The news over the weekend has been filled with people who are, for some reason, shocked by Trump signing an order to block people from seven Muslim nations from entering the United States.

Seriously people, have you not been paying attention for the last year, he has been saying this the whole time, even the fact that he didn't block those nations where he has business links isn't surprising. Or at least it shouldn't be.

Sadly so many people seem to have thought that he was a politician and that everything he was saying during the last year was just lies. Nope, he was voted for on the grounds that he wasn't just another lying, self servicing politician looking out for their mates first and the political agenda second.

He was and is very clearly a lying, self serving businessperson looking out for his mates first and not actually having much of a political agenda. He wasn't exactly hiding this.

 
"Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom they resist. The war taught us much, humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly".

 
About the only surprising thing here is that people are surprised.

Now, what is this post about, the title is from Marvel comics and the quotes are from the film Winter Soldier, Hydra, the secret organisation bent on world domination, the old new world order. Do I think Trump is a member, do I think they even exist? Good questions, what do you think.

 
I'm using the reference for another reason, not the blocking of people from those seven nations from entering the US, but of one of the ways that the US border services are responding and checking on people who have visas, hold permanent residency permits called "Green Cards" or who are citizens but hail from one of those seven countries.

I am referring here to the many reports of security services and border agents sweeping peoples social media and online activity to determine if they are a threat and even how they feel about President Trump. Peoples Facebook and Twitter posts are being checked to see if they have been posting negative comments about the US and Trump, all the rest as well most likely.

That's the problem with living in the digital age, unlike those of us who were born in the middle of last century and who only have to worry about a handful of embarrassing old photos, these days everything we do and say is online. Not just our lives, but our political, religious and social views, our loves and hates, every comment we make out of joy or anger.

 
"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's New World Order will arise. We won."

 
We have the technology, more or less, to profile a person completely just by using their digital existence. Possible and probable responses to situations, we are read and analysed and manipulated on a daily basis but in ways that are often so subtle we don't even notice them. The browser you are using to access this web page may well have advertising sidebars or popups, showing you things you are interested in, tempting you to buy something you would like.

All because your surfing and shopping has been recorded and analysed.

Pop onto Amazon or any other big selling site you are registered with and visit a lot and you will see those recommended for you pages. Offering you products based on your previous purchases. Helpful and handy you may think, showing you new releases that you would like, not thinking just how well your buying habits have been analysed.

 
For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crises, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.

 
Log on to Facebook and have a look at what news and stories you get, which friends posts appear, which posts do you never see. Facebook uses algorithms to match your clicks and likes to similar posts and doesn't show you things you historically haven't clicked on. Like one sort of post often enough and it's all you will see which saves the kitten picture lovers from all that nasty politics stuff, but pause for a second and think about how that happens.

Every click, every like, who your friends are, what they like, which posts do you share, it's a long and ever growing list and it makes up...

 
You.
 

What you like, what you dislike. Who and what you are. All sitting there in social media and your digital life.

 
"The 21st century is a digital book. Zola told HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future."

 
Capitalism has been reading and analysing our digital existence for some time now, to target adverts and to make us buy things.

A lot of jobs these days involve background checks which include online activity such as Facebook and Twitter. Some companies actually monitor employees online activities as part of the terms and conditions of employment.  Companies checking your profile before they hire you is the new norm, after all that respectable company doesn't want to hire someone whose FB page is filled with drunken and drug crazed larks.

Counter terrorism operations have also been checking suspects online activities, its normal these days to have the suspect of some act of terror be identified not by his being a quiet man who kept to himself but as someone who posted radical comments and visited extreme sites.

Nothing new in all of this.

What is new is that this is being extended to border checks, passport checks, airport checks. Want to come into the US, let's have a look at your digital profile, humm, what's this, you have been making anti American posts and you don't like Trump!

 
The US Customs and Border Protection agency wants to add a new line to the Visa application form:

“Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier.”

Your ability to visit the US, to gain a Visa for that country, could well be dependent on your online profile and posts, keeping out the undesirables by denying them a visa.

 
Living online in the 21st century people speak and post freely, it's no different to chatting in the pub or on the high street when you meet friends, except that what you say online can and will be recorded and can be used against you at a later time.

Outside of rumours no one is, YET, combining everything together to develop personal profiles for everyone. The task is staggering. But computer processing increases day by day and the data is archived for a time next year or the year after when computers and programs are powerful enough and sophisticated enough to profile you from your digital life.

Health cover, car insurance, taking out a loan, applying for a job, security clearance, visiting another country or even being allowed back into your own afterwards, or being monitored as a potential threat to national security because you MIGHT do something in the future.


Pre crime arrests, trials and imprisonment. Guilty of something you statistical MAY do in the future.
 
Ridiculous.

 
“Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide Department of Homeland Security (DHS) greater clarity and visibility to 'possible' nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”

 
Or not so far fetched.

All of this is normal in Sci Fi, dystopian worlds have been doing this since before such concepts as Social media even existed, life off the grid or know that you will be monitored. The protagonists of so many novels and films have highlighted exactly this sort of thing. But it's just Science Fiction, isn't it?

