11 min funding

What are you able to finish in 11 minutes?

Most people would probably answer along the lines of grill a nice steak, bake a pan of cookies or play one round of Candy Crush. Not Micheal Armani and David Jones however. They would get their dream funded. 

Called the Micro, their personal 3D-printer smashed its Kickstarter goal of $50,000 and is now well on its way to becoming one of the most interesting projects on the site.

Created by a team in Bethesda, MD, the Micro originally sold for $199 for early birds and his since risen by $100. It’s a tiny printer, to be sure, with a 4.5 cubic-inch build volume and a special internal spool that holds the filament inside the printer’s case. It can build objects 4.5-inches high, which isn’t much but it’s enough to have a bit of fun.

The founders, Michael Armani and David Jones, have done something quite intelligent: they’re building a very bare-bones printer with some very interesting software. However the full success of this campaign this is not because they have a great product. 3D-printers have been around for a good long while now, and if you really wanted one you would have gotten it already. 

Instead, what they do have is a shown a well structured purpose and functional solution. There a few key take-aways from this success story:

• Affordable, consumer printer: Micro keeps repeating and showing this. The product is affordable, making it available for any consumer
• Effortless: It is super-easy to use. The technical problems that may arise for consumers (How do I get blue-prints? How do I hook it up? What programs do I need?) are already explained and solutions provided by the company. This puts the consumer at ease with the product, making it comfortable.
• Power efficient = lower cost: By using more energy efficient components they can produce a better and more efficient product, which in the end lowers cost. 
• Showing of functions: The video clearly shows and highlights different real-life, momentary problems where the product can be put to use. It shows a woman fixing a broken shower curtain, a man printing a prototype for a project, or even just printing a small espresso mug because the last one broke.
• Explaining why they need money: This may be the most important and best part of this video. They explain the project, the funding, and the plans they have for the funds expertly and simply. There is no doubt in my mind, why they are asking for my money, and where the money I contribute is going to end up should I choose to fund them.

In short, an expertly executed project. Please have a look and comment below!

Google Taking Action for Free Speech

In an obvious nod to the recent controversy surrounding the freedom of speech on the web, Google is now taking a clear stand, advocating for a free and unsupervised Internet. It was on Wednesday, January 18th, that Americans stood up in opposition to PIPA and SOPA – bills that would have censored the Web and imposed harmful regulations on primarily U.S. businesses, but also the entire world.

Individuals took action and closed down their personal blogs, companies closed their websites, and thousands of US citizens called their elected representatives in Washington, voicing their mistrust. Their voices were heard. Washington recognized the damage these bills could inflict on the Internet, and as a result, PIPA and SOPA have been indefinitely postponed. However postponed is not good enough; these bills needs to be buried forever. Google recognizes this, and is not petitioning everyone to sign up for a free Internet.

This development follows quite expected from the recent year’s disclosure of Internet espionage. It may seem like ages ago now, but it has not even been a year since former CIA employee Edward Snowden ,in a series of exposés beginning on June 5, 2013, publicized thousands of classified documents to several media outlets. The leaked documents revealed operational details of global surveillance programs run by the NSA, and the other Five Eyes governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with the cooperation of a number of businesses and European governments.

Within the immediate days that followed Snowden had gotten his passport revoked, fled to and from several different countries, charged with espionage, and quickly seen himself go from patriot to traitor. However some people would say that he has made the exact opposite journey, and gone from traitor to patriot. Seldom has one man been called so many different polar opposites; a hero – a villain, a savior – an enemy, a patriot – a traitor.

The disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy. Two court rulings since the initial leaks have split on the constitutionality of the NSA's bulk collection of telephone metadata, and most would argue that NSA have greatly surpassed their jurisdiction.

Espionage and terrorism have always been the dark side of freedom of speech, and will probably continue to be so until the end of man. The Internet has since the beginning been open and free, and has lately played pivot roles in aiding freedom around the world. Countries like Alger, Tunis, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Yemen would not have started their paths towards democracy had it not been for the Internet. The Internet has help to uncover racial prosecutions and injustices in Saudi, Oman., Iraq, Djibouti, Sudan and West Sahara, and has also recently shined a strong light on the homophobic nation of Uganda, leading to western countries boycotting the African nation.

