Showing posts with label Third Wave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Third Wave. Show all posts

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Infographics: Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto: The Booming Robot Industry

One of the sunshine industries of the information/digital/third wave age would be robotics. The Visual Capitalist has an effusive overview of the industry:
Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

ROBOT MARKET GROWING AT 15%, WITH 1.3 MILLION NEW INDUSTRIAL ROBOT INSTALLATIONS BY 2018

The market for industrial robot installations has been on a skyward trend since 2009, and it is not expected to slow down any time soon. According to the World Robotics 2015 report, the market for industrial robots was approximated at $32 billion in 2014, and in the coming years it is expected to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of at least 15%.

That means between 2015 and 2018, it’s anticipated that 1.3 million industrial robots will be installed worldwide. This will bring the stock of operational robots up to just over 2.3 million, mostly working in the automotive and electronics sectors.

For how long can the global robot population continue to grow?

ROBOT DENSITY

Perhaps the most interesting way to peek into the future of industrial robot installations is to look at potential sales in China.

Currently, the world’s most populous nation has a density of robots that is about half of the world average, equal to just 36 robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers in China.

However, this is changing fast. It’s been the largest market for robots since 2013, and in 2014 the country bought 57,100 robots – the highest quantity ever recorded in a year. By 2018, one in every three robots in operation around the world will be in China.

What will happen if China’s density approaches that of other robot industrial centers?

Highly automated countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea all have robot densities that are multiples higher. South Korea, for example, has 478 industrial robots for every 10,000 workers – a ratio that is 13x higher than China’s.

With this kind of potential for growth, it’s clear that this is only the start of the robot story.
The spread of robots would entail not only of investments aspects but of political-economic ones as well. For instance expect the rise of neo-Luddism.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Infographics: How the Fintech (Financial Technology) Industry Performed in 2015


Part of this has been the the Financial Technology (FinTech) industry.

Financial Technology, according to Wikipedia, are the "line of business based on using software to provide financial services". Additionally, the the technology heavy companies "are generally startups founded with the purpose of disrupting incumbent financial systems and corporations that rely less on software".

In short, Fintech industries have emerged to challenge incumbent institutions established by the industrial revolution.

What distinguishes the "information age" as against the "industrial revolution" has been the "decentralized" platforms enabled by digital technology relative to the latter's "centralized" (top-down) institutions.

2015 have been a great year for the Fintech. Below is an infographic of the state of the Fintech in 2015. 

As an aside: disclosure: I do not have exposure yet on Fintech.

The SavvyBeaver writes,
Financial technology or FinTech is an integral part of the global economy. It's what processes transactions, helps us monitor the markets, and keeps the banks ticking. In recent years this kind of technology has rapidly evolved with the advent of mobile banking, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and the general rise of financial apps. There's no telling where it will take us in the future, but if the current stats are anything to go by GROWTH is the word.
A new infographic from SavvyBeaver Canada and startup Call Levels takes a closer look at the current financial technology landscape.
Its exponential growth can be clearly seen from the investment side. From 2013 to 2014, global investment in FinTech jumped from $3 billion to over $12 billion - a 400 percent increase. When the full data from 2015 is in, it's expected to have reached a staggering $40 billion!
Payment and lending solutions make up 40% of all investment, but blockchain technology (popularized by Bitcoin) and Cloud-based services are also heavily backed.
Unsurprisingly the United States is the largest investor, followed by Europe and then Asia. Giants like Citigroup, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are all pumping millions in to the industry, alongside individual entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen of Netscape and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. The general public are also increasingly investing, with stocks in Paypal and P2P lending platform Lending Club, leading the pack.
The majority of FinTech startups are also born out of the US, from tech hubs like Silicon Valley, New York and Boston. Collectively these account for roughly 4.7 million companies. India is next with 1.92 million FinTech startups and the UK accounts for 820,000, most of which are developed in London.
The top 5 Unicorns of 2015 (I.e. startups that have been valued over $1 billion), include mobile payment processor Square Inc ($6B), online payment processor Stripe ($3.5B), eCommerce and mCommerce technology company Powa ($2.7B), P2P lending platform Prosper ($1.9B), and outsourced payment processor Adyen ($1.5B).
Quite clearly the current demand is for efficient online and mobile payment processing solutions, which is just a reflection of how society wants to do business. Whether it's the local plumber wanting to accept digital payments instead of cash or a giant corporation wanting to include Bitcoin as a payment option, FinTech is helping us get there.
Meanwhile the top FinTech acquisitions of 2015 include the sale of bank software provider SunGard to FIS for $9.1B, DH Corporation acquired bank payment solution provider Fundtech for $1.25B, and digital payments business Skrill acquired online payment provider Optimal Payments for $1.2B.
What drives FinTech is innovation and efficiency. Simply put people want to be able to access financial services quickly, easily, on the go and for a cheaper price than traditional services. Even relatively new technologies like contactless credit cards are already being challenged by apps like Google Wallet that lets you do the same thing but with your phone instead. One less item to carry and extra security.
Other apps currently in the limelight include Call Levels itself, which allows you to monitor markets like equities and Bitcoin and receive alerts when there's a move you need to know about. Venmo is a digital wallet that allows you to send money instantly between friends and family for free, and you can fund the transaction with credit cards and bank accounts. On a larger scale it could easily rival Paypal.
Quite what the future holds isn't clear but FinTech advocate Michael Spencer believes the public are going to become far more educated in managing their assets and finances because of the apps themselves. He and other analysts like Chris Skinner are also predicting that some of us could end up doing our banking through Facebook.