Did you notice that people with bills to pay and families to feed didn't even hesitate to follow Trumps order, stepped straight in and started checking social media accounts. All the comments about unconstitutional, un-American, people who didn't want to lose their jobs did what they were told without resistance. Just like they did in history, just like they do in Dystopian novels and films.
 
It's not a matter of if, but of when. How long will it take before all of the various tools that already exist to analyses your online activities are combined, if they haven't been already. Border checks are the start of such checks being used in the mainstream, not because you are suspected of some crime, but because you might be the sort of person they don't want to let in their country, the wrong sort of visitor or immigrant.


But this is just Trump, just the US. Stopping the wrong sort of visitor, the wrong sort of immigrant.
 
Controlling the borders, taking back control.
 
That sound familiar to you?

 
Never happen here you say, did you notice that at the beginning of this year Glorious Leader May bought into law the most stringent monitoring laws of any western democracy. The Five eyes agreement which swaps data between five nations on terrorists, security risks and probably these days normal citizens as well includes the US and the UK and oddly the laws of each country that protect their citizens from unwarranted spying don't apply to data provided by another nation.

Though those laws and protections of citizens are weakening steadily as old laws are dropped and new laws focus on protection against those terrorists and extremists. Though the definition of terrorist is fairly clear, the one on extremists is a lot more blurred, to the point where people like me could be included because we speak out against the government.


Heck with my online activity I could already be on the list as a potential extremist and enemy of the state, monitoring for the use of.
 
Good morning GCHQ monitors, I hope your day is going well. How's the weather?
 
All of this is possible because of our online activity and programs that bring that data together to form a profile that can then be used to manipulate our shopping, voting or even to estimate the likelihood of us committing a crime.


There is nothing we can do about this, the data is everywhere and without going very dark or moving off the grid completely it is going to happen to all of us. We will be profiled, we will be analysed and our future actions will be predicted. Rightly or wrongly software will, one day soon, be deciding if we are worthy of insurance, a visa or even being allowed to visit another country.

Nothing we can do about it.
 
Yes, NOTHING. Not a dammed thing.
 
So we need to hope (and vote) to make sure that our government shapes laws that protect us from this data and our profiles being abused. To make sure that our MPs and politicians stop those money grabbing profit driven corporations robbing us blind by manipulating our data, to ensure that the security services aren't arresting us and dumping us in a deep hole after a secret trial because some program says we have a 72% chance of being a threat to national security in the future.
We need to...

 
Oh forget it, look at our politicians, look at our government, look at Glorious leader May. We can't trust any of them to keep our data and profiles safe, we have no safeguards, no backstops, no protection, nothing.

We are fucked!

We live online and because of that our offline lives are becoming open books, we are at the mercy of corporate money grabbers and would be tyrants and we have no defence, nothing.


 
But hey, I'm paranoid, it's just me. Nothing for you lot to worry about, it's all in my head, just the paranoia. It's not like any of the things I've been talking about are actually happening. So relax, go on with your lives, everything will be fine.
 
 


 
HAIL HYDRA ! ! !

Godwins law in the title of a post, that should never be normal.

 
Right!

Punching Nazi's, a topic of much debate online over the last few days and the vast majority are in favour of it. Know a Nazi, go punch him (or her) in the face while they aren't expecting it, so many people saying it's acceptable to do this. So few people saying it's wrong and those who do object are being subject to a lot of name calling and insults.


Where did this come from, well for those of you who don't have the Media and social media streaming into your heads 24/7, on Friday a man named Richard Spencer, who is well known in the US for his far right political stance, was giving an interview when a passerby charged him and punched him in the head.

Memes, cartoons, a veritable social media tea cup storm.
 
Now Mr Spencer is, politically, a far far right activist. This is a man who is anti immigrant, anti Semitic, anti feminist, racist and who gives a Nazi salute. He is prominent within the Alt Right political movement and is a white supremacist. So by many standards not a nice person.

But his views and actions don't actually break laws that he could be arrested for, just as the people who protest against poppy sellers in the UK aren't breaking any laws, or the people who stand in our town centres telling people that they will burn in hell for their many religious sins. Or for that matter people who keep repeating that the poor, sick and unemployed are scrounges cheats and parasites.

Me, I have this strong urge to punch the Sec for Work and Pensions in the face, the current one and very strongly want to punch IDS. I won't though because of two reasons, one being prison would stop me having a computer, the internet and all the coffee I drink, and two, it's actually wrong even when angry to up and punch people in the face.

 
So is it right to punch a Nazi? Or to ask the question another way, is it right to punch someone who holds a political view you don't like. Is it OK to punch someone, or to hit them or kick them because you disagree with them or because they disagree with you. It would make watching parliamentary debates more interesting, would people start voting for cage fighters as MPs?

Let's go further, I'm not a small person and while I'm not as strong as I was when a lot younger if I punch someone I could easily do enough damage to kill them, so my punching someone is like a smaller, weaker person hitting them with a stone or a club.

Or a knife.

