Archive for the ‘ Technology ’ Category

Stupid Information

This is a continuation of my posting Stubborn Stupidity - my most successful posting.

We seem to have decided on a name for our time – the Information Society. Instead of the Digital Society - which would be more accurate – but not as comforting. Somehow we think more information must be a good thing – when it is not necessarily anything of the kind. We have been swamped by stupid information of all kinds.

Historically, stubborn stupidity must have happened before stupid information – and, indeed caused it – and continues to cause it.

It has led us straight into a swamp – from which we are unlikely to emerge anytime soon.

2013
04/20
CATEGORY
Internet
Philosophy
Technology
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The National Digital Library

You can find it easily enough at dp.la. Your browser should add all the rest of the stuff to the URL for you.

You can read about it in the New York Review at The National Digital Public Library Is Launched! The article is only two pages long – and is well-worth reading.

This effort is pure altruism – that the Internet made possible – much like Wikipedia. Americans can be proud of themselves – but most will probably ignore it entirely – since it won’t make any money for them.

From the article:

Speaking broadly, the DPLA represents the confluence of two currents that have shaped American civilization: utopianism and pragmatism. The utopian tendency marked the Republic at its birth, for the United States was produced by a revolution, and revolutions release utopian energy—that is, the conviction that the way things are is not the way they have to be. When things fall apart, violently and by collective action, they create the possibility of putting them back together in a new manner, according to higher principles.

The American revolutionaries drew their inspiration from the Enlightenment—and from other sources, too, including unorthodox varieties of religious experience and bloody-minded convictions about their birthright as free-born Englishmen. Take these ingredients, mix well, and you get the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights—radical assertions of principle that would never make it through Congress today.

What the article does not go into is something very important – copyright laws. These badly need to be updated for our information (or knowledge) economy. These have been extended back in time endlessly – for no good reason. They should be limited to the usual life of any printed material – only a few years.

Copyright law also needs to be extended to allow books to be rented from any digital library. The technology for this is available and is being used in places like Amazon’s Kindle where you can rent any book for any time you chose. This should be extended to all books. Publishers would have to allow this, whether they want to or not. And eventually all nations would have to agree with this – just as they do the existing copyright laws.

The difficulty is the many proprietary formats for electronic books. Everybody wants to force everyone else to use their format. With no thought at all to the common good – which is considered a ridiculous idea.

The problem, in the last analysis, is much larger – we should be in control of our world – but we are not – and don’t want to be.

2013
04/20
CATEGORY
Education
Internet
Software
Technology
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Mass Communications

First there was writing – which made possible control at a distance – and thereby empires of all sizes. Then there was the printing press that made the same thing possible – but on a much grander scale. Communication (of nearly everything) was greatly enhanced. But time and space were not altered. Print still had to travel physically.

Electricity changed all that. The telegraph and telephone could carry information anywhere instantly. And radio did not even need any physical carriers – but could broadcast through space itself! This was the breakthrough that caused a breakdown of the Modern world in the 19th Century.

Movies, radio, and television in the 20th Century made mass communications possible – where a small group of people could control the behavior of much larger groups – which made totalitarianism possible.

Then came the computer that made this communication two-way. People could influence their mass communications as much as it influenced them. This was a big improvement – but, at the same time, it created a new problem. Information of all kinds could circulate rapidly – and become powerful (and thereby creditable) rapidly. People had no way of filtering all this information – and soon gave up trying.

The Information Economy (as it was soon called) became inherently unstable – the curse of all overdeveloped societies.

2013
04/18
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Confusing Hate With Love

This is a continuation of my key insight that the human mind considers opposites to be the same thing – the problem of the identity of opposites.

In my family we confused hate with love – and only recently have I discovered that this confusion still exists in my mind – and in my behavior. You cannot imagine how destructive this is for me – and everyone else in my life.

As more and more of our functioning becomes unconscious – this confusion becomes more and more of a problem – because this kind of reasoning occurs in our unconscious mind – without our knowing about it – because this is what the unconscious is for.

It takes a fully-awake mind to make solid moral judgments – and to see the world clearly. But more and more we prefer illusions to reality – because they provide instant gratification.

Developing a trained mind takes time – and strong social support . Something the classical world had – at least for some of its upper classes at one time – but then lost. This was one of the goals of the Enlightenment – but we have lost that too.

The conflict between our emotional mind and our thinking mind is perhaps the most serious one we have. It requires a careful balancing act – a skill we have lost – and don’t want back.