I short the Internet was born, and shall remain, free.

Governments alone should not determine the future of the Internet. The billions of people around the globe that use it and the experts that build and maintain it should. A free society depends on free expression. The flow of ideas and open access to information on the web helps communities grow and nations prosper.

https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/

This may be the most important stand we ever make, and Google is leading the way. Please read the petition and get opinionated.

Do you think governments should be able to restrict the Internet? Please comment below.

Google's expanding their AI Mind

Google is expanding its ambitions in Artificial Intelligence with the acquisition of AI company DeepMind for a reported $400 million.

It’s no secret that Google has an interest in AI; after all, technologies derived from AI research help fuel Google’s core search and advertising businesses. AI also plays a key role in Google’s mobile services, its autonomous cars, and its growing stable of robotics technologies.

With the addition of futurist Ray Kurzweil to its ranks in 2012, Google also has the grandfather of “strong AI” on board, a man who forecasts that intelligent machines may exist by midcentury.

If all this sounds troubling, don’t worry: Google’s acquisition of DeepMind isn’t about fusing a mechanical brain with faster-than-human robots and giving birth to the misanthropic Skynet computer network from the Terminator franchise.

DeepMind's Web site describes the London-based company as "cutting edge" and specializing in combining "the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms." The site says the company's initial commercial applications are simulations, e-commerce, and games.

Google has been particularly focused on advances in artificial intelligence recently. Scientists working on the company's secretive X Labs created a neural network for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors and then unleashed it on the Internet. The network's performance exceeded researchers' expectations, doubling its accuracy rate in identifying objects from a list of 20,000 items.

I wrote about Artificial Intelligence as a part of my article series The Conscious Internet. Do you think the age of Artificial Intelligence is upon us? Comment below...

The Conscious Internet - Part VIII: Our Digital Mary Shelley

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 8 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

The reality that the Internet today is such an intricate part of society that it would be almost impossible to revert back to a time without our digital connections, can hardly be contested. The total amount of information being sent through the ether each day is staggering and ever increasing.

Exactly which virtual straw will break the camel’s back is quite unclear, but what can be agreed upon is that it begins with massive amounts of shared data.

This occurrence is currently referred to as “Big Data”; the massive amount of unstructured, unorganized, and thereby unsearchable (“ungoogleable”) data that is today populating the Internet. Estimates place this type of data at about 90 % of all information, and it is only getting bigger. It consists mostly of social media, but also includes other data-generating interactions such as call-center conversations, TV footage, mobile phone calls, iMessaging, website clicks, etc.

The impacts of Big Data also seem impossible to predict. Game developers today create games which center on social interactions, and the ability to play and share gaming experiences with your friends online. As a result more and more games demand constant connectivity to even boot up a game, something that always results in trouble at launch day. 

When launching Diablo III in 2012, Blizzard Studios tried anticipating the amount of users logging on to play the game for the first time, keep in mind that this was probably the biggest release that year, so the statistical data provided to build servers capable of handling the onslaught was not hard to find. Still they failed. 

The servers were down for days, and “Error 33” (meaning the server is unreachable) was forever carved in Blizzard history. They history repeated itself a year later with the launch of SimCity 5, which again had players disappointedly waiting for a server connection. 

Regardless of our knowledge of the Internet, it seems as though we will never again be fully aware of what goes on within its digital boarders. In theory there could already be a primitive cognitive being in the net, a phantom invisibly surfing the wires in between servers. Our lack of knowledge combined with the speed of which the Internet is growing, would provide the perfect veil for which to hide behind.

In the race between mother board and mother brain the human intellect is currently in the driver’s seat. Our illogical complexity it seems is still guarding the key to cognition, but the grip may be slipping. However, a cognitive digital entity, in spite of SkyNet’s best foreshadowing, does not have to be a threat to society. It could rather turn out to be an invaluable asset for our human development. 

This artificial intelligence would instantly sense our mood if we had a bad day, and turn on an appropriate musical tune or TV show to cheer us up. It would provide moral support when faced with a difficult question, and laugh with us when amused. It would ease our everyday life and relieve both stress and workload. 

