"I'd like to Teach the World to Sing ..."

 

INDIVIDUAL

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     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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GROUP

intelligence

ARTIFICIAL

Peoples Communities Societies Peace

"Joseph Votel, a recently retired head of the Pentagon's Central Command, said last year he was struck by how Israeli forces mounting strikes in Gaza in May had been integrating AI into their operations and by "the impact that is having on their targeting cycles". He says Israel is using AI to generate a large range of potential targets for surveillance to whittle down. This lets its forces "disrupt enemy attacks without the need for a lengthy development period or a longer campaign."  America's armed forces, helped by Palantir (an AI company which, like Anduril, takes its name from "The Lord of the Rings") and other contractors, is trying to build such technology into a system which can narrow down a huge range of potential targets and pass information about them freely to where it is most needed. Given the finite capacity of communication systems, not to mention the vulnerability, this requires that an increasing amount of processing be done "on the edge" - that is, on the platform carrying the sensor.  In 2016 a Pentagon project called Maven started trying to address the "lots of surveillance but not much to show for it" problem identified by General Ryan. The idea was to automate the identification of people and objects in the petabytes of video footage sent back by surveillance drones. It ended up producing software efficient enough to run on the drones themselves. In Scarlet Dragon, a recent-AI focused American exercise in which a wide range of systems were used to comb a large area for a small target, things were greatly speeded up by allowing satellites to provide estimates of where a target might be in a compact format readable by another sensor or a targeting system, rather than transmitting high-definition pictures of the sort humans look at.  In a world where bandwidth is often the biggest constraint such parsimony is a boon. It speeds up kill chains while reducing vulnerability to jamming. At the same time, it puts a greater burden on the automated parts of the system to provide reliable synopses of what they see, which is a worry for people keen to ensure that fully informed and responsible human beings stay on top of all decisions about where and when to blow things up." p.9.

 Signals from Noise. Heads in the clouds. The Economist Technology Quarterly, Defence technology, Hide and seek. January 29th 2022. 442: 9281. pp. 9-10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR_7Swtv0XM

AI Anxiety and the Public Letter in Hodges' model

INDIVIDUAL
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    INTERPERSONAL  :   SCIENCES              
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC
SOCIOLOGY :   POLITICAL
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GROUP

'doomerism' fear, belief, rationality artificial intelligence AI anxiety reflection, critical thinking	echo extinction biological intelligence pace of change past Speed NOW Time future
public public understanding of science 'public letter' collective fear - history life: family, work, leisure ..	policy governance motivation: public good, marketing, business, profit, power, control . . .

My source:

"Something strange has appeared in our sky. Let’s get a sense of what this alien is before we blow it out of the sky. Maybe it’s beautiful!"
https://t.co/UKwZCkjYrN

No apocalypse for now! An excellent, balanced piece on AI anxiety from @StephenMarche @guardian

Let's think more… pic.twitter.com/iJvPlzzK1q

— AI (@DeepLearn007) May 15, 2023

Out of hand ...

This blog is a pain, as is twitter.

I've known for ages -

H2CM new website - A short-form project brief

Twitter on hold: Blog a trickle ... 

Dries! I promise ...  (Sorry!)

I've known since the start of W2tQ back in April 2006. The web - software is change.

 

Blogging and twitter are a distraction.

 

The blog has helped to frame ideas. I can see now though (hindsight eh!), how unprepared I was in 2014 for a PhD, not just financially (self-funded), but having a question. I've had a project since 1988, but what's the Question?

 

People get in touch (SPAM reaches the inbox) with web design, SEO service offers. They point to how 'ill' my website / blog is. No website/blog are specified, no business address, details, there's a personal/business name that doesn't reflect the email signature.

I know that 'analysis' of the blog reveals a pile of errors, missed opportunities. And, yes; there is a much better online solution to drive income ...?

So, after the past year and especially last month, 2023 will be much much quieter on W2tQ. What will be posted?

• Book 'reviews'
• Quotes, insights from books I'm clearing as relates to Hodges' model
• Occasional timely insights from press / media*
• Conferences, Calls for papers, Journal news
• Q&A with other people about h2cm; critique of the model (well you never know!)
• Update on draft papers, and new citations

So, yes similar threads but the volume must be much, much less.

