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Technology
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Technology and science as religion is too abstract for most people who crave the spiritual. Technology is a tool, not an inspiration.
Facebook and Google live off third-party content. Independent journalism is key to democracy. The Internet giants have a moral obligation to pay for the content used on their platforms to sell advertising. Australia is a pioneer in demanding they do. It’s only fair and will help democracy.
Technology platforms control the data in the US and in China the government does. Europe is thinking of pooling all data - a path to a data cooperative, away from companies and governments, to benefit people. Utopia or possible?
Sorcerer sorcered - we've been captured by our digital and metropolitan webs.
Technology gives us power, equally the power is with technology.
As social networks have become too crowded and manipulated , you need editors you can trust to navigate them.
Existing in the digital world takes you away from living with you. When are you just with yourself, reflecting ?
Active human life has gone from physical to mental to digital.
What will happen when the digital rivals the authentic, in art, in people, in all?
Data, technology, communications, sharing of information and capabilities helps us tame and survive the virus. More is better, but we lack trust.
The digital networks are a new layer of connection in our lives, which, just like nature, is part and parcel of humans. It is now an additional dimension of our nature. Humans, nature and animals are one - so is our technology and our networks.
The coronavirus is deepening the separation of cultures and people, as well as turning us into even more digital beings. Could it also bring us together if needed?
What is the role of humans in a world of machines? Wisdom, judgment, emotions, imagination? Machines are actually openings paths were humans didn’t dare walk - look at AlphaGo. We can learn from one another.
It is because technology and networks give us more reach and power that we have a greater responsibility in their use. With increased freedom come greater burdens.
Even if we speculate that all can be explained by science and algorithms there may always be a space beyond -unexpected, allowing for metaphysical imagination. Something further, bigger.
As humans enhance themselves through technology with additional digital aides what happens to the body? What happens to the intelligence of the body, evolved over so long to become so sophisticated? One could argue that the body intelligence is as important as the brain intelligence. The human, after all, is biological. This includes the brain.
Humans adapt. In the digital world it seems easy to replicate human interactions, but we will miss the physical encounters and value them more. On the other hand our time in isolation gives us mental space, something lost in the frantic contemporary world.
We have the reach of the networks, equally they possess us. The web is our canvas but also our master.
Even though the world is fragmenting politically and culturally, we are all more interconnected and live in digital networks.
Human life has historically been embedded in societies which are vertical in nature, hierarchical and controllable. Under a god or sovereign.
We now live within networks, which are horizontal and structurally open.
Networks have no centers of power, or if they do, those will shift. Networks escape their creators and develop their own life.
The world looks safer when societies rule, and chaotic as networks. That’s probably a reason for the general anxiety, felt mostly in the West.
Humans are now a product of networks, as opposed to being actors in society.
In politics you see it with more direct citizen participation, and in capitalism potentially with the sharing economy and distributed ownership, in geopolitics with a fracturing world.
Technology now affects humans more than humans influence technology.
In our networked environment where everything is interconnected the world is actually breaking up and international institutions have withered. Yet because of the web that ties us all together and binds us to our environment, any one actor can have an immense effect on the whole. In civil life, paradoxically, with all the freedoms afforded by networks people feel lost and become more tribal. It is therefore more important than ever to ensure the health of each and any of us. By health I mean physical ,mental and economic. Since everyone is a participant, let's make sure all are empowered for the journey ahead from the start. Minimum standards are needed both at system and individual levels - so that the sky above is open. Those capabilities for all won't be the same, on the contrary, as people and cultures differ, any one life sustains and flourishes when the elements that together make a being are nurtured, healthy, and accorded. Each individual effects the whole. In this case it is humanity and our planet.
Networks 1.0: The internet and social media has given all access, distributed and fragmented voices or at times given them a megaphone. Information control has increasingly vanished.
Networks 2.0: Blockchain and tokenization, on the other hand, would allow control of information, its ownership, its distribution and its protection.
The first wave was freeing, the second, orders. Both empower, increase velocity and create additional layers and multiply uses. The internet and social media, even though democratizing and socializing, have concentrated economic benefit in fewer hands. The crypto world of blockchain and tokenization will make all participants capital owners.
Technology companies enable virtual worlds, yet we still live in the physical realm. This is why Silicon Valley isn’t a magnet beyond it’s business purpose and many of its temporary residents flee once they are done with their missions.
