Category Archives: Technology

Are food prices really going up?

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There was an informative chart from NPR. The chart pointed out that a frequent pattern was the reduction in package size as a means of not raising prices. Mariner’s local supermarket also reduced options among items by taking more expensive brands off the shelf. Interestingly, the manufacturing sector distributed their goods to fewer but larger retailers. For example, mariner can no longer find Lipton decaffeinated instant tea in his county but it is still available online at Walmart.

Now he can no longer find Planters Honey Roasted mixed nuts. Mariner often has expressed concern about the future of storefront economy. He described in his home town the disappearance of a dozen stores, some were large corporations,  – thereby reducing town domestic product to virtually nothing. Grocery stores are gone, pharmacies are gone, 5&10 store is gone, numerous restaurants are gone, hardware store is gone, car dealerships are gone. One is lucky to have a job less than 20 miles away.

Converts will say, “Poo!” It’s easier to call Walmart or Amazon with our smartphone. Thinking of smartphones, how many old timers realized the precedent that was set when a simple telephone allowed a person to speak to an artificial human being instead of having an interpersonal experience that sustained community society? “Well, it’s easier than harnessing the horse!” Today, that “human voice” can’t be guaranteed to be real – even if you see them on a screen.

Tribes, extended families, individual skills, community-based cultures soon will no longer exist unless they match Google’s data bank of common values – which is an oxymoron.

Perhaps mariner is old fashioned.

Armageddon progresses.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner warned about this

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The biotech company Colossal Biosciences has long aspired to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth, which roamed the Northern Hemisphere thousands of years ago  during the last ice age. But for now, as a step along the way, the company has come up with something decidedly less mammoth: meet the woolly mouse.

What was the purpose of this feat of genetic engineering? Colossal’s pitch is that, with biodiversity going the way of the dodo (which the company also hopes to resurrect), saving existing species will require tweaking their DNA to make them more resilient.

In other words, Colossal has decided to fire the planet’s ecosystem and take charge of the planet’s evolution process. Ain’t the mouse cute? Just think, your great grand children will be able to go to Walmart to pick from a menu what their children will look like – sort of like buying a puppy.

Well, mariner could use some hair . . .

Ancient Mariner

Ever metaphor?

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Greetings, readers – This is an unusual post about one of our intellectual tools – the metaphor. The human brain has a logical process that, he suspects, AI and all its fellow technologies will never master – human comparative analysis (HCA).
There are about 80 million neurons (brain cells) in the human brain. On top of that, each neuron has over one million atoms. Recent scientific discoveries show that each neuron can reorganize itself internally based on the situation. A recent article wrote “The cell can call together committee meetings within the cell when conditions call for it.” It will be very hard for common electronically-based atoms to compete with neurons that can reorganize their algorithms in committee meetings at the level of an atom.

Here is a simple metaphor that encompasses the entire Trump conflict:
A cup on the counter contains creamer, honey and coffee, three liquids which have been taken from their normal world in containers. They are confused about what is happening. Then they see the approaching spoon. In fear they say, “Oh no! Here comes a spoon! What will we become?”
The spoon is Donald Trump. The liquids can only hope all will be well in the end but who knows, maybe they will end up in the kitchen drain.

Let’s label this the ‘spoon metaphor’. In one simple picture, the brain can pull together the context of its human experience involving many subconscious experiences, spatial conditions and conscious awareness to understand the comprehensive, real world experience from an approaching spoon. Mariner can’t accept that AI, seeing an approaching spoon, could interpolate the specific, undocumented meaning and provide a correct assumption.

Metaphors come in all sizes, shapes and scope. It is a common way to transfer broader meaning without using a ton of words; it a key teaching method as well as an expression of attitude. Waiting in a doctor’s waiting room, one could say they’ve been there so long that the doctor should provide beds; a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the situation is provided by the metaphor ‘provide beds’, reflecting emotion, physical restraint and organizational efficiency.

Metaphors are especially powerful when they are used to provide insight into very complex ideas. Last November 30 mariner wrote a post about what reality really looks like. He pondered the different reality seen between a human, a snail and a dog. Each will claim they see what reality really looks like but actually, the structure is completely different for each species. Without the use of broad metaphors, an article on the same phenomenon was published in an online magazine called Salon referencing an article in Discover Magazine. It ran on for pages.

