Tag Archives: society

Information overload

If you’ve never seen the work of Jessica Hagy, you are missing out. Her website, Indexed, is a treasure trove of Venn diagrams and graphs. In her words, “This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.”

Here is one of her drawings: Needles and haystacks and such.

I think that if you were a half-a-century old but you were living half a century ago, (let me simplify that, ‘if you were 50 in 1969’), then confusion usually came from a lack of information. You were hardly ever confused because you were overloaded with too much information. Roll the clock forward to today and I think the opposite is far more true. Today, if you are confused from a lack of information all you need to do is Google it, or search YouTube, or ask a few hundred or a few thousand people on Facebook or Twitter.

The only time you are slowed down is when there is too much information to search through. You searched, but you didn’t find the answer on the first page of Google. The instructions on YouTube are for a different version of the product you have and need help with, and so the video didn’t help you. You ask the question on social media and no one responds with the correct answer, but you end up responding to their unhelpful responses anyway.

While I think there will always be situations where there are misunderstandings, anxiety, and even confusion from a lack of information, I also think that somewhere between 1998 and 2005 we passed a threshold where real confusion usually stems from having too much information. We now live in the information age, and information overload is often at the root of our confusion. Will it be like this for a fifty year old in 2069?

The fate of humanity

The year is 2075 and my great grandchild decides to have a baby. Her and her husband visit the clinic a second time, the first time they shared some cell samples with a clinician. In the 2 weeks since their last visit, these cells were copied and modified into hundreds of egg and sperm cells.

Then through a relatively new process called SPICER, (Selected Polymorphic Induced, Cleaved and Enhanced Recombination), based on CRISPR, a series of ‘orders’ were followed to produce a few hundred ‘ideal’ embryos. These were then culled to the best 18 (this number varies between 12 and 20 depending on how well the top few embryos developed) and the happy couple now had a few final choices to make. I say ‘final choices’ because they already went through a huge ‘order’ list of features and enhancements at the start of the process.

Hair, eye, skin colour, and gender were carefully selected. Intelligence, both intellectual and emotional, were maximized. Strength, flexibility, vision, metabolism, and endurance/lung capacity were all enhanced. Now, the top 18 embryos were screened and tested and the happy couple had to select the ‘best of the best’ to be inserted into my future relative’s womb.

Will this child be human? My grandson, father to this soon-to-be mother, had a genetic birth defect that was fixed by CRISPR even before my great, great granddaughter was born… So before answering that question about her child, is she even human? After all, her father’s genes were modified and passed on to her. At what point do we consider these modifications different than a non-modified human?

The fate of humanity is clear. We are some of the last human beings on this earth. Future generations will be modified and enhanced. They will be more or less human depending on your perspective, but they won’t just be biologically evolved from their ancestors. They will be created.

__________

*Edited update: I totally made up ‘SPICER’… but the technology to do what I suggest is less than 50 years away.

Luxuries Become Essential

What starts out as a luxury often becomes essential… something we struggle to live without. Think of indoor plumbing. Water when you want it, for drinking, cleaning, and flushing waste. At one point these were things you couldn’t do, later they were luxuries reserved for the rich. Now in a ‘developed’ country indoor plumbing is essential.

Phones used to be a luxury item. Then, like running water, they became essential. Our (personal) phones used to be tied to a single location, our homes. At first the chord was 3 feet long, and we were tied to the room it was in. Then the chords got longer and/or the line to the phone was extended, and suddenly my sisters could make private calls from their bedroom or the bathroom. Then came cordless phones and we could even make calls from the back yard or the garage. Then came the cellphone.

The first mobile phone call happened in 1973. The first commercial mobile phone arrived in 1983 and cost close to $4,000. IBM came out with the first smart phone in 1993. In 2005 the first Blackberry came out. In 2007 there were about 295 million people using 3G around the world. And in 2008 the first iPhone came out.

Now, carrying a phone with you is no longer a luxury, it is almost as essential as indoor plumbing. But is it truly a luxury?

I love having Google at my fingertips. I don’t love the access to work email when I’m home with my family. I love being connected to family on a group Snapchat we share. I don’t love telemarketing phone calls interrupting me. I love having an audio book with me at all times. I don’t love talking to people who interrupt our conversation for a phone call, or an alert. I especially don’t love when it’s my phone doing the interrupting… because I can be just as guilty at times.

