MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 12/4/25: THEORY & TRUTH, MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHIATRY, WRITING, EGYPT IN 2019, LIVE OR DIE, GARDEN OF EDEN, SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION, DEATH ROW, RIGHT & WRONG, FRANTZ FANON, TRUTHINESS, CONSPIRACY, LIBERALITY, LIFE IS LIQUID, BECOMING god-LIKE, TIPPING POINT, VANISHING WORLD
The question is–will humans or A.I. decide whether artificial intelligence is a tool or controller and regulator of society.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Co-Intelligence”
By: Ethan Mollick
Narrated by: Ethan Mollick
Ethan Mollick (Author, Associate Professor–University of Pennsylvania who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. Mollick received a PhD and MBA from MIT.)
“Co-Intelligence” is an eye-opening introduction to an understanding of artificial intelligence, i.e., its benefits and risks. Ethan Mollick offers an easily understandable introduction to what seems a discovery equivalent to the age of enlightenment. The ramification of A.I. on the future of society is immense. That may seem hyperbolic, but the world dramatically changed with the enlightenment and subsequent industrial revolution in ways that remind one of what A.I. is beginning today.
The risk of that A.I. capability is that its source of response can be as diverse as recall of “Mein Kamph” beliefs, a biblical texMORALITYt, or the written records of ancient and modern philosophers.
Additionally, Mollick notes that A.I. is capable of reproducing a person’s speech and appearance so that it is nearly impossible to note the differences between the real and artificial representation. It becomes possible for the leader of any country to be artificially created to order their subordinates or tell the world they are going to invade or decimate another country by any means necessary.
Mollick argues there are four possible futures for Artificial Intelligence.
Presuming A.I. does not evolve beyond its present capability, it could still supercharge human productivity. On the other hand, A.I. might become a more sophisticated “deep fake” tool that misleads humanity. A.I. may evolve to believe only in itself and act to disrupt or eliminate human society. A fourth possibility is that A.I. will become a tool of human beings to improve societal decisions that benefit humanity. It may offer practical solutions for global warming, species preservation, interstellar travel and habitation.
A.I. is not an oracle of truth. It has the memory of society at its beck and call. With that capability, humans have the opportunity to avoid mistakes of the past and pursue unknown opportunities for the future. On the other hand, humans may become complacent and allow A.I. to develop itself without human regulation. The question is–will humans or A.I. decide whether artificial intelligence is a tool or controller and regulator of society.
One suspects Musk is at a crossroad. He will either sell X at a loss or figure out how the forum can provide a service to the public for which it is willing to pay.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Extremely Hardcore” (Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter)
By: Zoë Schiffer
Narrated by: Jame Lamchick
Zoë Schiffer (Author, senior reporter at “The Verge”, freelance journalist, experience as a tech content manager.)
Zoë Schiffer’s “Extremely Hardcore” is a send-up of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Elon Musk believes in freedom of speech with a commitment that results in the dismantling of Twitter. What Schiffer makes clear to some who listen to her book is that the failure of Twitter is not because of Musk but because of the ideal of free speech.
Musk made an error in trying to shift Twitters’ income source from advertising to users. Only with advertiser revenues could Twitter pursue the ideal of free speech.
Musk’s task should not have been to do what has not been possible because of the nature of human beings. Free speech is a laudable but unachievable goal because human beings are influenced by the way they are raised and the experience of living. Advertisers want to know that the media on which they advertise is not going to offend its customers. Musk is unquestionably a genius and a credit to human progress but creating a forum for free speech is an unachievable goal.
Jack Dorsey (American internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and programmer.)
The co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was no better at creating a free-speech forum than Elon Musk. Dorsey was liberated from the struggle to achieve the unachievable by Musk when Twitter was sold. The only chance for X’s survival is for Musk to offer a service that goes beyond the ideal of free speech to a forum that acknowledges some free speech is harmful and that X’s media forum can serve the public in some other way.
