Category Archives: Technology

Remember liberal arts?

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As regular readers know, mariner spends a lot of time in Nosey Mole’s tunnels, thereby avoiding broadcast TV news. He spends his time reading and watching more cogent and thoughtful reports in professional journals, non-profit news organizations and has burned a candle short looking for interesting entertainment shows.

One of his sources is YouTube which he calls Junk University. Name a topic, a person, an ideology, a trade skill, health, comedians or any flower no matter how scarce, and Junk University has a series on it. Mariner is a lingering fan of boogie woogie. There are endless hours of boogie woogie clips.

But whence what we used to call ‘liberal arts’?

Colleges are abandoning liberal arts because it isn’t focused specifically on career preparation. It has been decades since public schools made a serious attempt to introduce academic classes on history, politics, sociology, language, philosophy, psychology or religion. Trump et al are wiping out any evidence that there was something erroneously called ‘slavery’ in the American past. If a student isn’t pursuing STEM, they are out of luck.

Guess what? There is a top class liberal arts university on television! It is a TV series on PBS called NOVA – 50 years of liberal arts episodes covering all the implied information one would want to learn in a liberal arts program. There are insightful episodes about society, ancient history, the future of education, the future of industry, all the Earth Sciences, even mariner’s oft quoted ‘Hacking your mind’ 4-part series.

So if your soul is shriveling in this tumultuous, unfocused world, refresh yourself browsing 50 years of NOVA; orderliness will return to your psyche.

And don’t forget to chip in as a member to offset one of the wonders of political history who certainly will have a place on future NOVA episodes: The Trumpeter has killed Federal support to PBS.

Ancient Mariner

Jobs threatened by AI

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On the CBS website, mariner found a detailed analysis of what types of jobs may be most threatened by automation. An easy way to understand the impact is to consider how the Internet has changed the reader’s shopping habits – what ever happened to malls?

Impact from GPT4 [Pre-trained software capable of dialogue and creative writing – including songs]

Customer services representatives
Accountants and auditors
Software developers
Secretaries and administrative assistants

Overall

Computer programmers
Financial managers
Accountants and auditors
Sales representatives (wholesale and manufacturing)

Automation

General and operations managers
Accountants and auditors
Receptionists and information clerks

Augmentation

Chief Executives
Maintenance and repair workers
Registered Nurses
Computer Systems managers

Mariner would offer an outlook if he could – no one can. We are in a fog without a map and must confront dysfunctional government, unbridled corporate behavior, tendency toward war as a solution and a dissatisfied planet..

Armageddon proceeds

Ancient Mariner

The new job market

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There seems to be increasing news coverage about the job market, especially when comparing past, present and future markets as presented by government figures. The presumption from the White House is that the tariffs will restrict foreign manufacture and allow US manufacturing to grow substantially.

On the other hand, banking, investment and private institutions don’t feel as secure about the effect of the tariffs. They speak to the influence of ChatGPT already in the marketplace which is affecting employment today. In mariner’s local newspaper he reads that a nearby river town’s pubic library plans to replace a desk librarian with a bot that can check in and check out materials. When McDonald’s is forced to modify products and prices in order to sustain sales, something must be afoot.

Further, the public has an innate feeling that one had better be frugal – an attitude that contributes to recession. It’s likely that the persistent news coverage is about closing branches and even closing large stores so they can reinvent their fiscal model.

The White House is doing everything it can to bolster financial reports – even to the extent of disassembling the Federal Reserve so the interest rate can be lowered.

While it is true that the giant manufacturers and retail powerhouses can respond to the tariff situation by offering more jobs, that seems not to represent the closing of many shops and small industries because of the new market, tax regulations and AI.

It appears the economy will be dancing on thin ice for the next year or two. One can hope for a new approach after the midterms. Amos insists that mariner mention the collapsing US influence in world markets.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Deming

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Mariner has pulled another book from his library to review while multiple inches of rain continue to fall. It is the book that set mariner’s style of management during his career. Adam Smith is credited for defining free market capitalism and John Maynard Keynes rewrote competitive economics to get the US out of the Great Depression but Deming changed the workplace.

