Corporations vs The Public

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Back in September of 2017, I met Oliwer, a Norwegian Green Peace activist looking for donations in Stockholm. He told me that they’re trying to stop the Norwegians from drilling for oil in the Arctic. He also told me about how a powerful, profitable company involved in logging is attempting to disrupt the environmental organization by suing it for a massive amount in damages to their business.

I asked him to tell me more, as it was hard to understand for me how such a thing could even work. My image of Green Peace was that of a world-wide, semi-decentralized network of agents (mostly volunteers). It’s hard to kill such an organization, especially given the volunteering aspect. Unfortunately, most money still leaves a trail (I’d switch to donations via cryptocurrencies if I were Green Peace).

I promised the man that instead of donating money, I’ll donate time and do what I do best: investigate and write. The case he told me about is only one of the many times corporations and even governments have went after Green Peace^. It is, however, one of the most ridiculous (although admittedly not as ridiculous as when the government of Australia tried to basically pay a corporation to sue Green Peace^).

The case the activist I met last year was referring to is that of Resolute^, a company in the tree-cutting business (wording intended). The firm went as far as using RICO^, an act conceived and used against the mafia, to go after the environmental organization. That’s almost as preposterous as the mafia using the act to go after the government. Fortunately, both major Resolute cases against Green Peace have been thrown out of courts, including the case the activist was talking about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_Forest_Products#Greenpeace

I don’t want to even imagine what would happen if a lawsuit manages to eventually kill a major organization working for protecting the ecosystem from the rampant expansion of human industry. Setting that sort of precedent is extremely dangerous. Green Peace is not without its faults^, but compare it to the mining industry^ or to some automakers^.

And since the seed for this article was planted in Stockholm and I brought up the mining industry, I’ll close with one more recent example of criminal negligence on the part of mining companies. This time it’s about a Swedish company called Boliden.

Last year, the company was sued, here in Sweden^, by Chileans who suffered due to living close to the toxic waste that had been dumped^ by a company that Boliden employed in order to move the poison from Sweden to Chile. The court ruled in favor of Boliden^, which is not surprising given that this was taking place in the city where the company was founded.

It’s a typical black & white ruling that doesn’t even offer an apology (however symbolic) to the victims; not even acknowledging that Boliden had zero interest about how its toxic waste was being stored; ignoring the fact that a well-off country conveniently dumped poison in another part of the world. By the way, this is the same Swedish company responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in Spain^.

To ensure that our children benefit from healthy living conditions, I suggest taking part into and protecting the institutions that are concerned with the future of our ecosystem and making sure that those that disrespect the environment pay a hefty price for their negligence.

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Amazon Is Interesting These Years

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Every decade or so, we get a couple of very interesting companies to keep an eye on. I’m not referring here to being profitable (even though that’s often the case). It’s about being interesting, as in ground-breaking, mind-bending, evolutionary. This is not a recipe for long-term success, as these companies can either become nearly-unshakable, established names, or end up fading into mediocrity.

Amazon is most definitely a company to watch out for. It has historically been doing quite well for itself, but as this decade approaches its end, things are getting really interesting. Here’s a very well written and thought-provoking article about the firm:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/14/why-amazon-is-eating-the-world/^

Even as Amazon draws closer to creating its own delivery service^ (and soon after, taking over the world) the company’s stock has suffered recently from a couple of direct attacks from the Trump Tactical Twitter Terror Torrent^, the White House’s newly found weapon of mass distraction. While it’s true that Amazon has dodged paying^ a lot of taxes, seeing this criticism coming from a master of tax evasion^ is somewhat tragi-comical. Note to self: one day find out who are the investors who profited the most from the dips in Amazon stock caused by the TTTTT^.

I’m pretty sure Amazon will continue to grow its business under almost any conditions can be thrown at it. The reason is culture. I believe Amazon managed to implement a culture of innovation that not only outpaces all its competitors, but is also very quick to adapt to changes in its economic and technologic environment.