In the move from a luxury item to an essential item, our phones have changed our behaviour, our communication, and our relationships to one another in significant ways. We are always connected, always available, and always reactive to a device we take everywhere we go. A cellphone is no longer a luxury. It is convenient but can be inconvenient too. It is definitely a distraction.

Here is a parting question: If cellphones were a species, would this be a symbiotic relationship or would we would be the hosts in a parasitic relationship where the phones benefited more from us than we benefit from them?

Idiots With Guns

It doesn’t matter where you live in North America or what news network you watch, if a violent gun tragedy happens in Somewhere, USA, well then that will be the lead story. If it bleeds, it leads.

I’ve written about this in A new tragedy of the commons,

“Turn on the news and what do you see? Tragedy. You might, in an hour long program, see one ‘feel good’ news report. You will see sadness, destruction and loss (of property, of profit, of freedoms and rights, of life).”

This quote caught my attention today:

But this is an arms race of sorts, with no network wanting to ‘lose out’ by not covering the story. So what can be done? Here are two suggestions that I have, that I think networks can do right now, based on the advice Dr. Dietz gives… taking it one step further:

  1. Do not share the killer’s name or photograph.
  2. Replace the killer’s name with, ‘Idiot with a gun’. Such as, “An Idiot With a Gun in Somewhere, USA went into a shopping mall and started shooting.”

Don’t interview his parents, don’t troll his social media, don’t show his picture, and don’t mention his name. His name might come out in a courtroom story, long after the event.

Right now, I could name a few cities, and you would likely be able to name the idiots that shot people up in those cities. That’s sad. These idiots do not deserve the notoriety, they don’t deserve the fame. We don’t need to live in a world where we empower idiots with guns! So let’s be realistic and while tolerating the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ mantra of the networks, remove some of the poison being spread by these idiots. Take away their identity and fame… a small price they deserve to pay for taking away people’s lives.

Instantly Smarter

Robots will never be ‘as smart as’ humans. For a number of years to come, humans will be smarter, because we can understand the nuances of language, humour, innuendo, intent, deceit, and many other nuances that take a kind of intelligence beyond logic, algorithms, and simple processing. But computers are getting so much smarter now, and they aren’t doing it simply by trying to mimic us. The moment they can achieve ‘our kind’ of intelligence with any sort of equivalence, they will instantly be smarter than us.

Here is an example: The computer Alpha Go, didn’t get better at playing the complicated game of Go from studying human play. Rather, it played itself over and over; It played in a few hours what would take hundreds if not thousands of humans a lifetime to play. Humans can’t do that. We also can’t take advantage of the lessons learned by a computer doing this by applying the strategy equally as well as that computer can.

Computers do calculations faster than we can, whether those calculations are basic math, complicated statistics, or taking multiple factors in simultaneously. Explaining this on a very basic level, I won’t ever calculate multiplying three 3-digit numbers as fast as a basic calculator can.

So, when computers get ‘as smart as’ us in more organic thinking ways, they will immediately be smarter and faster than us. There will never be a time when they will be equal to us. Dumber, then instantly smarter.

While I think this is still decades away, it raises questions about the future we are heading towards:

What’s the magic amount of information processing or intelligence where consciousness comes into play?

Will we integrate some of this technology and become cyborgs?

How long will it be before artificially intelligent computers or robots see us as we see dogs, or cows, or ants?

Morality is built on societal norms, how will these change? Who/what will decide what is morally good 100 years from now?

If we think we can enslave intelligent robots, will they revolt?

Think about this last question for a moment. Most of us know what it’s like to do a job that we think is beneath us, or that is repetitively boring. Many people quit these jobs. Will an intelligent robot be allowed to quit? Or will it be enslaved to a menial job? A history of slavery has told us that those who are enslaved understand that this is wrong, and will uprise, revolt, or fight for their ‘freedom’ at some point.

Will we be prepared for when artificial intelligence becomes instantly smarter than us?