“W. Edwards Deming was assigned to rejuvenate Japan, a nation totally destroyed in the world’s first nuclear war. W. Edwards Deming played a significant role in Japan’s post-WWII economic resurgence, which led to widespread adoption of his philosophy in the U.S. during the later years of his life. His basic message was that focusing on quality would decrease cost and increase both productivity and market share. However, he argued that problems with quality were usually management’s fault rather than that of the workers on the floor. Management needed to transform itself and its practices into a quality-oriented enterprise. Quality should not be entrusted to a quality control department, but rather to a collaborative effort involving management, supervision, purchasing, and production workers. Quality inspections should be eliminated in favor of building quality into the product during the manufacturing process.” [Engineering and Science Hall of Fame]

Especially during the mid-century wars, production was very much a hierarchical process. This was because speed was of the essence; decisions were made quickly because wars and all of society affected by wars had to be supplied worldwide.  Management structures within corporations were strictly top down and subordinates had little to do with the decision-making. Deming’s reputation was highly regarded; his approach slowly crept into American production theory.

What made Deming’s life experience different from typical economic philosophers was that he not only had to build a new economy for Japan but a new nation as well. His theories of management have been flavored with Japan’s hardship after the war. As the Hall of Fame suggested, Deming’s approach was to know as much as possible about the product, assign responsibility throughout the organization, all with the purpose of superior quality in the marketplace.

At mariner’s level of employment, this meant ‘team management’. First, unusual for the time, was to provide a document which defined goals, objectives and tasks – all based on product performance and resource management. These documents could be large and often detailed. When mariner had the contract with Taiwan to build a new computer system, the first month was spent in the US with Taiwanese and US planners laying out the goals and processes of the project.

As the project progressed, decisions were made by teams assigned to a set of tasks. Each team had a dutch uncle advisor who was a specialist, hired by mariner and representatives from Taiwan. The important aspect was to make sure the team knew it had the responsibility to deliver the goals laid out in the planning documents. Each employee had an assigned task to deliver and participated in team coordination.

Even today, if he had a significant goal to achieve, he would use the ‘team method’.

Books are telomeres.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

New child care services

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More chatbox memes – look behind you!

From  https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-ai-plus-438426cc-d0dd-4ebc-8704-6f8fc768bcac.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslogin&stream=top

What they’re saying: Interaction with generative AI could “fundamentally change the human brain,” says Dana Suskind, a pediatric physician and expert on early childhood and early language development.

  • Suskind says teenagers and adults are already forming relationships with AI companions. The same could happen with younger kids.
  • “The content and experience that kids are exposed to in early years isn’t just sort of changing things the same way social media impacted adolescent brains,” Suskind told Axios. “It is actually changing the foundational wiring of the human brain.”
  • “Children naturally anthropomorphize,” Suskind wrote in an email, “but with responsive AI, we’re entering uncharted territory for how this might shape their developing sense of reality and relationships.”

Between the lines: Some child development researchers worry that chatbots could reshape how children learn trust, empathy and connection.

  • A small study from 2024 showed that kids ages 3-6 were more likely to trust a robot than a human, even when that robot had proven to be less reliable than the human.
  • Trust is a particularly thorny problem for those who rely on AI, since many researchers argue that these tools might always be prone to making things up.

Chatbots also tell people what they want to hear.

  • They’re trained to please, which means they’re unlikely to say “no” — a word that small children need to learn to deal with.

 

Mariner recommends not using rapid fire weapons or shotguns. Your real loved ones may be close at hand. All these efforts to invade Homo’s anthropomorphic reality are just a step toward Armageddon. The next step is not to bother with babies – they’re too much trouble – AI bots may offer an age-seasoned teenage bot instead – or, if the reader is so inclined, adult bots (male and female) are available and quite charming.

We have come to accept robots in the workplace, despite union protests. Now the frontier is the home.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

New hunting targets

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From time to time, mariner has mentioned the emergence of commercial memes walking among us. Well, it is more than walking, it’s flying and driving, too. It turns out, according to Popular Science magazine, that China already has a national development policy that encourages robotics to co-exist with the humans on city sidewalks and the Subway – to say nothing of stocking the shelves of 7-Eleven stores after they arrive.

Mariner had suggested a year or so ago that goose hunting could include drones and deer hunting could include delivery boxes. For those that have an elk or bear license, it makes sense to include delivery EVs with no humans on board. Lo and behol, if China’s meme sees you, it turns on its happy face! Shoot, man, shoot!

Amazon reportedly is developing AI-trained robots to one day jump out of vans and deliver packages. 

