Monthly Archives: April 2017

Automation is disrupting society, but will it destroy or reaffirm our faith in democracy and its freedoms?

The far reaching potential of hyperconnectivity, the Internet of Things and automation is discussed in the media every day. The speculation on how society will be affected is wild, reserved, optimistic and pessimistic. It covers everything from the impact on jobs to infrastructure, standards of living and communication. But how will these rapid technological advances impact democracy? This blog discusses whether hyperconnectivity and automation will lead to a new utopia (autopia anyone?!) or a nightmarish Orwellian 1984 in which we can't be truly free.

Automation and Freedom

When the internet first went live, many commentators assumed it would provide a pure form of democracy. Everyone was given the same platform; age, race and gender were no longer relevant and we were all anonymous. But the reality was more chaotic, as we struggled to comprehend the power of a new tool that would revolutionize human life. This strange world was somewhere we could get lost and detach ourselves from everyday existence, but often it was also a quasi-reality that proved overwhelming and dangerous.

Yet slowly we have found structure. Society has become inherently more intelligent - we can find the answer to almost anything at the click of a button. Those at the cutting-edge can now gain previously unimaginable insight into human tendencies and interests. From here they can make tangible benefits to our lives. We can order a taxi, monitor our home, obtain recommendations on new music that suit our tastes and even meet our future partner; all from our phone through automated data-driven processes.

Freedom, a fundamental tenet of democracy, is inherent to automation when implemented correctly. For instance, in the workplace many employees were previously shackled by tedious repetitive manual tasks, but they now have more freedom to work on creative, complex and specialized projects. This is also true outside the office; administrative tasks that constrain us and consume much of our time have been removed - just think of paying money to a friend on a mobile app compared to visiting a bank. So automation and the Internet of Things are already beginning to reconstruct our daily routines, providing us with more time and freedom to pursue new interests and engage with society on a deeper level.

Big Data and Big Change

The power of automation depends on our ability to harness the explosion in volume, variety, veracity, velocity and value of data. Big data has significantly changed what is possible and has immense potential if we can learn to understand it.

Traditional media, which has historically shaped society's perspectives under the command of a few large corporations, has lost its stranglehold on information that has now been democratized. Examples of which extend to bloggers, vloggers and almost anyone who has been able to get an audience on a social media platform.

In the same way that savvy tech businesses can utilize data to better understand their customers, political and social groups will soon be able to understand human tendencies. Now interests and behaviors can be rationalized with precise data from large samples of society, rather than the guesswork and opinion of just a few who claim to represent diverse groups of people with only a postcode in common. Decisions can be made on analytics rather than emotions and instinct. At no point in history have governments had so much information available to make the correct decisions, or the public so much information to hold politicians accountable for their actions.

Empowerment Through Automation

Most definitions of democracy include the idea of empowerment: giving a voice, a right to vote, the right to free speech etc. The Internet of Things can and should be used to empower us. Everyone everywhere is gathering information at an exponential rate, and even if it does seem daunting at times it is a fantastic opportunity.

Critics would argue automation is destroying the labor market and sending collective organization into spiraling decline. However, technology provides a platform from which any disruption can be reordered. Automation will not take our jobs (scientific studies typically argue the reverse). Sure, it might restructure the way we work, the roles we take and the way our society functions. But we should use these incredible tools to enhance society and reconcile it rather than blame them for divisions.

Information is available to the public who can use it for good. Knowledge is power and we are seeing a dramatic shift in a transfer of knowledge. No longer should it be the exclusive property of small and privileged enclaves of society.

So What Does the Future Hold?

Clearly modern technology has disrupted society. The challenge therefore is to overcome our fears, embrace it and adapt in the right way. Because, never before have we had so much opportunity at our fingertips. It is, I would suggest, a cause for enormous optimism and the way it is used is up to us.

Continued here:

Automation And Society: Will Democracy Survive The Internet Of Things? - Huffington Post UK

Posted April 24, 2017 09:18:14

Decades of failed visions, like the collapse of communism, mean the idea of utopia has come to have pejorative connotations.

