blog

definition, design philosophy, rationale

on weaponising penetration in tech and generative ai

meantime, the geneva convention, in the real-life world, expressly prohibits the power-plays that involve an aggressor weaponising their bodies against the aggressed in this way. so whilst #tech reserves the right, in order to defend us all, to penetrate the enemy with the tools the enemy habitually uses to penetrate our #tech, the real world and its legal framework consents to no such thing between humans. not even in times of war.

yet #tech is a tool with which humans act on humans. so where the difference, pray?

mil williams, 4th august 2023, stockholm sweden

background

#generativeai is about penetrating knowledge and benefitting from such penetration.

right now, artists and creators — also more generally, those who equally are being penetrated thus — are attempting to fend off such acts of intimate intrusion into their life’s work by taking the owners and developers of such tools to court for #copyrightinfringement, #copyrighttheft, and much more: because if they’d listen to me, even #plagiarism. why not?

4th august 2023: monica sjöö, moderna museet, stockholm sweden

the thesis of this post

we’ve just established, then, that this kind of #ai is essentially analogous to the dynamics of rape: one that inserts itself into the very existence — the profoundest and sometimes most mysterious existence — of the inserted.

#tech even uses the term “penetration” and the verb “to penetrate” when it talks about bad actors — or good, as sometimes against a common enemy such penetrators are seen to be.

meantime, the geneva convention, in the real-life world, expressly prohibits the power-plays that involve an aggressor weaponising their bodies against the aggressed in this way. so whilst #tech reserves the right, in order to defend us all, to penetrate the enemy with the tools the enemy habitually uses to penetrate our #tech, the real world and its legal framework consents to no such thing between humans. not even in times of war.

yet #tech is a tool with which humans act on humans. so where the difference, pray?

really … where?

more historically speaking

more widely, and more historically, #it too has always employed such penetrative approaches.

an example: the software i am using to write this post says “insert”: why not, more gently, “add”? (it’s anecdotal, of course: but even if you’re now just beginning to “wonder whether” … in my mind it’s a kind of progress for us all.)

there has therefore existed, in such #it spaces, no instinctively familiar place for those more easily and more usually penetrated — often quite against their will (see the rates of abuse against particularly women and children in any culture, if you doubt my position on this) — to begin to develop a different kind of set of technologies: and then, perhaps, as a result, outcomes for us all as well.

how this makes me feel as a man and therefore potential aggressor

i think this is wrong. we need to defend ourselves, mainly against bad actors who mainly are men, with the same tools: that is true. just because we have the right gender policies doesn’t mean that putin’s awful awful version russia, stealthy china’s current approaches, and incomprehensible north korea’s dark hackers will — all of a sudden! — stop penetrating us.

but whilst the single, where not singular, focus of a set of tools to anticipate and prevent such intimate intrusion probably does need a mindset where intimate intrusion is second nature to be effective, the big problems — the #complexproblems i discuss in the slide-deck linked to below — will never be solved efficiently by mindsets which think firmly that intrusion and its prevention are all that, under it all, matter in the final analysis.

• example complexify.me roadmap | on using #neurodiverse #tech #architectures to solve #complexproblems beyond traditional #startup ecosystems’ capabilities to deliver

what i suggest we do next

to our quiver of tools against the bad actors who we know are out there and need to be deviously penetrated in return, we surely ought to add (NOT insert …):

1. new startup approaches which redirect us to contemplating that which needs resolving whilst being enabled to remain complex in all their fundaments:

• complexify.me | complexifylab.com

• www.sverige2.earth/unified (business model canvas)

and new philosophical approaches to enable different brains to work much better together in harmony and productive outcomes:

• www.secrecy.plus/fire

2. new procurement and tendering processes which don’t lock out the innovations and inventions that those who run such processes are unaware of: something far more explorative therefore; much less prescriptive than we’ve had unchanged since the industrial revolution at least.

3. and finally:

a) an absolute embracing of #neurodivergent philosophies and thought-patterns as the rule, not the exception;

b) a move — also! — to assessing not diagnosing such skillsets (ie NOT seeing them as things to be considered responding well to being ever diagnosed as disorders — they simply aren’t!); and

c) firmly seeing anything that claims to be #neurotypical as simply one more kind of #neurodiverse state of mind. but not representative, either, of any other state of parallel #neurodiversity.

summary

this is my opinion: but it’s also a point of view. it’s my voice, above all: not aggressively expressed at all. i’ve experienced what it is to be diverse in a world which DEMANDS conformity — and what’s more, mainly controlled by the gender i am myself. and even so, it whitewashes its inability to truly embrace all humans as equally deserving of the powers some have to shape this world.