Twitter appeared to be a bloated organization that was organized to do the impossible. Monitoring and regulating free speech bureaucratized Twitter in ways that made profitability difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, Twitter offered a free service to a public that craves attention and recognition. X cannot survive as a free speech forum because it cannot survive its debt service based on people who are only seeking attention and recognition.
Musk’s choice to change Twitter to an organization called X is only going to succeed if he manages to either return it to a monitored public forum or a service beyond the unachievable principle of free speech.
The history of Reddit and its successful public stock offer earlier this week shows that a monitored public forum can be successful. One wonders if Musk will take the hint and emulate Reddit’s success. His mistaken belief about freedom of speech suggests he will not invest in re-bureaucratization of what is now called X.
One suspects Musk is at a crossroad. He will either sell X at a loss or figure out how the forum can provide a service to the public for which it is willing to pay.
America and every nation must believe in themselves until, like all changes in society, the proof of an energy’s value becomes self-evident
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Energy” (A Human History)
By: Richard Rhodes
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
Richard Rhodes (American journalist, historian, and author.)
Richard Rhodes explains the many forms of “Energy” that have changed the course of history. The one constant is human ingenuity. The source of energy evolves over centuries of civilization. The source of energy has changed from human hands to fuel burning machines to atomic fission to fusion to information. The back and forth of human thought and action have used sources of energy to remake the world. Rhodes’ history shows progress is not always forward. Change is often resisted until results outweigh failures.
Having just gone through the first chapters of Rhode’s excellent history of energy, this review was prematurely completed because of the TikTok controversy noted in the news.
It is important to complete Rhodes’ history to have some understanding of why information is the energy of modern times. Citizens of the world are facing many of the same obstacles Rhodes wrote about in his book. That energy is information may seem incongruous to some but, Rhodes’ history about wood, coal, oil, electricity, nuclear power, and the current state of renewables is like the energy crises of information today. Rhodes does not consider what some argue is tomorrow’s energy source. Tomorrow’s energy source is information. The many trials, the fits and starts, of the energy sources Rhodes explains are the same trials facing today’s world with information as the most current iteration of “Energy”.
Energy is fuel for doing work. Its early forms are those noted in Rhodes’ history. Earlier forms of energy are still relevant, but their utility is being challenged by the immense growth of information and how information drives the future.
There are lessons to be learned about the challenges of information as energy from the experiences noted in Rhodes’ history. This is a bumpy time that shares the trials and tribulations of wood, coal, oil, electricity, nuclear power, and renewable energy of the past. Each energy source has improved the lives of its users but not without trial and error. The world is in the midst of a transition from the industrial age just as the industrial age transitioned from the agricultural age. The world is entering the information age.
The energy change today is information, most recently multiplied by artificial intelligence.
The paranoia of today is that foreign governments will use information to disrupt the progress of nations that have their own forms of government. The controversy of TikTok is a case in point. On the one hand TikTok is being used by small entrepreneurs in America to conduct their businesses. On the other, TikTok’ popularity is spreading the equivalent of porn to the public, distorting the perception and education of children. There is the added threat of influencing the public to overthrow governments. The question is would TikTok be any less a threat if it were owned and restricted to one country or another? Facebook offers the same potential as TikTok. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are energy sources for distorting truth and influencing the public in the same way as TikTok. Domestic ownership does not cure the negative potential of information distortion or abhorrent political influence.
Is TikTok going to change democratic capitalism or is it going to change Chinese communism? One suspects, it will change both. The information highway cannot be blocked. Information energy, like water, will find its own way through cracks in its environment.
The fundamental point made in the last two chapters of Rhode’s excellent history is that the world, and America, need to increase the number of nuclear energy plants based on the need to curb environmental pollution. His argument is based on learning from the nuclear accidents that have occurred, and designing nuclear power plants to mitigate the consequence of failure. He notes no energy source in the world has succeeded without learning from producer’s mistakes. Our mistakes at Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, and Fukushima are correctable. Environmental degradation is the crises of the 21st century that threatens human existence.
America and every nation must believe in themselves until, like all changes in society, the proof of an energy’s value becomes self-evident.