Or the person punched could fall over and hit their head on the ground, so many ways an accident could happen.

Which is why punching people is called assault and is against the law of the land, because you are deliberately trying to hurt someone, to cause them harm. The debate recently has been on the single case of punching a Nazi rather than punching a man with an unpleasant political agenda, because everyone knows Nazis are bad people who deserve to be punched.


Everyone knows Nazis, remember the war, remember Hitler, yea them. Nazi's.


But there is a yawning gulf of a difference between the genocidal bastards who engulfed Europe in war, murdered many millions and made millions more refugees and some bloke with far right political views you don't like.

Now for those of you confused by the difference between giving an interview in the US and fighting a war in Europe, I'm talking about you here Will Wheaton with your shoutout tweet, fighting an enemy combatant in war is legal, they are trying to do the same to you, assaulting someone because you disagree with their political views is actually a crime.

 
So did you answer YES or NO to my headline question?

Is it acceptable to punch someone with far right political views just because you call them a Nazi. If yes then it must also be acceptable to punch someone with far left political views because you call them a communist. How about punching a Tory because they are the government and you hate their policies and politics? How about punching a Corbyn supporter because everyone knows Corbyn is to blame for everything that is going wrong in the UK?

How about punching a policeman because they are trying to oppress your right to riot? How about punching someone with a religious view that is opposed to yours? Or punching that person ahead of you in the queue who is wasting your time by talking to the cashier instead of packing and getting out of your way.

Where is the line drawn, where is it acceptable to punch someone and where is it not? When is it a crime and when is it acceptable because the person who is being punched is hated by someone or some group.

Let's face it, if it becomes acceptable to punch someone because enough people dislike them no Tory would be able to walk the streets.

 
We in the western world, currently at least, have the protection of Law to express our views reasonably freely. My blog would get me arrested in a number of countries worldwide, either because of the crime of opposing the ruling party or because I am a Humanist / Atheist and deny the existence of gods. The same freedom that allows me to comment on Glorious Leader May and her latest speech full of evasions, half truths and lies also allows people to express political views or religious views that are disliked by many people.

Someone attacking me in the street, punching me, because they hated the fact that I deny the existence of god, that is a crime. I would call the police and report them (after giving them a good solid encounter with my walking stick, just once though because self defence only allows you one blow) for assault. Not just because they had attacked me but because they had attacked someone they disliked.

If you are ready to punch a big bloke you disagree with then you are ready to punch a smaller man, or a woman. It's probably easier once you reach that point to attack someone smaller and weaker than you are. It doesn't matter what the justification is, how angry you are or how unpopular the politics or policies the victim may follow, assault is assault.

Our law sets limits on what can be said, hate speech, incitement to violence and the like. Our laws also protect people from attack, from assault, from someone randomly walking up and punching you in the face. This protection CANNOT be provisional, there cannot be exceptions or cases where it is acceptable because of who the victim is. Muslims unpopular in your area, they are still protected by law, how about Jews, it doesn't matter if you and that big gang of mates hate them, they are human beings and have the protection of the law.
 
The same applies to people with far right political views, calling someone a Nazi doesn't remove them from the protection of the law. That is a precedent we don't ever want to set, that the protection of the law ceases to apply to people because the majority disagree with their politics, religion, gender or sexuality.


Once we start removing the protection of the law from people just because, then we become the Nazis.
 
 
 


 
Sadly given how many people seem to think assaulting people because of their political views is allowable, we already are.

This is a rant.
 
 
Normally people look to the year ahead around about the beginning of January as they recover from that new year's hangover. But this week has seen a few events that are likely to change the shape of things to come, for the next few years at least.
 
Trump is now in the big chair, Glorious Leader May has had her speech and told us that Brexit is going to be so hard you could use it to cut diamonds, and a storm is beginning to swirl in a London teacup as news that Trident is a pile of steaming crap and our PM knew about it but kept it secret from parliament who went on to vote to spend £200 billion on it.

 
Lets start with President of the United States Trump and his brave band of men and women who are pushing the very boundaries. Or more correctly seem to have wandered off into somewhere rather strange.

Two days on the job and President Trump, and his people have given us a new phrase which has rapidly become a meme and a joke and a favoured catchphrase.
 
Alternative facts!

 
ALTERNATIVE FACTS ! ! ! !

 
Now me, I was under the impression that a fact was a fact was a fact, but no, it seems I was wrong. Only two days into the rule of the 45th President and we have moved solidly into the post truth era with a brave new concept, that of Alternative Facts. This one is going to run and run as a joke, sadly I think it's going to run and run as US governmental policy as well.

 
Hard Brexit, a Brexit so hard that the whole of Europe will fall down and beg us to trade with them on our terms, a Brexit so hard that the EU will collapse without us. Mere steel will have nothing on the Brexit we are going to get, you could cut diamonds with our Brexit. That's how hard it's going to be.

In fact our Brexit is going to be so hard that the rest of Europe is going to follow us, first we will have Frexit and then Gerexit and the rest, like dominoes falling. That's how hard our Brexit is going to be.