Mariner habitually converts experiences into metaphors. Be glad, he saves the reader pages of reading which is often replaced by a simple and often entertaining metaphor. Eat your heart out chatGPT.

Ancient Mariner

Good AI perspective

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Virtually every commentary about AI approaches the topic at a too low perspective: the impact on jobs, privacy, energy vulnerability, etc. In fact, AI is a global issue that will change global politics, global trade and a new era of feeding the world. Below is an expert’s insights as to how AI will change the world – worth reading. From AXIOS:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-167e2440-d545-11ef-86f8-718f1121da12.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Ancient Mariner

Our career molds our empathy

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Readers know mariner’s distaste for the invasion of privacy by new technologies embedded in our vehicles, budgets, social life and that of our children as well. Perhaps his unusual resistance can be traced back to his career.

He has had dozens of jobs from paper boy and soda jerk to preacher, parole officer and computer system consultant. The longest career was as a freelance consultant hired by corporations to install computer upgrades – thirty years. He never was wanting for the next contract because he ran a stable project that met its goals. One would think that such a consultant would have to be a computer expert and indeed he had a major in computer science but not one in computer engineering.

In fact, what made mariner successful in project management was his previous experience as a preacher and a parole officer. Mariner did have an associate or two who were computer engineers and coding specialists which made it possible for him to manage the difficult part of the project: people. He had learned a technique that creates team ownership. Each project worker was assigned to an eight to ten member group; each member owned a segment that was an integrated segment such that the other workers had a role in the worker’s success. Mariner was always present at these group meetings playing the role of coach and at times, decision maker but never taking away segment ownership. In the end, the group managed itself.

But the transition in the corporate power structure caused by a new computer system was often tragic. Employees who had worked there for many years were told they would be laid off; workers were transferred to lesser jobs and hopeful careers were interrupted. coders and technicians who were unfamiliar with the new technology were pushed into dead end corners of operations. In larger corporations, there were fierce political battles between vice presidents and key managers because their political power, created by the amount of data they controlled, was no longer needed. Everyone will own all the data.

Did the reader catch the phrase ‘everyone will own all the data’? Were the upgrades in mariner’s projects ancestors to Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok? The major reason for mariner’s projects was to move from a network where the workstation computer created data that was uploaded every night to data storage devices where it could be integrated with other workstation data; the core work data remained in the workstation to be managed by a network of employees. Hence, a supervisor, manager or vice president was important because they managed (owned) the data in their unit’s workstations.

The effect of his projects forced a reorganization of the corporate workforce without, he suggests, any grace or feelings about a large segment of displaced workers and managers. In his projects, the workstation became a data entry terminal little more complex than an ATM.

Now, long out of his career, he understands the subtleties of data ownership and how it creates, metaphorically, a democratic operation. Today, one’s private computer – much more personal and life-important, is being taken away to live in the clouds of the AI corporate data banks. Now everyone owns all the data – including the reader’s data. The reader’s computer is just a data entry terminal.

Democracy will have a hard time existing in an AI world.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Fourth horseman of the Apocalypse

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In a recent post, mariner mentioned four forces of nature that would determine the future of Homo sapiens. They were global warming, population, disappearing resources and AI. This post offers resources that help understand why AI may not be the blessing of other advances like the automobile, airplanes, can openers, electric lights, etc.

Often mentioned is the movie Matrix which has become a movie series. It is about the battle a few independent humans have against an AI brain that totally controls the human race; humans are kept alive in caskets so central AI intelligence can use them as batteries; These humans are fed a fake reality that makes them believe they are living a normal life.

Another frequently mentioned source is a PBS documentary ‘Hacking the Brain’ about the powers of AI and how, if controlled, AI can be useful but the documentary also displays the dangers of AI in its ability to manipulate humans even as they think they are living normal lives.

