"Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move."
- John Wheeler
"Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move."
- John Wheeler
Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” I say, “I do not think, that is why I exist.” —Taisen Deshimaru
In the field of observation chance prefers the prepared mind
- Louis Pasteur
This is the start of an infrequent series of posts entitled "Asshollery of a very refined form" (thanks to @vakibs for the name). It is a very special award for very special behaviour. The first post is dedicated to Google who thoroughly deserved it.
Google Internal "Selfish ledger" video leaked, describing its vision for planetary scale "Behavioural Sequencing" and Social Engineering.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
OK Google: Where I reside (Berlin), the vision you are outlining in this video (and its logical conclusions) are historically well known: It is called Eugenics - that ultimate leads to Genocide. In your case, all in the name of some super intelligence that - as the video points out multiple time - might emerge sometime soon and might be better at organising human affairs. This is a totally tone deaf, arrogant, totalitarian and deeply anti-democratic vision, built on-top of a very distorted view of humanity, society & culture. The Video is 8.30m long and not even once is the word "privacy" uttered. This video not only outlines an extremely dangerous agenda, but as well is Asshollery of a very refined form.
Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct:
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
OK Google: Congrats for having the dignity of finally removing this, after just weeks ago announcing you want to collaborate with the Department of Defence to build the AI for its drone killing programme (they are probably collaborating for many years silently). Well done, very post-modern of you and truly Asshollery of a very refined form.
This brings this episode of "Asshollery of a very refined form" to a conclusion. Until next time!
A growing selection of ideas, links, books & media, exploring the topic of re-enchantment.
Books:
The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age:
https://www.amazon.com/Re-Enchantment-World-Secular-Magic-Rational/dp/0804752990
The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life:
https://www.amazon.com/Re-enchantment-Everyday-Life-Thomas-Moore/dp/0060928247/
The Re-Enchantment of the World: The Value of Spirit Against Industrial Populism:
https://www.amazon.com/Re-Enchantment-World-Industrial-Philosophy-Aesthetics/dp/1441169253/
Presentations:
Narrative re-enchantment as world re-enchantment:
https://www.slideshare.net/SebastienPoulain/narrative-reenchantement-as-world-reenchantement
Business Model of a Botnet: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.10848.pdf
Abstract: Botnets continue to be an active threat against firms or companies and individuals worldwide. Previous research regarding botnets has unveiled information on how the system and their stakeholders operate, but an insight on the economic structure that supports these stakeholders is lacking. The objective of this research is to analyse the business model and determine the revenue stream of a botnet owner. We also study the botnet life-cycle and determine the costs associated with it on the basis of four case studies. We conclude that building a full scale cyber army from scratch is very expensive where as acquiring a previously developed botnet requires a little cost. We find that initial setup and monthly costs were minimal compared to total revenue
ToonSynth: Example-Based Synthesis of Hand-Colored Cartoon Animations:
http://dcgi.fel.cvut.cz/home/sykorad/toonsynth.html
Abstract: We present a new example-based approach for synthesizing hand-colored cartoon animations. Our method produces results that preserve the specific visual appearance and stylized motion of manually authored animations without requiring artists to draw every frame from scratch. In our framework, the artist first stylizes a limited set of known source skeletal animations from which we extract a style-aware puppet that encodes the appearance and motion characteristics of the artwork. Given a new target skeletal motion, our method automatically transfers the style from the source examples to create a hand-colored target animation. Compared to previous work, our technique is the first to preserve both the detailed visual appearance and stylized motion of the original hand-drawn content. Our approach has numerous practical applications including traditional animation production and content creation for games.
"Google’s New Algorithm Creates Original Articles From Your Content":
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-article-algorithm/253565/ #Generative
Looking at People using Brain-Computer Interfaces is just strange. Are they having fun or..?
Comment by Shanqing Cai: "That's because you aren't supposed to smile, laugh or talk. The muscle EMG would ruin the EEG signals. 😂😂 Not sure when that problem will be solved."
"The Charkha And The Cow" - by Aravindan Neelakandan:
https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/the-charkha-and-the-cow
"Gandhi combined in the spinning wheel 3 components he valued most: respect for human component, technological transparency, decentralisation".
