Tag: education

The Future Plays At All Boards

There seems to be quite an interest in ‘the’ future, lately. As in, the last couple of tens of millennia but also the last couple of months. Recency Effect, maybe ..?

The thing is; discussions how the near and far future will/might be, are handicapped by industry and specialisation myopia.

  • IT-angehauchten discuss ANI, AGI and ASI, with neural networks resurfacing, finally, in discussions over when (soon) we’ll have the Singularity. Yes you’ve read my great many posts about that already or go in shame and still do it (impression tracker is engaged).
  • A branch of that, discusses very near future labour markets – mostly, almost exclusively, those in the furthest developed economies only.
  • Biologists and eco-nuts (are they?) are on the Global Warming / Food- and Fresh Water- Starvation / Anti-GMO paths in their discussions.
  • And there’s of course daily glocal wars going on, military/physical and refugee atrocities everywhere, and economic warfare as well. Of the latter which ‘cyber’ in all its forms (remember, #ditchcyber) is part.
  • Simple-economically, there still is the enormous divide between haves and have-nots, now being exposed (nevertheless still growing) within countries’ local economies as well due to jobless growth and the Pikettyish 1%’ers.
  • And, I probably forget some category. [Edited half a day after post release, to add: Yup, this here combi-one.]

But, … all play out on/in the same world, the one you and I inhabit [well maybe not you, alien (as physical being or just meme/information floating around over whatever physical media) listening in from the Andromeda nebula]. So, we’ll have to deal with all problems, operational, tactical and strategical, together both in people and in solutions. And as the world spins faster than ever, requiring ever more clever and ever more-dimensional solutions. Until all choke, mind-wise. Hasta La Vista, baby.

Oh well. I’m not (even) negative …
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[Anywhere, everywhere.]

Some solution to your (future) joblessness

You may have noticed I tended towards the dystopian side regarding Singularity things and by-definition jobless growth (or slowdown, or anything), as in this and the posts linked therein.
Possibly, you’re in the category aiming for:
Photo10-4
[Wingspread house; good living by FLlW at Racine, WI]

I didn’t discuss time frames.
Though I’m not optimistic about those, either.
But at least, there’s some info that may lull the frightened back into sleep, and help the agile, willing, wanting, forward:
CGGf6YgWAAAetje
[Plucked from … some socmed post]

Study … and keep in mind: This is for the very (happy) few that have a big head start; are at a quite stellar developmental level already.

Swa(r)m(i’)s anyone ..?

OK. That title needs some explanation. This is that.

First, a pic to display the right mood:

000024 (7)

[Office; Y2K fieldwork at Martinique]

Yesterday [at time of scheduling ;-] it struck me that some years ago already – time flies like an arrow (eight interpretations) OR when you’re not working (traditional interpretation) – there was this fad in organisationland called ‘swarms’ in which agile (sigh…) little bands of independent professionals would come together all bringing their individual expertise and competences (as swami’s) to do a certain project job, then disband to go off to other ventures in yet other swarms. As transparent pools of in-group trusted achievers that would need less coordination than Big Corp in-house controlled project teams, and would leave the independents truly independent even from one another. Yet needing the trust among themselves.

But as swarms go, the hype’let soon disappeared it seems. So I checked with Trends™ – and found something interesting:

Swarm trend graph

Off search term ‘swarm -bird -bee -starcraft -alien -heart -“the swarm” -locust -particle’ yes even the movie needed to be excluded to let it make some sense.

Where you see … there might not have been a hype’let in the first place. And/or it was buried amidst negativity over the New Economy (© The Year 2001) in the Financial Downturn.

Anyway; which part of the jobless growth isn’t jobless but rather perm-contractless ..? Only if we net out the work contracted to independents (individual / swarm / inc.), would we know how much actual productivity/growth is jobless indeed.

Or you would have pointers to definitive data on the latter already ..?

Gininflation ..!?

The title not referring to a rise in consumption of some derivative beverage (jenever being the real deal of course!), but a conflation of Gini and inflation.

Because it just won’t leave my mind that some form of inequality (change) index might be derived from a clever combination of regular inflation rates (the real ones, not the pure phantasies ponied up by governments!) with both the Gini income and wealth indices. As this would amplify that inflation may hit classes that can hardly avoid it harder, and classes that wouldn’t care much, less. Or the other way around. Or so. Driving out money supply through capturing where the hoarding of that new money takes place.
Finally exposing the spiraling inflation in the Euro zone, too, that officially didn’t exist after Doomsday struck (Feb 2002) but all but the most foolhardy delusional (bordering on ? utter incompetence) knew and know better. Coinciding with the mortgage / derivatives bubbles.

But it takes some careful crafting to combine inflation (which one?) with Gini (which one?). Where my skills in the area are a bit rusty. Anyone ..?
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[No razor sharp banking saved Toronto]

A rough drive to success

How is it that there are so many paths to success – and not all of them involve heroism, drive, luck over misfortune, etc. …?

Because, for one, we may diss the simply very lucky (by birthplace, geo/socially) that have to do nothing in particular and just drift up, often floating up by lack of weight, not even realising, not grasping the concepts of being so lucky as the only factor(set) and that not being one’s own achievement.
And consider the averagely lucky that work hard and purposefully, and succeed. Praise them, but somehow we all (sic) expect them to be successful (or they ‘fail‘ …!? A single stroke of bad luck isn’t ‘failure’!).