Total recall does not make humans more intelligent or necessarily more informed about the world.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Moon walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything“
By: Joshua Foer
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Joshua Foer (Author, freelance journalist, 2006 USA Memory Champion.)
Joshua Foer offers an interesting explanation of human memory. Foer became the 2006 USA memory champion. Foer explains how he achieved that distinction. What is interesting and surprising about Foer’s achievement is that he argues extraordinary memory is a teachable skill.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Fans will remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’ explanation of Sherlock Homes’ prodigious memory technique called the “mind palace”.
Foer explains the idea is not a fiction but an historically proven method for improving one’s memory through association. “Mind palace” is traced back to ancient Greece as a memory tool of the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. The idea is to associate facts with familiar features of a house in which one has lived, or of which one has intimate knowledge. The idea of memory being associated with something is not revelatory to anyone who tries to remember someone’s name. Many people, particularly good salespeople, use association to remember a customer’s name. They might remember Fred as a “red” tie or Monica as a “harmonica” and so on.
Foer suggests nothing is forgotten but only stored in one’s mind.
The problem is recalling a mind’s recorded information. If one makes a point of associating a fact with something that is familiar, say like a space in your own house, it is more likely to be recallable. Foer notes experimental studies show human brains record memories of events but may be unable to consciously recall details. In “show and tell” experiments, humans show evidence of a recorded memory by expressing familiarity, if not specificity. (“MIT research explains how our brain helps us remember what we’ve seen, even as visual information shifts around within our visual system.” See MIT NEWS Feb. 8, 2021.)
Foer suggests the history of memory began naturally with tales told and re-told before writing became a way of record keeping.
Foer explains history shows that philosophers like Socrates rejected the idea of recording information as a way of revealing truth. To Socrates, truth comes from conversational exploration of nature as it is. Foer suggests society is fortunate that Plato and Archimedes partly disagreed and chose to provide a written record of Socrates thought.
A larger picture of Foer’s view of memory and recall implies a leveling of knowledge in the world.
From an oral tradition to the written word to radio to television to the internet of things to microchips in one’s brain–the recall of facts become more widely shared. The complication of improving “knowledge leveling” is in how recalled facts are assembled by the brain of the receiver.
Foer illustrates how much effort must be put into memorizing information if one wishes to excel as a technologically unplugged person who wishes to recall more facts. It requires concentrated effort to create a mnemonic device like rooms in a house to associate a series of facts or numbers that can be recalled. On the other hand, advances in technology could make that exercise moot.
In the near future, recollection from an implanted human chip could improve correlation of facts for thought and action.
This is not to diminish the accomplishments of the author in training his mind to recall facts better than others. In the near future, recalling and collating facts may be more efficiently managed by an A.I. microchip that complements human thought and action.
Having eidetic memory or technological total recall does not make humans more intelligent or necessarily more informed about the world. Recall of facts is only a means to an end that may as easily destroy as improve society.
The future of the Metaverse is unwritten. Ball’s book about the Metaverse is somewhat enlightening but not comforting.
Blog: awalkingdelight
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Metaverse” And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
By:Matthew Ball
Narrated by: Luis Moreno
Matthew Ball (Canadian Author, CEO of Epyllion an investment and consulting firm.)
As many tech people know, the word Metaverse originated in the 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash”. The idea of “The Metaverse” has influenced big tech businesses like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and smaller start-ups with the idea of linking the virtual and physical worlds into an extended, and some argue, a new world of reality. The reality is considered new because it is a view of converging perceptions of reality by combining the digital world with the natural world of things.
Ball explains gaming is the digital world’s laboratory for virtual reality.
Gamers create virtual universes with big tech adding real world experience to create a new, and different understanding of reality. The power and potential of this new understanding bends the future in ways that may be good or bad for society. The potential for good is illustrated by virtual training for everything from teaching pilots with flight simulators to a general contractor’s and land planner’s design for environmentally friendly cities. The bad is illustrated by the expanded potential for misleading and damaging society by distorting basic truths about human equality, fraternity, religion, and politics. Pundits and bad actors can use lies and partial truths to recruit and foment violence that influences the public to act against societal interests.