Bitcoin’s energy use got studied, and you libertarian nerds look even worse than usual:
https://grist.org/article/bitcoins-energy-use-got-studied-and-you-libertarian-nerds-look-even-worse-than-usual/
The first peer-reviewed study of bitcoin’s energy consumption confirms fears: Bitcoin’s energy consumption is growing at 20% *per month* and is effectively erasing decades of progress on renewable energy.
Comments by vakibs:
Bitcoin is another step in the accelerating entropy of abstracting real objects into virtual pieces of information, breaking that information into pieces & revirtualizing it. What will it do to the ecosystems in the real world? What does entropy do to the real world? Surprised?
For all this talk about "Augmentation" and "Assistive" technologies, I'm missing a serious discourse on "De-Augmentation". Where do we start?
What are the principles of De-Augmentation?
Suggestion by Vakibs:
We should start with attention. In Yoga, de-augmenting human attention is known as Pratyāhāra. It is a beautiful computational notion, realized in the Sanskrit linguistics of Pānini.
"The Age of Assistance" - talk by @behshad_behzadi from Google on the impact of voice assistants on user behaviour.
"Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature" - by @livingarchitect: https://www.nextnature.net/2012/02/any-sufficiently-advanced-civilization-is-indistinguishable-from-nature/ #FFHCI
Watching this great documentary about the water shortage emergency in Iran brought up many ideas & feelings. Here some reflections on Water:
Water is the basis of life on planet earth. Water scarcity is the lack of freshwater resources to meet water demand. It affects every continent today. One-third of the global population (2 billion people) live under conditions of severe water scarcity. (Wikipedia). What has lead to this situation and how do we move forward?
This comment by an Iranian farmer who lost his land still rings in my head:
"Technology created the illusion of abundance for 60y. We build our society on it. Now it all collapses."
An engineer, commenting on the massive water crisis in Iran.
"We were so proud of our engineering skills, but we lost track of reality and evoked the crisis ourselves"
Humans used to go to where the water was. Today, Water must go to where Humans are. The Iranian water crisis poignantly brings to mind the observations Lewis Mumford made over 40y ago, about the dangers of "megatechnics" and the myth of the machine.
In the act of 'conquering nature' our ancestors too often treated the earth as contemptuously, under the delusion that the losses did not matter, since modern man through science and invention would soon fabricate an artificial world infinitely more wonderful than the one that nature had provided - an even grosser delusion ― Lewis Mumford
Water will very likely be the main source of conflicts in the 21st century. Hydro politics is a tremendously important topic (even more than oil), yet not often discussed.
"There is a motto in hydro politics that states that the countries upstream are using the water to get more power. The countries that live downstream, use their power to get more water " - Hojjat Mianabadi
"Water is both a human & natural phenomena, closely linked to human activities. It is generally assumed that a water emergency leads to conflicts. But experts say lack of water can also lead to more cooperation. It is up to us what we choose, conflict or cooperation" - Hojjat Mianabadi
Our planet is gifted with Water - a truly magical thing in our solar system. Let's make sure we choose cooperation over conflict and preserve this natural wonder for future generation.
Comments by Vakibs in reaction to this posts on Twitter:
We forget that rivers are flimsy goddesses who step in a land on their own accord, and whose favours can change literally with the wind. The data is clear from history. Many civilizations perished into the desert when they did not treat water with the sacredness it deserves. But some survived all through the ages, as the rivers are pleased with how they are being treated by the people.Massive dams, especially upstream, which block the nervous system of a river, will cause her to abandon her current home in the riverbed. It may be a matter of decades, but it is mere seconds in the geological timescale. The people upstream may be thinking their greediness is paying off. But it will be a very short time before the desert encroaches there too. The rainfall patterns will change with the wind. Rivers ought to flow till the sea. It is a connected system.
It is urgent time for global culture to re-connect with the sacred river, water and ocean gods and spirits. The technocratic irreverence for all things sacred is ultimately a form of necrophilia, which directly yields climate change and mass extinction. It is time.
"From Generative Models to Generative Agents" - talk by Koray Kavukcuoglu (@koraykv) from @DeepMindAI at ICLR2018. #ML #Generative
"Real People Are Turning Their Accounts Into Bots On Instagram — And Cashing In": https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/people-are-turning-their-accounts-into-bots-on-instagram - As predicted here, "Botnets will be the quintessential art-form of the 2020s."
The term of the day: "automated engagement trading groups".
The logic of botnet users is very clear