[Contributor] Indifferent Politics

Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexanderBGault

With the U.S. Presidential election fast approaching, it is time again for everyone of voting age in the US, and a few not yet of voting age as well, to sort out their political ideals and choose a candidate they feel will protect those ideals. And this year, as with every other year, a new crop of young voters is entering the pool.

And many of them don’t even know who’s running.

The young adults of this generation are less politically interested, at least in terms of big elections, than previous ones, and it’s not a new problem http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/26/apathetic-disaffected-generation-may-never-vote

Many references to the political apathy of the new generation date back to 2013, and this specific one refers to the UK, but the problem is spread across many 1^st World countries and has shown itself in the current voting generation and the one just arrived.

There are many ways this problem could have arisen. In the US specifically, it could stem from the blatantly ineffective Congress, the lack of focus on the “little guy” in federal and state government, or the widespread disregard of the younger generation by the older.

The younger generation sees no reason to vote for the people who on the street refer to even the best of them as “self-centred and narcissistic”.

The political apathy could also be a product of how politicians and hopefuls communicate with the younger voting audience. When someone lives a majority of their life without Twitter or any other social medias, they tend not to see its relevancy or importance, and therefore disregard it or use it as an afterthought. And the growth of social media has revolutionized how people get their information.

For much of the 20^th century, people got their information, especially political information, from newspapers or television and radio. Rarely was the information straight from the politician or candidate themselves. However, today, the information in generally disregarded if it isn’t from the candidate or politician themselves. Twitter accounts run by “Mr. _______’s Management” are rarely given credence, and interviews with a big news corporation are outright ignored.

This new era of politics requires a more personal touch from the candidate, an interesting return to the roots of American politics that the big-business men of the 20^th century are not accustomed to.

Alexander Gault-Plate is an aspiring journalist and writer, currently in the 12th grade. He has worked with his schools newspapers and maintained a blog for his previous school. In the future, he hopes to write for a new-media news company.

You can follow Alexander on Twitter here https://twitter.com/AlexanderBGault.

[Opinion] Another “Uber of ‘X'” is not the Solution to Our Problems

“Uber of X” is not the solution to many of our problems with spreading, monetizing and deeeping the significance and reach of the Web.

One of the areas that demonstrates the lack of human imagination in developing the Internet for the service of people rather than in the service of commerce, is the human desire for the tool of the Web to work in service of leisure, consumption, marketing, entertainment and distraction. This desire, evidenced through the apps, tools and services we have designed and laid on top of it, caters to our base human desire for ease of solution, without being bothered by the intricacies and complexities of the chaos and complication, network growth brings.

Our tools–particularly our communication tools–should stand as objects that raise us up out of the muck of our inter/intrapersonal conflict biology and serve a Higher Purpose and our higher selves.

Another social media network isn’t going to do that.

Another selling, promotion or entertainment platform isn’t going to do it.

Any application, change or build atop the Web we have now, pitched and described to potential investors as “The “Uber of ‘X’” isn’t going to do that either.

But, maybe the Web in its voracious expansion out of the corral of the digital/virtual world and into the desert of the lived real, will never become the edifying, higher purpose technology we all thought it would be in the 90’s—maybe it’ll never be more than a glorified telephone/television system.

In the sci-fi dystopian novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, the citizens of a reality, not far removed from our current one, have limited choices outside of consuming, learning, and entertaining themselves in an elaborately constructed virtual world. Meanwhile, in the real world, people line up to enter the virtual world in a zombie like, Walking Dead, fashion, as the means of commerce and creation have abandoned the old, real world leaving it to rot and die on the vine.

We are at the beginning stages of this transformation of our world.

But only if we don’t try to challenge the inherent assumptions, expectations and disappointments around the architecture of what we have built atop the Web we have now. These challenges must push us beyond socializing and commerce and move humanity toward transformation and edification.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] On Predicting the Future

You can’t do it.

Neither can we.

Human beings (all of us) spend a lot of time generating a lot of anxiety, about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen next, or when this thing we’re doing now will all be over.

We can’t help it. Our biology has us wired for fear and anticipation of the next thing over the horizon. But, we believe that the work of conflict is for human beings to overcome their biology.

In our modern, conflict ridden culture, we have the tendency to mythologize the past, as if the people who lived then were somehow less intelligent, less forward thinking, less analytical, and less worried about the future. This orthodoxy of nostalgia is a poison, particularly in the context of a conflict. When we mythologize the people and situations of the past, because the future is unknowable—and thus scary—we hand over power to the worst impulses inside of us.