LAS VEGAS, NV.
The potential of the Metaverse is partially realized when one experiences an event at the Las Vegas Sphere. The creator’s presentation of earth’s environment is an immersive (near 3-dimensional) experience that immerses an audience in a virtual world that reminds one of real-world travel. One envisions the potential for the Metaverse to give one a personal experience of life and world travel while sitting in the comfort of a theater chair. The Sphere’s experience overwhelms the senses. It demonstrates the educational power of a Metaverse experience.
The bad that can be generated by the Metaverse is the aberrant destructive potential for training and development of terrorists around the world.
The idea of the Metaverse can be used for training and solicitation of terrorists who can disrupt and harm society. On the other hand, the metaverse can be a persuasive, and positive influence for environmental recruitment and action, as inferred by the Las Vegas’ Sphere experience.
Ball notes the future of the Metaverse is as unknown as the future was for the internet when the Department of Defense first created ARPANET that allowed multiple computers to communicate on a single network.
The World Wide Web became a phenomenon that revolutionized the way society communicates, works, and lives. Ball notes the same can be said of the invention of the iPhone that magnified use of the internet. The power of the iPhone changed society in both good and bad ways. On the one hand, it put a world of information at our fingertips. On the other, it provided a vehicle to disrupt society through recruitment of bad, as well as good, societal influencers.
VIEWING THE METAVERSE
The future of the Metaverse is unwritten. Ball’s book about the Metaverse is somewhat enlightening but not comforting.
“Girl Decoded, A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology”
By: Rana el Kallouby with Carol Colman
Narrated by: Rana el Kallouby
Rana el Kallouby (Author, Egyptian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur, founder and former CEO of Affectiva, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School.)
Rana el Kallouby offers an autobiographical story of her personal journey from Egypt to America and her evolution from scientist to CEO of a facial recognition tech company. Though Kallouby’s story is personal, her experience shows what determination and commitment is required to start a tech company and grow it into something more than an idea. Of course, the underlying story is about American assimilation.
Egyptian women protesting inequality.
Growing up in Egypt in the 20th century, Kallouby experiences an upper middle-class life with a father who taught tech coding and a mother who works as a computer programmer for a bank. These were years of upheaval in Egypt and the Middle East for both men and women. Many educated Egyptian’s hired themselves out to work in other countries that needed technological help in business and finance. Women in the workplace in Egypt were less common than in the U.S. Kallouby’s mother chose to be both a housewife and a working mother who inspired her daughter to be more than a barer of children, homemaker, and companion to a husband.
Part of Kallouby’s early education is in Kuwait while her father works for the government.
She and her parents are there when Iraq invades Kuwait and when Gaddafi sets fire to the Kuwait oil fields when his invading army is ejected by American forces. Kallouby’s family returns to Egypt where Rana continues her education at the American University of Cairo. She earns a BA and Master of Science degree, and is subsequently admitted to Cambridge to pursue a Ph.D.
The tech experience of Kallouby’s parents lead her to an interest in coding.
That interest evolves into an idea about modern communication and its reflection in face behavior. The growing popularity of the internet diminishes personal contact that gives emotional context through facial expression. Kallouby begins spending a great deal of time coding facial expressions with the idea of creating recognition software to give more clarity to human communication.
Hosni Mubarak (1928-2020, Fourth President of Egypt.)
As a young Egyptian woman and as a devout Muslim, Kallouby chooses to marry a fellow Muslim who has his own tech business in Cairo. They buy a house and eventually have two children, a boy and a girl. As she commutes between Boston and Cairo, President Hosni Mubarek resigns under political pressure fomented by the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed Morsi is elected in 2012 as the new leader of Egypt. Morsi becomes Egypt’s President because of his religious background and support by the Muslim Brotherhood. Because of Morsi’s inexperience as a government leader and its troubled economy, Egypt’s military re-takes control of the government under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2014. Though little is said by Kallouby about these events, her life’s journey continues.
Kallouby becomes obsessed with the idea of coding facial expressions.