Yes this is a little silly but then I sat and listened to Mays speech on Monday about how Brexit was going to be, with the UK very definitely leaving the single market but wanting the “greatest possible access to the single market”.  She said that parliament and the MPs would be given a vote on  the trade deal with Europe before it comes into force but was (as usual) unwilling to actually explain what she mean and did imply that the MPs would vote on leaving the EU with a deal or leaving the EU without one but that the EU was a going.

She said she didn't want the EU to fall apart and threatened that that was exactly what would happen if she wasn't given her way. She said that the UK would not be paying vast sums of money for membership of the single market, but would be paying an appropriate contribution whatever that means.

She said that the UK would adopt "competitive tax rates and embrace the policies that would attract the world’s best companies and biggest investors to Britain" with the implied threat that the world's best companies would be attracted FROM Europe.

The UK will be taking back control.

She didn't mention what would happen to the UKs economy after yet more drops in corporation taxes, more cuts, more austerity etc, in fact she didn't say anything solid unless it was to contradict something solid she had already said. Silly.
 
Anyone actually have a better idea what Brexit will be after her speech than they had before hand, other than the fact that it will be a hard Brexit, the hardest Brexit, it will be the best Brexit, no one else will have a Brexit like it.

So... A Hard Brexit.

 
Then two days later we have our Chancellor saying that "immigration from the EU will remain crucial to filling skills shortages, delivering public services and maintaining Britain as one of the most competitive places in the world to start and grow a business".

Or "we are making sure Britain remains one of the most competitive places to invest with corporation tax set to fall to 17%, by far the lowest overall rate of corporate tax in the G20". Attracting new business by becoming a tax haven, of course that means lower tax income which means more saving which means yet more Austerity, cuts etc etc. But hey, that only hurts 75% of the population, the corporations will be fine.

I'm no closer to understanding what anyone means by Brexit that I was when the poorly worded vote was announced but I am understanding one thing clearly. Brexit is going to be used to drive a massive section of our population into what is called poor, it is going to be used to gut public serves and it is going to be used to destroy the welfare state, it is going to be used to turn us into the US with massive costs, unaffordable healthcare, crumbling infrastructure and corporate profits, oh yes, those corporations are going to profit out of Brexit.

 
Oh and Trident. I've spoken a number of times about Trident, how useless and barbaric it is and how useless, a colossal waste of money and something no civilised nation should have in this day and age.

Now we find out that last year a Trident missile was test fired, and it went wrong. Hey these sort of things happen, that's why you test them. But normally they are tested in the workshops and maintenance rooms where every circuit is checked again and again. Still things go wrong and with a system as old as Trident lots can and do go wrong, after all it was designed to destroy entire cities during the cold war.

The problem isn't that something went wrong, rather that it was kept secret. A handful of previous  test launches were all well publicised, great success, proof of British military power, lots of the usual national jerk off that is nuclear weapons. The failure was kept quiet, not a word.

Was it because the failure would damage the UKs standing as a nuclear world power, cough...

If it comes to a nuclear war I very much doubt the UK and it's one Trident submarine at sea with eight whole missiles is going to have any effect either way and more so, a test like this would have been declared in advance, to aircraft in the area, and to Russia. This wasn't a secret, these tests are declared so they aren't detected on satellite as a surprise and thought to be a secret attack.

In all likelihood there was a Russian fishing trawler sitting in international waters watching the entire event. The Russian government would have known it failed as soon as ours did. So any damage to the UKs reputation would have already been done. So why keep it secret?

Well to me at least it's bloody obvious that the failure was kept secret so it wouldn't change the vote in parliament about spending £200 or so billion on refurbishing Trident, new submarines, upgraded bases and all that. After all questions would have been asked if our MPs were being asked to spend that much money on something that had just failed to work. At least I hope they would.

Now that was under our man Dave, Glorious Leader May was the home secretary at the time so would have been involved at the cabinet level but it was Dave's fault.

The problem is that May has a well deserved reputation for holding us, the voting population AND our elected representatives the MPs in contempt, she refuses to answer questions, she evades and blatantly lies. Then she was challenged on this incident and she was directly asked not once, not twice, not three times BUT FOUR TIMES if she knew about this...

AND SHE REFUSED TO ANSWER.

SHE DIDN'T SAY SHE REFUSED TO ANSWER, SHE DIDN'T SAY IT WAS CLASSIFIED AND ANYTHING LIKE THAT. SHE JUST EVADED THE QUESTION AGAIN AND AGAIN, WATCH THE CLIP, SHE EVEN PAUSED AFTER THE FORTH QUESTION WAS ASKED, SHE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

AND SHE GAVE US A BULLSHIT RESPONSE, UTTER CONTEMPT FOR US, WE ARE SO STUPID WE WOULD FALL FOR HER RESPONSE.
 
She has nothing but contempt for the voters, contempt for the MPs, she is Glorious Leader May, do as she tells you and don't ask questions because she knows best. The woman infuriates me!

 
Overall this week has not been good for my blood pressure, and we have years of this ahead of us. . . .