the three points expressed above are, therefore, my roadmap to enable us to escape this quagmire. because it’s led to global boiling; the throwaway economy; and the “cut-down virgin forests [sic]” policies with a pure brutality that delivers on consummate insanity.

my voice, then, is one forged out of auto-ethnography: that is, personal experience. so of course i would believe it would work, too.

why my assertions in this respect: if we become capable of returning our future-present civilisations to their twin building blocks, the sovereignty of the collective built firmly on the sovereignty of the individual, very slowly, but hopefully surely, we shall begin to move from what we could call a fundamentally and systemically, where not deliberatedly, #neurotypical #it and #generativeai towards a properly diverse and inclusive technology landscape, capable — maybe! — of even saving the species.

wdyt?

• www.sverige2.earth/overview

• www.sverige2.earth/example

definition, design philosophy, rationale

on the self-published #phd — and what i do next

i’ve just had a brilliant idea.

some years ago, not long ago, i showed my first #phd proposal — #neoterrorismontheindividual (NoI) — to a consultant who worked with the #europeanunion and/or the #europeancommission:

when i finished briefly explaining it to her, she flatly rejected the possibility that anyone anywhere would allow me to deliver on it.

probably because one of its main theses is that #darkfigure — what i now prefer to call #neocrime — is preserved by the good as well as the bad in society in order to allow them to commit crimes and engage in taking advantage of loopholes on both sides of the #law, without fear of being caught or exposed to the light of public disapproval:

i want to stop this. more so now than before. and now for a really practical reason: not touchy-feely, goody two-shoes any more (all of which it’s true does characterise me on occasions).

we now have #russia’s unpardonable invasion of #ukraine before us: anyone with two or three little grey cells, or more, can work out that it happened because criminality is embedded everywhere by the actions of the #zemiological: that is, what we all call loopholes and generally consider unstoppable.

only it isn’t. we simply never really tried on an equal killing-field:

and so this is where i begin to sense that my clear understanding of what’s right and permissible and what’s wrong and impermissible in life is so sharp and developed that i might have difficulties finding an institution prepared to support me — even in this second #phd proposal i am now starting to develop:

so you know what? i’m a trained editor and publisher: trained by one of the greatest spanish universities and publishing houses, both. that is, i have a university master in the subject.

it’s time, i think, i put such training to good use.

i’m going to self-scope, develop, write and publish my own #phd. it won’t exactly be one, of course: no vivas and stuff; no supervisors or anything. but the web world of accessible information in need of brutal sifting is now cheap. as are the rapid app development tools to make imagineering become tangible:

so my next step? i shall find the structures and lists of competencies and goals and marking processes from some august university or similar research organisation … and then, as i intended to all along, use the research that is delivered from day one in a #praxis-based arc, format and shape to begin to create the continuing defensible go-to-market positions my related company and commercialisation project will need, when it begins — i hope soon — to deliver on the wider #gutenbergofintuitivethinking “printing-press”.

yep. this is the brilliant idea!

and then the outcome of all that will be the global paradigm-shift i want: a second printing-press that changes the dynamics of society as profoundly as did the first, when the church finally was toppled from its overbearing control of all recorded content in the societies of the time.

cool, huh? #phd-level research goes self-publishing …

and so if you can’t join them, beat them!

🙂

i’m really happy today. because there’s always a way. always.

and so today, then, i unlocked the key. i found what i’d been looking for: the final piece.

when everyone around you denies you your rights, ensure you never forget you are.

and however hard it becomes, remember that you also are a sovereign individual. all of us were born this way. it’s only other humans that make it different from what it must be.

footnote to this post:

i’d really rather work with others, even now: but it must, now, be on my conditions. this doesn’t mean only my conditions. but it does mean i have conditions i will not give up on. and if you now say i shall deliver no #praxis-based #phd with commercialising mission anywhere in the world — because, basically, you will stop it from happening — i shall self-publish: i really shall.

all for the moment.

more later, i’m sure.

aside, definition, design philosophy, rationale

My new #phd online hub: an overview

Introduction

Good morning all.