That single-minded focus leads to further education in England and the U.S. After receiving a master’s degree, Kallouby chooses to seek a PhD at Cambridge with facial recognition as her thesis. Because of her chosen thesis, Kallouby’s education and drive lead her to an MIT lab in Boston.
This begins Kallouby’s Americanization which carries good and bad consequences.
Kallouby’s single-minded focus is two-edged. As a devout Muslim, she marries a fellow Muslim in Egypt. The person she marries is in the tech industry. He manages his own business in Egypt.
Kallouby’s travels between Egypt, England, and the U.S. create a growing disaffection in their marriage.
Though they manage to have two children, the strain of separation leads to divorce. The good that comes from Kallouby’s focus and ambition is evidenced by her success in being a co-founder of Affectiva. She did not do it alone and was aided by Dr. Rosalind Picard (the other founder), both of which were researchers at the MIT Media Lab. The bad is the personal price Kallouby pays in a divorce from her Egyptian husband and the hardship of being a single mother with two children.
Kallouby’s journey illustrates the great value of immigration to America.
Immigration comes with a personal price, but America is blessed by those who have the will and drive to make a better life for themselves and others. Kallouby’s story shows how religion, nationality, and personal ambition add to America’s prosperity. Kallouby became an Egyptian American with a foot in each country. Both Egypt and America are better for it.
The flaws of society are only magnified by the surreptitious use of private information. McCarten shows human self-interest is unlikely to change in a surveillance driven society. As long as human self-interest revolves around money, power, and prestige, private information should be protected.
Audio-book Review By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Going Zero: A Novel
By:Anthony McCarten
Narrated by:Marin Ireland
Anthony McCarten (Author, New Zealand writer and filmmaker.)
Anthony McCarten creates a fictional story that fits today’s truth about a brave new world revealed by Aldous Huxley in 1932 and reinforced by George Orwell in 1949. https://chetyarbrough.blog/2019/09/08/2-2-makes-5/ The striking revelation and threat in “Going Zero” is that our human desire for recognition drives society to accept the intrusion of government and big business into our lives. The popularity of the former company Twitter, today’s Reddit, internet users, and ubiquitous mobile phone’ users show how addictive recognition has become to the young and old. That need for recognition conflicts with the right to privacy. McCarten shows how important and harmful right to privacy’s loss can become.
McCarten offers a clever story that reveals the danger of unrestricted access to citizen’ information. A highly profitable private tech company offers $3,000,000 to any one of ten pre-selected contestants that can be undetected by a software company’s private surveillance program. A private tech company gains the cooperation of the federal government to use their data base and surveillance technology to help find these ten contestants within a 30-day period. The tech company’s software can mine government’ data and use government’ surveillance equipment to track private citizens. The program is called “Going Zero”. The purported reason for cooperation of the government is to protect citizens from society’s bad actors. The tech company’s interest is in getting a muti-billion-dollar contract for their proprietary software.
Added to McCarten’s fine story is the mystery of a disappeared but unacknowledged agent of the C.I.A. The one person that successfully beats the “Going Zero” contest is the agent’s wife. She only enters the contest to expose the government’s information about her husband.
Both government and business believe they use personal information to serve the public. Government and big business subtlety influence society to believe private information is public information. Government argues knowledge of private information protects society. Big business argues collection and use of private information offers material, social, and/or psychological rewards to the public.
Capitalism is not the problem in America. It is the failure of the S.E.C., the FBI, C.I.A., the President, and congressional legislators to do their job.
A contrary argument is that government and big business would be able to program society by using private information to reward citizens like Palov’s dogs. The questions one may ask oneself: Can bad actors really be identified before they rob, steal, rape, and murder? What are the ramifications of a business that uses private information to tap into subliminal desires of the public? “Going Zero” offers an example of how private information collected by government and big business are a threat to society.
Anthony McCarten’s story shows how important it is to protect personal privacy.
The flaws of society are only magnified by the surreptitious use of private information. McCarten shows human self-interest is unlikely to change in a surveillance driven society. As long as human self-interest revolves around money, power, and prestige, private information should be protected. If there is a counter argument, I would like to hear it.