I’m not sure if we should cry rivers for bankrupt retailers, but we should definitely cry rivers for the working conditions in some Amazon warehouses^. Keep in mind that this merciless economic ecosystem^ is of our own making^.

If during the coming years Amazon manages to become an almost transparent bridge between manufacturers and customers, it’s only the other retailers who lose. I emphasized the word “transparent” because sooner or later, Amazon will have to alter its business model in order to adapt to an economy where, other than monthly or seasonal exhibitions, customers will meet manufacturers online, with little to no mediation. It’s already happening through markets such as Etsy^, but will accelerate thanks to cryptocurrencies and other novel, yet to be imagined, means of doing commerce.

It won’t make me happy if small retailers might have to close shop, but perhaps it would be more pleasant for them to automate their logistics, sell online and spend the rest of their time doing more creative stuff. On the other hand, having a physical shop to go and test a product is quite valuable, albeit this is changing due to an increasingly flexible returns policy. Given the current trends, the job of being a retailer will eventually be completely automated, just like all other non-creative jobs. Or, I should say, the non-creative aspects of being a retailer will be automated, leaving creativity and originality as the valuable differentiator.

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Our Warming Atmosphere Makes Plants Less Nutritious

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It is said that “you are what you eat”. That stands true not only for humans, but for everything that eats. It’s well known that at optimal temperatures and humidity, plants thrive given light and carbon-dioxide. It was considered that one of the perhaps positive effects of global warming would be that plants would grow faster. This self-balancing property of our ecosystem could even contribute to cleaning up our atmosphere, as more plants would eat more CO2. That may very well hold true, if it wasn’t for desertification^.

However, even though plants do thrive thanks to having more carbon-dioxide available, they apparently are not as nutritious. This is an extremely important finding, because, like as the article below points out, “increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is reducing the protein in staple crops like rice, wheat, barley and potatoes, raising unknown risks to human health in the future”:

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511^

“Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising,” Loladze said. “We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.”

Perhaps we humans can compensate for a diet comprised of less nutritious plants through various supplements, but this doesn’t bode well for our ecosystem and therefore for us. The planet is already adapting to the carbon-dioxide we’ve added into the atmosphere, but there will be [unforeseen] consequences, probably more than we can even imagine.

In closing, here’s a longer quote from the highly recommended article linked above:

Could carbon dioxide have an effect on human health we haven’t accounted for yet? The answer appears to be yes—and along the way, it has steered Loladze and other scientists, directly into some of the thorniest questions in their profession, including just how hard it is to do research in a field that doesn’t quite exist yet.

In agricultural research, it’s been understood for some time that many of our most important foods have been getting less nutritious. Measurements of fruits and vegetables show that their minerals, vitamin and protein content has measurably dropped over the past 50 to 70 years. Researchers have generally assumed the reason is fairly straightforward: We’ve been breeding and choosing crops for higher yields, rather than nutrition, and higher-yielding crops—whether broccoli, tomatoes, or wheat—tend to be less nutrient-packed.

In 2004, a landmark study of fruits and vegetables found that everything from protein to calcium, iron and vitamin C had declined significantly across most garden crops since 1950. The researchers concluded this could mostly be explained by the varieties we were choosing to grow.

Loladze and a handful of other scientists have come to suspect that’s not the whole story and that the atmosphere itself may be changing the food we eat. Plants need carbon dioxide to live like humans need oxygen. And in the increasingly polarized debate about climate science, one thing that isn’t up for debate is that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising.

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Daring to Imagine Cyberwarfare

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Disclaimer: this article is meant to prevent the hostile use of technology by encouraging transparency and highlighting the major risks that await us during the coming years. I live on a planet where I don’t want to have nuclear weapons and especially not nuclear weapons that can be hacked^.