Research shows that the points in human history where health and safety have sky-rocked coincide perfectly with spikes in technological evolution. The introduction of the steam engine drastically reduced the work-load placed on the individual employee, resulting in a revolution in increased welfare for the overall human population. 

This innovation infinitely multiplied the power of our muscles, and helped us overcome the limitations of our own bodies. We now stand on the brink of another revolution as we are slowly overcoming the limitations of our intellect, outsourcing intelligence to the computers. 

The creation of a SkyNet is almost a certainty; we will before long have an interconnected, all-knowing entity governing the processes we live and function by, but rather than destroy us, maybe it will help us grow into the next step of human evolution.

Thank you for reading taking time to read my short article, hope you enjoyed it! What do you think our Internet future holds for us? Leave you comment below!

The Conscious Internet - Part VII: Flying over the Cuckoo's Nest

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 7 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

The Internet has grown exponentially over the last couple over years, especially with the introduction of mobile devices. Mobile devices overtook computers as the medium of choice for accessing the Internet worldwide during 2013, and there is today more apparatuses connected to the Internet than there are people on this planet. The number surpassed 10 billion in 2012, outnumbering the current human population of about 7 billion. 

Every minute that passes on the Internet 2 million searches are performed on Google, 600 new homepages are published, 100 000 new tweets are sent, and more than 48 hours of new media is uploaded to YouTube. In fact, every day more than 11 000 years of video is watched on YouTube and that number is growing. 

In 2013, every day 2.9 quintillion bytes of data (1 followed by 18 zeros) are created, with 90% of the world’s data created in the last two years alone. As a society, we’re producing and capturing more data each day than was seen by everyone since the beginning of the earth. To put things in perspective, the entire works of William Shakespeare, as it would be written down in a text document; represent about 5 MB of data. So, you could store about 1 000 copies of Shakespeare on a single DVD. This vast amount data produced every day would create a stack of DVDs reaching from the Earth to moon - twice. 

Obviously we are creating more data than is humanly possible to grasp, and as we are doing so the gap between creating data, and understanding that data, grows just as quickly. Creating content does not require any in depth programming knowledge no more, and the development in the field of interaction design is rather taking us in the opposite direction toward more intuitive and more easily understood interfaces.

This will in turn result in only a selected few possessing the front edge knowledge needed to understand the full entity that is the Internet, and sometimes not even these geniuses will full understand what is happening. In the end of the nineties a new looming menace threatened to strike at humanity; the Y2K bug. 

Computer experts around the world collectively announced that due to a design faux pas in coding the internal motherboard clocks for the world’s computers, there would be a substantial risk all computers would malfunction at midnight of December 31 1999. When writing the code, programmers had only used two digits to store the yearly number instead of four (99 instead of 1999), which would result in all the worlds computers at strike of midnight hitting a full row of zeros for both date and time (00 00 00 – 00:00). 

Coincidentally this is what the motherboard would show if the computer was blank, before it had been programmed to do anything, which is why the experts feared that resetting the clock may result in the same outcome; the computer could interpret this as a “kill switch” and automatically blank all its memory.

The public panic spread like wildfire. Elevators and airplanes where going to plummet to the ground. Ships would run ashore. The electrical grid would be shut down, and with it the pumps controlling the fresh water supply. People started stock-piling everything from water, kindle, and canned goods to gas-masks, guns, and diesel powered generators; anything you would possibly be need to survive the upcoming Armageddon. 

Others believed they could be spared through Y2K-insurances, and paid programming humbugs smaller fortunes to perform laptop-exorcism. But nothing was certain, and so, as the clock crept closer and closer to the fatal stroke of midnight the world held its collective breath. In retrospect, the ignorance displayed may have been amusing, but it proves a how little we really know about our own creations.

... ends in Part VIII: Our Digital Mary Shelley

The Conscious Internet - Part VI: The Bright Side of Life

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 6 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

But the real question remains unanswered still; how much intelligence is to be considered intelligent? Looking at the animal kingdom scientific views begin to differ quickly. Some biologists argue that intelligence can be found with all living organisms, while others only recognize the human intelligence.