However, there is a way out, but we have to do a very scary thing first: We have to jettison the orthodoxy that mythologizes and infantilizes past decisions, people, and situations and realize that we will, in turn, more likely than not, be mythologized and infantilized by future peoples as well.

Pride and vanity—in our accomplishments, our technology, our knowledge—are pathologies of the current age. In the age of the present, people elevate themselves over the populations of the past, and become anxious and fearful about how they will be judged and categorized by people yet to be born. The humbling thing to realize is that such pathologies are no more pervasive in people now than they were in people of the past.

Pride and vanity—along with a courage deficit and a need for safety—go a long way toward ensuring that conflicts we thought were over—in our families, our organizations, our societies, our cultures— continue on into the future.

Humility in the face of past, faith in the face of the future, and peace in the situations of the present, lead to not worrying about the future, rather than expending mental, emotional and spiritual energy on trying to predict it, control it, or prepare for it.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Original Intent

Whether people are debating the significance origin stories found in documents, or critiquing where innovations and progress ends up once other people (with other ideas) get involved, the search for “original intent” shows up.

The first reason that determining original intent is a fallacy and—to a certain degree—a way to either shut down conflict and force accommodation with whatever the new idea or innovation is, or it serves as a way to critique progress without really having any skin in the game.

The second reason that original intent is fallacious as an argument against progress, is that no one—and particularly not the initial founders or designers of an idea, a concept, a product or an innovation—had any idea what the future would hold.

Which is why many arguments for the continuation of the Second Amendment (or any other amendment in the Constitution) tend to be ignored. The original intent of the founders who wrote the amendment in the first place, was greatly influenced by their immediate past—and their current situation, which is now shrouded in the past of US history. The writers of the Constitution couldn’t have imagined steam power or railroads spanning the country, much less the Internet, AR-15’s or the specific geopolitical strife that lead to the decision to go to war in Vietnam.

Instead of focusing on original intent and trying to determine how that intent matches up to situations that did not exist in the past when that intent was originally developed, perhaps focusing on original principles–mission, vision, values, goals–would be a better route to success.

This is a particularly salient point as we begin to really think about what kind of Internet we want to have, even as the Internet changes into something that it’s original founders, designers and developers could never have imagined.

-Peace With You All-

[Contributor] Future Physibles

Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexanderBGault

Perhaps its bad form to use a word coined by a website dedicated to pirating digital products, but so far, physibles is the best way to describe the next wave of items that exist in the digital and physical worlds.

Physibles can best be described as objects created on a computer and formed in the physical world by computer equipment. While this may sound like another way to describe the production in any mechanized factory, physibles are more akin to a 3-dimensional printed object.

Physibles are the next big thing in consumer goods.

Through a combination of high end printers that more closely resemble the mechanized arms that assemble cars, and programs that feed the proper information to these printers, one can “print” out almost any item they would want. For the most part, this technology doesn’t exist in the public sphere, but it has achieved some major breakthroughs.

For example, the 3D printed car.

But the ability for one to forgo the mainstream manufacturing process entirely, and get the same goods they would have through such a channel, doesn’t bode well for the current economic configurations. Every economic idea that operates in the industrialized nations is created with the idea that people will have to get their goods from somewhere other than themselves. The distinct process of supply and demand governs almost every aspect of the economy, down to the resource-gathering sectors.

If one can shortcut around all of those, with only minor interaction with their computer, their printer, and the resources to create the items, then jobs and businesses will inevitably fail. And depending on the abilities that this technology may reach, perhaps even the resource-gatherers will find themselves out of a job.

Suddenly, at least 27% of the United States GDP is erased.

This lack of jobs, created and furthering the issue that nobody will be buying anything on the traditional market, will pose many issues. Productivity will drop in all sectors, because why would people be working if there’s no value in what they’re earning?

Infrastructure will fail all over the planet, resulting in the failure of almost every device that depends on the electric grid and Internet to create these goods. We’d be back to square one, and depending on the amount of people who decided to remain on and maintain the infrastructure, coupled with how long it will actually take between the start of this process and the failure of the electrical grid and Internet services, it may take years to reestablish ourselves to the previous state.

