspects of the world amenable to expression as information as if they were the whole world.

The scale of the interactions possible over the Internet will tempt more and more people into more interactions than they are capable of sustaining, which on average will continue to lead each interaction to be more superficial.

Given there is strong evidence that people are much more willing to commit petty crimes against people and organizations when they have no face-to-face interaction, the increasing proportion of human interactions mediated by the Internet will continue the trend toward less respect and less integrity in our relations.

The Internet, automation, and robotics will disrupt the economy as we know it.

How will we provide for the humans who can no longer earn money through labor?

The opportunities are simply tremendous. Information, the ability to understand that information, and the ability to act on that information will be available ubiquitously … Or we could become a ‘brave new world’ where the government (or corporate power) knows everything about everyone everywhere and every move can be foreseen, and society is taken over by the elite with control of the technology…

The good news is that the technology that promises to turn our world on its head is also the technology with which we can build our new world.  It offers an unbridled ability to collaborate, share, and interact.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

It is a very good time to start inventing the future.

The most significant impact of the Internet is getting us to imagine different paths that the future may take. These paths help us to be better prepared for long-term contingencies; by identifying key indicators, and amplifying signals of change, they help us ensure that our decisions along the way are flexible enough to accommodate change…Afficher l'image d'origine

That billions more people are poised to come online in the emerging economies seems certain. Yet much remains uncertain: from who will have access, how, when, and at what price to the Internet’s role as an engine for innovation and the creation of commercial, social, and human value. As users, industry players, and policymakers, the interplay of decisions that we make today and in the near future will determine the evolution of the Internet and the shape it takes by 2025, in both intended and unintended ways.

Regardless of how the future unfolds, the Internet will evolve in ways we can only begin to imagine. By allowing ourselves to explore and rehearse divergent and plausible futures for the Internet, not only do we prepare for any future, we can also help shape it for the better.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS : THESE DAYS WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN.

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in Humanity., Innovation., Technology, The Future, Unanswered Questions.

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In writing this post I have decided to ignore as much as possible the obvious state that humanity now finds itself in.

It goes without saying that we are in a mess.

Who we are, is defined by who we are not, and the practices of exclusion that define identity have to be recognized – an issue we are already witnessed in the context of online communities like Facebook.

In the ‘cyber’ world, it is possible to have multiple identities and ‘selves’.Afficher l'image d'origine

While technologies have become a ‘part’ of humanity, it should be considered, I believe, how they are going to change the way we exist and, moreover, to what extent they are really necessary in human life.

 The 21st Century is, more than ever, a century ‘flooded’ by the invention and expansion of new technologies. These are varied: we use smart phones, computers and other devices that supposedly ‘enhance’ the way we communicate between ourselves and also socially interact.

Already machines can process spoken language, recognize human faces, detect or emotions, and target us with highly personalized media content. While technology has tremendous potential to empower humans, soon it will also be used to make them thoroughly obsolete in the the workplace, whether by replacing, displacing,or surveilling.

 So is it possible to design intelligent systems that safely design themselves.
However, our bodies are also undergoing fundamental changes.
It is now possible to artificially increase physical characteristics and other bodily features. Our own natural biological capabilities can be extended almost endlessly.

These changes certainly influence several human aspects, such as identity, personality and much more.

Technological advances have made ‘fluid’, but superficial the way we communicate and perceive ourselves. There is no boundary when it comes to what I actually am, and what I project myself to be.

It is not possible, anymore, to discern between who is actually sitting on the other side of the screen, and what is being said online, in a chat, for instance.

Our bodies have become transcendent in the sense that they are; in some cases

not even regarded as necessary anymore. Bodies are thus not natural, lively and active agents through which we encounter and perceive others and the world,

but have become ‘replaceable.’

Technology is proposing a complete ‘denial’ of our bodily existence. A ‘body’ not that is not useful at all anymore, is becoming a recyclable item rather than rotting or burnt to a cinder.

Imagine a future scenario in which extremely powerful computerized minds are simulated and shared across autonomous virtual or robotic bodies.  Given the malleable nature of such super-intelligence— they won’t be limited by the hardwiring of DNA information – one can reasonably assume that they will be free of the limitations of a single material body, or the experience of a single lifetime, allowing them to tinker with their own genetic code, integrate survival knowledge directly from the learning of others,and develop a radical new form of digital evolution that modifies itself through nearly instantaneous exponential cycles of imitation and learning, and passes on its adaptation to successive generations of “SELF”

Not only would the lineage of such beings be perpetually enhanced by automation, leading to radical new forms of social relationships and values, but the systems that realize or govern those values would likely become the instinctual mechanism of a synchronized and sentient ” technocultural mind.”