One accepted definition of intelligence is the ability to draw conclusions to once environment and adapt accordingly, without any previous knowledge. In other words, distinguishing between educated and being intelligent. The two building blocks for this intelligence has been said to be once cognition and the survival instinct. 

A cognitive being will defend itself if attacked in order to ensure the survival of itself, and in the long run also its species. Ponder for a moment the idea of putting the same type of thinking into a program. A simple line of code would make the program copy itself whenever someone tried to delete it, thus escaping doom. Such a built in defense mechanism would in its perfect form create an eternal program, impossible to wipe out, without making it particularly intelligent. 

The answer to this question may not be to establish links between cognition and computers, but rather to introduce computers to cognition. Several movies toy with the idea of being constantly connected, where we are all living out human life on the net. This raises the question of where the cognitive being really exists. Is its existence tied to the physical body, or is it connected to the realm where it perceives its reality? 

Descartes, who probably would be history´s greatest mind when it comes to questions concerning existence, reasoned that mind always ruled body. He would probably argue that existence would be perceived as where the mind would be present, in other words; living (in) the dream.

... continues in Part VII: Flying over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Conscious Internet - Part V: Deciphering the Logic

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 5 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

Deciphering the Logic
When discussing cognition and artificial intelligence, one does not get far before encountering one of two major theses regulating the subjects; the Turing Test and the Chinese Room Theory. Computer experts around the world usually adhere to one of the two models, spending countless hours trying to prove its principles. 

The Turing Test was formulated in 1950 by the British mathematician Alan M. Turing, as a way of proving or disproving whether a machine was intelligent or not. The test places three different people; a man, a woman, and a interrogator, in separate rooms, with no contact with each other except for a link through which they can send messages - for instance via using a computer. The interrogator then asks the other two questions in order to determine which recipient is who. 

At an unknown point during the test, one of the two being interviewed is replaced by a very clever machine, programmed to answer the interrogator’s questions in the best of human behavior. The question Turing was asking himself was if a machine could be so smart enough that the interrogator would not be able to tell that a switch has been made.

Turing pointed out that the test alone was not created to, nor was it even suitable for, determining whether a program was intelligent or not. He saw the possibilities of a brilliant machine failing the test if its own intelligence differed too much from human intelligence. Or how an ingeniously programmed, but in essence fairly dumb machine, would be able to trick the interrogator into thinking it is still talking to a human counter-part. 

So far no machine has been able to pass the test. The best programs last for about a minute until they finally trip over themselves and repeat a sentence word by word. The program does not only need to be as quick and witty as its flesh and blood counterpart, it also needs to be as dumb and irregular. Some programs have also failed due to the fact that they were too quick, and gave back to accurate information, making the interrogator suspicious. Artificial intelligence also have to balance artificial unpredictability, and artificial stupidity, in order to be truly intelligent.

The Chinese Room Theory formulated in 1980 by John Searle, a professor in philosophy at UC Berkeley (University of California - Berkley), is based on almost the same thinking as the Turing Test. One test subject, who doesn’t know Chinese, is placed alone in a room with only a Chinese instructions manual to keep him company. Messages in Chinese would then be sent into the room, and the test subject is then asked to answer the message using the manual. 

Every message sent into the room would have a corresponding answer, given by the manual, which the test subject then would pass on. Searle argued that regardless of which messages was sent in and out of the room, the person decoding would never gain any knowledge of what was relayed simply because he did not know Chinese. 

The relationship with artificial intelligence is here quite obvious. A computer does not understand the code that is being fed into it, nor does it know how to decipher it, the computer simply knows how to react to the programming. It will therefor never, as a cognitive being would, be able to reserve itself against code it did not like, regardless of how illogical it may be. The computer would in other words jump of the bridge, if only it was programmed to do so.