This being said, physibles becoming a reality isn’t all bad, and the dooms-day scenario previously described is very avoidable. Simply put, for a world were major manufacturing is no longer relevant and people can create all they need from their home, strict limits on home production must be maintained, and access to the forms for the home-printed goods must be put behind a pay-wall to maintain the relevancy of working.

This must remain so until maintenance and construction can be mechanized to such a degree that minimal human interaction is necessary.

As with all major changes to the way people interact with their goods and those who make them, a certain degree of caution and planning must be implanted to ensure that the change is smooth and does not result in any major catastrophes.

The future is bright, but humans must always tend that flame to ensure it doesn’t burn out of control.

You can follow Alexander on Twitter here https://twitter.com/AlexanderBGault.

[Future] Escape From the Coliseums

The building Roman Coliseum was begun by the Emperor Vespasian in the year 72 A.D. and was completed by the Emperor Titus in 80 A.D.

We all know what happened in the coliseum (or colosseum, if you prefer that spelling) and we have used the historical knowledge of “death and violence as entertainment” that occurred there, as a way to justify, or excuse, all types of bad behavior.

In the modern era, our time, an image of the building is featured on the Italian version of the five-cent Euro coin.

There are three things to consider about the coliseum, and the events that occurred there, and how they relate to our own potential, social commons future:

The Emperor Vespasian constructed the Flavian Amphitheatre as a part of the beginning of Imperial Rome’s transformation “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron.” In essence, the construction of the building and the acts committed in it were the beginning of the last gasps of Imperial Rome.

Historians, politicans and philosophers often get stuck explaining the events at the coliseum. But keep in mind, they were not considered to be out of the ordinary for the 80-90% of Roman citizens who lived at a subsistence level or just above.

Imperial Rome had it’s own 1% issues…

Spectacles, events, and contests between people could—for the Roman crowd—quickly degenerate from merely an observed spectacle to a violent mob action, requiring troops to kill people.

So what, right?

Well, think about it for a second: The social media coliseums that contemporary, Western technologists have built, where bully, hazing, and trolling runt rampant is our own fault, from Reddit to Twitter.

The tragedy of the social media commons, is that when a party (or parties) uses a resource for free and is then tasked with maintaining order in it, the resource is damaged by signs of conflict, bad behavior, and other poor choices.

Similar to the coliseum, the social media commons (some would call them cesspools) seem to allow and encourage any spectacle, no matter how debased, debauched, and damaging to the participants—and the observers.

And, as our world becomes more interconnected, not less, the coliseum grows, to encompass people from different faith backgrounds and ideologies (Has anyone seen the latest ISIS video on YouTube?) who will use the forum of social media to recruit, train, propagandize and in general “do unto others.”

What’s the way out of this?

We don’t know, but we do know this: The circles of the arena are getting larger everyday, not smaller.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Web 3.0 – The Earbud_U Minute

We need to figure out what kind of Internet we want to have.

The business model currently funding and pushing the growth of the Internet is based upon monetizing a base of users who come to a project and use it for free, or for a nominal price.

The user takes advantage of the content/service/process for free. And, as a result, the user is so enamored with the content/service/process that they keep coming back over and over again, building a trust based relationship with the creator/creators of the project. Subsequently, in order to fund the project, there are hopefully so many users that an advertiser has no choice but to put advertisements in front of a group of eyeballs with whom the project owner has built a relationship.

This is the model underlying Facebook. The nominal fee model (a subscription-based model) underlies LinkedIn, journalism models, ecommerce platforms and other content/service/process platforms.

Web 2.0 is what everyone is talking about now, but Web 3.0 is really, where the Internet has to move to.

Web 3.0 is beyond just the Internet of Things. Web 3.0 is the Internet as Everything. Web 3.0 is the Internet waging active battle with the last, sticky remnants of the world built through the assumptions of the Industrial Revolution. This is a world created around the rules, laws and policies, created by politicians and people to keep the common democratization of the Internet out of the hands of the common people before the Internet.

Here’s a question: Why is it that there aren’t any internet connected roads?

It has nothing to do with technological innovations such as creating concrete that can communicate with strips on the road. Or with computer chips that can talk to your car. Or signs and traffic signals that talk to the road, the car and each other.

The reason there aren’t roads that are intelligent is not a smart car issues, no matter what Google Cars would have you think.

The issue is really laws and regulations.

Laws are the last bastion of the Industrial revolution world that have yet to fall to the unending sweep of the Internet. We see the beginnings of this with our current thrashing around privacy, data, and “who owns the future” (either you or a corporation) but once we settle all of this we will have new business models that will allows the Internet to be truly “baked in”.