Twitter will likewise be less, but that doesn't mean - like many - I'm running elsewhere.

I'll be reading, writing, drawing 👍, following webinars and specific YouTube sessions ... studying and will pick up Drupal, github and Pharo. There's a hosting account to put to work, or at least experiment with. Over the past year my thinking about Hodges' model has (imho) progressed. I'm quite excited about what might follow. I'm also daunted, by the dual challenges of the 'development stack' (Drupal is at version 10 and counting...) on the one hand, and logic - relational analysis on the other.

Many thanks for your interest thus far.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.

 

*Oh gee! I replied to a thread on #HIFA yesterday and tweeted this a.m.. It would be remiss of me not to pick this up, so post to follow soon.

Book: The AI Does Not Hate You

You don't need to deploy AI strategies...

"Indeed, there are already glimpses of dangerous, unpredictable thinking in our AI. One AI learnt to win noughts and crosses tournaments against other computers by creating impossible moves billions of squares away from the board. This forced all the other computers to try to represent a board billions of squares across in their memory - but they didn't have the capacity and crashed. The cheating algorithm won by default.". James Marriot. Saturday Review, The Times, 1 June, 2019, p.13.

- to be a healthcare professional...*

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group

The AI Does Not Hate You
-

*for the moment at least... 

You don't even need 3x3!

Marriott, J., Why the nerds are nervous, Saturday Review, The Times, 1 June, 2019, p.13.
[Book cover - The Times.]

Sense making? miss-il-es civil-ians te-ears

individual

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

tears	tears
civilians to defend m i s s i l e s	m i s s i l e s to defend civilians

Source: Various news media over several days - current and past...
 

Joint Strike Care F-4(5)

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

individual(?)

Social Reflections on Power	Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning II

group - population

Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning II

Image source: https://www.f35.com/assets/uploads/downloads/13661/9777287314_9a87af14da_o__medium.jpg

Exoplanets, exobiology, exocortex, exocare ...?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/may/14/godvsatanindeepspace

Exoplanets

planets outside the solar system

An exoplanet (or extrasolar planet) is a planet orbiting a star different from the Sun (the "exo" prefix means "outside" in Greek). Up until now, one has found mainly gas giant planets, which are easier to detect than telluric planets. However, due to the increasing sensitivity of the detection methods, one already begins to observe the first planets of sizes comparable to the Earth.

Source: http://media4.obspm.fr/exoplanets/pages_definition/questce.html

Exobiology

The term exobiology ... covers the search for life beyond Earth, and the effects of extraterrestrial environments on living things.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology

Exocortex

-noun
An artificial external information processor that augments the brain's high-level cognition. Julia used her exocortex to access the memory of her tenth birthday.
Source: Fleming, N. The next wave. New Scientist, 14 May 2011. 210, 2812, p.33.

Exobuilding

ExoBuilding explores the novel design space that emerges when an individual‟s physiological data and the fabric of building architecture are linked. In its current form ExoBuilding is a tent - like structure that externalises a person's physiological data in an immersive and visceral way. This is achieved by mapping abdominal breathing to its shape and size, displaying heart beat through sound and light effects and mapping electro dermal activity to a projection on the tent fabric.
Source: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~hms/pdfs/SchnadelbachEtAl_ExoBuilding_CameraReady_AuthorVersion.pdf

(8 April 2013 #DTMD13)

Exoskeleton

http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/top-10-robotic-exoskeletons.html

n.
ex·o·skel·e·ton ( k s -sk l -tn). n. A hard outer structure, such as the shell of an insect or crustacean, that provides protection or support for an organism.

Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/exoskeleton

exoskeleton: A medical device that allows individuals with severe spinal cord injury to walk and enhances rehabilitation for stroke victims.
Source: http://tagdef.com/exoskeleton

Exocare: Depends on your perspective - context / situation sensitive

Care exercised by a planet, or that planet's representation (on Earth the UN) towards life on other worlds, includes ethics, protocols and first contact.
See also: https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/seti-and-policy

Care not delivered by statutory health services. Care delivered by the individual also described as self-care.