The State of Fintech in 2016
Made by: SavvyBeaverCA

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Infographics: The Internet of Things and Our Mobile Future, Lessons from the Matrix

The internet of things will likely be one of the major technological advances from the information age that will have significant influence in the shaping of the future. 

The Visual Capitalist writes
By the time you finish reading this infographic, there will be 3,810 new devices connected to the Internet of Things.

That’s because there are 328 million devices being connected to the internet each month. It’s also why researchers estimate that there are going to be 50 billion devices connected by 2020.

In fact, the future looks very different as we adopt to these technological trends. Already, 71% of Americans using wearable technology claim that it has improved their overall health and fitness. Imagine what will happen with more immersive analytics, a preventative mindset, more metrics of useful health functions, and integration into the health system.

The connected lifestyle means that there could be 500 devices in each home connected to the web by 2022. Every lightbulb, lock, thermostat, appliance, and item with an electronic circuit could be networked together, finding synergy. As strange as it may seem, by 2020 researchers even expect 100 million lightbulbs and lamps to be connected to this grid.

Entertainment and convenience are driving the “smart home” concept, which is expected to be worth $56 billion in 2018. However, there is also the benefit of creating a more energy efficient world. It’s already expected that street lamps could save energy costs up to 80%, so why can’t that be the case in the home as well? Self-adjusting thermostats, lights, and appliances will increase the efficiency of homes to make a big impact on net efficiency.
Internet of things should be something to look forward to.

But as tools, they can be use for productive or non-productive activities. By non-productive, this can even enhance the government's repression of the public. The internet of things may even pave way for the realization of omnipresent surveillance society ala George Orwell's 1984.

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute analogizes the internet of things with the trilogy movie the Matrix:
Make no mistake: the Internet of Things is just Big Brother in a more appealing disguise.

Even so, I’m not suggesting we all become Luddites. However, we need to be aware of how quickly a helpful device that makes our lives easier can become a harmful weapon that enslaves us.

This was the underlying lesson of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers’ futuristic thriller about human beings enslaved by autonomous technological beings that call the shots. As Morpheus, one of the characters in The Matrix, explains:

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

“What truth?” asks Neo.

Morpheus leans in closer to Neo: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Age of Robotics: Japanese Hotel Staffed by Robots

This is revolutionary. The service industry will most likely see a widespread adaption of robots.

In Japan, a small hotel opened with a service staff manned by robots.

From the CBS:
The world's first hotel staffed almost entirely by robots is opening its doors full-time to guests this month, but CBS News correspondent Seth Doane has already been able to spend a night in the futuristic facility near the city of Nagasaki.

Doane reports that the opening of a small, low-cost hotel doesn't usually warrant international attention -- even with gimmicks like drones, or the boss arriving via robotic platform.

But the "Henn'na Hotel," which translates to "strange hotel" in Japanese, lives up to its name.

"Please ask me your request, but don't ask me a difficult question because I am a robot," says the dinosaur behind the check-in desk.

The English-speaking dinosaur robot is designed to appeal to kids. Also at reception, an almost creepy humanoid, programmed to speak Japanese, and of course, to bow in respect.

There's a robotic bag-check, even a robot concierge.

Hideo Sawada is the man in charge. Doane asked him if robots, which rely on a set of multiple choice responses to any question asked, could really replace staff like the hotel concierge, who has actually tasted food.
The Kicker… (bold mine)
Sawada says having robots fill jobs can help reduce labor costs by about 70 percent. At the Henn'na, rooms start at only about $80 per night -- a pretty good deal in one of the most expensive countries in the world for travellers.

The hotel boss admitted that the robotic staff "don't come cheap," but said that compared to an annual payroll for human personnel, "they are quite cost-effective... and as (technology) improves I think they will become quite price-competitive."

In technology-crazed Japan, robots are becoming part of everyday life; from commercials, to appearances on TV as modern-day samurai. They're in stores greeting customers, and titillating tourists at Tokyo's famed "robot restaurant."

Hotels were merely the next logical progression.
Investors/entrepreneurs have always been on a lookout for ways around minimizing labor costs. Part of such costs may be from policy based interventions like the minimum wage. Thus proliferation of robots will likely on occur areas with high labor costs.