One source mariner hasn’t mentioned in a while is ‘The Social Dilemma’ available on Netflix. Largely, it is an interview of AI experts and managers who have left the AI corporations because of the immoral and intensely capitalistic policies exercised by corporations collectively known as Silicon Valley and which generate all the social media content with ulterior motives.

As to mariner’s prediction of Armageddon, AI is not a tool for making life better. There is an element of improvement reflected in better health care, resource management and supply chain efficiency but the AI technology is not controlled by anyone but the corporations themselves.

As it stands, social media can start wars, erroneously destroy careers, turn gossip into national policy, etc. – and does this without government restraint, without individual control of personal information, without total control of AI intrusion into economic sectors, and without due diligence to protect against hackers and international political abuse.

It is an area of the future which has yet to show its true colors. We will just have to wait and see how things turn out.

Shades of Matrix.

Ancient Mariner

 

Nothing Personal

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Mariner has lamented the present along with many of us, and the political collapses, the cultural stress brought on by modern travel, the plight of social media. But it is the big four {global warming, population, biomass and artificial intelligence) that will shape Homo sapiens’ long term future. While provoked by human history, they are no longer dependent on obnoxious human behavior. The big four now are on their own history track regardless of the misfortunes of politics, war and obsessive invention.

A snapshot of human wellbeing in the year 2125 will be in the hands of the Big Four:

⊕ GLOBAL WARMING. Even as scientists have begun to pursue new technologies to deal with carbon in the atmosphere, other perspectives may not be as ‘easily’ cured. Climate change, in terms of global weather patterns, does not dance only with carbon excess. Volcanoes and earthquakes play along more slowly, the Earth’s core is out of rotational sync enough that a magnetic polar reverse has begun and the Sun will join in every 11 years or so. Further, humans are playing carnival games but the earth is not a game. Earth is a large planet capable of Solar System behavior on its own terms (Humans must remember that in reality they own nothing; it all belongs to Mother Earth).

When it comes to natural resources versus population, there is a correlation:

⊕ POPULATION and BIOMASS. From National Geographic:

“The global population is currently about 7.3 billion. The UN estimates that by 2050, that number will grow to 9.7 billion. By 2100, 11.2 billion people will have to cram together on the Earth’s surface. These estimates outstrip last year’s projections by around 150 million people.”

From UN: “Biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, deforestation, water and food shortage—these are all exacerbated by our huge and ever-increasing numbers. Our impact on the environment is a product of our consumption and our numbers.”

The impact of population and natural resources together has altered nature in many different ways. Take one very small example – vertebrates:

Ten Thousand years ago was just yesterday: Agricultural communities developed approximately 10,000 years ago when humans began to domesticate plants and animals. By domesticating species, many groups of people were able to build settled communities and transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle dependent on foraging and hunting for survival. [National Geographic]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. There is a recent documentary on Netflix featuring an interview with Bill Gates (What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates) where in the long term he cedes (without using words) that Homo sapiens will lose out to artificial intelligence.

Mariner is at a loss to predict the future. It is obvious that Homo is as susceptible to the forces of nature as any known collection of molecules, neutrons, atoms and electrons. Who knows, perhaps the rumors of space aliens traveling the universe is our future.

Do spaceships have recliners or battery chargers?

Ancient Mariner

 

The new world ain’t so bad

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As many, many voters have done, mariner has shut down news in its entirety. Not only that, he has removed television in general from his options. He and his wife spend one evening each week on a ‘date’ to watch British mysteries together. Other than that, the television sits dark in its corner.

After a few days of dysfunction, one begins to fill in the space with other options – everything from talking more often with family members, to reading books, to crosswords, to reading magazines, even to stopping to talk to neighbors more frequently. Did the reader know they could still go to the movies?

Slowly, the brain turns to other things not thought of in a long time; there’s that attic door lock that has needed fixing for years; building a clear report of family assets, budget patterns and tax detail; tossing out one million four hundred pieces of 8½x11 paper that has been cordoned off for most of one’s life; gifted non-viewers may recall knitting, crocheting, painting and writing. Two friends of mariner make jewelry.

There is time to restart your attendance to community organizations and social events. If he wanted, mariner could go to a square-dancing club; even if he wanted to go, his knees and vertigo would make a mess of things.