Our society has a perverted moral code – because we confuse opposites with each other. And one other thing – we confuse our things with ourselves. In other words – because we are completely confused. We confuse intelligence with stupidity – for example.

But more importantly – we confuse being confused with mental clarity. And feel we are as smart as we can be.

Let me run that by you again. In our highly developed condition (highly developed technologically) we have flipped into a being socially and mentally undeveloped. The exact opposite.

This is hardly a new observation – it is as old as the hills. Except for the technological part of the complex (where everything affects everything else) which, as far as I know, has been overlooked.

2013
04/15
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?

TED

This was a presentation made at TED Rio de la Plata - on the border between Argentina and Uruguay – both Spanish-speaking countries.

The audience were young professionals who were fluent in English – and who had probably worked in the States at various times – as the presenter had.

This was interesting to me because I live in Central America, in Costa Rica – which is not part of the Informational Economy – which consists of, most importantly, knowledgeable people.

I just talked to a young acquaintance, who is completely bilingual, and who is going to college, and studying programming – among other things. I was shocked to discover that he knew next to nothing about what was going on in the Computer world!

I get much of what I get on the Internet – from Aerocasillas – who flies what I get delivered in Miami – to the nearest large town, where I pick it up every week. Their web site is excellent – so they must have some good software engineers working on it. Probably somewhere in the States.

But only a small minority of Gringos and Ticos use it. The rest think it is too different.

And while I am at it – I might as well mention that only a small minority of people in the States are computer-knowledgeable.

Here we are in the Computer World – and most can only look at their smart phones – and marvel at them – having no idea how they work – and no desire to know how – or much of anything else.

2013
04/13
CATEGORY
Life in Central America
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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If the World is Not Interested in Them, They are Not Interested in It

This is the basic dynamic that shaped what we call the Post-modern world – it seems to me – although I seem to be the only one who sees this.

I did not come to this conclusion from a study of history – I am hardly qualified to do that. I simply noted what the people in my world (late 20th Century America) were like – and drew my own conclusions. America was the most highly developed country in history – but this development was not interested in people – quite to the contrary. It was interested in the production of products instead.

In the town was born into in 1936, Ft. Madison, Iowa – the west end of town was devoted to the Santa Fe Railroad, which had a large repair depot there for its steam locomotives – and the east end of town, where the Sheaffer Pen Company was. Today there is nothing left of either one. Ft. Madison is now part of the Great American Rust Belt – where most of the world’s goods were once manufactured.

Americans have carefully overlooked this part of their history – and pretend that it was not important. They have forgotten their past – and, as a result, have no present – and don’t want one.

Let me summarize this development again. We became more and more interested in our things (our manufactured products) and less and less interested in ourselves – and our children. As one of those children – I fiercely resented this – and I am sure many other children did too. But this resentment was simply shoved – along with much else – into our unconscious. Where it determined how we behaved.

These people – latter dubbed The Great Generation – did very well in WWII – after failing completely in the Great Depression. They emerged the most powerful country in history. And this promptly went to their heads. Instead of building the Great Society - they set about destroying it! Because – as I keep saying over and over – this society did not want them – as people. But only wanted them as building blocks for their industrial economy.

I am not saying anything new here. What I am saying has been said so many times it has become tiresome. All I am doing is putting it in context – its own social context.

There is nothing complicated about this analysis. It depends entirely on the functioning of the unconscious. Which people usually recognize – in a formal way, but deny in practice. Because that would involve acknowledging some very unpleasant parts of themselves – that they would rather ignore.

The overall result is that people (especially the young) have ceased to function. But due to an inversion of values – they interpret this as being perfect!

2013
04/13
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Powerful Surfaces

I have a strong feeling of what this posting is about – but I am not sure I can put it into words. Let’s see how far I can get.

The basics are simple – we believe the world is composed of nothing but surfaces – powerful surfaces – behind which there is nothing.

The visual arts – Painting in particular – made this assumption first. And tremendous efforts were made to display the world on specially prepared canvases. And tremendous efforts were made by the viewing public to appreciate these paintings. Everyone believed reality existed right there on those painted surfaces. Almost no one thought this was strange belief.

Historically, this was the Renaissance - the beginning of the Modern world. And the invention of a new kind of abstract space that could be seen by one eye (the artist’s) and represented on one surface.

Living as I do in Latin America, I can appreciate the lack of this kind of space – which can easily be specified by two coordinates – street name and building number – or latitude and longitude. Latinos strongly resist this, and insist on long descriptions – beginning with a landmark, and using variable units of length (100 meters can be nearly anything). The lack of precision does not bother them – and they seem to consider it an advantage (since it requires more social interaction to locate anything).