... continues in Part VI: The Bright Side of Life

The Conscious Internet - Part IV: Running Free

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 4 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

Running Free

The second of November 1988 a young man named Robert T. Morris Jr. wanted to play a prank. He was a graduate student at Cornell University, and in the spirit of school competitiveness, he released a simple program on the Internet, a so called “worm”. The coding was modest; all the program did was to copy itself until the host computer ran out of memory and crashed. With the opus in hand, Morris hacked into rivalry school MIT’s computer network and unshackled his creation. Using a loophole in the operating system Unix´s network settings, Morris was able to bypass security measure and gain access to the core of the computer. Arriving at its destination the program began multiplying itself, blocking up memory, and thereby rendering the computer useless. When it was done with the first computer, Morris had told the worm to move on to the next neighboring computer, and repeat the process. What Morris had not taken into effect however was that in this case the neighboring computer was to be any computer hooked up to the Internet.

The process took less than a second to perform and within a few hours the chaos was evident. When Morris saw his creation escaping out of his control he immediately contacted a friend at Harvard to help him contain the issue. They quickly sent mail to major US servers, cautioning them of the worm and trying to convince them to shut down. But their warnings were already stacked up in the wake of the worm, and the plead was never even delivered. At that moment the worm had already destroyed more than two thousand servers, as well as over ten thousand computers, some of which belonged to NASA, the BRL, and MIT.

It took teams of programmers numerous weeks to sanitize all the affected computers, and the web was left inoperative for several days. What had started as a practical joke amongst two rivaling top universities, quickly escalated to the largest IT-devastation known to man. The total cost for the fabrications was estimated to be more than $53 000, and Morris himself was convicted to three years on probation, 400 hours of community service, and $10 050 in fines. Morris had negligently tripped over Pandora’s Box, and despite of all his programming skills and knowledge, he was unable to close it.

Suppose now that Morris´s worm was designed with another purpose. Instead of crippling the computers it came across, it would simply copy the contents of that computer and information back to a main hub. Morris would then have created a global network, where he personally controlled all the information that passed through it. A central computer system controlling most governing entities in the US; all-knowing and aware of any minute impact to the network – sound familiar? Today, such cataclysmic event may be regarded as far fetched. Improved anti-virus protections, higher encryptions, and better firewalls should prevent this type of disaster from ever occurring again. This is true to an extent; increased security measure has made it increasingly difficult to hack major system, however, at the same time, the algorithms used in viruses have also improved, placing this virtual arms race neck to neck.

... continues in Part V: Deciphering the Logic

The Conscious Internet - Part III: HAL 9000

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 3 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

HAL 9000

Since the dawn of inventions, man has strived to improve and ease the utilization of all his tools and creations, something that holds true also for computers, and for the Internet. Programmers spend hours in front of computer screens, slaving to create more user-friendly interfaces, all in an attempt of mimicking human communication and interaction as closely as possible. This, in combination with a wealth of science fiction movies, gave birth to the expression Artificial Intelligence, which has become a dominating force behind modern day computer development. Making computers smarter, able of understanding and helping the user, is now the cutting edge in modern computer marketing.

In reality the computers are not at all smart, but rather the logic we fill the computers with. Programs can be scripted to learn new actions, thereby inventing its own solutions to problems, but this is not without its own limitations. A computer will always follow the strict set of laws and regulations dictated by its’ code, and therefor lacks the ability to endlessly come up with new angles and strategies. This results in the fact that computers, faced with the simplest of problems, will be incapable of solving a given task simply because it falls outside of their main programming. Man, on the other hand, is an irrational and unpredictable being, capable of creating new and illogical adaptations to most anything. This is why chess-guru Garry Kasparov managed to beat the super-computer Deep Blue, in their first set of match ups. Even though Deep Blue had been programmed with every chess move known to man, and had counter action strategies for all of them, Kasparov’s mind used innovative, previously unseen strategies, that the computer did not know how to counter.

But in the same second Kasparov made his move Deep Blue analyzed it, broke it down into its components, and devised strategies for it, making the move obsolete. The same move could never be used twice by Kasparov, resulting in Deep Blue finally beating the old chess wizard, the second time they met. In his strive to master the computer; Kasparov was in essence just training it.

... continues in Part IV: Running Free

The Conscious Internet - Part II: A New Day Dawns

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 2 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.


A New Day Dawns

The step from movie to reality has however, time and time again, been proven to be a giant leap. This is especially true when it comes to science fiction. A walking, talking and fighting robot may be a thing of the future, but the essence of Terminator, the Internet sibling called “SkyNet”, may be closer to us than we think.

