Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 12348

FUTURISM UPDATE (November 09, 2014)

a Amazon and Lifeboat

NEW YORK TIMES: Home Depot Says Hackers Also Stole Email Addresses http://lnkd.in/dmDSkuK

NEW YORK TIMES: International Raids Target Sites Selling Contraband on the ‘Dark Web’ http://lnkd.in/dc2jZdC

BUSINESS STANDARD: 50% of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025: Report. Workspaces with row of desks will become completely redundant, not because they are not fit for purpose, but simply because that purpose no longer exists, the report predicts http://lnkd.in/dFyWwk2

BUSINESSWEEK: David Cameron kept Scotland in the U.K., but the rise of right-wing nationalists could cost him his job: http://buswk.co/1uKH4H5

FOREIGN POLICY: Asian countries are wary about Beijing’s growing power, but China still brings home the bacon. http://atfp.co/1z9Tkje

NBC: Gorbachev Warns World is on Brink of ‘New Cold War’ http://nbcnews.to/1uNQBhh

BBC NEWS: Ex-USSR leader Gorbachev: World on brink of new Cold War http://lnkd.in/dtwysHG

The Huffington Post: Why Gorbachev Feels Betrayed By The Post-Cold War West http://lnkd.in/dCPTsiV

MARKET WATCH: Gorbachev says don’t pick on Putin http://lnkd.in/dWSK9xS

FOREIGN POLICY: Emerging market economies are in a lot more trouble than investors want to believe. http://atfp.co/1wECOYU

Discover Magazine: The mystery of the Virgin Galactic pilot’s error: http://bit.ly/1uafHEX

BIGTHINK: Your Brain Peforms Better When It Slows Down, with Steven Kotler http://lnkd.in/dgvCMxY

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Big Data Gets Master Treatment at B-Schools. One-Year Analytics Programs Cater to Shift in Students’ Ambitions http://lnkd.in/dWznGnn

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Elon Musk’s Next Mission: Internet Satellites. SpaceX, Tesla Founder Explores Venture to Make Lighter, Cheaper Satellites http://lnkd.in/d4vN-AM

BY MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI

White Swan Book Author (Source of this Article)