Computer viruses and hacking have been around since the dawn of the Internet. But while some time ago the platform was used almost exclusively by academics and the tech-savvy, the Internet is now quickly becoming one of the central technological pillars of our society. Particularly in developed countries, countless vital social systems are now connected to it, ranging from the run-of-the-mill residential heating system to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, public transport and even military.

In the same time, the skills and tools in the cyber-soldier’s arsenal have greatly increased in potency. Even more importantly, the interest and will to compromise connected systems has increased exponentially in the past decade. Some years ago, the Internet was home to mostly petty crime and the occasional larger security breach. Now-a-days, state actors such as the United States^, North Korea^, and pretty much all major powers and nation-states involved in military conflicts, train and make use of cyber-hacking squads.

Independent hackers (not aligned with any nation-state or political cause) and hacktivists^ (hackers with a presumably ethical agenda) have also evolved. They’ve become very well organized and armed, sometimes using digital weapons acquired from state agencies. One of the biggest vulnerabilities of cyber-weaponry is that it can be copied and distributed in a matter of seconds.

In 2017, the NSA was humiliatingly robbed^ by hackers. Immediately after, the agency’s arsenal was distributed and sold^ to organizations across the globe. Some major^ security incidents^ followed. I’m sure that what was made public so far only scratches the surface^ of the damage done. The increasing popularity of ransomware^ will lead to many more such attacks in the future^. After all, it appears like North Korea got itself quite a bit of money using WannaCry^.

Judging by the trend of the past decade, it sure looks like things will get worse before they get better. As more and more devices come online, the risks will only increase. The cyber-arsenal of the 2020s is beginning to look very scary, especially when considering the exponentially increasing number of targets. Combined with the way technology permeates our lives (and how much of our personal information is in the hands of companies that profit from selling data^), a country could find itself brought to its knees before a single shot was fired.

Throughout the past few years I’ve been compiling a list of cyber-attack methods ranging from the mundane to the most interesting and devious. Later in the article I’m going to present you with a few scenarios showing how these methods could be used against a nation-state. I do this in the hope that governments will take the necessary steps to protect their citizens (and, in fact, the entire world) from what I consider to be the blitzkrieg of the 21st century.

Means of Cyberattack

This list is by no means exhaustive and I aim to regularly maintain it. It’s important to also keep in mind that none of the items on this list is particularly devastating by itself. The power of today’s cyber-attacker lies in mastering the art of combining several attacks to reach the desired result, something that will be covered in the second part of the article.