Watch video here. (hat tip EPJ)

Monday, November 10, 2014

80% of Catalonians Say YES to Independence!

Last night I wrote (bold mine) 
Unlike the failed Scottish vote for independence where Scotland has mostly been a tax consumption economy, so in the fear of the loss of the welfare privileges, the elderly stampeded to cast a NO vote to independence, Catalonia has been the main contributor to the Spanish economy with nearly 19% of Spain’s GDP where her GDP per capita is higher than the European Union average (EU-27) according to the OECD.

In short, Catalonians may be fighting to keep their share of production rather than satisfy Madrid’s political interests by redistributing the former’s resources to the latter’s welfare dependent supporters.

Thus should Catalonia’s independence become a reality, this will likely signify a big setback to the already struggling Spanish political economy.

I am not aware of the political agenda of the leaders of Catalonia, whether they will elect to join the EU and adapt the euro or join the EU and decide to have their own currency or operate independently from the EU.

Moreover an independence victory by Catalonia can set in motion or inspire a string of existing and active secession movements around Europe to ask for political recognition. Should this happen this would serve as the death knell for the centralization plans for the Brussels based bureaucracy.

So should the independence vote prevail, there will likely be huge political uncertainties that will dangle over the political economic domain of EU and of Mr. Draghi’s ECB.
Well, Spain’s PM Rajoy, the EU and the ECB's troubles have come to fore as Catalonians has voted overwhelmingly for independence!

From the BBC.com
An informal vote on independence for Catalonia has shown more than 80% in favour, officials say.

The provisional results followed a day of voting across the autonomous region in north-eastern Spain.

The non-binding vote went ahead after Spain's constitutional court ruled out a formal referendum.

Earlier, Catalan leader Artur Mas hailed the non-binding poll "a great success" that should pave the way for a formal referendum…
The 80% Yes…
Voters were asked two questions - whether they wanted Catalonia to be a state and whether they wanted that state to be independent.

Vice President Joana Ortega said that more than two million people had taken part in the "consultation of citizens" and that with almost all votes counted, 80.72% had answered yes to both questions.

Just over 10% voted yes for the first question and no for the second, he said, and about 4.5% voted no to both questions.
Spain’s Mainstream Resists…
The ballot was held in the face of fierce opposition from the Spanish government.

Speaking beforehand, Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala dismissed the exercise as "fruitless and useless".

Opinion polls suggest that as many as 80% of Catalans want an official referendum on the issue of Catalonia's status, with about 50% in favour of full independence.

Spanish unionist parties argue that because the ballot was organised by grassroots pro-independence groups it cannot legitimately reflect the wishes of the region.

More than 40,000 volunteers helped to set up and run the informal exercise.
It is obvious that beneficiaries of Spain's welfare state will refuse to have an independent Catalonia, that’s because these groups get their welfare finances from them! The political parasites would essentially lose their financial and economic hosts!

But if the Spanish authorities will defy the wishes of Catalonians, don’t expect a peaceful transition. At worst, the outcome could be a civil war.

Catalonian experience as I noted above will fire up a string of existing and active secession movements around Europe to likewise ask for political recognition. The wave of decentralization has snowballed. 

The existence of the EU, ECB and the euro are now in jeopardy

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Economics Drives Politics: Scotland’s Independence Referendum

Will Scotland secede from the United Kingdom? This will be determined by a referendum in September 18th

As for a background on this, Sovereign Man’s Simon Black explains: (bold mine)
Anyone who’s ever seen the movie Braveheart has heard of William Wallace, one of the original heroes of Scottish independence.

Though Mel Gibson’s highly fictionalized account was one of the most historically inaccurate movies in modern cinema, Wallace did, in fact, lead Scottish rebels against English invaders. And he died for his cause.

Wallace was severely tortured after being convicted of high treason against King Edward I; he was dragged by horses, hung nearly to the point of death, revived, relieved of his manhood, ritualistically disemboweled, made to watch his entrails set ablaze… then finally beheaded.

Not the way you want to go.

That said, the movement for Scottish independence lived on, and England folded in 1357, ending a 60-year war between the two nations.

For the next 350 years Scotland remained an independent state until… go figure… a financial crisis.

In a desperate attempt to become (almost overnight) a major world trading power in the 17th century, the government of Scotland backed a comically ill-fated attempt to colonize Panama.

It failed miserably. Yet the investment in the Darien Scheme (as it was known) amounted to up to half of Scotland’s total money supply.

When it went bust, Scotland was nearly broke.

There had already been a push to reunify with England for some time. And with the country’s economy in shambles, unification seemed like a good move.

Today Scotland again finds itself debating the question of its independence, fueled once more by economics.

It’s easy to point to a number of different causes of rebellion, revolution, and dissent. But ultimately it’s economics that matter more than anything else.