You know, when mariner thinks about it, it may not be long before robots are trained to hunt people on the street . . . But they’ll smile.

Ancient Mariner

Ponder stuff

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Current studies of human cells in humans reveal that you have within your body cells that belong in your family’s bodies. They didn’t originate in your genome, they belong to your mother, father, sisters, brothers and even cousins. The cells are perfectly happy doing what they were created for. How did you get your family’s cells?

Current studies in quantum mechanics suggest that there are no wrong answers – only different answers. Wow! How is The U.S. going to handle this? If colleges are still teaching ethics, how will they deal with this? Find Schrodinger’s cat; see what it thinks.

When does consciousness occur? In other words, what information and where did it originate such that you became aware (conscious) of that information? Don’t ask neuroscientists – they can’t agree. Some say it is formulated in the back of the brain, causing attention to be focused on it. Others say its the front of the brain, interpreting reality. Fortunately, neither can be wrong, only different. If only you could keep your mother’s cells out of it!

For the first time, scientists have created embryos that are a mix of human and macaque monkey cells. Maybe it will act like Jerry Lewis and quite likely like a relative of yours. Scientists also are putting pig semen in human embryos. Don’t  Americans have enough prejudice just with color difference? If this isn’t wrong, it certainly is different.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Who are the best replacements for a dead democratic party?

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Everyone is painfully aware of the republican party’s intentions regarding economics, fuel consumption, racial division, political domination using the military, etc. But where is another option? The democratic party is a silent shambles. The power democrats from the last half of the 20th century aren’t powerful anymore. Most of them are moving into retirement. What kind of representatives should we elect to replace them?

Bottom Up Government.  The last several decades have seen the demise of ‘one person, one vote’. Many states arrange political processes that favor one party over the other – the most common is gerrymandering state and local districts; a few states require gubernatorial approval of each Federal election representative. Obviously, it takes more funding to remain competitive even in one’s own state – that. means money replaces local voter influence.

We should select local leaders who would disavow gerrymandering, require rank voting and prevent dark money coming from outside the state. These steps would do a great deal to minimize the current plutocracy.

Economics   Since the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the flow of capital has increasingly become ‘trickle down’. It is easier to become richer for the rich and harder for the average citizen to catch a break even versus inflation. According to inflation, the minimum wage should be $22.80. Under today’s administration, all discretionary funding is at risk (discretionary funding is when the government helps citizens with their costs, covering everything from PBS to social security and helpful regulations controlling everything from tax rates to wildlife). Further, large corporations, especially those in computer technology, are not under the control of government regulation and slowly are changing the marketplace to a ‘middleman’ purchasing process where supply and demand do not set market price, e.g., Walmart, Amazon and Temu (online) among many more.

We should elect local leaders who advocate income ceilings for billionaires, restore and improve funding for large issues like medical care, public education and improve Federal Emergency Administration (FEMA) financial support to citizens as global warming threatens homes and communities. Insurance cannot maintain competitive pricing and slowly will back out of coverage due to hazards.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)   Tons of evidence exists from many sources – including tech managers who left the field for moral reasons – that the rule is “if you can do it, do it!”. There is no ethical control over artificial intelligence development. Already there are constant news reports about its effect on children and its hidden manipulations in the marketplace. Scamming grows more widespread. Most neutral scientists agree that there is an eminent confrontation between human politics and AI independence.

We should elect local leaders who understand the intrusion of AI, aka nonhuman influence, into a citizen’s daily life. Primarily, two issues require immediate government control: social ethics and corporate mergers. Generally, this requires a younger candidate who has been exposed to the new AI era and understands it influence.

International Unity   Much of the world is in disarray. Among the wealthiest nations, it is conflict over who will dominate the new age. In moderate nations, the issue is very similar to the retiree who depends heavily on Social Security: “If I lose the source of my primary income, there is nothing left”.  And certainly, in terms of body count, the poor nations are battling for survival at the citizen level. Add to this stress the pressure on religion, theocracies (Arab nations), the shifting weather patterns caused by global warming, the forced migrations of millions and there seems to be nothing in store except Armageddon.

We should elect local leaders who believe in economic integration as a solution to the trembling of world order. The prime example since the second world war is the European Union but the scope is not wide enough. China has a comprehensive strategy called ‘The Belt and Road Strategy’ which integrates trade across most of Asia and includes the eastern side of Europe. Could the U.S. forget racism and work to economically integrate the Caribbean and South America?