Then, once that happens, the sky truly will be the limit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] 3 Reasons the Future Won’t Be the Same as Now – The Earbud_U Minute

Nostalgia for the future is a terrible thing. As a matter of fact, we have heard recently that nostalgia for the past might be poison.

Human beings, without much great reluctance, tend to romanticize the past, and believe that the future will be exactly the same. Only slightly cooler.

However, three facts mitigate against this view:

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It’s the management of change.
The “good old days” were just as filled with uncertainty, suspicion, anxiety, awe, nostalgia (both forward and rear facing) as the current time is.
The same conflicts that occurred in the past, will continue to occur both now and in the future, but the impacts of those conflicts will seem faster and more immediate.

Case in point for all of this is the recent 75^th anniversary commentary around the 1964 World’s Fair. None of the changes that we currently take for granted were even thought of then.

Or, to make it even more bald: We are currently living in the future that Blade Runner promised us, just without it raining all the time and us all wearing the same drab outfits.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] A Utopian Singularity

The release of nuclear power was greeted with a mixture of awe and triumph.

Splitting the atom was—at one time—the most difficult task that humanity had set itself upon completing.

Once the atom was split, however, and the power released from that act was applied to the making of war and the destruction of human lives, in order to—ostensibly—prevent the loss of other human lives, humanity recoiled in horror at that which we had accomplished.

Robert Oppenheimer’s words at the Trinity test ring down through to our time: “ Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

And now, we have arrived at yet another linchpin moment in human history. Just as the act of splitting the atom and releasing it’s energy was supposed to bring humanity closer to a utopian peace, we are now at a moment where very smart people are promising us that we are ready to release the potential of AI and many other technologies.

They promise us a jobless future of endless prosperity, with at least our basic needs completely fulfilled.

They promise us a future of 3D printed food, self-driving cars, predictive machines that will learn what we need and provide it to us without question.

They promise us a future where there will be haves and have-nots, but that they line between the elite and the commoners will be the same as those who can defeat—or prolong—their own deaths through genetic manipulation, and those who know that the technology is out there to do this, and cannot get it.

But, in the midst of all of these promises—remarkably similar to the many promises made to humanity by well meaning smart people (like Robert Oppenheimer) before we released atomic power—they do not ask the truly existential questions the release of such technologies creates:

Will a jobless future have space for fulfilling work to be accomplished by people who want to do it?
Will 3D printed food provide for all of humanity’s basic dietary needs without damaging the environment, or the people who consume it?
Is overcoming death really the highest possible calling for an individual human being?
Can a man made machine ever experience emotions, question its own limitations or explore the possibility of a soul?
Will machine learning bring utopian peace, or is the brute nature of the human animal more likely to emerge once the singularity arrives?

What’s most disturbing to us is that none of the really smart people in genetics, neurobiology, data analytics, computer and software technology or any of these other fields, seem to be interested in sitting down with a few philosophers, religious practitioners and policy makers to even discuss the questions in the first place.

To quote another famous man: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Humanity’s progress is too important to be left alone in the hands of the very smart people.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] We Would Prefer Not To

In light of the current interest around Big Data and the privacy issues made relevant through Wikileaks, Edward Snowden revelations and Google’s recent EU “slap-down,” we wonder how the people who choose not to be enfranchised will be cajoled (or forced) into the developing systems of the future.

Typically, late adopters hang out at the end of the bell curve, waiting around for the latest I-phone iteration to arrive on the discount aisle at Wal-mart, but even these days, the distances between the areas on the bell curve is becoming more and more compacted.

The conflict then arises between those who are the early adopters (the “cool” people”) and those who, for whatever personal, psychological, or emotional reasons, would prefer to still run down that awesome eight track recording of Supertramp.

Most marketing thinkers and wizards of smart continually claim that, eventually there will be enough niches for the people who would rather not participate in the future to still hang out and take advantage of the fringe benefits of the future, without having to actually become an early to mid-adopter of the future.

Problem solved.

Right?

But, what if the real conflict comes from the powers that be in government, corporations and other large organizations, who would prefer to have the convenience of having everybody (even the fringe folks) participating in the “whiz-bang” future, in spite of their objections?

It turns out, that Bartleby (and his late adopter followers) wins in the end, but with the cruelest dénouement possible.

And then the question becomes, what’s the early adopters’s Alamo?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/