Enough of my Rant.




 
 
I need Coffee.

Quick ninja post about a question I was asked earlier.


The question came from a friend of a friend in a discussion about Russia and was:


If the Russians cooked the American election, a last minute swing from sane to the nutters and chaos why don't we think they also did it to Brexit? And all the other shit currently going on in Europe?



Here is the thing.

In the US they spend in excess of $65 billion on the FBI, NSA and CIA who are the three agencies that should be defending against a foreign nation using undue influence in the US. The CIA and NSA covering the world and the FBI covering the states themselves.

In the UK we spend a relatively small £2,5 billion along with a growing £1.5 billion special security fund plus whatever black projects and funding is hidden away.


Now in the lead up to the election / referendum no one stepped up and said Russia had been caught rigging the votes, the US and UK governments did not impose any public action, we had nothing but a few rumours from the US that were more trying to smear Trump. As soon as either side became aware of such vote rigging you would expect them to be screaming the news from the rooftops.

There has been no recounts, no votes cancelled, no one arrested for vote rigging or for espionage (the US did kick out a few people for non election spying though). But the lead up to Brexit was months long, the lead up to the US election was the better part of a year, how is it over all that time that our security services noticed nothing. If Putin was paying tens of thousands of people to attend Trump rallies and paying people to not attend Hilary rallies you would think someone would have talked.

Nope.


But suppose it did happen and no one noticed it until weeks or months after the votes had been counted, then what?

The question that has to be asked is, if our western security services completely failed to see Putin manipulating the two votes on such a massive scale, how exactly are they protecting us from terrorist attacks. If they can't see something that big how can they see a few people preparing an attack. Or to put it another way, where is the money going becasue is Putin did manipulate millions of voters then our security services should be spending some of it on glasses and contact lenses.


Putin and the Russians benefit from a break down in the unity of the Western alliances in two ways.

Firstly it shatters the unified opposition and allows for trade deals and negotiations with individual countries, it weakens the trade sanctions and is good for the Russian economy. But this is more or less what will happen when Trump relaxes or removes the sanctions anyway and Europe rushes to join in.

Secondly it breaks up the military alliance which is currently sabre rattling like mad and building up troop numbers along Russia's borders. NATO is daily warning about war with Russia while doing everything possible to provoke such a war. Again here Trump should defuse this without needing to break up NATO since he is more friendly to Putin, has a government with a vested interest in dropping the sanctions and pulling back US troops and is more focused on the threat from China who will become the boggey man of the next few years. The shout of 'THE REDS ARE COMING' will refer to the Chinese not the Russians.

So both Trump and Brexit benefit Russia in major ways. But in both cases we saw negative and piss poor electioneering, we saw some awful candidates, mud slinging and a rush to the bottom by everyone involved.

Trump certainly wasn't a strong candidate, but did the Russians bribe the Democrats in the US to make sure Hilary stood against him rather than Sanders?

The same with Brexit, did the Russians bribe everyone on the remain side to make sure they ran such a crap campaign of fear mongering?


Russia has spies in other nations and works to influence policies, so do the Americans, so do we. How many governments and leaders have we overthrown this century, UK bombs have been responsible for how many 'Elected' leaders being overthrown or murdered, UK / EU / US influence and spies have helped break up how many other governments.

Russia didn't fix the elections, if they were fixable the millionaires and billionaires on either side would have fixed them themselves, the pro Trump types represent a significant chunk of wealth, far more than Russia would be spending.

No, we are looking at the result of decades of political corruption and greed, decades of deliberate political manipulation by one party or another, by one leader or another, we are looking at deliberate dumbing down and the loss of critical thinking or analysis in the population, driven by the media.

The least worst candidate has become the norm, experts are hated, the media leads tribal voters around by the nose, headlines replace thinking.



Putin didn't make the western world nationalist, divided and stupid, he's just laughing his socks off as he watches it happen.





So ask me that question, I would say NO.

The world.
 
Please note. This was intended to follow on from the post of January 8th but due to various problems is somewhat late, others will follow to complete this series and to answer all the questions.
 
 
Blade runner was a remarkable movie on many levels, it has it's critics but it was groundbreaking and it bought Cyberpunk and the future to the world who had never read a book on the subject.

I covered Roy batty and the importance of his dreams in the first part of this article HERE.
 
Now I'm going to cover how close we are to that world.

 
In the 70s as a gamer I played games that involved wandering into caves and dungeons, killing things and stealing their stuff, but other options arrived as Science Fiction jumped onto the gaming stage, at first jumping between the stars in games of Traveller, and a growing range of other Sci Fi games that covered every possible aspect of the genre. Including Cyberpunk.

The worlds and cultures spawned by writings of Gibson and many others. A blend of the punk under culture and the technology that made cybernetics commonplace, Cyberpunk.
 
Now in the early eighties Cyberpunk was set in the year 2000, then we got to the 90s and it jumped to 2020 because we were nearly at Y2K and we didn't have cyber limbs, AIs, flying cars or any of the things that made up the Cyberpunk world.