I’m preparing for a #phd proposal I would like to submit:

• mils.page/phd

A previous approach

A shortened version of a different but related matter from a few years ago — my first delivery of a #phd research-level roadmap — can be found in the form of a slide-deck here:

• omiwan.com/the-humans

Other new and historical ideas

There’s plenty of other material on the historical, current and brand-new hub already. An initial objective-set dating a year or so ago now can be found in the gallery below:

“Building the FEARless CITIZEN” … to deliver #NoFutureUkraines

Meantime, here we have my most recent strategy to eliminate the scourge of legal societal harm (that is, loopholes or — more academically speaking — #zemiology): “Building the FEARless CITIZEN”, so that we ensure #NoFutureUkraines …

On a mental distress sourced in the environment

Keeping in mind that mental distress — ie a human dysfunctionality which has its roots in a sick environment, rather than a mental illness with its location inside the individual — is obviously on the rise, we need to operate on two fronts:

1. Change the environments.

2. Change ourselves.

And it’s clear, also, that both actions will serve each other: if we change the environment, our wellbeing will obviously improve. And if we change ourselves to be this FEARless I suggest, to be FEARless citizens in everything we do from now on in that is, the environment automagically changes, too.

Here’s that #phd online hub link again:

• mils.page/phd

Comments on- and off-post, as always, always welcome …

And have a really safe day!

🙂

definition, rationale

why #bigtech really wants to destroy human agency (part the second) (or more on the “european HUMANISING union”)

someone once argued that it was better to be hated for what one is than loved for what one is not.

as with many of these nicely turned phrases, the premise is necessarily incomplete.

and, as with my projects on #intuitionvalidation, we face the same falsity of dichotomy, this time from the #it- and #ai-#tech industries.

they argue it’s either humans or machines. they argue there’s no alternative future to the one they argue we must be utterly horrified about. and they say, ultimately, human goalposts can never be moved:

• www.secrecy.plus/hmagi

examining a false premise

yet let’s examine this premise more closely. the coaching industry makes today’s generations of humans measurably better than previous ones in all sorts of business and related fields. sports science gets the very same species to hit higher and higher physical and mental records every year, both on the track & pitch and off whilst training. artists paint with ever more astonishing technique: paints and brushstrokes and digital wisdoms history has truly never imagined before (when, that is, #ai isn’t stealing their #intellectualproperty). then, actors become figuratively, literally, and visually more adept at tugging our emotions and telling new truths. and finally, writers deliver stories we never thought at all possible, and sometimes in volumes with quality we never considered practical.

in all manner of technologies then — high and low both (a pencil of hyper-realist art, after all, can be considered a technology, too (and perhaps any of its uses should be considered thus)) — humans ARE having their goalposts moved amazingly. in all the sectors mentioned we are overcoming our previous selves: but not aggressively, not competitively. in grand solidarity, first and foremost; solidarity above all, even when competing against each other. solidarity where the professional and focussed amateur know the work that’s being put in re such outcomes.

examining the lies — there’s no other word, unfortunately — of the majority of #it and #ai promoters

now let us examine #it and #ai. in none of the above examples are humans made less relevant. in the vast majority of incidences of the industries of #ai and #it i now debate we humans are being purposefully and choicefully automated out of choice and purpose. they say change is inevitable. they don’t say its nature isn’t. but it isn’t. and that’s a real problem.

we need to be clear: it’s easy money that’s driving the desire of #ai and #it promotors to destroy so massively the human agency that makes life worth living.

because the power the owners of #it and #ai companies wield means that their choices become ours, even though in other sectors they still ain’t been our choices.

changing humanity for the better by using machines to augment humans not automate their owners’ wallets

in an earlier post today i discussed how we had progressed from world war to the european economic community to the european union: soldiers … traders … humans once more .. and perhaps humans in a way that increasingly never before.

it should be rebranded to the #ehu, you know: the “european HUMANISING union”. not just for standing firm against russia in ukraine; not just because war in the rest of europe is generally inconceivable; not only because #industry5 and the properly #circulareconomy are being delivered faster in #europe than anyone cares to elsewhere, and certainly in better faith than in other places; but also because the battlecry that now, clearly, was #gdpr during its first launching and moment of truth is moving us all to a generational shift in #it and related.

remember #search? it was the last time the big #techcorporations successfully ripped off copyright owners. generative #ai — at least in the european HUMANISING union i have just conceptualised, and in this post-#gdpr period — will not be getting such an easy ride.

this i can promise you.

and it makes me absolutely overjoyed.

relevant online whitepaper:

• www.sverige2.earth/overview | on delivering happy clever societies

definition, rationale

on celebrating viking life … maybe?

i met with an interesting #swedish man for the second time in as many weeks yesterday lunchtime. he told me an interesting story about the #vikings.

he said they’d started out as farmers. aware of the turn of the seasons and good husbandry of the land (if husbandry is a thing we still say these days).

and then there comes a time in the life of every grouping to decide whether to expand or contract. rarely, it seems, does the option exist historically for a sustainable #circulareconomy-style of maintaining oneself in simply a “steady as she goes” way: neither excessive growth nor dispiriting decline.