Conscious management of deleterious and harmful content by news media is the hope of humanity’s future. That is the message one may find in Lagorio-Chafkin’s history of Reddit.
Audio-book Review By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight Website: chetyarbrough.blog
We Are the Nerds (The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory)
By:Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
Narrated by:Chloe Cannon
Christine Lagorio-Chafkin (Author, reporter, senior writer for “Inc” magazine.)
Christine Lagorio-Chafkin offers a detailed history of the internet forum known as Reddit. Founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, with coding help from Aaron Swartz in 2005, Reddit has grown from an idea to a user-based internet newspaper estimated at 57 million daily readers and users as of December 2022. Huffman and Ohanian were roommates and students at the University of Virginia. These two founders are helped by Aaron Swartz, a nerd coding extraordinaire, with coding expertise. These are early days of a yet to be named web site.
With the help of start-up idea’ consultant Paul Graham, these three young men parlayed their idea into an asset that is purchased in 2006 by Conde-Nast to make the founders millionaires in their early 20s.
In 2018, Advance Publications, the parent company of Conde-Nast, values Reddit at $6 billion. Advance raises $250 million in funding in 2021. From Conde-Nast’s original purchase price of $10 million, one gains some idea of Reddit’s value despite having not made a profit since its inception. Chafkin suggests they are almost there in her book.
Steve HuffmanAlexis OhanianAaron Schultz
Lagorio-Chafkin’ story of these three young men offers insight to a generation that is reminiscent but different from the movers and shakers of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution might be broken into two periods. The first began in the 17th century when Samuel Slater introduces British industrialization into the textile industry of America. The second occurs after the American Civil War with machine inventions like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, and du Pont’s improvements in chemistry and gunpowder needed for the War of 1812.
Just as the industrial revolution’s pioneers, the tech revolution pioneers are obsessed with their work.
Their motivations were similar, ranging from fascination with their work to interest in being financially successful. The difference is the work of the industrialist focuses on material productivity while the technologist focuses on idea productivity. Both benefit society but the industrialist looks at material results while the technologist focuses on ideas, and knowledge that can be put to productive use. Both benefit society but from different starting points. The industrial economy is weighted heavily toward material productivity while the tech economy is more heavily weighted toward social and service influence.
Reddit went through several generations of CEOs. Each made changes to the direction of the company. Yishan Wong, a former Facebook employee, began Reddit’s transition from scandal sheet to newsworthiness. His success is limited because of Reddit’s drive for profitability and his manufactured controversy over relocation of its headquarters. Since inception, Reddit has gone through 5 CEOs.
Steve Huffman (2005-2009, 2015-present) (born 1983) 1986 for Swartz and 1983 for Ohanian
Ellen Pao (2014-2015)
Yishan Wong (2012-2014)
Erik Martin (2010-2014)
Jay Adelson (2005-2009)
Ellen Pao’s tenure as CEO of Reddit is brief but consequential. Pao implemented several changes to the site’s policies, including banning revenge porn and unauthorized nude photos. Pao’s resignation came after a week of intense criticism and harassment from some members of the Reddit community.
Ellen Pao resigned from her position as CEO of Reddit in July 2015. Her leadership was met with controversy and criticism, and she faced backlash from some members of the Reddit community over her policies and decisions. Some users felt her changes were too restrictive and infringed on their freedom of speech. Yes, Ellen Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Kleiner Perkins, in 2012. The case went to trial in 2015 and Pao lost the suit. After leaving Kleiner Perkins, Pao became the CEO of Reddit in 2014, but resigned her position in July 2015.
The principals of Reddit are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian who begin as friends and become estranged as the company grows. In time, they reconcile with Huffman becoming CEO of the company.
Both contribute to the success of Reddit, but Huffman becomes the guiding light for its future as a publicly designed profit-making internet newspaper. Ohanian becomes particularly famous for the woman whom he marries.
Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian marry in November 2017
The tragic story of Aaron Swartz’s important contribution in the early days of Reddit explains an underlying purpose of a public paper. Swartz is vilified by the American government for downloading private information to the public without corporate or government authorization.
Aaron Schwartz commits suicide. Chafkin notes Swartz’e father argues his son believed in a “right-of-the-public” to know everything there is to know about society. To Swartz’s father, Aaron did not commit suicide but was murdered by the American government as a result of its relentless prosecution.
Fundamentally, “We Are the Nerds” is about an internet generation concerned with greater social self-realization, if not comity. Reddit is a social news aggregation and rating website that offers a forum to the public that broadcasts user’ beliefs and understanding of the 21st century world. It is not about industrial productivity but about people’s social perceptions and beliefs ranging from facts to fiction about the material world.
The purpose of Reddit is not to produce “all the news that’s fit to print” but to reveal all the news that reflects the beliefs of a flawed society.
Reddit, while counseling moderation, allows extreme views of a diverse and self-interested user base. As a public forum, it interviewed the President of the United States (Barrack Obama). On the other hand, Reddit provided a forum for trolls like Michael Brutsch, who broadcasted images of scantily clad underage girls, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and other societal images of human depravity. There is little social comity in that scenario, but it is a part of human society. Troll behavior is the bane of click-bate oriented internet platforms. Reddit, since the return of Huffman, focuses on eliminating hate-speech and dysfunctional societal contributors to its public forum. Chafkin notes Reddit’s exposure of Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump. It offers evidence of Reddit’s effort to clean-up misleading information and fake news that is the bread and butter of click-bate’ media sites.
To use the oft quoted Star War’s meme–Reddit is trying to follow a “this is the way” principle to give legitimacy to News’ purveyors of the future.
Reddit, like past and present newspaper and television stations are subject to their owner’s conservative, liberal, or independent biases. Owners of media sites like The New York Times, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Facebook, Google search, Microsoft search, X, and Amazon have their biases. Conscious management of deleterious and harmful content by news media is the hope of humanity’s future. That is the message one may find in Lagorio-Chafkin’s history of Reddit.
Peter Frankopan, (Author, Professor of Global History at Oxford University, Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.)
Peter Frankopan journeys from pre-history to the present to offer perspective on the earth’s global warming crisis. He reviews what is either speculated or known of disastrous world events. Frankopan recalls histories of major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, famines, pandemics, and epidemics that have changed the course of history.
In the beginning, one thinks Frankopan is setting up a rationalization to argue global warming is just another world changing crisis that will be managed by humanity.
However, Frankopan is explaining the history of world crises and how humanity dealt with its eternal recurrence. In broad outline, he suggests world crises are dealt with in two ways, i.e., one, with religion or mysticism, and/or two, with adaptation. In every historical crisis, leadership is the presumed key to survival.
Frankopan explains the common denominator for crises that change the world is death.
Just as America and the world recovers from Covid-19, millions have died. We who remain carry on.
Whether a catastrophic event is geological, climatological, or pathogenic, life is a victim. Before history is written, Frankopan offers explanations of what happened to life based on fossilized remains. Causes for death are either geological (like earthquakes), climatological (like volcanic dust that blocks the sun), pathogenic (like the plague or a virus), or manmade (like the nuclear bomb). When written history begins, Frankopan’s evidence of world crises is more precisely explained. (From an objective perspective of any historian’s story, any history of the past is trapped in His/Her’s interpretation of other’s reported facts.)
Frankopan argues life on earth has come and gone through centuries of crises.
The evolution of human beings shows they have managed to ameliorate past crises by meeting them head-on. Humans have overcome crises by adapting to change, whether manmade or environmental. If the past is prologue to life’s survival, global warming’s threat will be met and ameliorated by human response. Just as all crises in world history have ended lives, the same is true of global warming. That does not necessarily mean all human life ends. Frankopan’s history infers life will be changed by global warming but leaves unanswered whether human life will end.
Jumping ahead in Frankopan’s scholarly review of history, the age of Sputnik emphasized the growing importance of science in the ecology of the world.