When times are good and everyone is prosperous, few people want to rock the boat. No one has an incentive to change the system when it’s working so well. 

Only when the prosperity begins to collapse do people have a strong motivation to change the status quo. 

Suddenly the jobs are less plentiful, the taxes are higher, the standard of living is lower, and the costs are greater. And people demand change. 

The greater the pain, the greater the desire to shake things up. And it’s happening across the world.

In Europe, separatist and extreme parties are gaining ground on the heels of an economic depression that has besieged the continent for several years now.

In France, Spain, Italy, Greece, etc., people are fed up with the current state of affairs, and they are agitating to split off from their current political leadership.

Likewise, Scottish voters are going to the polls in just over a week to decide if they should break away from the UK.

And from the looks of things, the independence movement has a very strong chance of winning.
A wave of secessionist movements around the world have been underway.

Crimea has just seceded from Ukraine, early this year.


Secessions (political decentralization) have been part of the growing political trend brought about by the ongoing and deepening failures of political economic centralization which has been a product of the (top-down) industrial era. The coming crisis will magnify such transition.

And secession trends will likewise be reinforced by the deepening of the information age (bottom-up) where connectivity via social media networks facilitates the enhancement of community (net lingo: tribal) based non-contiguous relationship

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Third Wave Politics: Failing Nation States and the Growing Secession Movement

Industrial age centralized governments will pave way for decentralization.

In the observation of Europe Day Sovereign Man’s Simon Black writes:   (bold mine)
But what is true is that European imperialists conjured entire nations in Africa out of thin air from their palaces in Brussels, Paris, and London.

And all of this was done without any regard for ethnic, linguistic, religious, and historical divisions among the various tribes that inhabited Africa.

But what few people realize is that Europe is no different.

Think about it—the United Kingdom consists of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland lumped together in a political union.

Each is entirely different from the others. And secessionist movements are alive and well. 

Scotland will hold a referendum about its independence in September. And the troubles in Northern Ireland have plagued the region for decades. 

Belgium is a completely artificial country, and the Flemish are actively pursuing independence from the Walloons. 

In the late 19th century, Germany and Italy were both unified into modern countries from diverse fiefdoms and city-states with strong regional identities.

Those regional identities are still present today. Just a few weeks ago, a vote was held in Venice over independence for the wider region. 

The Basque separatist movements in Spain are stronger than ever. The Balkans were an absurd experiment. I could go on and on.

Europe is the best example that borders and countries are completely arbitrary. 

They are created to serve one purpose—consolidating authority over a piece of land and the people living upon it. 

Today just happens to be “Europe Day”, a holiday in which Europeans are supposed to commemorate the Schuman Declaration that jumpstarted today’s European Union. 

This is a continent that has a long history of constantly going to war with itself.

They slapped lines on a map, formed some new countries, and expected that everything would be OK.

Then they made those lines even broader when they consolidated everything into the European Union. And EU politicians are trying to make things even bigger.

History shows that when economic times are good, people are happy about unity. 

But when times are tough as they are now, divisions start creeping up. People look around and say “this system isn’t working”. 

They demand change. Sometimes violently. And we would be foolish to presume that this time is any different.

The immediate avenue for this conflict to play out is still through peaceful means—referendums and the rise of nationalist and Eurosceptic political parties. 

But it’s clear that the trend is to get smaller, not bigger. And for the system to change entirely. 

Like feudalism before it, the nation state is a failed experiment that will ultimately be replaced. It’s already happening. 
Pls continue to read here 

I previously noted that growing secession movements marks the “gradual confirmation of the predictions of futurist Alvin Toffler as elucidated in his highly prescient 1980 book, The Third Wave (p.317)
National governments, by contrast, find it difficult to customize their policies. Locked into Second Wave political and bureaucratic structures, they find it impossible to treat each region or city, each contending racial, religious, social, sexual or ethnic group differently, let alone treat each citizen as an individual. As conditions diversify, national decision-making remains ignorant of the fast-changing local requirements. If they try to identify these highly localized or specialized needs, they wind up deluged with overdetailed, indigestible data…
In consequence, national governments in Washington, London, Paris or Moscow continue, by and large, to impose uniform, standardized policies designed for a mass society on increasingly divergent and segment publics. Local and individual needs are forgotten or ignored causing the flames of resentment to reach white heat. As de-massification progresses, we can expect separatist or centrifugal forces to intensify dramatically and threaten the unity of many nation-states.
The Third Wave places enormous pressures on the nation-state from below.
Bursting bubbles will only compound on such trend.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Social Cycles: The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Cycle as defined by dictionary.com is “any complete round or series of occurrences that repeats or is repeated.”

And cycles are not only evident in natural sciences (e.g. planetary, organic, physics), but most importantly in the dynamics of human social relations.

Aside from business economic cycles which occupies much of the discussion of this blog, the rise and fall of civilizations is another example of such social cycles.