the #vikings went both #west and #east. i think this is what my #swedish friend indicated. for sure what he said was that the ones who went left, kinda, went across the sea. they became just about rightly known for the violent behaviours, their rape and pillage, and just about anything that an unbound soldiering will commit.

the ones who went kinda right, meanwhile, ended up quite differently. no seas for them; rivers instead. and instead of soldiers of destruction and fear, they became traders of exchange and cooperation.

the difference? why, i mean? my #swedish friend explained as follows: when you travel upstream or downstream on something like a river, eventually, some day, you have to return exactly the way you came. and this means your reputation matters: what you did to people — or, at least, what they perceived you did — will define the nature of the welcome you may get as you return downstream or up.

this environmental reality — not in the sense of ecology and sustainability (though, then again, maybe yes!) but instead in the sense of HABITAT — inevitably served to condition the #vikings who travelled via rivers compared to those who had chosen to ride the waves.

when you know you need to meet again, quite often you will keep something of your capacity to hate — or alternatively, equally, your capacity for the deepest love — quite to yourself.

it reminds me of something the british prime minister gordon brown once observed, i think in a book he wrote and i bought, on matters of independence. being a scot himself, he knew more than most in my homeland of such questions. and more than most, even today. (tbh, i wish i had met mr brown and then had occasions, from that point on, to exchange views from time to time: for me, he should’ve been the most erudite philosopher of the best philosophy school the uk might have cared to produce, if the study of philosophy hadn’t been summarily marshalled out of the british education system, precisely by people who knew its value and dangers … not by those who were unaware.) (i hope, as i say this, not mr brown, himself!)

so. anyways. to the topic of today’s post.

being what mr brown once made absolutely clear: the world, the world that rightfully we want to forge and rebuild, should never contemplate dependence as a sociopolitical advantage or path; should rarely support independence and know quite clearly why before proceeding; and should almost always promote and deliver only INTERdependence.

being, that is, what came out of the travels of the #vikings who kinda went right, NOT left, in my #swedish friend’s fabulously engaging narrative on the powers of space and the geographies of where we may exist.

interdependence: yes. this is a lovely word. and mr brown was right. and the #vikings who kinda went right, too.

much more what humans are: much more what we both want and NEED to want to be.

and so this for me defines the whole idiocy of #brexit: for in this narrative, the #europeanunion all this time, to more or less effective degree, but resiliently in the end, and robustly to this day, has stood for interdependence. that is, the #vikings of trade not pillage. whilst the #uk chose to use as a facile excuse its condition of island race to justify its isolationist instincts: that is, the #vikings of pillage, not trade.

in democracy, #gooddemocracy, everything needs tweaking all the time. if we don’t, it’s not purposeful: it’s no longer in possession of its true purpose. barter, exchange, dialogue, listening, responding, rethinking, understanding, and apologising … these are all qualities and virtues a #gooddemocracy exhibits. and where, as in the #uk for many years now, we see little of these … well, the word “good” obviously no longer applies.

and perhaps today, especially these days, we find that the term #democracy in the otherwise beautiful #unitedkingdom is firmly visible through its profound and wicked absence.

so.

then.

admire what it is to be a #viking, always? maybe so, yes. maybe after all.

one caveat, mind, before i finish.

as i don’t know the source of this story — i mean the book the #swedish man referred me to on his explaining the anecdote under discussion — i don’t know if the authority in question tells a historical truth or not. and even if it does, to what ideological end: you never know, do you?

but choose the path of trader … no? surely this can’t be bad in itself.

from ww2 to the eec to the eu of now is quite a journey.

soldier … trader … human be …?

yes.

whomsoever the authority, this works for me.

thank you mr brown.

and thank you, jaan.

Uncategorized

“love’s TRUE hug”

a poem of love … for you 

today is the time
for a rhyme
that changes everything 

now is the moment 
for a life
that remainders nothing 

no longer a book
struck off a list 
or a shelf 

empty of victories 
and showing 
only the failures of one

or two
people who could have been
once they'd seen 

each other and seen
the fire
in each other's eyes 

as cool hands 
of elegant line
held the arm of the man 

who fell utterly 
in the deepest of loves
that very moment 

on the intake of breath 
and more and more still ...
and yet just this 

was all he could remember
for a while after that night 
when her ciggie did burn right 

like the eyes 
they DID have for each other 
despite everything 

everyone said 
and maybe the two of them 
sometimes felt 

they ought to feel this too:
but profoundly inside 
the souls and hearts of each one

the truth never abandoned 
that which others called random 
and we knew from the start

