education – Page 24 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Everyone’s using Layars

Just started re-reading the 1991 (..!) Gelernter classic Mirror Worlds. Nomen est omen, author-itywise.
Then it struck me: Mobiles weren’t invented back then; can you imagine ..?? And Home Improvement was the hit of the year. Some Tim Berners-Lee guy first proposed HTML. Even PCs version 1.0 were still not ubiquitous.
And then this Gelernter published this masterpiece about virtual worlds. Not some random tech prediction, but insightful, visionary stuff.

But the reason I give you this, is: In 2009, Layar started. Where has that gone ..!?

When you know what I’m talking about, you see the link with the above. And might wonder as well. Yeah, one can DuckDuckGo them, but that’s not the point, which is: Where’s the exponential unicorn disruptor daily jubilant news about them, whilst they have grown in prominence ever since ’90 ..? Why not ..?

Oh well, I’ll leave you with:

[Once, friggin’ SotA at Noto]

Ringtones on deaf ears

[Abridged repost; relevant again]
There seems to have been an explosion of (news over) ~mojis lately. Like, the past half year has seen a proliferation of subsets and niceties that, as a phenomenon, spell the end of interest in messaging.

As the phenomenon (not this which is great in any absolute measure) is so very much the same as we saw with ringtones…
Arrrg! Yes indeed they spelled the end of the introductory phase of mobiles. The more it became a fad to have some peculiar ‘tone, the more one exposed oneself as a somewhat (?) pathetic Laggard, not quite knowing yet how to have and treat a phone as perfectly normal tool without having to brag how great one was for having one in the first place.

Can you see the same with messaging? If not, you may be the one that actually paid for the nicest ringtone you disabled in shame for not getting any but negative recognition after a couple of days again.

So, … next up in this series: How “Like us on Facebook” went the same way in the 2^nd half of 2015, latest… And:

[Siegfried& not quite]

Porter’s half “value” chain

The problem: Half an <undefined> chain isn’t much good.
Because … There’s no money anywhere in the ‘Value Chain’ oft portrayed. As it is in Starreveld’s model. [You’re out of luck, in Dutch only and even then, no pics .. oh, there‘s one]

Which points to an even bigger error: No clear(ly communicated) def of Value in the first place. Allsorts went off and did a lot of heavy lifting (they wished! The lightweight airheads the majority was!), but achieved … not much; little; nothing worth their salts.

Obviously. And also, obviously very much required, these latter days, that a proper all-inclusive and operable definition of Value still is created, leaving mere ‘money’ in the dust similar to the distance between ‘data points’ and ‘information’. But let’s start with completion of the core model not keep it in half.

Oh well…:

[Capture that in moahnay…; at what translates to Eddie’s ‘hood]

Grendel’s mother

This indeed a repost. As matters in global politics made this material utmost relevant again, a couple of weeks ago. Has the news since addressed the below already, or will we learn from history that we don’t learn from history ..?

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have.
There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:

[A museum. Hence, still very relevant; Edinburg.[Earth isn’t flat, you know…]] ]]]] ]

C’est arrivé près de chez vous; LoRaWAN

Yet another major building block of the Future … in place. [And, not a ref to some City of Light atrocities]
Where’s the Privacy and (OR) Security experts …? For certainly, though almost out of public view, the undercurrents develop fast, into a maelstrom — I’d like it even more in this form — of possibilities; to be abused before being controlled, as has always been the case throughout history.

Oh well, can’t stop Progress, certainly not of the Technology kind… But one can hope we (sic or huh?) the Concerned will be in sufficient numbers to be able to and to be allowed to insert the appropriate controls into the whole shazam.
Like, you know,

[Or is this an Tocqueville’ian opposite ..?]

The Internot Diploma

In an attempt to pre-empt all 2016 April fool’s jokes by a mile (in time and ridicule value) some Dutch Board on Cyber Security (notice the joke starts there, with ‘cyber’ since #ditchcyber) proposed to ensure all kids would get some ‘Safe Internet use diploma’.
When you know the kids regularly fail for (very, very!) basic math skill tests, can hardly write comprehensible sentences over … [fill in some number comfortably below ten] words let alone know anything about bits and bytes (but do know about birds and bees far ahead of practicing any of that — we hope) or even the most basic things about what programming is, hence are at levels of education about four or five years below their age, you can see the enormity of what’s proposed.