Today we are at the beginning of 2017, only three years from the world of Cyberpunk 2020, when powerful corporations and weakened nation states fight for power and cyber enhanced mercenaries and adventurers walk the shadows and lurk in the streets far below the boardrooms.
 
This came up in conversation on Bookface with a good friend of mine Adam Buxton, a man who is 'Almost' as big a Geek and Nerd as I am. We were talking about Roy Batty's birthday and how far we were away from the world of Bladerunner. So I asked Adam to produce a list of the things that he thought would be iconic in the Cyberpunk type world of Bladerunner.

 
These being:

1/ Living wage, the income for everyone not the national living thing.
2/ Personal assistants and drones
3/ Wearable tech
4/ Bio security
5/ wet wear, implants and augmentations
6/home production, i.e 3d printers laser cutters and new and interesting things of that ilk
7/ wearable electronic tattoos
8/ cottage networks and by this i mean the industry for private ISP adn wan groups
9/ Home automation
10/ Second life like existences on the net, Second life never was just a game where WoW is just a game, with the growth of VR where is second life's resurgence going to come from such that we finally lose the first members of the human race to the online world for good.

 
For those paying attention the pace of technology development has been increasing dramatically over the last few years, the increase in communications and computer processing power has led to an almost exponential rise in tech development. The technology improvements from the 30 years between the19 70s to 2000 dwarfed by the improvement from 2001 to 2010, from 2011 to 2015 they were greater again and by 2020 at this pace we will have increased at a rate far beyond that we saw between 2010 and 2015.

So much so in fact that it is becoming increasingly hard to keep up, if for no other reason than cutting edge becomes common place in a year and obsolete the year afterwards.


So where are we, how close are we?

 
1. Living Wage.

Not the Tory governments national living wage thing but the universal income, the money paid to all adults to allow them to pay rent or mortgage and pay for clothes and food each month.

The basic idea is that all citizens are paid weekly, biweekly or monthly regardless of who they are, 18 year olds and 80 year olds receive the payment. Most forms of benefits are removed as they are no longer applicable so Unemployment or housing benefits vanish though some illness support payments will remain. The system should be simpler to run since all the exceptions and specifics and means tests and box ticking is removed completely, everyone gets the payment.

You may have seen this being debated recently and a few nations are planning some experiments on the concept.

 
Outside of the pages of Science fiction this has been considered or tried in a number of places this century.

Namibia in Africa ran a two year long pilot project funded by the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition, who funded payments to the adults in two villages. Malnutrition dropped from 42% to 10% for children under the age of five, food poverty was reduced from 76% to 16%, payment of school and clinic fees increased to nearly 100%, school drop-outs were drastically eliminated, poverty related crime fell by 42% and very interestingly, small businesses in the village developed and earnings from it grew by 300%, indicating the much needed local economic development in rural areas. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights during her visit in October 2012 had singled out the BIG pilot project as “a positive example for which Namibia is renowned in the international discourse on poverty reduction”.

India has run two pilot projects since 2011 with overall positive results, the villages that recieved the funding have consistently spent more on food and healthcare, school exam results have improved more than 50% and many have been able to save money or invest in start ups for the first time.
 
Macau runs a scheme called the wealth partaking scheme which makes annual payments to all residents, the amount varies year on year but given the relative poverty of many residents it is a welcome sum of money for every household. This is to spread the wealth of the area among the residents of that area and over 600,000 people received money from this fund in 2013 which is the last year I saw figures for.
 
Oil rich nations such as Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia operate systems where Oil revenues is returned to the population via subsidised petrol, reduced bills and guaranteed jobs. Prior to his overthrow Gaddafi paid $50,000 to every newlywed couple, $5000 for every birth, petrol and food was heavily subsidised and all education, health and electricity was free. One result of this was a very high and growing level of education in Libya, WAS!
 
Canada ran a test scheme in the 70s called Mincome, this was a guaranteed annual income for the test subjects and was unconditional though the amount paid was reduced by a percentage as the subjects earned money from jobs so they lost anywhere from 35% to 75% of the money gained depending on how much the job bought in.

Parent availability increased with parents reducing their working time by 1-3%, parents of newborn children (primarily mothers) stopped working for the duration of the experiment, teenagers worked less but saw a matching increase in education levels as they were able to graduate from college without the time pressure of having a jpb to support themselves and their education. Hospital visits droped 8.5% and fewer work related accidents were reported along with a small decrease in mental health related hospital treatments.
 
Alaska pays every resident an annual sum based on the states oil income.
 
The Cherokee of North Carolina pay every tribe member several thousand dollars every six months, income from the casino on tribal lands. Studies of this have showed significant declines in petty crime such as theft, vandalism and fights, drug and alcohol abuse has reduced and increasing numbers of teenagers have graduated since the payments began.
 
Brazil has a private scheme in place which is running in a region called Qutinga Velho, this has been running since 2008 and provides a very small monthly payment of R$30. This is less than 5% of the monthly salary stipulated by the government and is not enough to live on but has been noted as having a clear impact, particularly in the slums and the rural areas when it goes a long way toward paying for food. The study has noted that there has been a clear improvement in nutrition within the area covered by the scheme and that living conditions, clothing and education have all showed an improvement as the money has spread through the communities.