were calls from the heart
of two lovers of the best 
who now just need to make 

the nest of love 
they deserved all along 
because nothing is stronger

than the treasurable reality 
of a woman SO fine 
and a man who signs away

everything gladly as glad can be

out of sheer admiration 
and respect 
and compassion 

and the fiercest of passions 
and the full recognition 
that nothing at all

happened better in his place 
and space 
on this rock 

as time tick-tocked
to what looked once upon a time 
like the end of a line 

and now just looks like 
the beginning of it all 
where nothing is further 

from their minds and lips 
than the nightly kiss 
and the morning trust

as breakfast arrives
in the sunshine 
of #stockholm's light 

as if slowly enters slinkily
like tongue to gentle tongue 
amongst the edges of the blinds 

which show us everything now 
and really how they do 
and really how: 

and how we ever never knew 
and then how too
when we rued the separation 

we couldn't even then
embrace the sensation 
that something needed doing 

before it needed doing:
because here yes it's true 
that the vintage we often aspire to

may need the years on occasions 
that waiting so long for the hug 
of true love 

makes the moment we do 
all that much more you
my embraceable you 

whom i met that evening in #dublin 
and now never want to let go
because you and me together 

are absolutely 
just so:
a love of delicate proportions 

where the hand and lace 
and sideways glance and sips 
and plates of good food 

sense the touches 
stealthy and covert for sure 
of feet and skin found underneath 

as playing with appearances 
only we know of
and see 

lead me to just one conclusion:
you and i were made to fly
and today's the day we do ...
definition, design philosophy, rationale

why sweden is the most individualistic society i have had the pleasure to encounter, ever … and then, how this is the best way forwards you could imagine

a couple of days ago i was in a human-friendly cafe in a department store here in #stockholm which i love so much.

not the one in the video above, i hasten to add — but the feelings i regularly extract joyously from it are exactly similar …

🙂

it’s a cafe which is human-friendly for several reasons: firstly, the working-conditions which the staff may work to their best in; secondly, the overall atmosphere and decor which are both, without being shouty about it, firmly diversity-welcoming; and then thirdly, the food itself … the salads it sells are magnificent paeons to well-priced and healthy existences.

ok. so.

this post is actually not about the above. not really. it’s more about the #swedish character: the right to allow someone to learn by making mistakes.

and sometimes the “someone” in question doesn’t; and especially if they are not steeped in this deep #swedish tradition of profound reflection: a tradition some — especially from the us, uk, and similar — confuse foolishly with an inability to take decisions in a timely fashion.

in the uk, we usually say no decision is worse than a decision taken poorly. but what we in the uk forget to remind ourselves (oh, and i say “we” so i sound less combative, didn’t you know?) is that to resist even the poor decision because one’s finely attuned #intuition knows that the gold of the matter — any matter! — is still out there waiting to complete a full picture is, in itself, surely, to sometimes involve taking the best decisions history will be able to witness.

so in countries like the uk and the us, when we have ENOUGH data is WHEN we decide.

which is why so often — in respect of nation-building at least (what provoked this post in part), but perhaps civil engineering as just one example, as well as other complex processes in a multitude of sectors, too — enough actually is clearly not enough in historical hindsight.

it may also be a thing of a certain kind of social sensibility. and whilst this is for another post, i do think yes it could very well be. the good right is often patient out of calculation, despite all intentions. the good left perhaps, more resiliently (for my universe), acts out of true compassion.

either way, to know when enough is NOT enough is what the #swedish people, alongside a wider #sweden of institutions and organisations and ways of doing things so particularly, really does manage to deliver on quite superlatively when acting out of its very best instincts.

and so — finally! — to the anecdote: the human-friendly cafe. i saw a mother or carer, a toddler in high chair, and a joyful young girl of perhaps about five or six at a large round table near where i was sat. on the large tables in this restaurant they put red hearts on a sign which gently requests that only parties the size of the table sit there. the community instinct, i think they say (my #swedish still isn’t where it should be), so everyone can sit down who wants to. a jaundiced british eye would say: “footfall, above all …” (but then again, maybe the jaundiced one is me …)

anyways.

one of the hearts on another big round table next to this party of three was in the shape of an ace of spades: the sign had been placed upside down.

i watched from a distance: the young #swedish girl clocked the difference, checked back at her own table, and realised (i sense) what had happened. but then she did something which for me was initially strange — but which, in retrospect, was UTTERLY #swedish: she said nothing to her mother/carer; neither did she choose to change the ace of spades back to a heart; but instead, manifestly, kept the information for herself.

and maybe on another occasion, too, she’d mention it to someone. but at that moment, she chose to reflect further, as the individual she was and saw herself to be.