http://www.LINKEDIN.com/in/andresagostini

http://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

http://www.appearoo.com/aagostini

http://connect.FORWARDMETRICS.com/profile/1649/Andres-Agostini.html

@AndresAgostini

@ThisSuccess

. @hjbentham. @TheVenusProject. @clubofinfo. #futurism. #LOrdre. #antistatism.
The creeping social inequality in Britain has become a source of growing concern to many. When strikes and despair over the income disparity within a single country or locale feature often in our politics, do we unjustly forget the scale of global wealth inequality?
I am not writing this article to belie the social calamity of income inequality in Britain, nor to argue for more urgency in remedial foreign policies such as development assistance. This is purely an analysis of the long-term crisis represented by global disparities of wealth, and the historical choices it will force on many actors in the world-system, from states to activists.
In a talk I heard in my studies at Lancaster University in 2012, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke gave his predictions on the greatest threats to global security in the short-term and long-term future. One of his predictions struck me as the most important: the ease with which modern media allows different strata of the world to see one another’s vastly different lifestyles, thus threatening to turn global inequality into an ever greater spectacle. This spectacle has the potential to inspire global rage, perhaps justifiable in the same sense as encountered in the years preceding the French Revolution. Indeed, the present world order resembles France’s Ancien Régime in many ways.
Interestingly, the term “Third World”, used to denote less “developed” states, comes from the term “Third Estate”, which referred to “commoners” in France’s Ancien Régime – the subjects who rose up and turned their kingdom into a republic. Famously, Alfred Sauvy coined the term when he presented an analogy between exploited colonial states under the European powers and exploited subjects living under absolute monarchy, in an article for L’Observateur in 1952.
Since Sauvy coined the term, decolonization has achieved its popular ends, but an exploitative structure remains in place. At least that is the view of dependency theorists, world-systems theorists and other structuralist critics of the international system. The most eminent of these analysts is Immanuel Wallerstein, possibly the greatest sociologist alive.
In Wallerstein’s analysis, the modern thesis of “development” supported by the United Nations and other intergovernmental institutions is as much to blame for world inequality as Europe’s colonial “civilizing” thesis that came before it. In his widely taught theory of the world-system, the world can be socially and geographically broken down into three strata based on the kind of production processes occurring in different states and geographic regions.
Immanuel Wallerstein sees world inequality not as something proceeding from countries lagging behind others as a result of historic oppression and debt, but as something proceeding from the existence of “countries” altogether. In his assessment, the division of the world into distinct nation-states is founded on arbitrary distinctions among the human race, and this gives rise to world inequality. Taking up such logic, it is hard for one to deny that the dissolution of the nation-state model itself would be a core part of any long-term political designs for remedying world inequality.
If the abandonment of the nation-state model seems too radical for you at this stage, it is not too radical for Wallerstein. In Utopistics (1998) he predicts that a crisis that could occur as early as the coming half-century will create real opportunities to seriously challenge the nation-state model. He does not say what alternative system this crisis entails, but argues that there will be a unique opportunity to construct something far more egalitarian than anything previously known. If a more equitable order is indeed gained, this would involve borders ceasing to be necessary or recognized, and authoritarian state norms becoming unsustainable.
We can already see antagonisms that are directly tied to the transnational wealth inequalities on which this article is focused. Often misleadingly framed as issues between two states, they are actually issues between opposing strata of the world-system itself. Such issues include crises on the land, like migration to the United States through its brutally enforced border with Mexico, and the inhumane occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli State. They include crises on the water, such as migration from North Africa to Spain and Italy.
The crises tied to the enforcement of borders are part of the larger crisis gripping what Wallerstein calls the “interstate system”. This interstate system is the “political superstructure” of a global division of labor predicated on the historic industrial inequality persisting between entire continents and so-called nations. Strong states possess advanced factories and skills, while weak states are left to mine arduously. Wallerstein describes this exploitative situation in terms of a “core-periphery” relationship, in which the industrialized powers represent the “core”.
Another side to this crisis of the state is the alarming spread of internecine conflict and the growing perception of law enforcers as illegitimate, arbitrary and cruel (the 2014 Ferguson Riots are a compelling example of this and demonstrate that the US is not exempt). Such trends point inexorably towards the view that the nation-state may eventually be fated to be abandoned – not just in a particular country, but everywhere.
In my view, Wallerstein’s analysis is compelling. However, it lacks emphasis on the dawn of digital life, which has added a whole new dimension to the crisis of the world-system by literally turning the world into a community of individuals interacting on an unprecedented supranational level. This is historically important and bound to change global politics for very profound and complex reasons.
Another key historian of the world-system, Benedict Anderson, says something insightful about our modern nation-states in his book, Imagined Communities (1982). His analysis differs from Wallerstein’s, mainly due to his greater emphasis on technology and language. He gives the example of Bismarck’s Germany as the first modern nation-state, which differs from Wallerstein’s preoccupation with revolutionary France. In Imagined Communities, Anderson explains that the telegraph and rail systems allowed Germany to become a unified nation, by developing a sense of national consciousness.
If telegraph led to the formation of national consciousness through an illusory sense of community enough to give rise to a nation, surely it follows that the internet – with its profound revolution in our lives – will give rise to something equally significant. The champion of today’s rebel “cypherpunk” elite, Julian Assange, has said something very approximate to this in his own rhetoric, arguing that a “new body politic” is rising to challenge government authority through the internet. He also describes digital life as borderless and free, in such a way that can only become more and more real as digital technology continues its exponential growth. It is no accident that this sounds like the egalitarian post-state future leaned towards by Wallerstein as humanity’s noblest alternative.
Modern political legitimacy is founded on the doctrine of popular sovereignty, as Immanuel Wallerstein repeatedly points out in his works. One may be the citizen of a “nation” by having certain arbitrary qualities or place of birth, and as such may be treated equally and defended by a given state. This is what we call being part of a nation, whether it is the United States or a highly contested “state” like Palestine or Abkhazia. However, the basis of such an institution is very much in question, and in the future it will become increasingly weakened by the growing transnational consciousness brought about by weakening borders and exponential digital communication.
Where does this lead us? Shall we reject popular sovereignty as obsolete? Impossible. It is the sacrosanct foundation of all modern democracy and civil rights, and the only reliable metric of social progress. Self-determination of nations has been part of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, as is the idea that regimes must be legitimately elected to power by their constituent nations. However, if the nation is to become obsolete, as predicted in Wallerstein’s analysis of the crisis of the world-system, self-determination still stands because human rights are sacrosanct. The self-recognition of transnational humanity as sovereign must follow, and global lines of transport and communication make that feasible. The hard part is educating people that their dear “nation” no longer exists, and that is why speech and writing to sustain a global social narrative are so vital.
Perhaps the end result of the self-determination of humanity is not necessarily “global citizenship” as predicted by some (redundant, since citizenship is designed to exclude others and serves no purpose if it lacks this proscriptive power). Nor is it necessarily “world government”. However, we can know that human rights like self-determination will outlive the existence of the nation-state, and the alternative regime will then be designed and elected by the whole of transnational humanity rather than a particular group.
A new form of network-centric governance, authoritative but not authoritarian, based on scientific methods of evaluation, and tolerating no disparities in wealth or information, is a model that could supersede all the nations and make world inequality obsolete. Such a revised politics would be intellectually consistent with and assist to usher in a Global Resource-Based Economy.

