I ask this question in part because of my recent experience with crowd funding, the idea behind crowd funding is to support some ones idea, project, or invention by giving them some money. They may promise to give a gift in return but there is no contractual agreement to provide a product or service in return for the financial contribution. The …
Why the rich get richer and the poor poorer
Luck determines the winners and losers of society, not merit or hard work. Those that start out with more get more, and those that start with little often fall through the gaps. Inequality is not only caused by the human inventions of rent, profit and interest but also by a quirk of the economic system which means that if …
Fluid writing
Lets just imagine I want to create a new style of writing one without the old syntax and apostrophes but rather to just have a stream of words and then possibly a directional indicator to tell people when I have started a new or similar stream and then another when I have gone back to my original point or rambling …
Pets
Many years from now a girl was born into a family of outcasts, her name Redarre – the savior, for it would be her destiny to save her family by becoming a pet. The world into which she was born, in so many ways similar to ours in its stratification, but different in what humans had become. One group …
HyperNormalisation: New doco from Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis dissects the political malaise we have been lead into. There are no new grand ideas just crisis management. Politics as exemplified by Trump and Putin has become a game of shapeshifting. No-one knows what they stand for or who they really support in the fictional reality spewed to the masses. If you don’t know what they stand for …
Computers are taking our jobs – again
There’s been a lot of chatter in the media recently about AI (Artificial Intelligence), mechanisation, and driverless cars taking all our jobs. I’ve heard this before in the 80’s but it didn’t happen. Why? There is new evidence everyday that human labour is just not necessary anymore. Adidas has created its first fully mechanised shoe factory in Germany. Driverless …
Cybertopia – what the world will become
Cybertopia is a brilliant look at the world silicon valley wants to make. Burning man mixed with hippies and then a bit of Ayn Rand. What??? Yes they can do it because they have billions and billions of dollars. Or are Bitcoins better. You judge.
Contented progress (wellbeing)
I want to propose an idea that can make us contented (happy), imaginative, and progressive. Some may say contentment with what we have, and imaginative progress, are not contradictory. But how could we possibly be happy with what we have and still want to imagine and create a better future? I believe we can solve this contradiction by harnessing time …
Sleepers went back to work
Recently I have been reading Barry Jones’ Sleepers Wake – Technology and the future of work, written in 1982 it foresees a post service work environment, technology will have saved us from much toil and we will need a guaranteed income for all (similar to my Flat Payment) to provide for all those who are not employed with the means …
The fallacy of Shareholder democracy – the owners are all opaque holding companies
Elected governments really don’t have much power any more because they have ceded most of it to corporations which we believe we control through share ownership but we are hopelessly wrong. Corporations are some of the few organisations that have true global influence so if we were to have a global democracy we would want them in our power …