This visual bias got a huge boost when Photography was invented. Any moron with a camera could make pictures as good as the Old Masters. And they proceeded to do so – and the world was flooded with photographs. No one noticed the ego boost this gave people. As they saw it, this was just Progress at work. Turning multi-dimensional people (with a strong auditory bias, as in speech and music) into visual people.  Gradually, people started assuming that surfaces were all that existed.

Photography then merged with Electricity to produce the Movies – moving images – also on a screen. Sound was added – which greatly increased the impact – but it remained in the background. People realized (unconsciously) that large numbers of people (the Movie Studios) were working overtime to satisfy them! And they loved it. This was their world - made just for them!

Once again – everything was there – on the screen. There was no sense trying to look behind it – because there was nothing there! People could not help believing that the images were everything. They did not notice that they were being manipulated by the people who produced these movies.

The movies were replaced (in short order) by Television – which was even more manipulative. Which produced people who were even less capable. Less capable of what? Of being on their own. They had become part of their things – their cars and their TV sets.

The next great step forward was the Computer. Which was also seen as a surface – even more magical – because it worked two ways – from it to the user – and from the user to it. People loved it! Especially when they became hand-held with a touch interface.

People became even more part of their technology. They did not miss being on their own at all.

Surfaces had taken over completely.

2013
04/10
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Technology
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The Loss of Human Potential

This is hard a hard problem to write about – for the simple reason that we have decided it doesn’t exist. We have lost interest in ourselves – and in our all-important thinking and feeling abilities.

We have decided we are only good for doing other things – and not for being our precious selves. A recent issue of Scientific American, for example, concentrated on proving that the self was an illusion – implying that it was not important.

Self-development, it seems to me – is all-important. And we should be making it our first priority. But the very idea makes us nervous – because, we think something else (the economy, perhaps) is more important.

What we do not say (but do believe) is that human beings have become unsatisfactory – compared to other things. Things we cannot specify, but we feel strongly to be better than us.

This is a disastrous state of affairs – the worst possible – but a situation we have carefully overlooked.

This has resulted in a cumulative negative feedback situation. People have made a society less and less interested in people – and society has made people less and less interested in themselves.

And we consider this a vast improvement – when it is a total disaster.

2013
04/08
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Agile Software Development Methods Can be Applied more Widely

I have been saying – and saying over and over – that expertise in technology cannot be expanded to expertise elsewhere – to life in general. But the Agile approach may be an exception to this. Wikipedia (which can also be seen as  using an Agile process) has a good article on this. 

But the best place to get a feel for this is to poke around the many AWS (Amazon Web Services) related sites - such as the ones here. 

Right away I can hear the whining “But that is too much work!” Which, in my opinion, is nothing but people saying “The only right way to be is to know nothing at all!” Or to keep tightly-focused, and not look at the Big Picture at all.

To me, you got to be like a hound-dog – following a scent wherever it goes. No matter how much work it takes. Since when has anything worthwhile been easy?

One obvious way Agile has to be expanded is to turn the customer (in the business world) into everyone. To use it for social engineering.

Perhaps I can use my nose for sniffing out real progress (as opposed to all the fake stuff). I have certainly been down enough dead-ends  - maybe this scent-trail will go somewhere.

We did have the idea, at one time, that the world could be improved – and we should be doing that.

And it’s time we started doing that again.

2013
04/05
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Imperfection is Part of Being Human

In fact, craziness, in all its forms, has always been part of us – and always will be. Whenever a person, or a culture, thinks it is perfectly sane – it has, in fact, become insane.

Certain kinds of insanity are required for anyone to excel in most situations To succeed at being a lover, for example. Or an entrepreneur, a warrior, a programmer – or almost anything. You have to be a little crazy in the right way – but not too crazy.

It is my opinion that we (Americans, that is) have gone far too far. And just about any developed country is in the same situation. Development involved more and more machine-like behavior – in what seemed like a move toward perfect behavior. Since any machine (when it is working) is perfect.

When it breaks, however – as it always will eventually, only people can fix it – if it is not broken too badly.

We should be at the point in our evolution when we take stock of where we are – recognize our most common mistakes – and take care to not repeat them. We should be.

But this is not the case at all. To the contrary – we seem determined to keep repeating them. As if this were the right thing to do.

Let me repeat that – somehow or other we have become obsessed with becoming perfect – and not being human – and imperfect.

Or to put this another way yet – we have decided not to be.

2013
04/05
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Technology
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