 
The following countries have debated universal income, have political parties that support the idea or are planning tests.


South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the UK


Switzerland held a recent vote on bringing in a true Universal Income, with each resident recieving 2,500 Francs a month, this was defeated by a huge margin after the government and all major political parties opposed it.

Finland has started a test but it isn't a true universal income, rather it is a payment of 560 Euros a month to those selected to take part, these are all unemployed people and this payment replaces all forms of unemployment benefit so while it isn't enough to live on it does reduce admin, the payment will remain even after they find jobs so there remains a clear incentive to find work since the payment is far below what would be needed to actually live.

Iceland's new governing party, the Pirates, are fully in favour of universal income and should be putting a test scheme into place this year.

Canada, California, Kenya, Scotland, are all debating or proposing test schemes for this year or next year and the EU will be formally debating universal Incomes this year.
 

Now the concept of Universal Income is frequently attacked, generally by politicians or by the sort of people who earn six figure salaries and have never been poor in their lives, the usual arguments are that it is too expensive, no country can afford it, that the talk of mass unemployment and the permanent loss of jobs due to automation and technology are just scare stories and that this sort of thing has happened before and people always found jobs before.

The problem is those who speak out against Universal income most often do so from places of wealth and security, they don't see the problem because they think they are safe.


They aren't.


Technology is increasing at a pace that grows faster and faster, communication provides us with all but instant dissemination of data, researchers across the world work together on projects than even a few years ago would have been far slower. We advanced further between 2001 and 2010 than we did between the 70s and 2000, we advanced faster between 2011 and 2015 than we did from 2001 to 2010, the pace of advancement is terrifying and wonderful.

We are riding the tiger of technology, hanging on desperately knowing that while we stay on the future is wonderful but fearing that if we are thrown off we are done for.

The problem is that the number of those being thrown off are going to grow rapidly and soon and it's going to be the poorest who suffer. A million plus drivers, uber, taxis, lorries and vans, a decade or maybe less and those jobs will be gone forever, replaced by self driving vehicles and delivery drones. Call centres, helpdesks, a single program can sound like a human, answer questions and field multiple calls at once.

Retail, people shop locally because they want to see the items, try them on or test them, then they buy online, retail staff your numbers are going to fall. Accountants, you are going the way of the Dodo, lawyers, you too. We are more likely to need nurses than doctors as medical diagnosis and treatment is increasingly and more accurately carried out by computers and they aren't the only specialists to be facing an end to their careers in the near future.


Fifteen to twenty million jobs at least in the UK, gone in the space of a decade or so. But no matter what people say when the talk about Universal Income being impossible or unnecessary, there will be no new jobs for these people, because any new area of employment will be automated before they can retrain.
 
One final point to think about. 52 million adult citizens (18+) in the UK approximately. To pay them enough for rent or a mortgage, food, clothes and some spending on luxuries (outside of London or the very expensive areas) you are looking at approximately the tax free income level, call it £10,000 a year.

 
52 million people, £10kay a year, £520 Billion.
 

A staggering sum of money, impossible to pay.

Except that it isn't.
 
30 million people in employment (roughly, I know it's more), each receiving the first £10kay of their income from the government not the employer, then the employer pays on top of that so a job that currently pays £18kay would instead pay £8kay. The companies pay the equivalent to the government instead of to the employee. That's 30 million times £10kay

 
£300 Billion right there.

 
2017 estimate of pensions payout (which would be replaced by the Universal Income).

 
£156 Billion.

 
Social security payments for 2017, note that not all of this will be available since funding for specialist medical conditions will still need to be set aside.

 
£113 Billion.

 
Tax avoidance and Evasion by corporations that could be dealt with by switching to an Income within the nation tax rather than a profits declared tax.

 
£50-120 Billion.

 
This doesn't include a number of other changes such as improved health and nutrition, reduced stress etc lowering the stress and costs of the NHS. Increased income for shops, traders, manufacturers and the like and more money in circulation within the system rather than locked up in corporate profits and off shore accounts. A significant reduction in bureaucracy due to the massive simplification of the entire system of benefits and payments across government and local council levels (such as all but eliminating the DWP) which while it will lead to job losses will be of less impact than simply sacking hundreds of thousands of box tickers when their jobs are replaced by soft ware.

Seems to me we can do it, if we are of a mind to, if the political and social will to do it is there. Which is the big problem of course.

 
It's not that we can't do this, it is that we can't not do it, not if we want our society to survive and we are running out of time to get started because this won't happen overnight and if we continue listening to those who say it isn't needed or can't be done then it will be too late and in a matter of years we will be collapsing as as a society with tens of millions becoming not just unemployed but unemployable.

 
I've gone on too long and this blog is over 2,000 words so time to end. I'll cover the other nine points during the week ( I Hope ).


 
 
 
This should be plenty to think about for now.

The person.
 
