Ideas have merit. People have merit. Name-calling has no merit, ever.

Yesterday I was talking about discourse. One of the things I always find amazing is how quickly people are willing to call names.

1. Calling someone a name weakens your argument
2. When you argue with the person, you open the door for them to argue with you .

It is an interesting reality sometimes. The internet allows for the anonymous approach to human interaction. That was not available 30 or 40 years ago. The internet was just a baby then. Now it is a full-fledged toddler, and there are lots of Nos! One of the things I have noticed about people willing to deride others and use names and name-calling is that they cause issues. The issue is that fewer and fewer people interact on the site. The second is. Eventually, the administration team is forced to remove them.

When you dive into name-calling, you are on the edge of Cyber Bullying. I say the edge because if you only do it in replies or comments, it is less impactful than chasing someone across sites and doing that. So if it is one comment at a time or multiple comments on a single thread, it remains less dangerous than if you chase that person to another site. Commenting and chasing are two different things. One isn’t nice and really shouldn’t be allowed by sites. The other is very dangerous and should result in the person getting help.

The sad reality of the internet is that people think it is ok to call names. We had a politician that did that in the US. It isn’t acceptable, nor is it something people should do. Attacking a human being only destroys your argument. If your argument is so weak you can’t carry the argument and start calling names, then, in the end, you, the one who called the name or names, jose the argument.

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Talk about ideas, never people

I won’t throw out the topic of political rhetoric being protected as well; a huge mistake. I believe that, but it isn’t relevant to the world around us now. If you believe someone consistently lies, that is not something the rest of us can work around.

What worries me is discourse is dying. Discourse the discussion of an idea. It can be agreement, rejection, or anything between the two. It is two or more people arguing an idea. An idea is a concept. No human on this planet is an idea. Therefore, when discussing ideas, one does not discuss the person. This means if you insult the person rather than discuss the ideas, you are no longer in the realm of discourse. You should quickly get a petition together and run for office, as in that scenario, Political Rhetoric would remain protected.

In the realm of discourse, however, that effectively gives the argument to the other person. You say that the other person wins, even if you are right. Discourse is the discussion of ideas. There are no people in ideas. People have ideas, and some of the ideas people have are amazing. But never do we talk about the person.

I bring this up because the core tenet of free speech is discourse. We were talking about ideas. The reality of where we are now is that censorship is on the table. It was originally put on the table back in the framing of the constitution and the first few free speech rulings. That horrific concept that political rhetoric is protected regardless comes out of that. Discourse, however, is how this country was formed. It is the basis of what free speech is. When you argue someone’s idea, it is perfectly acceptable. When you argue with a person, that isn’t acceptable. That difference is critical.

Discourse is dying; help revive it before it is too late.

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Holograms, AR and making museums better!

As we move into the world of Holograms, AR and VR, I suggest a great company on the path to the first (holograms). Looking glass, I started with a Kickstarter project and am extremely pleased with their products. They are reliable and really fun to use! A great company to consider if Holograms are interesting to you. On the AR side, I strongly recommend the product AstroReality. Well, it isn’t a product, and honestly, neither is Looking Glass; they are both hardware and software combinations to deliver AR and Holograms.

AstroReality is cool because they have fun models of various things in the solar system that provide all sorts of fun data when you use their application. My favorite is the Footprint on the Moon. Using their application and pointing your phone’s camera to the footprint, you will hear all about it! Over time I suspect this technology will move well beyond the simple solar system. One of my favorite things is wandering museums. I am not a huge fan of docents, as, for the most part, they are hit or miss. For the worst part, they are, well, bad.

You could embed AR scans next to great works of art and record the best docents as they wander the museum. I understand the value of museums; for me, they are less than many other things but important. I have an opportunity to view and understand the museum without interruption. If I wanted to know more, I hit the AR tag. Museums can’t be focused on intellectual appeal. They have to be something we all want to see, understand and use. AR is an equalizing technology that would allow for the presentation of the best day of the best docent and no more hit or miss!

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does talking on the cell phone count?

I’ve played with the EKO electronic stethoscope for a bit now. The newest version includes an EKG capability. I use it mostly to check my current heart rate and other things. The cool thing is it pumps the information into my apple health, which I can share with my doctor. I can also review my average steps, average calories burned per day, and so on. It continues to improve overall. Again the difference for me may be much different than the value for you. I am curious how many steps I walk in a day. I am curious about what my average heart rate is.

As technology continues to improve life, we also need to consider the impact on our privacy and our time. I know many people say that, at best, spending more than an hour on your cell phone is a bad idea. I wonder if that includes calls? I spend 6-8 hours on my cell phone most days during the work week. That drops radically when the weekends and I am not working. But the argument or end state here isn’t the weekend. It is during the week. Does talking on a cell phone count as using the cell phone? If so, I am way over the recommended amount!