It's been tarnished by an association with fanatics, like Hitler and Pol Pot.

And to pragmatists, utopia might be a byword for the pointless pursuit of impractical and unachievable goals.

But although we live in a very different era to when Thomas More coined the word in his landmark book The New Island of Utopia, just over 500 years ago, there are scholars who say these ideas still have a place.

Jacqueline Dutton is an expert on the history of Australian utopias, and sees manifestations of utopianism all around us, in ideas like co-housing, urban agriculture, recycling, "second chance" food, and "sharing economy" innovations like Uber, Airbnb and couchsurfing.

"These ideas were considered counter-cultural and only belonging to hippy communities or radical people in the 1960s and 70s," she says.

"[They] were incredibly radical and marginalised ... and it's actually only taken us 50 years really to embrace [them] as part of our everyday life."

Even commonplace technocratic language like "alternate scenario planning" hints at utopianism, Dutton believes.

"It sounds a bit more boardroom than utopianism, but essentially it's about projecting a different way of being," she says.

"Basically, behind utopia, there is this desire for a better way of being in the world."

It is easy to dismiss grandiose gestures and lofty ideals as unworkable even if you are a philosopher striving to live a life according to your moral principles.

When asked to address an "abolish fishing" rally, philosopher and author Peter Singer, a practising vegan, says he challenged the organiser: "Isn't it a bit utopian to think that you are going to, by marching, abolish fishing?"

According to Singer, the organiser replied: "What I want to do is to plant the seed so that maybe in 100 years' time, people will realise that fish are sentient beings ... that we cause a lot of suffering to them."

"In one sense," Singer continues, "you could say it's utopian to think we will stop eating animals.

"In another sense, you could say, who knows? Conditions could change. We'll find other things to eat. We are already producing more plant-based foods."

Singer and Dutton were speaking at a recent Utopia 500 forum at the National Library of Australia, organised by ANU's Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities.

Dutton revealed, astonishingly, that there was a time when Australia existed only as an exotic, fantastical utopia in the imaginations of those living in the Old World of Europe.

"For about four centuries, Australia was imagined by the Europeans," says Dutton, "before it was actually known."

She says one of the first utopian visions of Australia was conceived by a Frenchman, Gabriel de Foigny, in 1676.

"It was called The Southern Land, Known, and it was a 'projection' of the Australian continent, the southern land it wasn't known as Australian at this stage," she says.

Inhabited by people de Foigny described as "hermaphrodites", the imagined Australia was "a place of hybridity, monstrosity [and] extreme otherness ... that cannot really be reconciled with a European understanding of the world".

"The idea that anything could be possible in this southern land made Australia a blank canvas a tabula rasa upon which pretty much anything could be projected," Dutton says.

The 16th century, when More was penning his Utopia, was an epoch of wonder and possibility. Europeans made landfall in what would become known as the Americas. The New World was coming into being. There were voyages of discovery and exploration. These were fertile times for imagined utopias.

Yet, we now know, complex civilisations in the New World predated the arrival of the Europeans by millennia.

Indigenous Australians, of course, existed on the great southern continent for tens of millennia prior to European exploration and colonisation. But did they have a concept of utopia in their dreaming stories?

Aboriginal writer and Miles Franklin-winning novelist Alexis Wright doesn't think so.

"I think our culture is structured differently. It's structured around the ancestral story, the creation story ... and our responsibilities were to maintain harmony and balance in the country, to traditional lands," she says.

"I think we were realists and we were tied to the land. There was a law structure, a spiritual structure.

"There's only one utopia I know and that's a [former] cattle station," she jokes, in reference to the Aboriginal homelands region near Alice Springs.

Dutton says while the notion of a desire "for a better way of being in the world" transcends cultures, the idea of utopia is essentially "a Western Christian construct".

Within these cultural parameters, though, there are virtually limitless visions.

One version, which harks back to More, envisages an age of leisure even if it is unclear how this lifestyle would be achieved in the modern industrialised world.

"Thomas More had this idea that work is not good for you. It's bad for your health. It should be minimised, as opposed to expanded," UCLA's Professor Russell Jacoby told the Utopia 500 forum.

