2 extremely opposed opinions on future history

A Harvard (Boston) history professor explains (on the pages of the Telegraph) how he thinks a great war over, in and with Iran is almost necessary but could still be prevented: The origins of the Great War of 2007 - and how it could have been prevented

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He is also a Senior Reseach Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has got a what we used to call a homepage at niallferguson.org. Time Magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Of course his pages link to articles that say things like that. Is he right? NOP. He's dead wrong.

Telegraph Group Limited (TGL) publishes telegraph.co.uk (since '94), The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Weekly Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph was established on June 29, 1855 by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh. He controlled it only briefly before selling it to his printer, Joseph Moses Levy. TGL is owned by the Barclay brothers.

A Hebrew University (Jerusalem) history professor explains (on the pages of Forward/Forwerts) what he thinks is the first knowledge necessary to prevent any such war: Knowing Why Not To Bomb Iran Is Half the Battle

You have been able to read about this guy, named van Creveld, here. Wrote lots of books, is a member of HU's Institute of Arts and Letters, has got email but not even his own homepage. Is he right? Dead right, methinks.

"Forward" was founded in 1897 as a daily newspaper in Yiddish (Forverts) by Abraham Cahan. By the 1930s, the Forward was a leading U.S. metropolitan daily with considerable influence and a nationwide circulation of more than 275,000. The Forward is owned by the Forward Association, a non-profit holding company.

Predigital Nostalgia

Here is an interesting posting on the Design Observer: Paper Spends More Time With Its Family

Here is how I got there and a nice reflection on the former: All retro over paper.

Whosoever will read the story behind the second link and knows me just a tiny bit, will also know by which searchwords I got there. plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

Jingo Kogo

Die mythologische japanische Kaiserin Jingo Kogo

Machine, Wealth, Leisure, Write It!

LCom linked a nicely interesting article on kurzweilai.net. Is AI Near a Takeoff Point? in which author J. Storrs Hall cross-references a lot and quotes Sun Microsystems co-founder and sw-engineer Bill Joy who in turn wrote in wired quoting and commenting Austrian born robotic Hans Moravec.

A 2 Paragraph Quote from B.J. ref. H.M. "There are two separable questions here: Should humanity as a whole build machines that do all its work for it? And, if we do, how should the fruits of that productivity be distributed, if not by existing market mechanisms?

If we say yes to the first question, would the future be so bad? The robots, properly designed and administered, would be working to provide all that wealth for mankind, and we would get the benefit without having to work. Joy calls this "a textbook dystopia", but Moravec writes, "Contrary to the fears of some engaged in civilization's work ethic, our tribal past has prepared us well for lives as idle rich. In a good climate and location the hunter-gatherer's lot can be pleasant indeed. An afternoon's outing picking berries or catching fish—what we civilized types would recognize as a recreational weekend—provides life's needs for several days. The rest of the time can be spent with children, socializing, or simply resting."

As for the second question, about distribution, perhaps we should ask the ultra-intelligent AIs what to do."

Our comments What makes that text so interesting are the questions it poses. It rounds up some of the more interesting answers too. It crucibly leaves out one possible development that Herbert Frank described in a sophisticated fashion in his Dune sequel. Anti machine computing rebellion. I commented in this sense on Chris' log.

The net realization from this is that it's time to broaden the good ole AI debate again. It has been pushed into a near invisible niche twice or even 3 times since its inception. Not good. Let us give it some prominence. Let us keep in mind also that it is a dangerous and complicated debate that could easily accelerate anti machine aggression if, like in the past, its promoters do nothing but create awe, false promises and irritation with people at large and more so with the political elites. Clear thinking and understanding is badly in need. But the debate also requires a lot more work and participation from non computing experts if not participation by all the population at large. Tough communication work is waiting. Might be not funny but will be necessary.

Addendum Just detected that motzes finds the story to be "yet another annoying chapter of kurzweil's dilemma". I asked her why.

Yet Another Addendum Contrary to what Joy and Moravec seem to believe we did not give up our birthright of leisure in the Faustian bargain of agriculture, rather our foremothers and forefathers and not we, the fictive humanity, rather acquired leisure in that bargain for the first time in exchange for work, a thing that also did not exist before that deal. Such lazy aphoristic thinking in the humanities is typical of the post 1870 superiority complex of the professionals in the so called exact sciences. And I still left out the subtleties caused by the differences between animal and plant oriented agriculture.

A final statement Yiyeh tov (means "will be fine") Why? Because there are many allies, not least the universe which contrary to what many scientists believe is good by nature.

ANTSCD: Writing The history, development and evolution of the world's writing systems

P3K pointed us to an equally (compared to the one above) important text on the evolution of writing systems. Krysstal.com is a United Kingdom based educational and information web site by Kryss Katsiavriades and Talaat Qureshi in London. On first sight it looks like an excellent place to easily study topics like language, football, physics, democracy and more.

Media systems and writing systems even more so, despite all of the academic traditions, are still understudied in my opinion. The emergence of sites like this one fit nicely into the current McLuhan revival.

Marshal McLuhan's books have suffered a lot of intentional and unintentional misunderstanding by half competent study and and large gaps in the knowledge of the evolution of humanity's media systems.

La plupart de la historical and political analysis is still strongly biased to West Eurasian history.

Weakly connected and unbalanced pieces of half knowledge are a very dangerous thing, ideologically. Then and again ideas can play large and tragic roles in the material world. Take care.

But then again: It's a pity we won't live forever, still it's getting better all the time, somehow.

A Flashback to 1971

China enters the United Nations.

Eighteen year olds win the right to vote in the U.S.

A "computer on a chip" arrives that's small enough and cheap enough to fit inside business machines, toys, appliances, tools and entertainment devices - in short, anything vaguely electrical.

The world hasn't been the same since.

From: Byte Magazin: microprocessors at 25, 96/12