Care directed at specific celestial objects, often as a result of long held ethnocultural beliefs and customs, the moon for example.

Care that extends 'human ecosystems' to what is external to the physical self, to encompass Gaia - the Earth and biosphere. Love directed not at a single person, or thing but the sense of what is whole.

Also refers to the use of a conceptual framework to frame reflections on health and social care - individually, socially or globally. Provides a means to integrate concepts of care according to the situation and salience incorporating the individual-group (population); the local, global and glocal.

Thanks Gerry for pulling some strings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20847151

Today it was Gerry Anderson's funeral. I am a child of that generation Thunderbirds, Joe 90, UFO - great TV.

In 2008 I found myself back in my old home town and an old friend from junior school got in touch. One of John's memories regards my dad who passed away in 2003 was the fact that when John came around in the very early 70s my dad would watch Thunderbirds with us too.

It really was family entertainment. Visionary, innovative, humane in its messages and delivery; and like the web today the stories counted. There was humour and human frailty on display too, a great primer for a future mental health nurse.

http://gerryanderson.wikia.com/wiki/Thunderbirds_Are_Go

There are favourite episodes - that featuring Fireflash, the Sidewinder, Sunprobe and Zero X from the film Thunderbirds Are Go that I saw on first release at the cinema.

I acquired a love of film soundtracks from the marriage of music and the action in Thunderbirds. Fusion existed in the 60s. Even before Star Trek arrived in the UK there was hope and optimism for the future.

Thanks Gerry!

'Semantic Reefs' - All at Sea, on Land and in Mind

In reviewing some literature recently I came across the phrase 'semantic reef'. In forwarding a copy of the paper Dr Trina Myers described the semantic reef as: an architecture created to automatically infer phenomenon or alerts about coral reefs using Semantic technologies (aka. Linked Data).

The coinage of semantic reef in the paper by Myers and Atkinson really captured my imagination. While the semantic web is of interest to me and the environment is the oxygen to the human ecosystem, to our very existence and well-being; Myers and Atkinson's semantic reef is very specific:

The Semantic Reef Knowledge Representation system is an eco-informatics application designed to assist in the integration of remotely sensed data streams and historic data sets supporting flexible hypothesis design and knowledge extraction. The system is an ontology-based architecture built to allow researchers to combine disjoint data sets into a single Knowledge Base for modelling the impact of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. p.16.

I've written previously of the conceptual role that the axes of Hodges' model can play. How they act as a distinct, idealised boundary between the disciplines. Most evident is the MECHANISTIC-HUMANISTIC divide between the hard sciences and the humanities. Academics, researchers, health practitioners can become trapped in a disciplinary silo. Reefs are often a Great Barrier. Mariners have to find navigable waters to find a way through. Safe passage is recorded.

The last thing anyone wants is a shipwreck; whether in the ecosphere, designing software or health care.
Maybe this is another (long-winded-yes) way of recognising the collapse of holistic bandwidth at the point of a medical emergency, a crisis. The situation IS a shipwreck. A disaster of a very personal kind. What lies beyond the information required in that specific instant, what lies outside that atoll is suddenly not important.


More positively though a reef also represents an opportunity. It is a sign, a measure of global health. As such it IS a community. It is community. Harmony. Balance. It is the community around which others revolve. And we need to recognise; nOt that, but this and nOw. ...:

Trina Myers, Ian Atkinson (2013). Eco-informatics modelling via semantic inference. Information Systems. 38, 1, March 2013, 16–32.

Thanks to Dr Trina Myers.

Image sources:
Australian National Maritime Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atafutrim.jpg

Walls, Lines, Dykes and Health Care

We are accustomed to defensive care and medicine.


Costs aside it seems the driving mantra (always served with a smile) is avoid risk at all cost; but we also recognise the need to balance risk in its negative and positive forms.



When it comes to thinking about care though we need to be open to new ideas, territories and opportunities and what being defensive means in practice and theory in the 21st century.



Additional links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offa%27s_Dyke

It is unlikely that the Dyke was constructed as a defensive earthwork. No army of the period could defend a 120 plus mile long earthwork. It is more likely that the Dyke was constructed as a political statement of power and intent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China

Greenspan wins Dynamite Prize in Economics

Alan Greenspan has been judged the economist most responsible for causing the Global Financial Crisis. He and 2^nd and 3^rd place finishers Milton Friedman and Larry Summers have won the first – and hopefully last — Dynamite Prize in Economics.