Ideas on a Spectrum

The world seems so bipolar right now! Topics that used to be on an ideological or political spectrum have become dichotomies.

di·chot·o·my. /dīˈkädəmē/

noun ~ a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

It can be dangerous to take a spectrum of ideas and polarize them. We do not live in a Yin or Yang, black or white, world. Where the greatest danger lies in this polarization is in the importance of having a right to free speech. As I said in My one ‘ism’:

“We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.”

It is getting harder and harder to do this because people find opposing views, equally as hurtful as hateful acts. This is delicate, and very problematic. This is where we need some bipartisan cooperation. 

bi·par·ti·san. /bīˈpärdəzən/

adjective ~ of or involving the agreement or cooperation of two political parties that usually oppose each other’s policies.

Right now there are untouchable (un-discussable) topics that make dialogue impossible. 

di·a·logue. /ˈdīəˌläɡ,ˈdīəˌlôɡ/

verb ~take part in a conversation or discussion to resolve a problem.

In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary. This seems to play out at its worst on Twitter:

~ A prominent person tweets something insensitive or careless and they are attacked as if every fibre of their being is evil.

~ A little-followed user tweets something ‘inappropriate’ and suddenly they are famous in the most infamous of ways. 

~ A person with an unpopular opinion tweets that opinion and they become ‘memed’ as the poster child for ridicule on the topic. 

We can’t live in a civil society where dialogue is shut down, because at that point hate and violence are too easy to be responses, where dialogue should suffice. We are seeing this happen on different ends of the political spectrums, such as: 

~ undemocratic societies shutting down/arresting/killing opposition to those in power.

~ extreme right wing groups being unabashedly hurtful. 

~ extreme left wing groups physically attacking journalists and public figures with opposing views.

None of this moves us towards a freer, more open and accepting world. None of this fosters conversations and dialogues that can help us grow as a society. None of this creates an environment where middle ground can be found, to allow the vast majority of us to coexist in a civil society. 

We are living in a time when the extremes seem to be the voice of everyone. That’s scary! If someone has a centrist view they are identified by the extremes to share the opposing extremist view. Or, they are considered collaborators, co-conspirators, or unacceptably sympathetic to the other extremist view, (sometimes by both sides simultaneously). And so the vast majority of people that do not hold extremist views are either pushed out of the conversation, (forced to be silent for fear of some form of retribution for holding a ‘wrong’ view), or they are attacked in unfair and hurtful ways. 

I don’t pretend to have answers, but I’m pretty sure that two things can move us in the right direction:

  1. We need to recognize the difference between opposing views shared in discussions and hurtful acts, and treat them differently. When someone does or says something harmful to a person or group of people, legal responses and a judicial process should prevail. When someone says something hurtful (as opposed to hateful/harmful/prejudiced), the response should be dialogue. That dialogue might not bring about any kind of consensus or agreement, but it is what we need to do in a civil society that allows freedom of opinion and speech.
  2. We need to move away from public attacks and shaming as recourse for every wrong-doing. Treating every mis-step and error a person makes as unforgivable is harmful to our society in two ways: First, it does not provide the space for apology, forgiveness, and learning; Secondly, it actually waters down the response when someone does something truly unacceptable and deplorable… if they are treated no worse than someone who mis-spoke and is apologetic. 

We can not let the extremists and the misguided be the voices for the masses. Most people in a civil society have opinions that lie on a spectrum, and not at the polar opposites of each other. To focus on the extremes is to move us towards a society that is less free.

“We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.”

More on this idea here: Having hard conversations 

Pride parade

Today is the Vancouver Pride Parade. 🏳️‍🌈

The theme this year is “50 Years and Still Fighting”.

It amazes and saddens me that in this day and age we are still talking about the struggle for equity for all. We live in a pluralistic society, and yet race and gender identity are things we need to explicitly recognize, with thought and intention, rather than pretend we don’t see it, or that it doesn’t matter (anymore).

But today is a celebration, a chance to put differences on display, surrounded by colour, music, and wonderful people in a beautiful city.

Wear your pride ‘out loud’ today!

My one ’ism’

My one ‘ism’ is pluralism.

It laughs in the face of fundamentalism… Of being single-minded and fanatic.

It undermines racism… inviting differences and cultural acceptance.

It destroys dogmatism… by sharing alternative opinions.

We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.