In this respect, More may belatedly get his wish. Advanced automation, enhanced technology and robotics are predicted to result in the widespread displacement of labour in the near future.

"The question of labour is the vexing issue of contemporary society," Jacoby says.

"As we become more productive, increasingly we can't find jobs for people. Where is the work going to come from? We can't figure it out."

But unemployment and underemployment do not equate to leisure. Not unless the idle are paid not to work, as some have indeed argued they should be.

Utopian thinking does not provide tangible solutions to society's wicked problems. Nor is it intended to. Instead, it widens the scope of what might be possible in the future; of what we should aspire to.

Perhaps, too, it ought to prompt us to consider not just the possibilities, but also the question of what is perfection and what is socially desirable.

"Is there a role for people with a disability in a utopian society?" an audience member asks Singer at the conclusion of the Utopia 500 forum.

Singer, whose writing on bioethics has been controversial, responds: "I suppose you could imagine in a complete utopia there might be ways of learning what causes people to have disabilities.

"And then maybe people would choose not to have children with disabilities. That's a possibility.

"Some people would say, in that case, you lose something from society. You lose a certain kind of diversity, a certain kind of caring. But my view would be, if you did have the knowledge, then parents ought to have the choice.

"In many respects we do have that choice now through prenatal diagnosis. And the overwhelming majority of parents, when they have a prenatal diagnosis of a serious condition ... decide to terminate the pregnancy.

"I don't think in any utopia you would remove that right of choice."

Topics: philosophy, history, community-and-society, australia

Read more:

Where have all the utopian thinkers gone? - ABC Online

Its hard to imagine a more generic name for a reality show than Southern Charm. Thats the Bravo series that started Season 4 this month and drew a solid 1.25 million viewers in the desirable 18-to-49 age bracket for the premiere.

Whats making people tune in?

The show (9 p.m. Mondays) revolves around characters in their late 20s and early 30s who live in Charleston, S.C. Many of them look so much alike that even they cant tell themselves apart. Is that tousle-haired, grinning party boy Shep or his protege, tousle-haired, grinning party boy Austen? Which slender blonde woman is Naomie and which is Cameran? The beauty of the show is that it really doesnt even matter because they all like a) day-drinking parties, b) complaining about the 150 degree heat and c) wearing pastels.

For comic relief, theres an older socialite, Patricia, and her plump pug, Chauncey. She lolls in bed in her palatial estate, summons her butler and asks why the buzzer to summon him isnt buzzing. He dutifully replies, Im sure the batteries have worn down.

For tragedy, theres the broken couple of Thomas (whos in his 50s and a former treasurer for the state of South Carolina) and 20-something Kathryn. Her use of drugs and alcohol brought their relationship to an end. Wealthy blue blood Thomas has custody of their young offspring. Thomas explains that the two children live in his guesthouse with a nanny because children are messy and hed rather they spit up on a $200 guesthouse rug than a $30,000 main house rug. Hes currently looking for a woman who feels privileged to be with me.

So beneath the shows bland title lie Southern self-indulgence, Southern snootiness and Southern sorrows. Maybe thats why people are watching!

Meanwhile, the unsung star of the series is Charleston, with its enticing palm trees and Spanish moss, refreshing river vistas and inviting front porches. Unlike the shows boorish humans, the Palmetto City oozes Southern charm.

Read more of Marcs TV musings:

Can millennials create a new utopia in Jungletown?

Brockmire turns a crisis into a home run

Yes, Crashing is another sitcom based on a stand-up comic. Yes, you should watch it.

Originally posted here:

What's making people tune into 'Southern Charm'? - Washington Post

New York Times

She Was the Orchestra's Only Black Musician, Until She Formed Her Own New York Times For Chi-chi Nwanoku, coming up with the right name for her new minority orchestra was a stressful experience. Though Ms. ... The first concert in 2015 during the Africa Utopia festival sold out, and fans lined up outside the concert hall hoping to get in. and more »

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She Was the Orchestra's Only Black Musician, Until She Formed Her Own - New York Times