The building blocks for our modern day Internet were laid back in the sixties by no other than the US Department of Defense. The branch Advance Research Project Agency, ARPA for short, had since the end of WWII been researching and developing methods to quickly get large amounts of information from the general stab distributed to the front lines. The goal was to be able to relay exact and detailed information such as positions, maps and pictures, without having to risk the necks of countless couriers. The Soviets had already launched the Sputnik so the race for positioning oneself as the dominant monitoring eye in the sky was already lost. The war had to been won on the earth. Instead for linking the stars, the ARPA started experimenting with coupling different computers together, and then trying to run calculations on one computer remotely from the other. So the first computer network was born – ARPANET.

But limitations in contemporary technology halted the developers, and ARPANET barely made it of the drawing board. It would be an additional ten years before the ideas of an internet truly surfaced again. This time it was from the realm of the academic world. Lack of funding moved the ARPANET project from military aspects into the top universities of the US, who breathe life into the thoughts once again. The idea remained the same, to quickly and securely send information from one university to another, but the approach had changed. Scientists from MIT, Stanford and UCLA managed, under close supervision from ARPA, design an operating system capable of sharing the collective memory of the connected servers, a so called “Time-sharing” system. The concept borrowed from the thought behind the vacation homes with the same name, where several tenants collectively owns an apartment and thereby reserves the right to said apartment for a limited period of time. In a similar way, the programs were run on the computers, one at a time, sharing the collective strength of all the connected computers. Instead of having the computer run one program at a time, from start to finish, the new operating system allowed for switching in between programs, and by doing so letting several programs simultaneously share the memory´s total capacity. This allowed, for the first time, for a setup of servers capable of coping with the enormous data stream created by a network of computers, without crashing or processing the information for ages. The modern Internet as we know it was born.

... continues in Part III: HAL 9000

The Conscious Internet - Part I: Judgment Day

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 1 of 8. Happy reading, and please comment below.

Intro:
Over the years the Internet has grown into a custom of our everyday life. It exists today, unchecked, as the largest medium of all information agencies, and has with its power seized an important status in our social scheme. If you’re not on the net, you don’t exist.

Nevertheless it seems as if we are only on the threshold of its entire potential. If we regard the independence of a mind as the origin of cognition, then the Internet emerges as an entirely new entity. Is there a possibility that a conscious Internet could somehow be created, and if so, could it be by our own human negligence? Is the essence of "mind" really shared by all, or is there a danger in assuming that wisdom is esoteric?

Judgment Day

“Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.”

Many probably recognize the dark prophecies that are presented to humanity in the beginning of the cult movie Terminator II. Man lets technology run amok and the war against our own creations is upon us. The masters have in an instance gone from commanders to prey. The Terminator franchise is built on the premise that the US government builds a colossal network of computers called SkyNet. SkyNet´s main purpose is to replace soldiers on the battlefield, and instead pilot drones to do the fighting, thereby saving humans lives. The network is connected to the entire US defense force, controlling everything from stealth bombers to submarines, in order to perform flawless, unified and inhuman strikes.

But SkyNet is also built as a huge data warehouse for continuous ascertaining and adaption. Along its travels through the web, it collects information from other data bases and storage centrals it passes, relaying the information back to its own mother hub for analyzing. Through this process, SkyNet grows ever larger and more powerful, learning new ways to adapt and solve problems from every corner of the Internet. On the 29th of August 1997 SkyNet circles back around the web, discovering itself and thereby learning about its own existence - SkyNet becomes self-aware. Technicians monitory SkyNet immediately react and try to shut down the main terminal, but it is too late. SkyNet reacts, as any other conscious being would when threatened by termination, and launches a counter attack with all available means by its disposal. Within minutes nuclear warheads rain down on earth, and man’s doom begins.

... continues in Part II: A New Day Dawns

Sudanese BlackOut

War-torn country Sudan shut down Internet access for all its citizens yesterday.

Renesys a company that, among other things, monitors traffic flows on the Internet, wrote in a blog post yesterday that it is the largest international disruption in Internet traffic since Egypt did a similar thing in the February Revolution of 2011.

The reason why the Internet has been shut down by the Sudanese authorities are the riots that occurred after the government has announced that it will remove subsidies on fuels such as gasoline. This has led to widespread riots and at least six persons have been killed in these. Twitter and other online services has been used by protest groups to coordinate their protests, and it is this possibility authorities now believe they have blocked.

Conversation Prism

This is for all you Brian Solis-fans out there. Those who may not have heard of Brian, he coined the words “PR 2.0” and was regarded in the early years of web 2.0 evolution as “a founding father of PR 2.0 concept".

A few years back Solis created what today is know as the Conversation Prism, which is a display of channels, platforms and websites that fall under Social Media. Thankfully it is also the subject to regular updates, the latest one now in 2013. The prism describes all forms of social media with the most important websites and channels covered. It clearly shows how diverse and large the world of online conversation is. Enjoy!

IoT #Internet of Things

More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks. But how does this benefit you?

Imagine a world where everything can be both analogue and digitally approached; a world where everything is simultaneously connected; yes, indeed a world where you can actually talk to your coffee brewer - not strong enough!

This is the world of IoT; a world where every device has a communicator tag that allows it to talk, interact and learn from any other device with an Internet connection. Any object that carries a tag relates not only to you, but also through being read by a reader nearby, to other objects, relations or values in a database. In this world, you are no longer alone, anywhere.It holds dangers, but it also holds promises.

Currently we can discern two main blocks of thought on IoT. The first is a reactive framework of ideas and thought that sees IoT as a layer of digital connectivity on top of existing infrastructure and things. This position sees IoT as a manageable set of convergent developments on infrastructure, services, applications and governance tools. It is assumed that, as in the transition from mainframe to Internet some business will fail and new ones will emerge, this will happen within the current governance, currency end business models.

The second is a proactive framework of ideas and thought that sees IoT as a severely disruptive convergence that is unmanageable with current tools, as it will change the notion of what data and what noise is from the supply chain on to 'apps'.

What if through the IoT we can create a layer of data, open to all, through which individuals can decide for themselves what they are willing to pay for, to get direct feedback from their voluntary donations, to coordinate community spending that has a direct bearing to their needs, to negotiate with other people in other parts of the world how to use their money? Or just to adjust your coffee machine to make the exact same brew at the office as you get at home? Either or would be a revolution! 

Digging a Digital Grave

In this day and age messing up on the Internet can have irreparable consequences. One day you’re in, the other day you’re out, and the results of one missed step often spells doom for an entire online enterprise. One of the key factors when running an Internet venture is the number of users you have; this determines amount of ad-spots you can sell which in turn governs you´re revenue.

That is why I cannot, for the life of me, understand SVD.se´s latest Internet move. What it says, in short, is that if you´re not a subscriber (to SVD´s paper issues) you´re not allowed to read the articles on their webpage. It sounds in theory as a sound move, however if SVD.se keeps this up, it will surely be the end of the online venture. Here´s why:

1. In Sweden we have a few different news sources, DN.se, aftonbladet.se, expressen.se to name a few. Minute differences in wording may set them apart, but not enough for anyone to have a unique USP. That is, whatever SVD.se is reporting on I am sure to find it on DN.se. SVD is not unique enough to support this move! 
2. Even if I actually was a subscriber I doubt I would spend time finding my subscriber account, nor would I create it. It is simply too easy just to go to DN.se! 
3. When you have made one user turn away, you will never get the user back! 

It’s quite simple; SVD.se are digging their own grave, and for some reason they seem not to understand it. A months subscription will set you back 273 SEK. Currently SVD has about 600 000 paper subscribers, compared to DN who has about 900 000. To add insult to injury, SVD already tried and failed with an SVD-app for mobile devices, which collapsed miserably after just a few months of service. Additionally SVD.se - last year - passed DN.se, with about 1 587 000 unique weekly viewings, compared to DN.se´s 1 500 000 views per week for the month of May 2012. I hope SVD publishes the same survey for May 2013. The numbers will NOT be as favorable.

So, SVD.se please put away the shovel before it’s too late. If not – you may not have a website to publish to by the end of this year!