There are important lessons to learn from social cycles.

As example, Sovereign Man’s Simon Black has an eloquent narrative of the rise and fall of the French empire. (bold mine)
Throughout the 18th century, for example, France was the greatest superpower in Europe, if not the world.

But they became complacent, believing that they had some sort of ‘divine right’ to reign supreme, and that they could be as fiscally irresponsible as they liked.

The French government spent money like drunken sailors; they had substantial welfare programs, free hospitals, and grand monuments.

They held vast territories overseas, engaged in constant warfare, and even had their own intrusive intelligence service that spied on King and subject alike.

Of course, they couldn’t pay for any of this.

French budget deficits were out of control, and they resorted to going heavily into debt and rapidly debasing their currency.

Stop me when this sounds familiar.

The French economy ultimately failed, bringing with it a 26-year period of hyperinflation, civil war, military conquest, and genocide.

History is full of examples, from ancient Mesopotamia to the Soviet Union, which show that whenever societies reach unsustainable levels of resource consumption and allocation, they collapse.
Mr. Black goes on to cite a recent NASA funded study which identified 32 advanced civilizations that rose and collapsed. Again Mr. Black.

A recent research paper funded by NASA highlights this same premise. According to the authors:

“Collapses of even advanced civilizations have occurred many times in the past five thousand years, and they were frequently followed by centuries of population and cultural decline and economic regression.”

The results of their experiments show that some of the very clear trends which exist today– unsustainable resource consumption, and economic stratification that favors the elite– can very easily result in collapse.

In fact, they write that “collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires major policy changes.”

This isn’t exactly good news.

But here’s the thing– between massive debts, deficits, money printing, war, resource depletion, etc., our modern society seems riddled with these risks.

And history certainly shows that dominant powers are always changing.

Empires rise and fall. The global monetary system is always changing. The prevailing social contract is always changing.
Social cycles are a product of the same series of human interactions that leads to parallel consequences. In short, people hardly ever learn from mistakes to keep repeating them. And such cyclical transitions are hardly ever smooth sailing.

But not everything is bad news. 

Again Mr. Black.
But there is one FAR greater trend across history that supercedes all of the rest… and that trend is the RISE of humanity.

Human beings are fundamentally tool creators. We take problems and turn them into opportunities. We find solutions. We adapt and overcome.

The world is not coming to an end. It’s going to reset. There’s a huge difference between the two.

Think about the system that we’re living under.

A tiny elite has total control of the money supply. They wield intrusive spy networks and weapons of mass destruction. The can confiscate the wealth of others in their sole discretion. They can indebt unborn generations.

Curiously, these are the same people who are so incompetent they can’t put a website together.

It’s not working. And just about everyone knows it.

We’re taught growing up that ‘We the People’ have the power to affect radical change in the voting booth. But this is another fairy tale.

Voting only changes the players. It doesn’t change the game.

Technology is one major game changer. The technology exists today to completely revolutionize the way we live and govern ourselves.

Today’s system is just a 19th century model applied to a 21st century society. I mean– a room full of men making decisions about how much money to print? It’s so antiquated it’s almost comical.

But given that the majority of Western governments borrow money just to pay interest on money they’ve already borrowed, it’s obvious the current game is almost finished.

When it ends, there will be a reset… potentially a tumultuous one.
The 19th century industrial age top-down centralized model has been running on a head on collision with the deepening of the information age characterized by decentralization. And such underlying seismic shifts causes massive societal strains as previously discussed. This is what futurist Alvin Toffler once predicted as the Third Wave

And when the socio-political-economic system has been routinely abused to the point that the accrued imbalances reaches a climax and a critical mass, the system eventually implodes. Nonetheless people will adjust to such changes.Thus a reset.

This quote MISattributed to British lawyer and Alexander Fraser Tytler on democracy captures some of the essence of the political-behavioral cycle (wiikiquote):
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

-From bondage to spiritual faith; 

-From spiritual faith to great courage; 

-From courage to liberty; 

-From liberty to abundance; 

-From abundance to complacency; 

-From complacency to apathy;

-From apathy to dependence;

-From dependence back into bondage.
The reset nears.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

War on the Internet: Meshnet activists Rebuilds the Net from Scratch


Such are examples of how government has used the web not only to expand their power but to mount repressive policies on their constituents. 

At the same time these are examples how government policies rob economic opportunities of small businesses (favoring the big ones).

However markets aren’t taking this slippery slope of privacy invasion sitting down. Some entities has taken into their own hands the rebuilding of the internet from scratch.

Across the US, from Maryland to Seattle, work is underway to construct user-owned wireless networks that will permit secure communication without surveillance or any centralised organisation. They are known as meshnets and ultimately, if their designers get their way, they will span the country.

Dan Ryan is one of the leaders of the Seattle Meshnet project, where sparse coverage already exists thanks to radio links set up by fellow hackers. Those links mean that instead of communicating through commercial internet connections, meshnetters can talk to each other through a channel that they themselves control.