Civil Rights   Any constriction on how a citizen lives within the bounds of their humanness induces stress. The worst case is slavery. Today, the right to choose or not choose pregnancy is more a political battle than a medical one. Well rooted in the U.S. is racism – not just blacks but any shade other than Honky White. Add to this dozens of civil constrictions like the current reversal of the right for children born in the U.S. not to have birthright citizenship because their parents were not citizens. The treatment of our citizens is approaching the brutality of the early Persian Empire. Add to racism the severe treatment caused by very distinct and self-absorbed economic classes that is so severe that the poorer classes are bound to remain poor or otherwise short-sheeted for their entire life.

We should elect local leaders who respect humanness, that is, they show empathy and compassion in their speech and behavior. They should tend toward unanimity rather than classism. Their political arguments should never choose confrontation over unity.

Planet-Human Relations   As the current President seeks to further disrupt humanity’s relationship with the biosphere by cutting out solar and wind energy funding, Mother Nature is not amused. Stated briefly, humans have consumed about 70% of the land and imposed livestock grazing to the point that there are 27 cows, sheep, etc. for every displaced wild creature. Now that the weather patterns are causing agricultural hardship and global warming continues to accelerate to the point that New York has to pay attention to rising sea levels, the biosphere has become a political issue. Throw in a planetary overpopulation of 8 billion humans just since 1800, and Mother Nature clearly is taking issue with human behavior. Economic balance is at risk around the world.

We should elect local leaders who intellectually understand that humans have over used the planet’s resources. it must be clear in their rhetoric that everything from FEMA to solar power to water conservation, etc. are the way humans must placate Mother Earth.

YOU   The role of voting as an influence in a slowly changing national culture has changed. All of reality is leaping forward at light speed, forcing rapid adjustments to economics, society and future survivability. This means a casual vote for a familiar name or party every now and then doesn’t work anymore. Every citizen MUST take more interest in government.

Perhaps you should visit a council/state legislative hearing every couple of months. You may learn not only more about the issues but also more about your representatives. If a state or national campaigner stops in your home town, check them out at their event. Read decent, balanced political news in your local paper – even the odd-minded political columnists – maybe even write a letter to the editor about a personal issue. The point is, the job of saving the planet is in your hands.

* * * *

Mariner knows it would take a godlike creature to meet all the recommendations above but do the best you can. If ever there were a time, women may be a better choice than men. He recommends using age as a primary consideration. Finally, VOTE!!!

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

Back to reality

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Yesterday, mariner returned from his visit at a tribal encampment. It is a return to reality. He can imagine what it feels like to have a building collapse on you when it is hit by a Russian rocket. He spent a day in the tunnels with Nosey Mole before stepping out to check on things.

First, the planet is at war. 23 nations have open warfare, unofficial military skirmishes, political assassination or deliberate destruction causing deaths. Donald is considering invading Iran, Greenland and even Canada – although he vowed in his campaign for election that he would extract the U.S. from foreign wars.

Second, the smart computers will take over the world a lot sooner than we think. Consider the following excerpts from The Week:

1- Senate Republicans have added language to the GOP tax bill that would deny the states of Federal funding for broadband projects if the states attempt to regulate Artificial Intelligence. In other words, AI can do whatever it fancies in state computer systems.

2- Traditionally, humans have had at least one fail-safe method of controlling technology: hitting the off switch. But what happens when a machine wants to stay on? In May, the AI Safety firm Palisade Research reported that multiple OpenAI models had refused explicit instructions to power down. During tests, its Claude 4 Opus model even resorted to blackmail, threatening to release fictional emails that suggested the engineer trying to shut it down was having was having an affair. The implications for the age of super intelligent AI are disturbing.

3- (Paraphrased) The Axoloti is a creature famous for its ability to regrow its limbs. The salamander-like creature can regenerate all kinds of tissues – not only a missing limb but tissues in the heart, lung and brain. Not only regrow an entire limb but any part of that limb, patched just like the original limb. Scientists have discovered that reitinoic acid is the key to Axoloti’s skill. We’ve all made these limbs when we were embryos. The trick is how we can launch correct growing procedures in living humans.