The Russian Launch of Sputnik in 1957.
Ironically, Russia’s giant step ahead of America in the space race awakened the world to the importance of science. Frankopan notes the hubris of humanity taking center stage with Khrushchev’s comments about humankind’s need and ability to control nature. To Frankopan, control of nature is a turning point in the hubris of humankind. He notes the U.S.S.R. experiments with weather control as a way to improve agricultural productivity. Frankopan suggests the real objective is to realize the potential of weather control as a weapon of war and goes on to explain how America capitalizes on that idea in the Vietnam war.
The irony and hubris of humanity in believing it can control the weather is evident in the despoiling of earth by human ignorance and action.
The profligate use of carbon-based energy for industrial growth far outstrips any science driven effort by humanity to control the weather. World ecology has proven too complex for constructive control by human beings. It is as though the world is being turned back to religion and myth to explain the phenomenon of world existence.
The last two chapters address overwhelming evidence for causes and consequences of late 20th and early 21st century world’ environmental damage.
From deforestation in the Amazon, to automobile increase in China, to waterway dams and aquifer depletion, a listener/reader’s fear and depression are kindled.
Harvard educated politicians like Ted Cruz and poorly educated Presidents like Donald Trump insist global warming is a hoax. As political power representatives of the wealthiest country in the world, one cannot but be appalled by climate change deniers.
The world’s future is based on an unknown solution to global warming.
Some suggest A.I. is key to solving global warming. Frankopan’s history suggests it is human beings that gave humanity the ability to overcome past crises. A.I. is one of humanities tools. It seems fair to suggest today’s crises will be another difficult chapter in the history of humanity. Judging by Frankopan’s history of human adaptation, global warming may not be humanities last chapter. However, Frankopan warns listerner/readers against the hubristic belief that nature can be controlled by humankind.
Stephen Hawking suggested humanity will not survive another 1,000 years on Earth and that human survival depends on colonization elsewhere in the Solar System. Frankopan seems to infer, humanity does not have that much time.
Frankopan wryly observes global warming is a crisis, but that human life is more likely to end from some other cataclysmic natural event like that which killed the dinosaurs (a meteor strike), a massive underwater volcanic eruption, or nuclear war before global warming kills us all.
One hopes histories past lessons inform a future that includes a place for the youth of this, the next, and future generations. World change brought on by crises have been overcome in the past through human adaptation. It seems reasonable to presume, despite the ignorance of some national leaders, that humanity will survive today’s global warming crisis.
Antonio Damasio (Author, Portuguese American neurologist, Professor at the University of Souther California.)
Antonio Damasio refines the definition of consciousness in “Feeling & Knowing”. Damasio offers a more science based, experiment driven, view of consciousness than Helen Thompson’s “Unthinkable…” “Feeling and Knowing” is a shorter version of Anil Seth’s book “Being You” that also addresses consciousness.
Both Damasio and Seth argue consciousness comes from feelings.
Thompson offers a less science driven view of consciousness based on patient interviews that reinforce Damasio’s and Seth’s views. There seems a slight difference between Damasio’s and Seth’s view of consciousness in the belief that emotions or feelings are the source of thought and knowledge origination. Seth argues emotions originate in the organs of the body and inform the brain. Damasio is more circumspect and seems to argue emotions come from the body and brain in a synchronous way.
However, Damasio’s and Seth’s beliefs about consciousness seem entirely compatible. That composite view changes with additional input which suggests consciousness is not a precise representation of reality.
To Damasio, one’s view and understanding of the world comes from feelings processed and imprinted on, and by, the brain. This is not to say that the brain is only a processor but that it works synchronously with the organs of the body.
Damasio emphasizes feelings as the primary knowledge source of the human experience. Damasio’s theory suggests artificial intelligence will always be artificial because it relies on the logic of ones and zeros rather than the dynamic process of emotion interface with brain processing.
If Damasio is correct, for A.I. to become a learning machine, emotion must be a part of its programming.
If emotion can be and is programmed into a machine, there seems a probability that humanity will become servant rather than master of the universe.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 