Each node in the mesh, consisting of a radio transceiver and a computer, relays messages from other parts of the network. If the data can't be passed by one route, the meshnet finds an alternative way through to its destination. Ryan says the plan is for the Seattle meshnet to extend its coverage by linking up two wireless nodes across Lake Union in downtown Seattle. And over the country at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, student Alexander Bauer is hoping to build a campus meshnet later this year. That will give his fellow students an alternative communications infrastructure to the internet.

While these projects are just getting off the ground, a mesh network in Catalonia, Spain, is going from strength to strength. Guifi was started in the early 2000s by Ramon Roca, an Oracle employee who wanted broadband at his rural home. The local network now has more than 21,000 wireless nodes, spanning much of Catalonia. As well as allowing users to communicate with each other, Guifi also hosts web servers, videoconferencing services and internet radio broadcasts, all of which would work if the internet went down for the rest of the country.

So successful is the community model that Guifi is now building physical fibre-optic links to places like hospitals and town halls where it can help carry the heaviest traffic.
The development of the “new” guerilla internet doesn’t totally bypass the current system.

Again from the same article:
Hyperboria, the virtual layer that underpins meshnet efforts in the US. Hyperboria is a virtual meshnet because it runs through the existing internet, but is purely peer-to-peer. This means people who use it exchange information with others directly over a completely encrypted connection, with nothing readable by any centralised servers.

When physical meshnet nodes like those in Maryland and Seattle are set up, existing Hyperboria connections can simply be routed through them. At the moment, Hyperboria offers a blogging platform, email services, and even forums similar to reddit.
Unlike sheep or automatons, the above shows how people respond to incentives. The war on the internet will signify a cat and mouse relationship in the deepening age of decentralization.


Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Quote of the Day: Liberalism’s trifecta

The industry was liberalism’s trifecta: newspapers, television networks, and the school system. Two are bleeding red ink. The third soon will be, as online education enables students to live at home, take courses online, graduate with accredited degrees, and pay $15,000 in tuition, total. A widely accepted estimate is that half of all American universities will go under over the next five decades. It won’t take anywhere near that long. The no-name private colleges will go under first, Cutbacks in tax funding will complete the procedure. Legislators will figure out that they can fire two-thirds of the faculty and replace them with online lectures and low-paid, untenured professors and graduate students to grade written exams.

All that liberalism will have left is the public school system, K-12. This dinosaur has been caught trapped in the tar pit ever since 1963, when SAT scores peaked. Online education is invading today. The American Federation of Teachers is on the defensive. In 50 years, the suburban schools will be online. Competition will demonstrate that the public school bureaucracies cannot compete.

Liberalism made entrepreneurial decisions on where the future was headed. The World Wide Web is taking the world in a different direction. It is leaving liberalism behind.

Liberals call this process of ideological decentralization “Balkanization.” I call it the break-up of a cartel that can no longer compete on the free market.
This is from Austrian economist Gary North at the lewrockwell.com. Decentralization will likewise erode the 20th century top-down political institutions.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Is Stem Cell therapy the cure for HIV?

I am a fan of technology. For me, advances in technology serves as the foundation for the great transition: From the mass based top-bottom social phenomenon known as the industrial age to the niche and specialization based bottom-up dynamic called the information age-digital economy. 

So when I encounter what appears as potential breakthroughs, I post them here.

Is Stem Cell therapy the cure for HIV?

From Reuters:
Two men with HIV have been off AIDS drugs for several months after receiving stem-cell transplants for cancer that appear to have cleared the virus from their bodies, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Both patients, who were treated in Boston and had been on long-term drug therapy to control their HIV, received stem-cell transplants after developing lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

Since the transplants, doctors have been unable to find any evidence of HIV infection, Timothy Henrich of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston told an International AIDS Society conference in Kuala Lumpur.

While it is too early to say for sure that the virus has disappeared from their bodies altogether, one patient has now been off antiretroviral drug treatment for 15 weeks and the other for seven weeks.

Last July Henrich first reported that the two men had undetectable levels of HIV in their blood after their stem-cell treatment, but at that time they were still taking medicines to suppress HIV.

Using stem-cell therapy is not seen as a viable option for widespread use, since it is extremely expensive, but the latest cases could open new avenues for fighting the disease, which infects about 34 million people worldwide.
There are many implications from these developments whether social, moral, commercial and etc…, nonetheless stem cell technology could just one be significant area for advances in healthcare.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

War on Bitcoins: US States Tighten Noose on Bitcoins

Increasingly desperate governments in fear of competition from their monopoly privilege over money have been in the process of tightening the noose on bitcoin, whose popularity has been gaining ground. 