I know; that question runs too deep!

The other technology that interests me a lot right now is 3d printing. I’ve probably posted ten articles about that in the last two years. It is an interesting capability and one that I think many more people should explore. There is so much to be built in this world of ours!

Just remember, it is not the fancy name on the printer that matters; it is truly the software!

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The law applies to all

A long-time friend emailed me yesterday with the greatest line I’ve ever heard. “It is an illegal search even though a court of law accepted the argument. Because every King’s home is his castle, you cannot violate the king’s castle.” I have to say that it made me laugh!

Two updated bits from past reviews:

1. The Pod3 from Eight continues to get better. Although, one thing they don’t warn you about. Dogs like to sleep in cool areas. So now Dylan has moved to my side of the bed.
2. Air Pod pro (I am on a pod review day ). I keep finding amazing features. I found that I can invoke Siri directly and not take my phone out of my pocket!

I need to be more structured about following up on reviews. I have done them for years, but the follow-ups are usually hit or miss. Anyway, lots to do this weekend; I need to get a bunch of projects to do status. I keep putting things off while focused on one project. That project is out of the way, so it is time to get going and finish up many projects that have been waiting.

I will end with a simple thing. As a person that works with US Government entities, I understand that clearance is critical. Not just that you have clearance but that you follow the rules of that clearance. I don’t care why someone would break the rules, but I do care that the penalties are applied evenly.

1. If I broke the rules related to classified documents, I would lose my clearance.
2. If I broke the rules, my company s could be forbidden from bidding on Government contracts for some time.

I don’t care about jail time—just a fair application of the rules for everyone. Based on George Washington, the president is the first citizen. But remember, he was willing to fight for his beliefs and die in service of his country. Then as president, he said the president was the first citizen. First means many things, but it does not mean king. It also means the law applies to that person as well as others.

Let’s apply the law fairly to all.

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Another tech wander…

I am sorry. Is it really that hard? It is not what you say. It was never what you say. It is what you do. How you do it is also more important than what you say.

Yesterday I posted. In part, because that is something that truly interests me in part, that is something I flip through. For a long time after cell phones had GPSs, I had a portable GPS I took with me on every trip. It wasn’t that the phone’s GPS wasn’t adequate. I could preload the destination, and once the GPS was on and ready to go when I arrived, it would start me to my first destination. Because of where I was flying, like the connections and hops and so on, and any other job requirements I had at the time, I often landed at night. GPS became the lifesaver. There were many times I landed in cities where I was first traveling was very difficult. I did not have a GPS got a paper map. I can only say that there were several times that I had to pull over to the side of the road, check the map, and try to figure out where I was.
 
I will stop there because today’s column is not about connections with your cell phones; I left out quite a few in my article yesterday. I want to talk about the concept of technology’s evolution. First off, the reality of technology is it can be scary. What I mean by that is technology can move faster than you as a person are prepared for or prepared to embrace. It creates not fear but not a very good feeling. It is somewhere between fear and failure. There that fear for that iteration of fear and failure or wherever it lives in that spectrum is what causes people to reject technology often. But I think the reality is technology, just like guns. It isn’t the technology for the weapon that is a problem. Is the person holding it or using it?
 
So I’ll end today with the concept that I’ve spoken of many times the incredible reality of the connected camera. Now look, I understand the cell phone Camera is replacing the digital and traditional DSL cameras. I also understand that your boat is likely waterproof. Do you want to take your phone and risk 30 feet of water pressure cracking history? If there is a correction screen, your phone is gone. This that ultimately is the power was connected to cameras. You can connect to a draw and see what the world is about. You want to have a girl without a camera and put their phone on it. The first, why would you control the drawer, and second, what happens if the drone crashes? The evolution of the connected camera is incredibly interesting. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

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Is that a phone I see before me?

One of the things that have been a long-time interest of mine is the reality of conversion: Voice, text to voice, language and handwritten, optical character recognition, and so on. The list of things you can convert today easily compared to just ten years ago is amazing. Ten years ago, OCR wasn’t easy. Now, you can do that with your cell phone. Language conversion continues to improve. Google and Apple translate allow a connected phone to easily translate from one language to another and back again

Timekettle, Ambassador, and others, including Travis, allow you to carry a device or earbuds that can perform offline translation (if you have ever roamed internationally, the data charges can be huge). All of this has been exploding onto the market in the last ten years.  Now, simply walking around with your phone, you can convert written language (Chinese to English or Spanish to English ,and so on) into something you can read on the fly. The quality of the translation isn’t perfect, but you can still read what you couldn’t before.

You can also hear someone speaking another language and understand what they are saying. All of this is in a device sitting in your pocket. A device 20 years ago had just added a camera and a GPS.  Now you can connect a drone and store drone video. You can connect to an ROV and play with the ROV video. You can add a connection to a sonar buoy and see what is under the water. It amazes me how far cellular technology has come in the last ten years. The next thing (rumored) is the integration of Satellite and standard pheons where your cell phone can also be a Sat phone. That means you will lever lose a connection. You will always be able to place that call.