But I’m putting this down out of respect for people like here, having overcome more than the very most of us would stand and still be decent.

Anyway; enjoy (someone else’s good fortune; are you above slimy creep enough to be able to?), and:
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[Not All Saints. However …]

Some less than 1% spenders

Just dropping it here; not all of the 1% are big spenders. Some have human motives to live differently. Now; how to get the others to contribute ..?
… Or; how to get the unspent and the uncaringly spent, to contribute back to society …?
Never mind. Read this.

For now, this:
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[Spent other ways, probably more efficiently contributing to overall well-being!]

Dump’let

Just a little dump’let of Inspirational tweets:

That’ll be all… Pics will return tomorrow.

Digital Native Schative

A couple of weeks ago, there was this little row (that you may easily have missed) about some recruiter requiring digital nativity (yes.) of candidates (and whether that would be discriminatory since it would exclude ‘old’ folks). As in this here discussion.
Where the point was largely missed that one would indeed not want to hire anyone who would consider themselves qualified on this point…

As

  • Considering yourself such a native, or ‘born digital’ or whatever ridiculous phrase one could use, disqualifies you as you have no clue:
  • Those born in a time when there was already something digital (e.g., like stand-alone PCs), will still have grown up in environments with hardly if any of those devices. Either due to region (PCs were around in the US in the 80s, not so much elsewhere) or class (as if less moneyed classes had PCs in the US, before the 00s). Same / similar for all (sic) other ‘devices’, ‘systems’, and developments, that one could consider to fall under the ‘digital’ class if there were such a thing. If ‘born digital’ is about ‘computers’ having been around: that started in the 60s ..! If it is about pervasive ‘digital’ stuff being around: Those kids are still infants (mentally!), 0-20yrs of age; only some escape this nubness and indeed do understand technology.
  • So, there’s hardly anyone who could actually claim to be born and raised (sic) digitally. Maybe a handful, possibly placed outside their bio family by authorities as the digital overload would count as child molestation (compared to their peers, playing outside).
  • And, all the other kids may have actually learned something of the outside world in which one has to live (or be kept (sic) in a basement all their life…). May; apart from those that didn’t properly learn to ride a bike since they were driven around by tiger moms. Still, the ‘born and raised’ digital, would be of no use in the real world due to knowing nothing of it.
  • The ‘digital’ has in the mean time exploded. Is it about mobile, about social, about devices, about apps, actual applications, programming, security, business deployment, assembler, design (of ‘web’ sites (huh whaddoyoumean ..!?), apps, devices, brands, or ..?), privacy, economics, …, …? No-one can cover them all; some may cover a few but certainly not more. So anyone claiming to master the world because they were ‘born digital’, I show you the Fool. Ecco homo.
  • So you’d better not hire such worldview-morons.

But then, you could hire me. I was trained to work on mainframes (operations) and early PCs (use, programming down to C and assembler), have learned hardcore HTML (3, 4) back in the day and moved to ‘modern’ applications, and understand the Real World through education and experience (also in the business world), etc.etc.
Your call.

For reference:
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[‘Native’ …? Córdoba]

His Story

Oh yes just to drop it like that. On history and the importance to know it. So that you wouldn’t declare just anything to be a historic, unique event like a launch of some crappy piece of software (if it’s good, you launch way too late!) we currently call an App – which might within a decade be a laggard petit bourgeois expression.
Even in historic perspective, a great many Unique events are far from it, by light years. E.g., the Iron Curtain in Europe. Anyone remember Tordesillas ..? And the Great Wall of China, similar? And…, and …? Or, as the n-word has become an absolute no-no for anyone of other colour, what history does it refer to ..? Don’t you use the s-word now, as that stigmatises a people that were so deep into that that their people’s name became the Anglo-Saxon and much afterwards English word for their very fate. Hence, to use the s-word now, singles out that populace and degrades them much more than the s made by their own peoples (sic!), also through the centuries around the world (sic) without much complaint by almost all affected then. False claims for preeminence by attribution ..?
[Not to disclaim the dismal, atrocious treatment many past generations received. Should be remembered – all]

To return: Claiming uniqueness of events, or forging history to claim its compensations for ills not received (in person), makes one look truly stupid. Widening the gap between true unique-historicity and one’s own insignificance in stead of joining them. So stop making yourself the laughing stock of the masses, you clown (by innate character, not by role – an honourable one).
Or I’ll claim my ancestors were driven out of Africa by the ones still there.
The ones still affected today, however…

This discussion will continue, for a great many centuries IF humanity allows itself that much time. Therefore, now:
DSCN7306
[Defense / retreat ..? Andalucía]

Grendel’s mother

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:
DSCN7008
[Ah, bull fighting (at Sevilla no less): Another such eternal struggle between Good and Evil, order and reason against pure force of nature – so often completely mistaken for simple ‘sports’. Cruel, to the Weak (sic) but not to those that value its depiction of life itself; that have experienced and/or seen much worse in human life, in person.]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord