Technologies help us do more with less, they defy boundaries of space, time and self. We experience them as both magic and loss. This essay begins by adopting broader conceptual analysis from the work of academics and theorists, applied from the position of practitioners working internationally on technology deployment for social change. It then looks at how data-driven technologies are currently deployed to solve problems. Lastly, it makes a case for why we cannot leave the challenges posed by data-driven technologies to technologists.
The brewing revolution in "Computational Economics" is backwards & dangerous: The basic premiss: "If we have a 'perfect' simulation of the world, based on *total* surveillance of everything, "we" can optimise economy, society & psychology with A.I's - and all will be better".
"Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism & Democracy for a Just Society" - talk by Glen Weyl (Microsoft) at Google, Moderated by Hal Varian (chief economist at Google)
If you think about it for a minute, Yoga, Qi-Gong, etc. (at scale) are clearly amongst the most potent sociopolitical attack-vectors against a techno-totalitarian state.
“Pursuance aims to unify like-minded individuals with the purpose of pooling resources, dispersing tools to enact social change, and establishing a system of accountability to produce tangible solutions for the greater good,” Burkhart said. “Imagine the effectiveness of a network of individuals, all equipped with a variety of skills to meet the demands of a certain issue, working simultaneously with hundreds of other entities focused on similar pursuits.”
"For the first time in human history, we can get any individual to collaborate with any other individual. So its about time we start leveraging this" - @BarrettBrown_
Since money, economics, industry and warfare are all essentially becoming just specific use-cases of computation - does any effective form of political/societal change, require a reformation of computation culture first?
1st principle of the Technetronic Society: "Something ought to be done because it is technically possible to do it." E.g: If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built even if they might destroy us all.
2nd principle: "Maximal efficiency & output over all else".
The objective metrics that run our modern societies are essentially only concerned with *quantities*: (More GDP, Growth, Consumption, Production = Better). Few raise the question of *quality*, or what the increase in quantity is good for ~ leading to imbalances in the system.
Indian teacher seeks to promote China-India cultural exchange through yoga:
An inspiring dialogue between the worlds most populous nations (2.7b people combined). Understanding the explosive political power of yoga etc., the Communist Party clearly is watching closely.
For many around the world, India is inseparable from yoga. When mentioning yoga, many would just simply associate it with all kinds of demanding asana practices. But for Yatindra Dutt Amoli, the ancient activity is more than that.
“Before we came here, we saw that people were more focused on the asana practice. The teachers were not making it clear that yoga is not only about practice, yoga is also philosophy, yoga is also a way of life,” the 36-year-old from an Indian university told CGTN.
In collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the India-China Yoga College was established in Yunnan Minzu University in the southwestern city of Kunming in 2015 and Amoli is just one of the first foreign teachers.
“In the beginning, my life here was very difficult, because I'm from a totally different cultural background and society,” he recalled.
The friendliness of his colleagues and his growing interest in China resulted in him staying in the country longer than he had originally planned. Now, he is trying to impart systematic yoga knowledge to his Chinese students by integrating elements from Chinese culture.
“Gradually I understood that I have to change (my teaching method), I realized that if I teach yoga philosophy, I should teach it from a Taoism, Confucianism, Tai Chi point of view and Qigong point of view, even from their ethnic culture.”
Actually, yoga is usually compared with China’s Tai Chi. For Amoli, the two widely practised activities represent two different cultures, while they also share many similarities. He compares Tai Chi to “moving meditation” and said that yoga and Tai Chi may be different in their process, but they both seek harmony between human beings and nature.
“This is cultural root. Yoga is from our cultural root and Tai chi is from your cultural root. If we communicate through the two mediums, we can cooperate more, even we can go further than cultural issues,” said Amoli.
To promote the cultural exchange, the university has also established a college specializing in Tai Chi and are sending teachers overseas including India.
“Both yoga and Tai Chi are the embodiment of the wisdom of the East. They’re good to promote people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and our universities can play an active role in this regard,” said Lang Gongxun, vice dean of the India-China Yoga College.
He’s gotten used to life here, and Amoli said he wants to continue his stay in China to learn more about the country. He said he wants to find more ways to bring the two cultures together.
“By borders, we can say that you are Chinese, I am Indian. But as a human being, we’re all the same. Our lifestyles are quite rich, culture is quite rich. So we have to understand each other,”
said Amoli, who is obsessed with traditional Chinese classics such as Tao Te Ching, which provides the basis for the philosophical school of Taoism, and Huangdi Neijing, which has been considered as the fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine.
Amoli said, when he went back to India last time, he found that people there knew very little about Chinese culture. “They said China has nothing. China only has Kung Fu,” he added.
Amoli is now devoting himself to learning Chinese. He said when he goes back to India next time or travels to other countries, he would like to tell people about other Chinese cultural treasures.
“I don’t know the political situation, and I am not interested in diplomatic things. I am just interested in cultural issues, and I think it’s time that we learn more from each other.”
"Why Indians say Americans are doing yoga wrong":
"More than 20 million Americans practice yoga. It's an industry worth more than 10billion dollars annually"
Yogic Paths: Exploring the Yogic Path
Yoga is meant to shape the life. To give a good shape to life. Its a way of living.
One of these days, someone will figure out how to effectively fuse the most effective bits of startups, political parties and religious groups into a fascinating new animal.
A Conversation With Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google. A truly fascinating glimpse into the logic behind Google. This talk is a bizarre mix of somewhat interesting and rather boring. I'm ultimately disappointed at the naive, at times crass over-simplistic worldview outlined here - all using smart sounding concepts, of course.
"You want to focus on skills that complement, that which inevitability is becoming abundant" ~ @nikete channelling @halvarian
"It used to be gardeners you would have to do now different plants and what characteristic those plants had - well that's gone away to. Now thats low-level jobs. They have been augmented by machines"
Translation: In a city that is rapidly turning into a desert, the owners have weaponised automation against its already struggling citizens & call it "progress".
A primary problem with the startup movement (a system to facilitate large-scale collaboration) of the past 20y, has been this: its full of implicit politics (growth, technocratic, disruption, consumerism) & totally void of explicit politics (ethics, diversity, ecology, etc.)
The entire drama around how Google & co are collaborating with the Pentagon's killing machine is somewhat missing the point: Would like to deeply discuss the meaning of war & the role of pacifism in the 21st century instead!
"Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong" - Mahatma Gandhi