By Harry J. Bentham – More articles by Harry J. Bentham

Originally published in Issue 13 of The Venus Project Magazine

Written By: — Singularity Hub

battery-free-chip-size-of-ant1

As a concept, the Internet of Things has been around for awhile. In theory, as chips get smaller and cheaper, we should be able to embed them in everyday items. Appliances, lighting, doors, climate control—all these things (and many more) get a chip and an internet connection. They can send data and receive commands.

In short, a world of dumb, inanimate objects wakes up to do our bidding.

But there are usually more than a few roadblocks between concept and execution. And two of the biggest challenges for the Internet of Things are power and cost.

Read more

Written By: — Singularity Hub

tobacco-plant

While computers scientists find new ways to supercharge computers, a team of plant scientists have demonstrated that they can supercharge a plant.

Hoping to speed up plant photosynthesis, researchers from the US and UK have successfully upgraded a carbon-fixing enzyme vital to photosynthesis in a tobacco plant with two enzymes from cyanobacteria, which function at a faster rate. If photosynthesis can be performed more efficiently, plants would grow larger and crops could have higher yields, possibly as high as 60% according to computer models.

“This is the first time that a plant has been created through genetic engineering to fix all of its carbon by a cyanobacterial enzyme,” said Cornell Professor Maureen Hanson, a co-author of the study, in the release. She added, “It is an important first step in creating plants with more efficient photosynthesis.”

Read more

The audio in this archive file was compiled from a 1984 meeting of futurists, transhumanists & progressives. The main topic of the meeting was the most appropriate ways to engage or advance these philosophies within government. For example, one significant point of discussion centered around whether running for office was an effective way to drive change.

The excerpts in this archive file collect many of futurist FM 2030’s thoughts over the course of the discussion.

About FM 2030: FM 2030 was at various points in his life, an Iranian Olympic basketball player, a diplomat, a university teacher, and a corporate consultant. He developed his views on transhumanism in the 1960s and evolved them over the next thirty-something years. He was placed in cryonic suspension July 8th, 2000.

Written By: — Singularity Hub

happiness ai

Big Brother is feeling you—literally.

A few months back, I wrote about Ellie, the world’s first AI-psychologist. Developed by DARPA and researchers at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, Ellie is a diagnostic tool capable of reading 60 non-verbal cues a second—everything from eye-gaze to face tilt to voice tone—in the hopes of identifying the early warning signs of depressions and (part of the long term goal) stemming the rising tide of soldier suicide.

And early reports indicate that Ellie is both good at her job and that soldiers like talking to an AI-psychologist more than they like talking to a human psychologist (AI’s don’t judge).

Read more

FUTURISM UPDATE (November 06, 2014)

a Amazon and Lifeboat

THE ATLANTIC: The Military Is Building Brain Chips to Treat PTSD http://lnkd.in/dYbe4q7

WASHINGTON POST: Verizon, AT&T tracking their users with ‘supercookies’ http://lnkd.in/dCcqG7T

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Virgin Galactic pilot defied the odds to survive crash http://lnkd.in/daPd5Yi

CIO: How to Develop Applications for the Internet of Things http://lnkd.in/dtcF6Rr

NEW YORK TIMES: Top British Spy Warns of Terrorists’ Use of Social Media http://lnkd.in/dPnPEcz

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: fMRI Data Reveals the Number of Parallel Processes Running in the Brain. The human brain carries out many tasks at the same time, but how many? Now fMRI data has revealed just how parallel gray matter is. http://lnkd.in/dz9h5pK

BLOOMBERG: Qatar, Citic Plan to Start $10 Billion Investment Fund. Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, which controls more than $100 billion of assets, plans to set up a $10 billion investment venture with China’s Citic Group as it seeks to diversify from retail and property assets in Europe. http://lnkd.in/dmS9wNf

THE ECONOMIST: Rise of the robots http://lnkd.in/dh_7asG

FORBES: Automation Is On The Rise: Will Robots Soon Be Commonplace? http://lnkd.in/dYGpdAD

