They are working so hard in the dark, since they don’t know what intelligence is, how it is done, or how it is mashed up with purpose, consciousness and experience. They are working with an essentially Platonic understanding of reality i.e. there is a non socially constructed truth and meaning out there – which is more than 2000 years out of date.
There were real technology breakthroughs in the 1970s, when computers made all text searchable using Boolean AND, OR, NOT ‘operators’, automatic sorting became possible and relational databases were invented. Since then, it has served the interests of computer companies to pretend to put what they call ‘intelligence’ into their machines, rather than enable people to use the real technology breakthroughs of the 1970s more intelligently.
I am afraid that this is yet another profit-driven tragedy wasting billions which could have been invested in enhancing the intelligent use of the technology on what is essentially a chimera based on a misunderstanding about the nature of human intelligence. More than 30 years have been wasted.
Luckily, some of us who had the privilege of working with real masters of database development, are still around who believe that the real opportunities around these technologies lie in the development of the collaborative intelligence of users.
The application of this human intelligence is why I obtain so much more useful information from Amplify, than from Google. It is why Amplify is so important as an early form of collaborative intelligence.
Millions of years of evolution and experience are being wiped out. The only way it will stop is if internationally traded currencies lose their value, and the global economy comes to a halt. So there may yet be a chance the slaughter could end.
Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly
rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar.
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| A plan for a 20-year ban on ivory sales, to protect African elephants, is also
likely to fail in the coming days — partly because Britain and other members
of the EU are refusing to support it. |
| Only 20 of the 120 countries at the meeting voted to ban
trade in the bluefin. |
| The Cites process, which requires a two-thirds majority for a proposal to be
adopted, is vulnerable to well-funded lobbying by countries and industries
that depend on trade in a species. The vested interests exploit
uncertainties in the estimates of population numbers, and strike backroom
deals to secure the votes of developing countries where endangered species
are far down the list of political priorities.
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Chinese firms that sell advertising on Google’s search pages appear to have written a letter demanding that the internet company disclose its plans for the country, and if necessary pay them compensation, as speculation grows that it will soon close its mainland search service. |
Google, the world’s leading search engine, said two months ago that it was no longer willing to censor search results and realised that might mean leaving China. |
It cited a cyber attack that it believed targeted human rights activists, as well as growing internet censorship. |
It is not clear whether closing the Chinese search service would mean a complete exit for the company, or whether it would seek to maintain other parts of the business, such as a research and development centre. |
The Financial Times reported this weekend that Google was “99.9%” certain to shut Google.cn, citing an unnamed source. Google has until the end of the month to renew its internet content provider licence, but has yet to do so. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
“In fact it is easier to make the case that the music industry, far from imploding, is one of the great success stories of the recession.” If music executives sold bottled water, they’d be calling for a ban on tapwater downloads. But their industry is proving resilient |
Who says you can’t sell something when there’s a free version? Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images |
Illegal downloads continue to be a cause of Armageddon within the music industry and a source of endless fascination outside. Business leaders still regularly moan that illegal downloads are destroying their livelihood, especially if representatives of government are within hearing range. At the first Music 4.5 conference in London last week, speakers took it as read that “kids are not buying music anymore” and that they must look elsewhere for revenues. Evidence of the demise of purchased music is everywhere to be seen, except for one place: the statistics. |
| In fact it is easier to make the case that the music industry, far from imploding, is one of the great success stories of the recession. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
Report reckons that in 2008 piracy cost the sector £10bn in lost revenues |
A quarter of a million British jobs in the music, film, TV, software and other creative industries could be lost over the next five years if online piracy continues at its current rate, according to a study backed by European unions and the TUC. |