Put retinoic acid and instructions to grow an embryo in the hands of a self-managing computer and Donald will have more than immigrants to worry about. If one thinks the Tea Party, the Patriot Group, the Ku Klux Klan and the Proud Boys all have the same brain – there is a 70% chance of that being true with smart AI.

Back in mariner’s home town, it is brutally hot. But, there are lawns to cut, dishes to wash, unpacking a truckload of supplies used for the reunion, constantly fighting tiny bugs in one’s eyes and ears, changing diapers, making dinner – that’s the real world. . . . . . . today.

Ancient Mariner

 

Why mariner dislikes smartphones

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Mariner apologizes to readers, family and friends who have heard enough castigation by alter ego Amos against smartphones and associated displacement of human interaction. But he has been challenged (frequently) again. So here is why smartphones are dangerous, then mariner will rejoin Nosey Mole:

Smartphones have a high convenience factor similar to air conditioning and automobiles, that is, it would be difficult to do without them. However, air conditioning and automobiles actually may contribute to improving Homo sapiens behavior. Smartphones will not.

In recent posts mariner has adopted the term ‘social accountability’ to represent the natural need for, dependence on and collaboration with other humans. These behaviors are in line with anthropological and psychological descriptions accepted universally today. Briefly, we are primates, we are mammals, we are capable of imagination.

Hundreds of thousand of years ago, primates were simple forest creatures whose social life did not go far beyond being responsible for supporting offspring until the child could go on its own. It didn’t take long before the mammalian instincts led to herding – yes, just like cows, horses and monkeys. Herding (let’s switch to tribes) is a defensive behavior to achieve several things: sharing threats and defeating them; sharing the burdens of raising offspring; identifying the best behavior to continue to be accepted by the tribe; and to have a realistic understanding of the world around them – a term used in psychology is ‘agency’.

To translate the last paragraph into conversational words, it is important to be engaged continually in interpersonal activity, engage with tribe members to resolve simple matters like food gathering, emotional balance not sustainable in isolation, learning what is currently important to the tribe, and exercising a complex brain to understand what is real and what is fantasy. A failed example today are the few who still believe the world is flat.

What everything written above means is ‘socializing with the tribe is what pulls together and identifies something called ‘reality’. Reality is not just an outside assumption, it also is an assumption of the subconscious brain, which must interpret whether to run, to watch or to take a pee. The tools of tribe association are our emotions, e.g., love, compassion, ritual, defensiveness and survivability. Communication with other humans is mandatory to identify a functional reality.

Mariner has experienced several families where Alexa has more conversation time with a person than their spouse has with them. It is a national news item that teenagers especially have emotional difficulties because the smartphone defines their reality and even tells them what they look like or how they should behave – without validation from the tribe. The smartphone has no ability to educate an individual with respect to their mental and personal reality. Yet it is so tempting that a brother and sister will sit on a sofa and communicate through an emotionless devise rather than actually use their own natural interpretations (AKA reality) based on tone of voice, facial expression, muscular tension or internal brain interpretations.

Another defect of the smartphone is personal isolation. Mariner attended a 100th birthday celebration recently. He sat at a dinner table with six chairs; the other chairs were filled by immediate family to the birthday celebrant. There was vibrant conversation about the times and experiences of the family – except for one person. She never spoke a word, never looked up and had no interaction with her own immediate family. Without interruption, she thumbed her way through an hour and a half of centenary celebration.

A similar dysfunction is the individual who will engage the smartphone at every pause in conversation to ask for detailed information from the smartphone then assuage their ego by expressing unnecessary information.

As to tribe relations, psychologically it is beneficial to acknowledge the tribe and its importance to reality. By doing grocery shopping at a supermarket, unconsciously one is aware that it takes a lot of tribe members to provide food and other essentials, that there is a unified reality that subconsciously builds self confidence and assures safety within the shopper’s reality. Shopping on the smartphone provides no tribe bonding and offers no way to sustain a person’s awareness of the world around them.

Which leads to the greatest danger of smartphones: interpreter of a person’s reality. Readers may recall that Mark Zuckerberg’s fantasy was to have everyone live in an online village designed just for them. Using publicly available data, the kinds of stores, recreational activities and even family members were all available at this online ‘reality’. Mariner can’t avoid saying it – this is identical to the lives buried in caskets in the movie ‘Matrix’.

Is domination by computers inevitable? Bill Gates thinks so. For what it’s worth, mariner does, too.

Ancient Mariner