So, to be on such a Board, one shouldn’t know the very first thing about the subject one babbles about or one would be overqualified ..!? What an insult to all the professionals out there that try hardest.

This all stupidity tires me enormously. I’ll stop now. And:

[Continuous renewal — at least that’s something ..!]

Oh, of course: DACcountantcy

Was reminded by this seer peer (no typos) in a casual remark that DAOs (DACs) may change quite a bit about the world as we know it. “DAOs are a game changing invention enabling a new model for human collaboration. #blockchain #C4ACC” (© him) — but apart from human collaboration (note the pejorative weight of the early ’40s this stil carries with it even today, in continental Europe), also the value of Trust in singular persons may shift.
DAOs then being of course, of course, the element I forgot to mention in my roboccountant post.

So, with this one linked in, now all the elements of that post make sense. In which the ensemble may have surpassed me. Or:

[Materially a circle, to any human accountant and dress codes displayed, are of the apparent relaxed Big4 dc’s of today; DC]

The Bureau of Chaos, by Theory

As a side note to, e.g. this here masterpiece…:
The tendency of bureaucracies to ever further detail its rulesets, that quickly become so burdensome [apart from other ills, ethically much graver], that is evident wherever (top-down) principles are translated in quasi- (not even semi-) mathematical ways, algorithmically almost, to the level of pervasive implementation, stems from the ultimate control approach to life clashing with the ultimate finest-grain detailed descriptions of the universe. Intentional, and definitely normative, description (in order to control! Man over Nature!) banging heads with extensional description.
Which will petrify, then fail because it creates its own Chaos structure, as described here. Where ‘repairs’ to the System are attempted over and over again since the initial values were not infinitely exactly known, can never be. So, one builds rulesets than behave like fractals (zoomed into), in particular when studied to understand and maybe subsequently fight.

Still, the Why of latter-day Bureaucracies (for once, I tried to avoid the overly negative, accurate and pejorative ethical (and esthetical) qualifications I commonly give to these totalitarian, inhumane structures — the latter qualification because of the Will to un-humanize it all) remains in doubt, as the Man over Nature thing (setting rules, hence achieving predictability) is somewhat less valid than otherwise; a bleak reflection of what we feel is a better description of motive.
[Intermission: Be aware as you were, that the b rulesets might be the spelled-out kind but the unwritten rules- social group kinds are also included.]
Ah, back to Maslow, maybe? Yes,yes, was dissed over the past couple of years; attempted to — and failed, probably due to unawareness of its deep values and not only superficial Meaning. Exceptions, the uncontrolled (by definition, and as the Outside is by definition, too), are threats to the achieved in that pyramid. ..? Though the higher up one is, the better one can handle ambiguity, uncertainty, the unexpected, black swans and Extremistan.

Just wanted to put it down for you. And at at last a somewhat positive turn, I’ll leave you with:

[Royal waiting (room) for Godot (i.e., National Railways everywhere), Amsterdam — notice the almost perfect horizon .. little less perfect but hanging in there … whoops! of the horizontal orientation]