How long has it been since the reader washed their dog? Does that trip to a lifelong friend nine states away seem more likely? The point one realizes is that an awful lot of life has been missed while opting for television to fill one’s day.

Brain scientists say an inactive brain goes south faster than an active brain – that is, if the brain has to learn new facts or skills on a daily basis, the brain may likely go southwest – a longer trip.

Speaking from his own experience, gearing up a daily to-do list and be willing to execute it is as difficult as gearing up a heavy 18-wheeler.

But the good side is a feeling of being an independent person, not attracted and seduced by television and, if one is committed to becoming a busy individual, one may lose track of the smartphone once in a while.

Remember: psychologists say that happiness comes automatically if one is active in the community, loves one’s family and graciously works at supporting the least of us.

Ancient Mariner

God bless us, everyone

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With political fireworks everywhere and wars in every direction, mariner thought he may need an update from his alter egos. He searched for Nosey Mole but he was nowhere to be found. Mariner hadn’t heard from Amos in quite a while so he called him.

“My readers have missed your skepticism, Amos. What’s happening?” Amos replied quietly that these are not times to agitate. “These are times to hold tight to what is dear, to what comforts, to what gives hope for the future.” Amos didn’t have much else to say. Clearly he was frightened by the American collapse of democracy, by the disappearing biosphere and the potential for a global war. He felt that resolution in the tiniest sense was nowhere to be found.

Mariner went to see Guru. “What’s your image, Guru? Where will this all end?”

“The end is far away.” Guru replied. He explained that the planet is rolling into a global warming that not only will have physical ramifications on economic stability but will promote global war – likely between US allies and the rest of the world. The underlying causes will be food shortage for an over populated planet – a profound shortage that challenges equality as a political virtue.

He mentioned that many countries, especially more liberal countries, will be hard pressed not to succumb to authoritative governments constrained by a strong plutocracy governed by giant corporations.

Mariner suggested that this may be a continuous process; how long will it take? Guru suggested that global warming will cause significant destruction by 2050 and that further, will put pressure on a capitalistic world – if survival is an objective.

The fact remains that this election, and its reconciliation, will determine how humans move forward in an unbalanced world.

As a famous fictional character once said: “God bless us, everyone.”

Ancient Mariner

 

Marvelous magic of evolution

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Mariner reads several magazines and journals just for entertainment. For example, here’s an article everyone will want to read:

To achieve remarkable performances, quantum computing systems based on multiple qubits must attain high-fidelity entanglement between their underlying qubits.

( https://phys.org/news/2024-10-subtle-current-phase-potential-stable.html )

Recently mariner came upon an article about a fish named Sea Robin. It inherited the ‘robin’ word because it flies underwater with wings just like a bird. Sea Robin’s wings don’t look like fancy paddles or oars like other fish have, they look and behave just like robin wings. Isn’t it intriguing that somewhere along the long, long trail of evolution, Nature’s office of genetic distribution delivered wings to a fish!

Even more odd is that Sea Robin walks on the bottom of the ocean in a fashion similar to four legged animals on land. Even more intriguing, it hunts for and smells food with its feet. Mariner’s feet smell too, but he wouldn’t want to eat what they picked for supper. Even Sea Robin’s color scheme looks more like a bird than a fish.

Sea Robin is such an intriguing aberration in Nature’s normal but slow cell-by-cell inheritance. It isn’t that Sea Robin came along at the same time as other sea creatures who were evolving in a way that would lead them to walking on land or flying like a bird. Sea Robin has been around for 18 million years!

The Sea Robin catches one’s interest and opens the door to thinking about the larger systems of Nature – not just evolution but all the systems that are in play in all the sciences from astrophysics to the chemistry of fungi.  Sea Robin demonstrates, however, that sometimes an aberration takes evolution in a different direction.

For example, Homo sappians has been around only 300,000 years and they are wreaking havoc among all of Nature’s sciences. One can perceive that Nature is dealing with the same type of confrontation as the one that happened at the US Capitol on January 6. The sappians aren’t improving anything – they have launched Armageddon against Nature’s planet Earth.

Ancient Mariner