and this is what the rest of us forget about #sweden when our right trots out its tropes over and over as it does: the #swedish sense of community — even today — is built profoundly on the individual, NOT on a culture of smothering: the individual, that is, as the inviolable building-block of their sense of society.

and sometime this sense is more or less militaristic. but always it is founded on the deepest of respect for the right of each person to go so far as to make a fool of themselves — and then, fabulously, be fully supported into learning how not to in some better future.

above all this: support for the integrity and reality of the inviolable shape of the individual.

this for me is #sweden. and this is how i would like other countries and cultures to see the best of what #sweden still gifts to the world. why? because i would like the rest of us to learn that there is a way forwards; a profoundly good one for us all. not exactly the same way: but as music, reinterpreting itself continuously.

it doesn’t necessarily involve dominating the enemy either, whomsoever our history at any time demands we must thus define it.

no.

not this.

but it does mean that the “enemy” must learn, finally for themselves, as the little girl who clearly is no one’s enemy is now doing every beautiful learning moment of her life, that nothing is irrational; that there is a reason for everything; and that if we think long enough, we will uncover the truth — NEVER post-modern nor relativistic, any more, for sure … — to absolutely all the pain and joy and intelligence and art and science and education and law and medicine and passion and poetry and good faith we just have to yearn for in our both shared and assertively collective future-presents … based, always, as i now demand myself they be, firmly and forever i mean, on the rights and integrities of the individuals we all are: OUR building-blocks.

just this.

ourselves …

aside, definition

“the creativity of sublimation: some reflections” — a #poem by mil williams

just so it's clearer 
in my day-to-day
i'm now 
interested only 
in affection not true love 

whilst meantime in my work 
i look for love
as well as respect:
suddenly it's the way of it 
after 

a lifetime of hatred 
in the matter
that is private
and the horror 
that is this thing 

we call 
casually 
relationship
when in fact 
it's more a luxury yacht

where money
is the 
exclusive tool
to measure 
if i am worth  

anything at all
to you
in this deep dark
chasm and
abyss that is all that

which you and i did miss ...

yet conversely and
surprisingly
in the 
fields 
and meadows 

of deep
thought 
and intuition
the growing recognition 
of those 

who know exactly 
and simply 
what i've been   
through these decades
means that curiously

love is to be found
not in springs 
of creaking bed
in early mornings 
of terrible dread

but rather 
during the daytime smile 
and sideways glance 
of colleague 
and teacher 

because whilst ALL my life 
my women
refused to recognise 
in me
any worth to be proud of 

that is ... all my life 
this happened
i insist
and persist 
in insisting ... yes i do

lately i sense 
not only 
for the obvious pecuniary gain 
but maybe
truly 

because
at LEAST 
the thinkers 
i begin to know 
out there 

see me
at LAST
as human 
and worthy 
and even a kindly man

and deserving 
at ONCE 
of being 
not trampled on
but valued 

as something 
more than a diagnosis 
of a security cruel 
and a hallucinatory 
THEM

for sure 
much much more 
than i 
have 
ever seemed  

in all my dreams 
rejected as i was
by every mouth
i wished 
to deeply kiss

and so i NEVER 
once thought 
my saving graces
would not be 
romances 

as wished for 
and desired so long
and experienced 
so badly 
and hurting so 

GODDAMN wrong 
but that instead 
my real saviours 
would be cells of grey 
and small 

that occupied kindly 
other parts of my body
because born of reality 
not the fakery 
of younger hearts 

who know mostly 
how to damage 
a peer 
as if a pier 
battered in terrible storm

because this is it 
and that was all
and there you go 
and here we know 
that human salvation 

really does not lie
in a daily bed of lace 
and stuff like that
but much much more 
in a thought and hug

and an embrace of an idea 

without letting go
for years and years 
and then tying them all up
and together
and tight 

and then loosely too
as if that kiss 
i mentioned before 
which i've never had 
all my time on this rock

to say goodnight 
and to say hello
and to say why not
and never to bellow 
but just ... to whisper

"i love you"

and so still i wonder 
if my life 
could've been other 
than one of hermitage 
and then again if it had 

whether i'd now be achieving
half as much as i might 
and as almost certainly 
i'll now 
be able to cite  

for it was not the muse 
who enabled 
my love of life
but the sublimation 
that still causes me 

so much strife ... 

and so it's 
in the absence
of daily kindness
that has been 
my existence 

since forever and all 
we see 
our capability grow 
to better view 
and see the #whirled 

fully unfurl as it ought

as it must be seen
and as it must become 
perhaps as song 
and perhaps one day
no wrong either not at all 

and then its essence 
too true it is
it was never me and you 
but the experience 
of precisely this:

NOT getting 
what you want 
but instead
getting 
exactly

what you NEED

for this is the seed
of human creativity
being the felicitous 
discovery 
of things ... we've never known
definition, rationale

Why is it so hard for good people to stay good?