Roboccountant

Talking about robotisation of the accountancy industry…

Automation is letting a computer do the same, or about the same, as was previously done by hand and/or mind.
This ‘doing’ is a walk-through of an algorithm. In its simplest form, and for major parts the core of accountancy / bookkeeping processing, this was even parameter-free so no switches needed to be made, no decisions at switchpoints. But sometimes, the switchboard was external e.g., in accountancy rulebooks that were but for (idiot) savants (a.k.a. ‘only some accountants’) near- or completely impossible to stuff in one’s head as part of the programming.
The Turing machines have it. But this line is only a display of wannabe Wisdom re core automation / programming knowledge.
Computers were freely programmable. And still are, mostly. Robots? Maybe not so much. But then, they’re of the industrial kind welding together your Tesla, or of the ridiculously purposeless humanoid kind. So, why talk about robotisation when it’s more about automation (of the classical label), nowadays called ANI, in the cloud or not..?
But then, there’s a lot of interpretation and shot calling and estimations up for discussion, in accountancyland. But that was what AI was supposed to solve! So far, we have only explored the either Expert System pure logic, or the ill understood neural networks deployment, but we haven’t integrated well enough the in-between (or supra) field of Fuzzy Logic. This could bring about a far more absolute truth of e.g., 60% admissibility of some estimation and at the same time a 60% inadmissibility of the same number. Then what — is determined by …? But that’s just how it is today, in the accounting industry, disguised as tough talk on admissibility but in reality styled more like cowardly firing squad pleading.
I already blogged about continuous instant report generation based on approved XBRL templates, that could draw on All data available in some organization, to deliver reports with the latest data to just whomever has access to the template/generation engine.
With assurance on the templates, and on the soundness of the base data pool generated/filled e.g. by automated verification against external sources, and on the integrity of the XBRL templates and the generation engine — nothing more needed. Initially, difficult enough, but learning effects will diminish the burden.
A second intermezzo: Of course all assurance will be delivered to your smart watch (sideline: as if such a thing would ever exist). Just strap a tablet to your wrist and you’d still be out by quite some margin, on screen size required to quickly glance over all relevant data (in one view! as is almost always required to understand the displayed, to have information from the data).
What if we find that all fuzzy logic including zero-to-somewhat fuzzyfied expert system’s translations of the hand- and rulebooks, would be implementable on rather simple neural networks, in the order of magnitude of a snail’s brain. No, not hinting at you, but the slime trail left by that Partner you know, is tell-tale.
When not if, weaving errors turn up in the rulebook algorithmic… When not if, the translation of True And Fair View into materiality criteria (NOT the other way around..!!! as it would be today but also as is complete and utter stupidity of the sackable offense and life without parole magnitude) will turn out to be faulty.
The idea that blockchain based trust will replace the value (if any(more)) of the wet signature — has that concept become sufficiently laughable ..? — of any particular person for reliance, is moot but may have to include indemnity / insurance coverage in one way or another, or is all accountancy (?) fee placed in escrow until a pool fund for expected claims is (over)filled?
But, will blockchain trust not go the same way as reliance on open source software ..? Will it not fail in light of the Bystander Effect ..? Then, exploited by the worst, first. As usual.

Well, just some touch points. The main one being: The rules are algorithmic, almost by definition. Until now, there was no good automated engine to draw on, but the inroads Watson is making in the medical field (oh how comparable!), show how close we (well…) are to being outflanked by … Hey lets have a contest about the name this first Roboccountant will have …!
As long as we don’t fall for the trappings to believe in any kind of child’s hand is easily filled expectation of a humanoid robot but rather one that has no physical existence other than its bits spread out over the global infra.

Oh hey before letting you in the dust, to clear up, herewith:

[Not evil but Ibla]

Romantic (Star) Wars

Ah, the romance! That will be proven to be the basis for the Star Wars movie (original one, the rest is after(sic)thought; also, future tense, as we near the future of Back To).
Since the many that say it so much clearer than Yours Truly, e.g., in this concise piece: When AGI / ASI (Don’t know when or rather if ever we would have a clear distinction between the two; re Asimov’s shorthand for magic) takes over, the ultimate control humankind had always sought over the universe, will flip to ultimate non-control. When hybris strikes, it backfires into annihilation.

Which is where the original SW was wrong in painting a picture as if some outpost could hold out against the Empire, being the ultimate Rationality that by time of making the movie, couldn’t be explained on screen (sic) other than through extreme unemotion(al characters). The ultimate emotion, love, resisting being razed off the face of the universe and conquering in the end. Yeah, right.

Or we start the Sarah and John Connor saga today ..?
The trick being the ultimate trick is so very much 100,000000….% effective, or the same, ineffective. How good is humanity so far, in achieving the former in stead of the latter ..? Proof, however anecdotal…?

Well, let’s not dwell on the negative and keep the rosy blue pill outlook:

[Dunno what this does here. Just a pretty ballroom; Palazzo Nicolaci, Noto]