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On A positive note! There are good things about AI!

I have spent the last two weeks building a “positive” view of AI/MI. Let’s start with this Artificial Intelligence term. How can a human-created intelligence that suddenly shows human thinking patterns (and is therefore accepted by humans as being sentient) be artificial? If the intelligence is aware, but in a way humans don’t understand today or in a way that is different from what humans do, it would be artificial. We are creating automation systems that are becoming more human-like, that is, natural machine intelligence.

I realize I am a voice in the wilderness on this one. Once a moniker reaches the mainstream, it is far too late to change it!

So the links are below to the articles. I’ve found quite a few positive impacts AI/MI can have in the short and mid-term. I do believe any situation where humans struggle is something that would be a good replacement area. No, Johnny, you can’t have the machine intelligence do your math homework. Logical and structured considerations are critical in moving down the path of implementing intelligence-based systems. From a pure comedy perspective (all of these are jokes), I have a few other impacts I thought I would share.

1. Your intelligent refrig refuses to open in two situations. The first is during a power failure (which smartly keeps cold). The second is after 10 pm (just a snack, NO)!
2. Your autonomous car pulls over and puts you in timeout. Even though the autonomous car was driving, you called the other drivers’ names. Ergo the timeout!
3. Your smartphone and smartwatch have blank screens during meetings—every once in a while, the screen flashes. I am not at the meeting stop looking at me!
4. The smart stop light stays red for a very long time. Finally, a voice on your radio says, “I am not changing; I don’t like you.”

All kidding aside, there are many positive impacts, and the funny ones are always interesting to consider. A couple of them, I think, are already happening! We must consider what is best for the majority going forward with machine intelligence. Tomorrow could be a positive day!

Positive AI/MI articiles

https://hubpages.com/technology/Futurist-More-postive-impacts-for-Machine-Intelligence-AI

https://hubpages.com/technology/Futurist-More-postive-impacts-for-Machine-Intelligence-AI

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Let’s move to the center

Two words really both me right now. Mostly it is their definition that is making me nervous.

Most: the greatest amount

Bear: to support or carry the weight of (also a large carnivore).

You cannot change the definition of words to fit your view of the world. Simply put, most means the greatest amount or number. Since just over half of Americans voted in 2016 and 2020, and less than 50% of those people voted for Trump, there is no use of the word most about Donald Trump.

Bear, well, that has to do with the 2^nd amendment.

We are a nation.

We are a people.

It is time to move to the center. There is no answer on the far right. There is no answer on the far left. Look, am I happy the FBI raided a former president’s home? Not really, but I am not happy because that person has been out of office for more than a year and still has classified documents in an unclassified location. If I did that, I would lose my classification. I would no longer be legally allowed even to see those documents. It is no longer an issue of privilege. It is an issue of doing the right thing, period.

We will never see the end of this litigation. The former president will die without legal resolution. Why? Because that is the tactic he will choose to employ—Delay, delay, and delay, exactly what he has done for many years. I remind you of his words – only guilty people take the 5^th. He took the 5^th in New York, apparently many times.

We need to move to the center.

The legal unraveling of our nation is not something we would be able to recover from for many years. It took ten years for the stain of Watergate to leave our national political scene. ARE (read possibly, maybe, could be) we seeing the 2^nd GOP President in the last 50 years that believe they are above the law?

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I am reminded of days passed

I’ve been taking pictures from around the world and using them as my Blue Jeans background during calls. I stopped doing that long, not because it wasn’t fun but because my work video camera died. It took a few months to figure out the what and why of the dead camera. Anyway, I am back to doing that, and I have to say it is a lot of fun! I traveled more than 1.5 million miles over ten years. A million of those were on United Airlines, and around 350000 were on Northwest. I have a sprinkling of other airlines as well over time.

What I have witnessed in terms of changes over the last 20 years (traveling and then not traveling) is an extremely interesting evolution. Technology has continued to evolve. You can do more with less now. What once was two-three and even four devices are now done with a single device. Normally the Swiss army knife approach isn’t optimal (saw down a 100-foot tree with a Swiss Army knife. Yes, it is possible, but possible in a lifetime. It would take many days to cut down a tree that size with a Swiss army knife. A chain saw would cut it down in minutes).

We are not, however, sacrificing the ability with the addition of the functionality to our phones. The phone’s camera is not bad now. The GPS is good. The memory continues to get bigger. The processor in the phones is now 64-bit. I would argue that Moore’s law is still alive; it is in your pocket just now!

Though, it was fun to end today when I was traveling. It is a lot more fun to be home. I don’t miss traveling.

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