BBC: Are we about to see the rise of robot bosses? http://lnkd.in/dNPWqCy

DAILY MAIL: Artificial intelligence ‘could be the worst thing to happen to humanity’: Stephen Hawking warns that rise of robots may be disastrous for mankind. http://lnkd.in/dNUHnt5

CBSNEWS: Robots on the rise in the workplace. Steve Kroft reports on technological advances, especially robotics, that are revolutionizing the workplace, but not necessarily creating jobs http://lnkd.in/daquEkW

MOSCOW TIMES: Russia Plans Nuclear Summit Boycott http://lnkd.in/dvpEnWw

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Vindicating Volatility. Why Fluctuating Oil Prices Are Here To Stay http://lnkd.in/dz6khjS

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Process Before Policy. How Washington Can Avert Financial Ruin After the Election http://lnkd.in/dT3QtuM

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The End of the Military-Industrial Complex. How the Pentagon Is Adapting to Globalization http://lnkd.in/dxVuzbE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: National Insecurity. Just How Safe Is the United States? http://lnkd.in/dHkj4RG

FORBES: There are nearly 7.2 billion people on the planet. These are the 72 who rule the world. http://lnkd.in/dQVadb9

HERALD ONLINE: Russian President Vladimir Putin Tops Forbes’ 2014 Ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People for the Second Year in a Row. http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/11/05/6495644/russian-presi…rylink=cpy

REUTERS: Amazon tries out taxi deliveries in California cities, WSJ reports http://lnkd.in/dnmq2ej

BLOOMBERG: Mercedes Puts Tesla Technology Beneath Hood to Chase BMW http://lnkd.in/d7Y6Jvi

BLOOMBERG: Mercedes Puts Tesla Technology Beneath Hood to Chase BMW http://lnkd.in/d7Y6Jvi

TIME: A single-malt from Japan has been named the best whisky in the world for the first time. http://lnkd.in/dBjA4cv

BLOOMBERG: A Slovakian Startup Is Building a Flying Car http://lnkd.in/dNv9gqu

FORBES: Amazon Faces ‘Bloodbath’ As Tech Giants Square Off In India http://lnkd.in/dt4gcPT

BUSINESS INSIDER: Here’s The Evidence That The Tech Bubble Is About To Burst http://lnkd.in/dxSWmiX

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: Monetizing Big Data: A Q&A with Wells Fargo’s Data Chief http://www.information-management.com/news/Monetizing-Big-Da…#45;1.html

SYMMETRY MAGAZINE: Physicists and other scientists use the GEANT4 toolkit to identify problems before they occur. http://lnkd.in/dXFpgqA

QUANTUM MAGAZINE: In a Multiverse, What Are the Odds? Testing the multiverse hypothesis requires measuring whether our universe is statistically typical among the infinite variety of universes. But infinity does a number on statistics. http://lnkd.in/dkVcrjx

BY MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI

White Swan Book Author (Source of this Article)

http://www.LINKEDIN.com/in/andresagostini

http://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

http://www.appearoo.com/aagostini

http://connect.FORWARDMETRICS.com/profile/1649/Andres-Agostini.html

@AndresAgostini

@ThisSuccess

Written By: — Singularity Hub

ufo-chinese-megastructure-cloud-citizen-21

Many of the world’s cities are hundreds, even thousands of years old. They evolved from the bottom up as populations changed and demanded change. A new road here, new building there. The result is striking and wild—a kind of physical history.

But what if you could start New York or London from scratch?

To see skylines of the future—look east. Perhaps nowhere is urban growth happening more rapidly than in China. Home to a burgeoning list of megacities (population over 10 million), the country is wide open to ambitious and imaginative urban design.

Read more

The Exponential Nature of Ebola

Otto E. Rossler

Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Inscribed on the UN Building:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul;
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain;
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
(Saadi, 1210–1292)

Abstract

A survey of the epidemiology of Ebola and the logically necessary responses is offered.

(October 23, 2014)

Ebola is of interest to mathematicians, of all things. Medical epidemiology is basically a mathematical discipline. The exponential growth curve of the number of victims – published on en.wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Af…_plot..png ) – exhibits a visible doubling every three weeks over six months time by now, with an incredible inexorability of the mathematical trend displayed. It represents an unprecedented medical record. It shows that the amazingly constant 3 weeks long incubation period, with subsequent likely death (50 percent) and with on average two newly infected persons, is something like a law of nature. It is a “phenomenon” in the sense of the
exact sciences.