State regulators are warning virtual-currency exchanges and other companies that deal with bitcoin that they could be closed down if their activities run afoul of state money-transmission laws, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to people familiar with the situation, banking regulators in California, New York and Virginia in recent weeks have issued letters telling the companies that they need to follow the state rules or prove that the rules don't apply to them.

The warnings fall short of formal "cease and desist" orders, which would demand that the companies immediately stop engaging in their business, these people said.
Bitcoins essentially promotes the blackmarket or the informal economy or economic activities outside the control of governments.

The growing popularity of digital cryptocurrencies led by bitcoin extrapolates to the intensifying growth of the informal economy. The informal economy in the US has reportedly doubled since 2009

And growing blackmarkets or informal economy reduces the capacity of governments to seize or confiscate resources from her ‘dissentious’ constituents directly via taxes and indirectly via financial repression and thus is seen as a threat to government’s monopoly on money

And as I have previously explained:
Bitcoins are supposedly decentralized. So technically speaking the US government cannot directly strike at bitcoin without taking on the internet itself. Thus the US government’s campaign against bitcoin has been channeled through the financing facilities of the trading platforms and not bitcoin itself…

The US government wants bitcoin dealers to operate under their umbrella and has assailed or harassed those operating outside their ambit.

In short, the governments will work on controlling cryptocurrencies covering all variants; aside from Bitcoin:Litecoin, PPcoin, Freicoin, Solidcoin, BBQcoin, Fairbrix, Geistgeld among the many more.
Under today’s highly fragile financial conditions which may anytime metastasize or implode into a global debt crisis, as seen via the unfolding upheavals in the bond markets, any possible challengers to the political establishment whether gold and precious metals, cryptocurrencies  or bizarrely even cash transactions, represents the grand scheme of slippery slope events designed to deepen political and economic repression to preserve the privileges of the beneficiaries of the industrial age political system. 

Resistance to change would only mean a disorderly transition.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Spielberg-Lucas Fearless Forecast: Movie Industry Will Implode!

I have been constantly saying that the information age will reconfigure almost every aspect of our lives. And much of the social frictions I have been posting here signifies as the angst of the transition from the legacy of the industrial age dynamics of top down, centralized and mass production, mass media and mass market forces to the decentralized, bottom up, highly specialized, niche production, niche media and niche based market forces of the information age.

Movie moguls Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predicts that the movie industry will suffer a disorderly evolution. Hollywood may suffer a meltdown!

Here is David Cohen from the Variety.com (bold mine)
Looking into their crystal ball, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg predicted the imminent arrival of a radically different entertainment landscape, including pricey movie tickets, a vast migration of content to video-on-demand and even programmable dreams.

Speaking on a panel at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Spielberg and Lucas took a grim view of the future of the majors and predicted theatrical motion pictures will become a niche market.

“They’re  going for the gold,” said Lucas of the studios. “But that isn’t going to work forever. And as a result they’re getting narrower and narrower in their focus. People are going to get tired of it. They’re not going to know how to do anything else.”

Spielberg noted that because so many forms of entertainment are competing for attention, they would rather spend $250 million on a single film than make several personal, quirky projects.

“There’s eventually going to be a big meltdown,” Spielberg said. “There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground and that’s going to change the paradigm again.”
This would be the forces of creative destruction at work, which should benefit the movie consumers as well as the industry, who will have to compete to reformat or restructure to suit the desires of the consumers, overtime.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

NSA Spying sends George Orwell’s 1984 Books Sales Soaring; The Age of the Leakers

Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s expose of the NSA’s spying on Americans has sent sales of George Orwell’s 1984 soaring.

From the Bloomberg:
Sales of George Orwell’s novel “1984,” featuring a futuristic totalitarian state, jumped on Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)’s website following reports of a classified program that lets the U.S. government collect personal data.

One edition of the book, which was originally published in 1949, moved to the No. 5 spot on Amazon’s Movers & Shakers list, which tracks dramatic increases in sales volume over a 24-hour period. That makes it the 125th-best-selling book on the site, an increase from its previous rank of 7,397.

The sales gains come after the revelation of a top-secret electronic-surveillance program that allows the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access data from audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs from the biggest U.S. Internet companies. The Washington Post and the U.K.-based Guardian reported the program’s existence last week.

Orwell’s novel portrays a dystopian society where individuals are monitored through ubiquitous television screens and overseen by a leader called Big Brother.

image
(mask of British renegade Guy Fawkes)

I am reminded of the movie  V-for Vendetta  which looks apropos on the theme of neutralizing of the tyranny of Big Brother.

Nonetheless, the Snowden-NSA episode exhibits the shifting of the balance of power of media and whistle blowers which has been undergirded by the information age.

Austrian economist Gary North calls this the age of leakers:

Edward Snowden is now the talk of the town — and the world. His story on the NSA’s PRISM spying system has given exposure to a story that NSA expert James Bamford had exposed in 2008, but which no one in the mainstream media bothered to promote.