  • Worms^ and viruses are the oldest means of cyberattack. Despite the popularity of antivirus programs, these old acquaintances of ours can still wreak havoc long before antivirus makers can issue the required countermeasures. The omnipresence of the Internet has allowed viruses and worms to maintain their feasibility.
  • Spyware^ is commonly perceived as a tool employed by shady organizations in order to acquire user data (with the purpose of monetizing it). It’s much more dangerous than that. I’m unsure if espionage saved more lives than it destroyed, but through the use of spyware, people with little foresight (for example script kiddies^) can gain access to information that can destabilize a fragile geo-political and economic balance. What’s even more dangerous is that influential leaders can be blackmailed using data grabbed by spyware. And this sort of attack has been evolving as of late. Check this one about ultrasound tracking^.
  • Exploits^ are another very old acquaintance in security circles. All software has bugs. Vulnerability scanners^ are a means of automatically and easily discovering ways to deliver attack payloads such as trojan horses^. It became much worse in the past few years because various technology companies started giving remote access “features” to their devices^ – in fact, these “features” have quickly turned into messy back-doors. I suspect governments have played quite a role in motivating device manufacturers to install these back-doors. Perhaps I can entrust a government to spy only for fighting crime, but unfortunately these same tools quickly get into the hands of the same category of people the government is presumably trying to reduce. However, I think that the privacy compromises made in the name of “fighting crime” are causing more damage than they prevent.
  • Social engineering^ and phishing^ are newer additions to the cyber-arsenal. These means of obtaining private information and gaining access to restricted systems have become popular thanks to the Internet, and particularly when millions of less tech-savvy people started using it.
  • And now onto more inventive means of attack. In 2017, students demonstrated that sonic attacks^ can be used to disrupt vehicle steering systems. This is just the tip of the iceberg though.
  • As far back as 2016 (which is ages ago in technology), researchers have proven that a Skype call’s sound^ can be scraped to detect up to 41.89% of the keystrokes somebody presses during the call. The ratio goes up to 91.7% if there is knowledge about the keyboard model being used and the user’s typing behavior. With the advent of machine learning^, I’m quite sure that these numbers can be greatly improved. Given enough data, a program can recognize the model of the keyboard being used after analyzing the sound of a couple of sentences being typed, and then be able to map every sound to the appropriate key. When in doubt, the same program can employ a dictionary of common words and phrases to figure out the gaps.
  • Hacking robots is quickly becoming a serious threat. One of the most famous cyberweapons ever employed was the Stuxnet^ worm, which was responsible back in 2009^ for damaging Iran’s nuclear program. Legal experts have actually concluded that, despite the worm’s “good intentions”, its use was illegal^. Despite my opposition to nuclear weapons, I find it hypocritical when one country forbids another to build them through dehumanizing excuses such as “you are irresponsible warmongers”.
  • Continuing with robot hacking, we’re living in an age when more and more of the technology we use becomes “smart” (read: exploitable). Enter “smart” cars (read: hackable cars^). And this Internet of Things^ thing is gaining momentum despite all the warnings out there^. As internet pioneer Bruce Schneier recently pointed^ out, “it might be that the internet era of fun and games is over, because the internet is now dangerous.”
  • Last but not least, here’s my absolute favorite cyber-attack. Hardware backdoors^! As the Wiki article points out, “China is the world’s largest manufacturer of hardware which gives it unequaled capabilities for hardware backdoors”. A well-hidden back-door^ may never be discovered until too late. This is one of the most effective and most expensive weapons in the cyber-arsenal; only nation-states or large corporations can afford deploying it. And I’m quite sure that almost all of our devices are ridden with such crafty points of entry.

Cyberwarfare

So now that the little list of doom is more or less complete, let’s see what attack vectors combinations are likely to be used in a major confrontation where the target is a technologically-developed country. Here, the imagination’s the limit, so I’ll just give a few scary examples to make a point and leave the rest of the inventing to those that have more time (and money) for it.

  • A country can be very easily thrown into chaos by a well-orchestrated cyberattack. Just suppress the invasion alert system^, shut down the power grid^, overload the communication networks^, mess with the self-driving traffic and other robots, disrupt stock markets and, of course, invade with conventional troops that have a better knowledge of the invaded country than the defending army does. Sounds difficult? Not for a nation-state that does its homework. There is so much personal data and so many vulnerabilities out there! A secret agency can work its way into the system by blackmailing the right people and ask them to do seemingly harmless favors at just the right time. Slowly but surely, foreign software is everywhere and plenty of vulnerabilities have been created and exploited.
  • How about taking over an armed outpost with no casualties on the attacking side? It can be done by taking out all the guards, silently and quickly. It’s easy when the attacker knows their patrol routes^ by heart. The article I linked shows how a seemingly harmless app reveals such information because some soldiers use it to track their fitness. Hilarious and dangerous in the same time. Because of the hardware backdoors most likely present in our devices, it’s fairly safe to assume that at least some countries on Earth can probably activate GPS tracking on seemingly harmless mobile devices in case of war. Even if measures are taken to counteract this, we’re talking 21st century technology here: conventional weapons have evolved and, used in conjunction with various surprise elements, can win a war faster than nukes. This is because nukes simply destroy everything, whereas a well-orchestrated attack can result in hostages, hijacked equipment and most importantly, access to secure data systems.
  • One of the most awful attacks I’ve ever read about was when an epileptic journalist was sent into a seizure^ after somebody sent him a strobing image using social media. This led to an arrest. It shows not just what our technology allows, but also how deviously inventive people can be. The attacks combined here are knowing something about somebody and then employing a means of delivery (social media) for sending a dangerous payload (an image causing an epileptic seizure).
  • And we can’t forget meddling into politics. It’s already well-known that Russia interfered^ in the 2016 election over in the USA. And guess what: they still interfere in daily life there^. It’s already turning into a fashion, and probably other countries are taking notes and getting ready to follow suit. Now-a-days not a single shot needs to be fired to push a country over the brink. A clever use of cyber-weapons can give a nation-state a solid advantage in a trade or cultural war. Divide et impera.
  • Some time ago, somebody deactivated Trump’s Twitter account^. Even though hopefully nobody would believe a nuclear war declaration from a Twitter account, such a security breach could be coupled with fake radar signals or other misleading information. A paranoid adversary might be quick to pull the trigger and in the aftermath, there won’t be many winners.
  • As our technology evolves, so will our use of various robots. Self-driving cars, fully automated factories and countless jobs that will soon be given to robots. It’s not hard to imagine the amount of damage that can be done to a country’s infrastructure and population by a well-orchestrated cyberattack.
  • Last but not least, let’s talk machine learning. As I pointed out before, AI is not really intelligent yet^. Many developed countries make use of machine learning for all sorts of things, such as super-fast trading on the stock market. As the years pass, we will see more systems being automated, but not able to discern right from wrong. And what will happen when such systems are hijacked? What would a terrorist do with an AI? This is a door that my imagination doesn’t want to open.