The perfection in which this behavior is observable in an ordinary if poor population is unprecedented. The contagiousness of the disease is extraordinary. And because of the 3 weeks long latency in the mom-infectious incubation period, the upcoming fate is hidden from the infected persons. They are healthy and nothing prevents them from leading a normal life. On the last two days before becoming bed-ridden on the 21st day, say, they carry the disease further.
When they are not at home – in town, say, or at their work place – they propagate the disease, and they do so at home thereafter as long as being cared for. Such a disease – once it has surpassed
an initial threshold of a minimum number of cases – is pre-programmed to spread and conquer.

Preventive immunization is hoped to be available, on an at first small and then grander scale, after a time gap of several months. It would be great if the race could be won earlier. This would stop the spreading if most everyone gets the protective shot. A curative – or at least preventive-acting – serum is also in preparation. And plasma can be collected from survivors who must be paid for this. (See the splendid review talk hiven most recently by the discoverer and name-giver of Ebola,Peter Piot: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/415 ). But these measures can help stop the spreading only after long further months have passed. After a 4-months delay, for
example (or roughly 18 weeks), the disease will – if no other measures are taken – have passed through six doubling periods of three weeks and hence have killed 64 times the current number of
about 5.000, which means about 300.000. And if the grand-scale vaccination or therapy takes twice as long in coming (8 months), it is 64 times more casualties again or 20 million deaths. If the
delay is 12 months (one year), it is again 64 times that number or one billion.

Therefore, relying on therapy or vaccination is like relying on a straw right now. What is it that can be done in the meantime? Flying-in nurses and doctors? No: Locomotion control is the only other causal measure that can be taken. It will not reduce the ongoing course of the infection in the sealed-off areas but it will, after reducing the population there to about one half in the worst case, stop the disease. This is a very sad prospect.

However, this prospect is too optimistic still. For it presupposes that the closed-off areas are provided with water and food as “catastrophe zones.” At the time being, this is perhaps still
feasible. But it will soon exhaust planet-wide capacities. This is a war going on. A war that is waged for once not by reluctant human beings but by a soulless parasite.

Obviously, it is not volunteering doctors and nurses that are needed as a causal measure, but water and food supply chains in motorized units, sure to reach even the remotest areas of the declared “closed zones.”

The “epidemiological approach” just sketched looks rather soulless: Is really the provision of basic needs more important than treatment? It indeed is much more causal – sadly. It is tragic to
see that neglecting this support strategy is much more deadly than the withdrawal of all therapeutic volunteers could be since they are “a drop on a hot stone” by comparison.

But is this not terrible? It is tragic. It is even more tragic since the disease itself is so uniquely cruel. It demands that healthy persons keep away from victims unless provided with an expensive protective gear (or unless being survivors). Therefore, the latter gear needs to be provided in very large numbers soon to be distributed in the closed-off zones immediately to prevent the death rate inside from becoming maximal.

A caretaker with a feeling heart coined the word “dying twice” for Ebola. The first time because you get abandoned – no one can come close to you, touch you, serve you. You are made a leper. Your mother must not hug you or come close any more (remember, even the dying Jesus had his mother at his side). Then you die once more in agony.

We come to a conclusion. Should the rational medical information given above be made public? The answer is: of course. But is this not another catastrophic news about Ebola? It surely is. This is the
first time in history that a war against nature needs to be waged. The greatest heroes are the vaccination developers. The next guild is the drug developers. The third league is the first league in terms of importance: The administrators who close down whole areas to be no longer left by anyone living there. On the same level are the providers of water and food for the closed-down areas. Their
mission is preventing death on a mega-scale. Until the eventually millions of sera and immunization kits needed are available, the twice weekly water and food squadrons are the life-saving troup.
They have the most important job as the green angels.

Volunteers are needed for this large-scale operation. And nations are needed to send-in the needed subsistence supplies soon, subito, immediately. For every three weeks’ delay causes a doubling in the
size of the effort needed, or perhaps even a quadrupling since the area to be served quadruples. For the infected areas cannot be closed before the support system is in place! These volunteers are
the life-saving angels – not the doctors, not the nurses. The latter are needed, too, but their humanitarian activities are in vain without the causal hygiene measure of closed areas supported
from the outside.

A new type of volunteer – the water-and-food squad – needs to be founded immediately. Any objections from my readers? Does anyone see a glimmer of hope beyond the above proposed desperate measures?

Acknowledgments

I thank Klaus Dietz for a discussion. For J.O.R.

This new analogical model explains (graphically represents) the behavior of horizontal light paths in the equivalence principle, and by implication in gravitation. It entails global constancy of the speed of light c in gravitation.

(I thank Frank Kuske and Ali Sanayei for a discussion yesterday in the lecture hall.)