Snowden went to the Washington Post first, but when the Post waffled, he dropped them and went to Glenn Greenwald, a pro-civil rights lawyer who lives in Brazil and writes for The Guardian, a British newspaper/website. Greenwald wrote up the story as Snowden gave it to him, thereby scooping the world. He gets 100% credit, as does The Guardian. The Washington Post gets also-ran status.

These days, a leaker with a story can get his story out his way. There is always a journalist somewhere who will run it. If it’s in a major publication, which The Guardian is, the story will get coverage.

A leaker no longer has to do it anyone else’s way. He can do it his way.

This has put governments on the defensive. Because the Web acknowledges no borders, a story gets picked up and sent around irrespective of where it was published. The Guardian does not operate in the USA. It is not in the shadow of the U.S. government. It owes the U.S. government nothing. It is not dependent in any way on the U.S. government. So, the Administration’s spin-meisters have no leverage over The Guardian.

This is the age of the leakers. They can get their stories out to the public by doing an end run around their nation’s fearful mainstream media.

There are no more national gatekeepers. If a newspaper reporter wants a scoop, he will have to do it the leaker’s way — otherwise, he will be an also-ran.
The above only exhibits of the erosion of mainstream media’s centralized control over information and likewise political power.

The age of the leakers include Wikileaks and the Anonymous and myriad forms of social media.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

UK’s Blossoming Libertarian Movement?; The Clash of Generations

The libertarian movement seems to be blossoming among English youths.

Polls show that the young are more relaxed than others about drugs, sex, alcohol, euthanasia and non-traditional family structures. They dislike immigration, but not as strongly as do their elders. And they are becoming ever more liberal. The BSA has tracked attitudes for three decades. It shows that the young are now far more tolerant of homosexuality, for example, than were previous generations at the same age.

Experimenters with new technologies, fashions and ideas, young people in Britain and elsewhere have long tweaked established social institutions. But their iconoclasm goes further than this. Young Britons are classical liberals: as well as prizing social freedom, they believe in low taxes, limited welfare and personal responsibility. In America they would be called libertarians.
Here is where it gets interesting:
More than two-thirds of people born before 1939 consider the welfare state “one of Britain’s proudest achievements”. Less than one-third of those born after 1979 say the same. According to the BSA, members of Generation Y are not just half as likely as older people to consider it the state’s responsibility to cover the costs of residential care in old age. They are also more likely to take such a hard-hearted view than were members of the famously jaded Generation X (born between 1966 and 1979) at the same stage of life.
The above shows of the intensifying generational conflict brought about by the welfare state.

People “born before 1939” have been the primary beneficiaries of UK’s welfare programs which originated during the 1906-1914 Liberal Welfare Reforms era.  In a Ponzi scheme, they represent the initial investors whose "return" “are “paid out of the investments of new entrants”.  

The new entrants in today’s Ponzi-welfare programs are the young generation, who plays the role of funding the entitlements of the Liberal Welfare generation, which has been intermediated by UK’s welfare state. 

image

The fragile state of UK’s fiscal conditions reveals that welfare expenditures account for the 25.9% of GDP according to the Wikipedia.org.  This has substantially contributed to the UK’s deteriorating debt conditions now at 90% of GDP. The above chart reveals of the breakdown of UK’s government spending budget
image

Given the increasing burden from entitlements which has been shouldered by today’s youths, welfare programs are getting to be less appreciated. The wider the generation gap, the more likely resistance on welfare policies.

Add to this globalization and the deepening of the information age,  the rise of UK classical liberals would seem like a natural outgrowth

Yet should libertarian politics deepen, this will likely worsen generational conflict at the risks of triggering social upheaval. Parasites will struggle to resist from losing their hosts.

Nonetheless UK classical liberal-libertarians seem as gaining significant grounds in terms of politics. 

The UK’s Independence Party (UKIP) said to be a democratic libertarian party headed by Nigel Farage may win next year’s European Parliament elections.

From Daily Mail
David Cameron expects the UK Independence Party to win next year’s European Parliament elections despite his pledge to hold an in/out referendum on Europe.

A senior Conservative source said it was now taken as a ‘reasonable assumption’ in Downing Street that UKIP would top the poll next May – sparking a fresh round of Tory bloodletting on Europe just 12 months before the General Election.
The UKIP also performed strongly in the latest local elections.

Nigel Farage, the party’s leader, was jubilant after it emerged that one in four voters supported Ukip in the elections in 35 councils in England and Wales.

The rise of the party cost the Conservatives three local authorities, although Ukip did not win control of any councils.
So the rising politics of decentralization or the renaissance of classical liberalism likewise chimes with the deepening of the information age.

Incidentally, in the latest protest against the Turkish government, this headline seem to herald the spreading of classical liberal-libertarian movement across the world (hat tip Cato’s David Boaz)
Protesters are young, libertarian and furious at Turkish PM, says survey