Countermeasures

Security needs to be taken much more seriously. In 2017, a bunch of big names got together with the purpose of securing the Internet of Things^. At least once in a while, it’s good that corporations seem capable of actually cooperating. Or can they?

The website of the famed alliance looks deserted^; there are very few resources there and it seems like it hasn’t been updated since its launch in early 2017. Unfortunately, in the age of hyper-consumerism^, such a publicity stunt is probably enough to keep people thinking that these companies actually care about security (they don’t seem to). So, the majority keeps buying insecure devices that can eventually be used against them (and their countries).

Shortly after writing this article (12 days, to be precise), a new, fancier alliance between tech behemoths launched the Cybersecurity Tech Accord^ with great fanfare. Let’s wait and see if their website^ will still be around in about a year from now…

I believe the only way for society to protect itself from online threats is to:

  • Use open source software exclusively and thoroughly verify it, line by line.
  • Rely on open source hardware designs or come up with them itself (it’s not so difficult now-a-days – several countries already do this).
  • Build all critical hardware in-house (local factories, local employees).
  • Secure communication endpoints with encrypted routers using multiple layers and fallback endpoints, similar to TOR^ but with additional layers of redundancy (similar to two people having to turn the same key at the same time in order to launch a missile).

And last but certainly not least, we have… quantum cryptography^. This could be a savior but it remains to be seen if nation-states and corporations will ever allow its use by the general public. China has been making great strides^ when it comes to this technology. Yes, the same China that manufactures most of our electronics. I wonder why they’re so interested in secure communication…

Version history:

2018-04-06 – 1.0 – Written.

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Earth’s Humming a Little Tune

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Well, it’s only “little” when considering the ultralow frequencies involved. In fact, it’s a massive tune. It’s a world-wide phenomenon and probably as old (thus long) as the Earth itself. The article below summarizes years of research into a perpetual hum that has been detected in places such as Antarctica, Algeria and on the floor of the Indian Ocean:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/12/08/scientists-are-slowly-unlocking-the-secrets-of-the-earths-mysterious-hum/?utm_term=.dd2b27f1f139^

I always had a gut feeling that there’s more to what our bodies need from Earth, other than oxygen, water and nutrition. This primordial vibration that permeates all life on this planet should probably be considered if we think about relocating to another planet. Unless this can be replicated somehow, there could be unforeseen consequences to us departing our world long-term.

