Machines are taking over the world. From nano-mechanisms to virtual machines, which can be any system that lacks physical components, yet follows the rules of mechanisms, the human race is populating the globe with technology to enhance the lives of people. People, however, need to understand there are costs and risks that come with the introduction of and reliance on machines while machines do not always do what people want them to do. To understand and prevent the harm technologies can do, humans need to understand how machines “think.”
Anyone with experience in mechanics, engineering, or programming will testify how frustrating it can be for the human brain to predict why a machine might not act the way it was designed to act. Usually, the problem is not the machine. It is the person. Machines flawlessly follow logic. Even the most logical humans do not. Machines can only function a certain way under a certain condition. The human brain has the tendency to predict what it wants to happen instead of what will happen. If a machine behaves in unexpected way, it is because the human observer has failed to take into account unexpected variables.
Comments
Economies were born from the beneficial, and often necessary, exchanges of goods and services. For the powerful, economic development allowed them to amass power in the form of spendable wealth and enrich their lives with superfluous luxuries. Over the course of time, through widespread prosperity and work that relied on specialized skills, more and more people were able to amass financial security as well as enjoy the power to purchase goods and services instead of devoting their time to every sort of menial task. Economic developed has allowed individuals and humanity to thrive when economies function in line with the needs of people.
In theory, economies exist to distribute global, national, and local resources in the most efficient means possible in order to maximize the benefit of those resources and the life of the available supply. For the sake of social stability, this ideally means an economy will provide for, at least, the basic needs of all people within the economy. Public policies, which govern an economy, should, therefore, foster economic mechanisms that distribute wealth in such a way the needs of most people can be met and innovative individuals have access to the resources needed to improve the function of the economy and human life. Venezuela is a tropical land of massive reserves of natural resources, vast plots of arable land, and rich biodiversity. Venezuela should be a paradise. Venezuela’s national wealth has, however, been terribly mismanaged by capitalist industrialists, who starved the Venezuelan People to build fortunes, then socialist cronies, who fed the poor, yet corrupted the government and economy to enrich themselves. Fueled by high oil prices, the so-called Chavismo movement lead by the popular Hugo Chavez appeared to the solution to all the problems of the People.
Since the collapse of commodity prices and the death of Chavez, which left his successor Nicolas Maduro in power, Venezuela has spent years struggling with economic hardships and political upheaval. The response of Maduro and his government has been to use a “state of economic emergency” as a guise to silence protesters, political opposition, and dissent in general. Not only has Maduro sought to subvert Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, he has corrupted the judiciary to do so. |
Read old posts
April 2020
|