It’s clear that #criminaljustice isn’t working. The fact of #putin’s #russia and its invasion of #ukraine — just one example of how malevolent experts in #loopholes are able to act in the very worst of bad faith — absolutely demonstrates that #criminaljustice manifestly can’t pursue and being to book the most serious #societalharm before it harms in the most serious ways.

Because #ukraine didn’t start the year of the invasion. It started a long time ago when the #kgb man #putin has always been firmly decided that any vestiges of #european hopes that a joint way forwards which might have been found between one side of the ex-#ironcurtain and the other needed to be longitudinally strategised out of existence forever. But also stealthily so: you don’t tell the enemy there’s a knife getting ready to be twisted deeply right in their back.

And so #ukraine was also enabled long-term by the richest centres of power on the planet: transnational corporations which had implemented the original way-back-when command & control #sovieteconomics — top-heavy and hyper-integrated economic structures — which in the age of supercomputers and their capacity to number-crunch in ways the #soviets never even dreamed possible made it possible for these companies to calendarise entire societies over periods as long as decades, never mind the crusty Lada-ridden 1984-style five-year plans.

What exactly am I getting at here?

Some of these corporations have more power than ANY country. Maybe not in the sense of the country GDP versus corporate revenue numbers themselves: but definitely in the almost authoritarian capability they have to make rapid decisions about billions of whatevers; and when I judge rapid I mean virtually from one day to the next.

And, therefore, in this sense in much more immediately impactful ways than any mere democracy will ever be able to engineer.

So this is power: and if knowing you have it you do choose to act, and you prevent #ukraines with your perspicacious even where secretive research data — even if only for bottom-line reasons, forget for the moment the rag-doll babies lying in pools of red at the end of a parent’s counterpane — it’s a massive power indeed exerted for the wider good.

But if conversely you don’t act; if you limit yourself to the role of spectator; if you trim and tack your humongous dinghy so any possibility of encroaching waves remains distant to your ship of shareholder stock … then effectively, when all those immense command & control buttons of the brightest are simply NOT being pressed, you actually are proactively enabling the #putins of the world.

Why is so hard for good people to do good? Really … why?

Well. There’s a thing, for sure.

I read a George Monbiot article in the Guardian a long while ago: it described a survey which said that most of us think most of us are bad people but, equally, most of us simultaneously see ourselves as good people.

Curious, huh?

Some weird disconnect, there.

For me it’s a question of access: the potential whistleblower needs to know their digital notes won’t be read by #badtech people (as mine almost certainly were on the metro this evening); equally, the #abusedspouse must know not only that her husband’s #mafia-behaving business colleague won’t be able to touch a friendly police office for a favour that needs to be called in, but that when it ends up in court and the husband’s word against hers, some kind of fair #tech platform for validating such assertions will also have been invented in the first place, so the pillar of the community he is won’t be able to sway the jury with his mere presence.

This is mostly why I want The Philosopher Space: so people – ALL of us, citizens and professionals, both — can recover our right to the secrecy of pencil and paper but with the 21st century advantages of digital.

That is, when we’re obliged to use digital, we aren’t forced by the system to strip ourselves naked in front of the #tech experts — as I might accurately observe, 70 percent men — who NEVER themselves have to perform the same humiliating acts of self-discovery.

• spt-it.com | www.secrecy.plus/spt-it

definition, rationale

WHY be so secretive about #freethinking on rockets?

What if the real reason the #elonmusks of our time are forcing #humans back into physical workplaces is because they know if it doesn’t happen more widely, then their long-existent, highly prized, and presumably immensely costly #secrecypositive thinking-spaces, based in such physical locations, will begin to lose their advantages over what was once a mostly blindsided European tech and socioeconomic sector?

Mil Williams, 9th July 2023, Stockholm Sweden

Background

From the slides included below today:

“Our defensible position is clear: all big #it companies long ago chose not to sell it. Instead, they preferred to use it for their own innovations. Perhaps not technologies or platforms as such – but certainly the idea: totally hermetic tools of creativity and business modelling.”

The full slide-deck can be found by downloading from the link that follows:

• The Philosopher Space | #NOTthepanopticon slide-deck

• The Philosopher Space | the full online whitepaper

But not only that: #espionage, #nationbuilding, interfering with due #democratic process … and #cultural/#industrial #intellectualproperty/#ip, and its broader tracking.