The coming decades will clarify the relation between our body and certain facts about the environment on this planet, particularly previously-hidden “features” such as this humming. I’m going to keep my ears on the ground for more news about the Earth’s song. See what I did there?

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Government 2.0

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Fake news, profiling & converting voters using social media^, rigged elections, media cartels owned by those in power (or that would lie to get the power), demagogy… the list can go on and on. Democracy today means that those that lie best or have plenty of money, get to steer our society. Actually, it has been so since a long, long time ago. But we now have the opportunity to set democracy free, if we make the right use of the technology at our disposal.

The Internet has seen better times. It was and still is a gateway to knowledge. The problem is that the information found on the Internet is often far from accurate; sometimes it’s horrendously false. From a highway to enlightenment, it has become a stormy ocean where one’s mind can be forever lost.

Fortunately, the Internet as a platform is still extremely powerful. We know it has some problems, but people all around the world are working to improve things. Along with newly emerging technologies, the Internet can still be our ladder towards the next stage of social evolution.

The purpose of any post in the Futurology^ category is to launch a wild, boundless speculation regarding what the future holds regarding a certain concept. To get things going, here are some of the things I imagine can be happen in the near future (coming decades) given a possibly unavoidable technological evolution of democracy. Feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments below. With your approval I may integrate these in the article, giving proper credit.

  • The way election campaigns are currently organized is one of the main problems of democracy. Because the people with the most money can reach out to the largest audience and can organize the flashiest campaigns, it all revolves around wealth, which is not always a proof of wisdom and intelligence. Wealth can be obtained through opportunity, or worse, through inheritance, which offers no guarantee that the receiver of the wealth can wield it responsibly. However, fixing the broken election system is totally within our power.
  • One of the good things that emerged during the past decades from the capitalistic competitive environment is the number of ways through which we can measure performance. There are countless tools for determining a person’s skills. Politicians shouldn’t even be allowed to enter an election if they cannot pass an interview that shows they can qualify for a given position.
  • Even more importantly, winning an election cannot be a blank check for getting any position in a government. A candidate vying for a position dealing with mining should have passed the relevant interview. Of course, a candidate can pass several interviews for several different areas, but never should a government hire a lawyer to deal with agriculture.
  • If we, the people, don’t want corporations to decide our society’s future, then we should take responsibility and change the broken election system. Goodbye donors. No party or candidate should be allowed to receive any funding from commercial entities or power brokers during an election campaign (or any other time for that matter).
  • Election campaigns will be redesigned to be much cheaper and paid entirely by a neutral, society-funded technocrat organization. Goodbye massive costs, millions of printed fliers and throw-away promotional material. Hello standardized and equal promotion for all candidates. All election-related financial transactions shall be documented in transparent, public records: open for challenge and debate.
  • A standardized election campaign means that all candidates should be given a precise, limited and equal amount of resources. This will include air-time on public channels, online and offline promotion. Candidates will have to adhere to a standardized way of stating their message: focused on previous accomplishments (proven and verified) and future plans (a public online space will be created where such plans can be fact-checked against budget and reality).
  • Today, with the help of Big Data^, we can assess the performance of politicians in a neutral way. Just look at how this software^ can find the best people to support a given law. Given enough data, software will be able to perform impartial screenings for an increasingly large number of candidates. Think millions. Just imagine that your highly skilled work colleague can one day receive, from a computer, a suggestion to candidate for a governmental position based on his skill, not on how many friends he has in a political party or the power of his dad’s commercial empire.
  • Earlier, I mentioned transparent financial transactions during an election campaign. Actually, everything should be transparent. All transactions that the government does should be easily accessible for any citizen. All contracts between government and companies that work for it should be open for public debate, because, in fact, these companies work for the taxpayers.
  • In case you haven’t been living under a rock, you probably heard of cryptocurrencies^. Enter crypto-voting. Sierra Leone just had an election where blockchain^ technology was used. Using blockchain, election results can be seen and validated in real time. It’s also much harder to steal an election (and can actually be made impossible if implementing relatively simple checks such as random people cross-checking other people’s votes). This system also reduces the costs of organizing an election and, in my view, can be used to facilitate what I call continuous voting.
  • Continuous voting means that anybody can change their vote at any time. Voters would simply log in with their ID and change their votes for any number of positions that are elected by the public. Politicians will be part of a market where every citizen owns one vote token per vote area (one vote for the education ministry, one vote for the local police chief and so on). This means that a politician would lose the safety blanket of a mandate, which is exactly the amount of responsibility that is required from any person in a leadership position. Mandates, after all, belong to an age where elections were expensive to organize. It also means that any citizen could own hundreds of vote tokens that entitles them to vote for a large number of positions. The vote tokens would be given by a system that automatically allocates them based on the citizen’s address (allowing a person to vote for all positions that influence their life).
  • Taking this further, direct democracy could be implemented by having laws as crypto-mandates: the more people buy in, the more power a law will have. This could remove the need for traditional politicians altogether. Rather than politicians, you would get something more akin to project managers that promote a law and try to get buy-in for that law.
  • The system could be expanded to include a public polling option not only for laws, but even for contracts. I’m referring here to the deals between government and companies that perform services critical to society (cleaning, public transport, etc.).
  • Taking this even further, we could imagine how instant direct democracy will look like. When a law reaches the support it requires, it could go into effect much sooner. For example, people could vote about speed limits in their community and see the effects immediately applied on connected traffic displays. A “thermostat”-like behavior would be implemented, to make sure that a law doesn’t “flick” on and off from one day to the next.
  • Depending on law, applying the changes would take a reasonable amount of time. For example, budget laws would apply only as soon as the affected institutions can adapt to a change in budgeting (within reasonable limits). This might mean less job safety, but would drastically increase a society’s ability to answer to its economical environment, which would, in turn, translate into better performance. With proper social protection measures, this can translate into an adventure where all members of society take part, together, in the well-being of their greater family.
  • Using such systems, a city could easily revoke the contract with any company if people realize it provides poor quality. No more deals behind closed doors, no more lying to get a contract with the government only to quickly drop in quality and siphon taxpayer money.