One could say that are approaching such an era, and such a ‘technological leap’ must, or at least should, be assessed critically. It seems crucial to understand to what end, and how, technology can or should be used.

It is important to create ethical boundaries when it comes to our use of new technology.

A minority of wealthy persons and influential companies will have power over biotechnology and others, thus restricting the access of the public to this information.

Our body is an important instrument through which we perceive and discover the world. This means that the body can also be plural, malleable and ‘fluid, however, it is important; in my view, that it does not lose its essence. Our bodily features are embedded in the social world, and they are part of culture, as well as nature.

We need to create restrictions to the access of new technologies, by engaging with ethical questionings that allow a better understanding of what it actually means to have these technologies changing the way we exist.

It could be said that the boundary between what it means to be human has been crossed and it seems not be possible anymore to argue that being human means having certain physical qualities, a consciousness, and so for this post it is quite a complex task to address what does humanity mean.

Because of not only the varied theoretical concepts involved but the understanding of our relations to new technologies; also, to how these technologies have entirely changed the idea of  ” what it is to be human” We’re not the same species we were 100,000 years ago. We’re not going to be the same species tomorrow. We will become more and more software-driven species. Change the software change the species. 

 The question of ‘what it means to be human’ is deeply rooted in our bodily experiences, feelings,sensations and perceptions. It is with them that we give meaning to our existence.  We are shaped by these bodily experiences, as culture and its technological advances shape us.

We should not, hence, give more importance to one in comparison to the other.

Digital information and technology are important to us, until a point. After this, our humanity as a ‘natural resource’ must take head and claim its right to exist as biological, finite and, above all, human beings.

This cannot be replaced by technology.

That said being human these days is closely related to machines and other ‘artificial’ traits.

I suppose that in this is the start of age of ‘cyber cultures’ and new technologies.

We are on the threshold of genetically engineered ‘humans’‘ Genetically engineered’ beings that bear very similar qualities to humans but will they be dependable on something ‘greater’ than themselves, namely, their maker: The‘genetic engineer.’

Humanity is intertwined within biology and culture but humans are now capable of distancing themselves from the world, and thus creating an awareness of their own place in it.

 This is, I believe, a crucial point that needs to be taken into consideration when discussing how new technologies influence our life and thus completely change the meaning of who we are. We should be able to reflect upon ourselves, the way we deal with new technologies, and, more than ever, we need to be aware of how these will change our ways of life.

A multifaceted discussion on these topics will surely help better elucidate this new form of existence and the consequences it might bring with it.

 

Each of us has our precious things, and as we care for them we locate the essence of our humanity.

 

In the end, it is because of our great capacity for caring that I remain optimistic we will confront the dangerous issues now before us.

Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology is largely based upon the idea that being human means existing in a society, it means not just to exist individually, but to be shaped by others, as well as by oneself.

 

Plessner vehemently opposes a dualistic model of humanity, such as those based upon the body/mind dualism. He strongly emphasizes that we exist in a culture, but our own biological traits also mould the way we live in the world.
For the moment we shape our sociality through history by acting as ‘organic’ beings.
 

Being human is having a will to changing one’s destiny and life.

However in transhumanist visions, materiality is seen as an inactive, passive, manipulate substance, and matter is interrupted as code, a program that can be changed according to individual wishes.

The fragility of our body is being lost nowadays, the idea that we, and thus our bodies, are finite is changing.  The body has lost its ‘expressivity’ and meaningfulness, it has become but a dull and unnecessary object. 

In the future  ‘cyber cultures’ might have bodies, but they act and ‘think’ like. 
However, they are, in regard to their lifespan, or, one could say, life, expandable.
The days of the body being buried or burnt to ash are fast coming to an end with Gene Editing.
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Now that we know the blueprint of Life cross species transplantation is around the corner.

While the precise form these changes will take is unclear, recent history suggests that they are likely to be welcome at first and progressively advanced. It appears reasonable that human intelligence will become obsolete, economic wealth will reside primarily in the hands of super-intelligent machines, and our ability to survive will lie beyond our direct control. 

Genetic Editing could lead to the Gene Rich and genetic discrimination leading to greater Inequality.

Man is said to have evolved from monkeys and apes…. but we still have monkeys and apes.

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