Blockchain technology is allowing the tokenization of any and every good - what about putting our most valuable asset, time, on the blockchain? Past and future moments.
Social media is decentralizing, democratizing access even when giving a few voices a megaphone. Crypto networks, while potentially highly distributed, can give some actors controlling powers. They also allow individuals to manage their assets, including information and time.
Blockchain using NFTs is a tool for individuals to take back control of their digital selves, in addition to other personal assets and goods.
As we realize that all assets, including intangibles, can be expressed as NFTs, directories and social platforms will be built. The Googles, Facebooks of Web 3.0
Digital twinning is happening - are we on the way to becoming one with our twin?
The digital expands the physical - allowing endless possibilities and experiences: from the finite to the limitless.
Language is technology. Like all instruments, language will shape both users and their environments. Tools are not absolute, it is their application that gives them life and meaning.
Only Humans can save themselves
Technology has continuously helped humans advance, providing benefits to all, but also empowering some more than others.
Technology leverages trends and accentuates societal phenomena.
For example, intellectual property becomes more valuable in the digital economy, making its owners only richer, exacerbating inequality. Other examples: Chinese preference for control is further enabled by facial recognition, forcing transparency, or in the West, blockchain empowers individual autonomy but also privatizes IP.
What will save or destroy humans is not technology, but our ability to coexist and cooperate between cultures and nations. Paradoxically, at a time when younger generations seem to not have roots - connecting across borders and civilizations - world regional powers are each hardening their local stance and are unable to collaborate. No surprise that the youth is frustrated with politicians and politics.
Technology isn’t our savior, future humans are at the mercy of humans.
We must endeavor to develop an ethos for the species and our tools.
The day technology saves us, we become disposable.
Blockchain technology will shift power from networks to owners of intellectual and digital property, giving more control to those. As opposed to freer and decentralized, Web 3.0 will privatize information, making it proprietary, and by conscribing its use will give increased hegemony and benefit to its owners.
By reverting to individual control, the result will be less democratic, open, decentralized and free. Platforms, entities and governments with access to the data will also gain.
Metaverse
Our feelings and emotions come from our physical experiences - yet as self aware humans they are manifested in our minds, and serve to develop our dreams, our ideas, our futures. We have taken from our lives to paint caves, build pyramids and cities, to craft jewels, but also to write books, make films and, now, enable life in the metaverse. We are transposing the analog to the digital. Will increasingly living in the virtual be satisfying, will we lose our identity, can we ever rest? The creators of web technologies want you to live in their world. If you look at Silicon Valley you won’t see any temples, monuments, parks. Working remote only accentuates this trend. If we can experience everything in the mind why have a child? A Cartesian triumph. The inevitability of our consciousness? Living on the blockchain, in the cloud, at the mercy of satellites somewhere between Earth and Mars. How can it not be? We are all being taken in.
Rather than use technology as a form of escapism, use it as an ability to enhance and enrich our lives. Even as we exist increasingly in the virtual realm, the physical world must keep our attention and engagement.
Cars made the original modern network, from our cities to our highways systems, giving us both access and shepherding us. Like any web, we live in them.
Humans and their technologies are so deeply connected that they cannot think of themselves apart.
Technology investments to be prioritized by governments and the private sector are energy alternatives, biotech, and artificial intelligence (also as a resource for better governance).
As our virtual environments become more sophisticated and AI’s more powerful, our attempts to escape matter to liberate and empower ourselves become more tempting and possible. Our feelings will relate to our virtual experiences - yet how will our physical selves respond?
We are already partly living in VR, yet our reactions are as they always have been, indifferent to digital or real-life inputs because we have bodies. That isn’t likely change, unless we are able to upload onto computers - what then happens to what makes us humans: mortal, with physical experiences, emotions, memories and the instinct to reproduce?
By living in a more digital realm, could we “dematerialize”, and consume less in the physical world, therefore help the climate?
In the U.S., technology platforms control the data. In China, the government does. Europe is thinking of pooling all data - a path to a data cooperative, away from companies and governments, to benefit people. Utopia or possible?
Data, technology, communications, and sharing of information and capabilities help us tame and survive the virus. More is better - but we lack trust.
A plane or a star are similar. Two objects made from nature, flying in the sky, both with a beginning and an end.