The Futurology Disclaimer: I do not claim that my ideas are original. I’m sure these suggestions are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, but hopefully they’ve scratched enough to get somebody inspired to come up with more. I’m also sure many of these ideas are already being worked on by several organizations. If any of the ideas listed by anybody on this page are original and will benefit any organization, I expect credit to be given where it’s due.

Version history:

2018-03-31 – 1.0 – Written.

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Romans Sure Knew How to Cook Concrete

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“A bunch of half-sunken structures off the Italian coast might sound less impressive than a gladiatorial colosseum. But underwater, the marvel is in the material. The harbor concrete, a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime, has withstood the sea for two millennia and counting. What’s more, it is stronger than when it was first mixed.”

I’m quoting from the article below:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/04/ancient-romans-made-worlds-most-durable-concrete-we-might-use-it-to-stop-rising-seas/?utm_term=.f37807445b83^

Unsurprisingly, we still have a lot to learn from ancient cultures, even when it comes to technology. Sure, it can be argued that the Romans half-invented this super-strong type of cement, half-stumbled upon it by chance. From what we know, they were far behind us when it comes to understanding complex chemical reactions, but as the saying goes, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”.

In any case, here’s to the advancement of strong materials, mother nature, chance and new technological opportunities for us to survive a rising ocean and who-knows-what we might bring upon ourselves in the coming decades.

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Wise Quotes Pill for 2018

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Some years ago, I began passively collecting random bits of wisdom; quotes I would come across while roaming the web or during daily interactions with friends and colleagues. I didn’t limit myself at including only quotes from famous people. I collected from the anonymous, from the ancient unknown and included even original or quirky sayings I heard during some conversation. My collection of quotes is growing slowly but surely.