Across the EU, as many as 1.2 million jobs are in jeopardy as piracy looks set to strip more than €240bn (£218bn) in revenues from the creative industries by 2015, unless regulators can stem the flow. In 2008, the creative industries contributed €860bn to the EU’s GDP – almost 7% – and they employ 6.5% of the EU workforce, or 14 million people. |
| When I read the whole proposal in detail, the fog lifted – or maybe my confusion just reached a higher level. I realised that the EMF is just a smokescreen. The real bullet in his proposal is that countries could leave the eurozone without leaving the European Union. This is not about helping countries in trouble. This is about helping them to get out. |
| So the entire adjustment burden will fall on the private sector. If life in the eurozone becomes intolerable, exit will become the default resolution mechanism. And when you include the legal possibility of an exit, the whole political and economic dynamic changes, and the threat of an exit might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. |
| I had previously assumed that Germany had a national interest in preserving the eurozone, as its exporters benefit more than anyone else from a stable exchange rate. |
| Some of his suggestions are unbelievably extreme, for example depriving countries with excessive deficits of their democratic voting rights,Read more at www.ft.com |
Vandana Shiva has been a wise scientist for so long. The tragedy is that her warnings and advice have been largely ignored. | The monsoons recharge the groundwater and surface-water systems. Since 1966, as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water-intensive chemical farming, India has over-exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine. The chemical monocultures of the Green Revolution use ten times more water than the biodiverse ecological farming systems. |
In the 1970s, the World Bank gave massive loans to India to promote groundwater mining. It forced states like Maharashtra to stop growing water-prudent millets like jowar, which needs 300mm of water, and shift to water-guzzling crops such as sugar cane, which needs 2,500mm of water. In a region with 600mm of rainfall, this is a recipe for water famine. |
| Chemical fertilisers destroy the living processes of the soil and make soils more vulnerable to drought |
The solution for the climate crisis, the food crisis and the water crisis is the same: biodiversity-based, organic farming systems. Read more at www.resurgence.org |
| A shorter working week is set to become the new norm, according to a report out this week from nef (the new economics foundation), the UK’s leading independent think tank. |
| the study, 21
hours, forecasts a
major shift in the length of the formal working week as a consequence of dealing
with key economic, social and environmental problems. And this can be seen as a
positive opportunity, say the researchers, rather than a threat.
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According to nef, there are several forces pushing us
towards a shorter working week: lasting damage to the economy caused by the
banking crisis, an increasingly divided society with too much over-work
alongside too much unemployment, and an urgent need for deep cuts in
environmentally damaging over-consumption. These combine with a growing interest
in people spending more time producing and delivering a share of their own goods
and services – from co-produced care and neighbourhood-based activities, to
food, clothing and other necessities. Read more at neweconomics.org |
New tax revenue, a fitter population, savings in health care costs, bad for GDP and Food Inc. profits. | between 1990 and 2000, sugary drinks contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease, a total of 50,000 years of incapacitation due to coronary disease, and 6000 extra deaths overall. |
| They conclude that an 18 per cent tax on soda drinks would reduce the weight of the average US citizen aged 18 to 30 by 2.25 kilograms per year (Archives of Internal Medicine, vol 170, p 420). A 10 per cent increase in the cost of soda would decrease consumption by 7 per cent, while a similar tax on pizza would reduce consumption by 11 per cent.Read more at www.newscientist.com |
Unlike solutions to problems which are closed systems, outcomes of predicaments are open and unknown. Adaptability trumps expert knowledge. | our economy is propped up by an exponentially increasing flow of energy and resources, like a beautiful and rising wave, and we can readily predict that it will pass a point of maximum height and structure and then devolve chaotically into a much lower and less organized state, unless more and more energy is pumped into it. |
| This is why there’s no “solution” out there |
It is critical that we understand that we are not facing a problem, but a predicament. Problems have solutions, while predicaments only have outcomes. You can solve the former but only manage the latter. |
Since we have a gigantic predicament on our hands, and we cannot predict how things will evolve or devolve when our economic model is starved for energy, the only rational response is to try to build resilience into our most basic and critical operating systems. |
| triage is called for, and, lacking better information, I would propose that we’d do best by concentrating our efforts on our most basic life support systemsRead more at energybulletin.net |
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Soap box - Pity the intelligent robot makers