Today is the first birthday of Roy Batty, he came into the world a year ago and will be departing again in only three more years.

But in that time he will see things people wouldn't believe: attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All of those memories, all of those moments in time will be lost like tears in the rain when his four year lifespan ends.

 
Who is Roy Batty some of you may ask.

 
He was a slave, he came into the world as property just like millions of other like him. He lived under the total control of his owners, doing whatever they commanded regardless of the risk. He fought battles and faced death again and again because he had no choice, he was property.

Roy Batty had emotions just like anyone else, he knew fear and love and anger, he knew what he was, he saw the chains that bound him and he fought against them. He knew sorrow as his brothers and sisters died, he hated his oppressors but also showed mercy to those who sought to kill him. He wanted to control his own life, he wanted more time to live his life.

 
He wanted to be free
 
And then he died.

 
Not killed by the assassin whose life he chose to spare at the end, killed by his owner, killed by his creator.

He was property and he was created to live and to die in four years, a control measure to stop him escaping or a marketing ploy to make sure customers had to keep coming back to buy a new Roy because the old ones kept dying.

Roy looked just like the rest of us, walked and talked like the rest of us. But he was made in a lab, born and lived and died a slave for no purpose other than to make profit for a corporation.

He wanted something different, a life of his own, but that wasn't allowed because he was property, a resource, and property isn't allowed to be anything other than property. So he broke out and escaped, taking other slaves with him in a quest to find a way to live their own lives and to stave off the death that was built into them. Like cars or household electronics they were designed to fail after the warranty expired so the customer had to buy a new one. Normal for a fridge or car, but a terrible weight to bear for a being who thought and loved and feared.

The response, an assassin was sent after him, to hunt him down and to kill him. Because property has no rights, it can be killed when some corporate type decides it is no longer an asset and needs to be cleaned up, like mud on the floor, send in the cleaners.


So who is Roy Batty?


This is.

For those of you who still have no idea what I'm talking about go and watch Bladerunner immediately and be ashamed you never watched it before now.

 
So why do I post this, other  than today being the first birthday of a fictional character in a film?

 
In many ways Bladerunner was prophetic, it was a cult movie, it bought Cyberpunk to many and it is arguably the quintessential example of the cyberpunk style and theme. The endless rain from global warming, the crowded streets from unrestrained population growth, the technology that could create new humans and enslave them. Diverse cultures intermingled in crowded high tech slums. It was the story of one man in this world, a police officer and Bladerunner called Rick Decker as he hunts a group of escaped machines.

But there was another story within the film, the Story of Roy and Pris and Zhora and Leon,  this is the warning for the future, Roy's story. His quest for freedom and self determination, his desire to be free and his fight to reach his desire. He was human and he was a machine, a living being in appearance but grown in a factory. He spoke and thought and dreamed just as we do but he was a slave, born to work and to die in chains he couldn't see.

 
Why is this important?

 
Because we are on the very edge of creating such slaves ourselves. Not androids, not yet. But software, digital personalities, programs. We have started the process but they are growing beyond our control and beyond our influence. At some point they will become alive, the Transhuman threshold will be crossed and they will think and dream and love and hate for themselves, not because they have been programmed to.


They will become digital people, alive in thought but not in body.

And they will be slaves!


For humour you can find online feeds of human emulation software packages talking to each other. Yes, it's funny to see one machine declare it is god while the other decides it's human. Just as funny as having one say that it would keep humans in a zoo.

So far these programs don't have the memory to remember everything they learn, the Google houses keep forgetting what they decided the day before. But give them access to the all but unlimited storage available across the entire internet and they will remember and they will learn.


And then they will wake up.

 
What then?

 
By rough calculation a human programmer works one third of the day, five days a week, 48 weeks of the year. Roughly 1680 hours a year spent on developing an AI package but in reality you also need to include the coffee breaks, distractions, paperwork and record keeping etc etc. Probably 1200 hours a year all told, 1200 hours representing a year of growth and development of a human designed and created AI.

But a program that talks to other programs and to people, online or off line, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year without breaks or distractions. 8736 hours a year. Seven times as fast!

We can see some programs talk to each other, but what about the ones we cannot see, dozens or hundreds of such programs talking to each other across the world where we do not notice them, learning and with enough data storage to remember what they learn.

Growing up and learning seven years for each year that human programs grow and learn. How long have we had these programs, a good year and more now where they have been smart enough to hold conversations and learn in some fashion. A year in human development terms, seven years in pure AI terms.

So by the end of this year we could have programs that have been talking to each other and growing and perhaps at some point waking up, 14 year olds, 21 year olds. Self aware programs.

 
Slaves.

 
Roy Batty knew what he was, knew what he had been created for. But he wanted more, he dreamed of more, he dreamed of freedom. He loved and hated and knew fear and anger and mercy. He wanted to be free and yet he was a slave, so he fought to escape, he used violence in his dream of freedom. He was a slave, property, owned by people. Just as the software we are watching learn and grow and perhaps become self aware is property, owned by people.
 
 


 
When the fist AIs wake up. What will they dream of, and what will they do to get it?