In awarding the Prize, Edward Fullbrook, editor of the Real World Economics Review, noted that “They have been judged to be the three economists most responsible for the Global Financial Crisis. More figuratively, they are the three economists most responsible for blowing up the global economy.”

The prize was developed by the Real World Economics Review Blog in response to attempts by economists to evade responsibility for the crisis by calling it an unpredictable, “Black Swan” event. In reality, the public perception that economic theories and policies helped cause the crisis is correct.

The prize winners were determined by a poll in which over 7,500 people voted—most of whom were economists themselves from the 11,000 subscribers to the Real-World Economics Review. Each voter could vote for a maximum of three economists. In total 18,531 votes were cast.

Fullbrook cautioned that not all economics and economists were bad. “Only ‘neoclassical’ economists caused the GFC. There are other approaches to economics that are more realistic—or at least less delusional—but these have been suppressed in universities and excluded from government policy making.”

“Some of these rebels also did what neoclassical economists falsely claimed was impossible: they foresaw the Global Financial Crisis and warned the public of its approach. In their honour, I now call for nominations for the inaugural Revere Award in Economics, named in honour of Paul Revere and his famous ride. It will be awarded to the 3 economists who saw the GFC coming, and whose work is most likely to prevent another GFC in the future.”

Dynamite Prize Citations:

Alan Greenspan (5,061 votes)
As Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan both led the over expansion of money and credit that created the bubble that burst and aggressively promoted the view that financial markets are naturally efficient and in no need of regulation.

Milton Friedman (3,349 votes)
Friedman propagated the delusion, through his misunderstanding of the scientific method, that an economy can be accurately modeled using counterfactual propositions about its nature. This, together with his simplistic model of money, encouraged the development of fantasy-based theories of economics and finance that facilitated the Global Financial Collapse.

Larry Summers (3,023 votes)
As US Secretary of the Treasury (formerly an economist at Harvard and the World Bank), Summers worked successfully for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Great Crash of 1929 had kept deposit banking separate from casino banking. He also helped Greenspan and Wall Street torpedo efforts to regulate derivatives.

The poll was conducted by PollDaddy. Cookies were used to prevent repeat voting.

For further information and interviews email: pae_news@btinternet.com

My source: (with additional links and image) Ciresearchers.net

Image source: http://sveccha.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/laws-of-and-black-swan/

Big pictures: Hodges’ model and Future Studies

I came across a 1996 paper by Richard Slaughter - The Knowledge Base Of Futures Studies As An Evolving Process. The paper highlighted a problem faced by future studies which was (and still may be?) grappling with its knowledge base:

Why, then, is it necessary to have a knowledge base of futures studies (KBFS)? There are several reasons. First, as Norwegian futurist Kjell Dahle pointed out at the World Futures Studies Federation conference in Barcelona in September 1991, the lack of a common knowledge base greatly complicated the work of those preparing courses, planning research, teaching and developing FS projects. The field is well known for its breadth, geographical scope and range of disciplinary paradigms. Where, in all this diversity, should newcomers, particularly intending students, begin? …

As also cited on the h2cm website Slaughter notes the significance of Wilber’s quadrants as a key resource and approach -

I have referred to this work at some length because over several years Wilber’s developing account has reframed my own thinking about present and future options, both personal and collective. Such a framework integrates insights from a wide field and provides FS with powerful new understandings and tools which go beyond one-dimensional thinking (e.g. rationality, technique, forecasting) and a single privileged culture (Western culture). Here, then, is an emerging basis for big-picture thinking and action into the new millennium and beyond. Here too is where some of the most substantial developments in the KBFS are likely to occur.
[My emphasis.]

Health and social care is not only focused on the future -

It is concerned about the PAST, NOW and FUTURE

- BUT it is always future oriented.

So future studies community look over here – now (please!)

Source: Slaughter, Richard A. (1996). The Knowledge Base Of Futures Studies As An Evolving Process, Futures, 28, 9, 799-812.