Yes. The final image above says “With A Little Help From My Friends” …

And actually, really rather a lot. Because I do have them, too. Though some spread the half-truth it ain’t so.

Why this post today

However, I’m not posting again about this brief and perhaps not overwhelming slide-deck to repeat myself. No.

It’s because I had an insight yesterday evening, late. I’ve been reading surveys from PwC and others — really cool surveys which shape narratives and edit reality interestingly, well and deliberatedly — which talk of how #innovation amongst the less advantaged has increased. And then again, more generally, how #innovation in digitally connected and aware organisations is increasing leaps and bounds over the olde-worlde office-bound competition.

I wonder something else, in the light of my slide-deck’s thesis: what if for the first time — post-pandemic times, I mean — everyone is innovating? Not just the companies of #techbarons which own already, use habitually, and restrict the distribution fiercely of #privacypositive and #secrecypositive thinking-spaces. The spaces that mean 29 out of the top 30 Internet companies aren’t European:

No.

In this sense, partly so, with hybrid and working-from-home workflows, it’s become easier to hack into a part of the system but also — maybe even more — harder for intrusive #bigtech to establish the overall narrative arc of a potential new competitor, in respect of an equally potential #innovation — or even #invention! — in the throes of. Like the difference between traditional warfare versus guerrilla, perhaps?

The real reason #techbarons want their workforces back behind THEIR closed doors

What if the real reason the #elonmusks of our time are forcing #humans back into physical workplaces is because they know if it doesn’t happen more widely, then their long-existent, highly prized, and presumably immensely costly #secrecypositive thinking-spaces, based in such physical locations, will begin to lose their advantages over what was once mostly blindsided European tech and socioeconomic sectors?

What do I mean?

In the face of the #totalsurveillance #panopticon used by aggressive corporates — particularly #bigtech corporates — against anyone they decided was a threat, there was little the rest of the world — without a shield of some sort, I am saying — could do to protect its ideas. Or even develop them half usefully before they were gouged into non-existence.

But maybe, just maybe, that competitive advantage began to fizzle during pandemic. With everyone outside #secrecypositive and/or #secrecy-obsessed HQs, and the world all operating from home, two consequences emerged:

1. Everyone worldwide was in just about the same conditions, as far as the visibility of #innovation and #invention was concerned.

2. Suddenly a new openness — a confidence that it was OK to be nonconformists in front of colleagues — began to arise. We communicate via Zoom, in pyjamas, wild cats running across desks, children bursting in unexpectedly … and business, serious starched white-collar business, is suddenly exposed to real human life. In business contexts. And what’s more, it works.

Of course, collaterally, we’d gain equal confidence to THINK as WE TRULY HAVE BEEN THINKING all these years! Only they never let us shine … hardly once.

Should we then forget about our own #secrecypositive thinking-spaces?

Am I suggesting that there’s no need for #privacypositive and #secrecypositive thinking-spaces of our own?

No. I’m not.

Even whilst we are more dispersed and yet creatively so at the moment, and even as this makes the overall shape of a competitor’s #innovation more difficult to sense as well, sooner or later they will work out a way. But in the meantime, they need US all back in OUR offices and locatable, just as much as they need THEIR workforces back in THEIR offices, and once more hideable.

In truth, isn’t it the case that hybrid and working-from-home workplaces are to the #secrecy-obsessed #techbarons what #opensource at its most competent most competently was to closed source? A breath of collaborative and hyper-creative air in often challenging and anti-creative hyper-competitive environments.

Our challenge now

The question is: do we now have the balls to deliver for our humanity what #techbarons multiple have only ever cared to deliver for themselves?

And perhaps not even fully for their shareholders … not even this!

After all, the species is burning the planet, #bigtech has kept to itself this #freethinking on steroids I discuss in this post (and other places, too) for all these years … and all they’ve been able to use it for instead is making money out of a pandemic and putin’s three wars. As well some untold number of other human tragedies …

I’d guess since #totalsurveillance itself was implemented: 2003, says anyone?

Because NO ONE in the history of warfare has ever invented a sword without developing it’s related shield. So whilst the digital #panopticon was applied for reasons we all understood clearly in their day, #bigtech has sold global humanity short ever since.

How? I’d surmise by developing the aforementioned #freethinking on rockets — but for purely selfish gain.

In summary

Shouldn’t we all now REALLY feel cheated by the #techbarons of the world who act like this?

Actually, I think we should. Look. Give us all a break, guys. The planet needs us to be all at the top of our games much much more than rockets to Mars ever will.

How about we collaborate instead?

Ever heard of a philosopher kind of a guy called John Forbes Nash Jr?