Today, I’ll share with you some of the best quotes I came across when browsing through a small section of my collection. Of course, should you want to have a look at the whole collection, you can always find it here^ (Note: I only upload the collection once a year so the link will lead to the file as it was at the publishing time of the latest “Wise Quotes Pill” article).

 

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

 

“Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.”

– Benjamin Franklin

 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

– Thoreau

 

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

 

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

– Ambrose Moon

 

“Our scientific capabilities have outrun our spiritual capabilities. We now have guided missiles and misguided men.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

 

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think.”

– Stephen King (Different Seasons)

 

“Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.”

– Henri-Frédéric Amiel, The Private Journal of Henri Prédéric Amiel, 1889

 

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

 

“The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.”

– Lao Tzu

 

“If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the present, for that is the past’s effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the present, for that is the cause of the future.”

– Majjhima Nikaya

 

“We are born in one day. / We die in one day. / We can change in one day. / And we can fall in love in one day. / Anything can happen in just one day.”

– Gayle Forman

 

“Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?”

– Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

 

“I have found that great ideas come when you have a great desire to have them.”

– Charles Chaplin

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

– Ray Bradbury

 

“Your state of mind is the most important factor in the outcome of your life.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“It’s funny because we ask God to change our situation, not knowing he put us in the situation to change us.”

– Unknown

 

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

– Alan Watts

 

“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“Time decides who you meet in life, your heart decides who you want in your life, and your behavior decides who stays in your life.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice.”

– Dr. Michio Kaku

 

“The greatest wisdom is to realize one’s lack of it.”

– Konstantin Stanislavsky

 

“Alone but happy, happy but alone…”

– Adrian Nastase (not the former prime minister of Romania)

 

“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”

– Anthony Robbins

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One More Hyper-car for the Hyper-consumerist Empire

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Diversity is beautiful. It’s the reason why our planet is so different than everything else we’ve encountered so far. Humans have added to the diversity through art and technology. But what if there is a boundary after which adding more diversity becomes ugly?

Some people don’t have running water. Some people start their day thanking that their home wasn’t blown up. Some people struggle in a hospital bed. Some people build cars like these:

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/mercedes-amg-project-one-hypercar-revealed/^

And some people buy them.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be able to afford such a car. It’s “good diversity” to be able to use technology to build masterpieces like the one above. But not until we’ve done some progress in fixing our society. Not while there’s still people undergoing extreme suffering. We have bigger problems to tackle and issues to consider before we can play around on the race track.

Do I blame the engineers that build hyper-cars? Of course not. Besides being a former Formula 1 fan, I know that these people are only doing their job. I do blame, however, a society that doesn’t encourage these bright minds to work on fixing bigger, more meaningful problems. It’s a paradox:

In order for society to begin to want to fix itself, society must first fix itself.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/02802-ProjectOneHyperconsumerism-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’One More Hyper-car for the Hyper-consumerist Empire’ desc=’Society doesn't encourage these bright minds to work on fixing bigger, more meaningful problems.’]

We Don’t Live in a Computer Simulation (Is That a Good Thing?)

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Every now and then, somebody is amazed at the ever-increasing power of computers to simulate reality. The accuracy of these simulations increases every year, in step with the increase in computing power. This has led some to extrapolate that eventually we will reach the ability to simulate an entire Universe, perhaps even including conscious beings. And if so, what if we’re a simulation ourselves? According to new research, this is, in principle, impossible due to, you guessed it, the most mysterious of phenomena: quantum effects.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/physicists-find-we-re-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation^

The article above presents this as good news. For me, this is neither good nor bad news. Actually, thinking of myself as a simulated object never dulled my sense of reality, nor my respect for life. And besides, if I’m simulated then perhaps there are some mighty creatures watching over my destiny. What I experience right now sure doesn’t feel fake so I couldn’t care less about the technology behind it. In any case, theories come and go and who knows what the future holds? Probably not even the simulators ;).

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