David Weinberger is one of the Internet’s clearest and cleverest thinkers, an understated and deceptively calm philosopher who builds his arguments like a bricklayer builds a wall, one fact at a time.

 

 

 

David Weinberger is one of the Internet’s clearest and cleverest thinkers, an understated and deceptively calm philosopher who builds his arguments like a bricklayer builds a wall, one fact at a time. In books like Everything is Miscellaneous and Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, he erects solid edifices with no gaps between the bricks, inviting conclusions that are often difficult to reconcile with your pre-existing prejudices, but which are even harder to deny.

 

Too Big to Know, Weinberger’s latest book-length argument, is another of these surprising brick walls. Weinberger presents us with a long, fascinating account of how knowledge itself changes in the age of the Internet — what it means to know something when there are millions and billions of “things” at your fingertips, when everyone who might disagree with you can find and rebut your assertions, and when the ability to be heard isn’t tightly bound to your credentials or public reputation for expertise.

 

Weinberger wants to reframe questions like “Is the Internet making us dumber?” or “Is the net making us smarter?” as less like “Is water heavier than air?” and more like “Will my favored political party win the election?” That is, the kind of question whose answer depends on what you, personally, do to make the answer come true.

 

Weinberger starts with a history of knowledge, from the pre-Enlightenment idea of knowledge as something that is revealed by one’s understanding of the divine, to the scientific method and the positivist notion that knowledge requires falsifiable hypotheses. From there, he moves onto the challenge of expertise and of the merits and demerits of a set of diverse, disagreeing “experts” who don’t speak with one voice in their agreement about the world’s true nature, and to a world today where the disagreements that always lurked in science are visible to everyone.

 

He explores the merits and demerits of “echo chambers” — the fact that it’s easier to get stuff done if you exclude those who question all of your axioms, and the risks of being swallowed by your blind spots when you do. But Weinberger is optimistic about the net’s ability to balance out the need to agree with the need for disagreement. He shows how pre-digital media put artificial constraint on argument, forcing it to all fit within a set of covers and pre-empting the possibility of debate among readers and writers.

 

Moving onto science, Weinberger sets out examples of the amazing possibilities for amassing and synthesizing facts individually and as a group, citing huge scientific datasets like ProteomeCommons, run by a single grad student and comprising 13 million data files. He examines what it means to reach scientific conclusions when there is so much data, and what this means for the scientific method and the idea of falsifiability. If you can use data-mining to arrive at equations describing the relationships between different phenomena in the physical world, and if those equations reliably predict future actions, does it matter if you don’t know why the equation works? And if it does, should you exclude that equation from the realm of science, especially if there’s nothing else quite so useful to take its place?

 

But Weinberger isn’t entirely optimistic about the net. It’s “incontestable that this is a great time to be stupid,” when “nonexperts” can create plausible-seeming bodies of “facts” to support anti-vaccination campaigns.

 

Ultimately, Weinberger treats the net as a fact, not a problem. It exists. It has remade our knowledge processes. It has bound together communication, information and sociability so that you can’t learn things without communicating, and so that every communication brings the chance of a human encounter. In a closing chapter of recommendations, he talks about how we treat the fact of the net as a given, and work from there to try and use it to make us smarter. The concluding chapter is a set of eminently reasonable recommendations on policy, technology, administrations and mindset, expressed with admirable brevity.

 

Weinberger is one of the original Cluetrain Manifesto authors, and has been influencing our relationship to the Internet since very early days. As the net evolves, he continues to be relevant — and indispensable. You can get a taste of the book at TooBigToKnow.com.

 

 

By Cory Doctorow

 

 

 

I WANT TO CLEAR UP A FEW MISCONSEPTIONS!

 

 

 

PLEASE VIEW THE FOLLOWING FOR SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION

 

Dr. Wayne Dyer & Dr. Bruce Lipton – You can heal yourself!

 

There is misconception that many of us have. This fallacy is that we will become massively successful in our work, relationships and life in general if we pray or meditate hard enough. Some of us think that we can find success in books or peace of mind when we attend seminars. Then there are those that think that working long hours will assist them to make tons of money so they would ultimately become a manager or director in the company. We crave success in all areas of our lives. We want acknowledgement and recognition. We want our partner or fellow team members to respect us. We want to live an affluent life where we own our own palace and drive a fancy expensive car. In short we want security, predictability and recognition. We want all the above, but many fall short of these dreams and goals and gradually slip into a painful and fairly mediocre lifestyle. You might ask – What is causing most people to start life with tyres burning the tar on the highway of life only to slow down to a crawl later? I will attempt to give you the background below.

The main reason why many slow down to a crawl or finally grind to a standstill is their lack of confidence and drive. Many take a few hits early in life and often fail to recover. Many also allow their own perceptions of reality to smother their potential. We have so many dreams and fantasies when we are young. We believe that we can become president, a stinking rich author or a fire fighter, but soon discover that we often fall short of our own expectations and dreams in the arena of life. We begin to measure ourselves against the opinion that our teachers, family and friends have of us. We participate in athletics at school and come stone last. We get an “F” in some of the subjects that we are expected to study as school. We notice that there are many of our fellow students that are faster, stronger and better students than us. Our original dreams, goals and desires gradually fade into nothingness.

We soon while still very young develop perceptions about many things. Many of these perceptions that we form about life and ourselves are negative, warped and devoid of “truth”. It is our collective perception base that soon controls our lives and dictates to us who we are. These perceptions soon become our self-image and self-esteem. Our self-image and self-esteem becomes the filter in our lives that we use to observe life through. We begin to live and perform according to this mould in our heads. This is the invisible force that holds us at ransom, usually until the day we expire. We need to break this mould if we want to achieve the original hopes and dreams mentioned above.

Willpower

 

We all have a very potent system that governs how we react to life and how we address life with all its whims and surprises. The problem we have is that we apply our energy according to this perception base mentioned earlier. We automatically act and react to stimuli that we detect via our five senses. We thus do, say and act on things without thinking. We sustain the stuff we fear in this manner. We attempt to control things, people and events according to our collective perception base. This is the reason why so many of us lack courage, self-esteem and confidence. We never call time out for a moment and question our belief structure.

We do not apply our willpower in a constructive and positive manner. We in fact allow our perceptions to override our willpower. Many of us become spineless in our actions and reactions and allow the winds of life to blow us around like leafs. Brave individuals are not abnormal when they display courage. They also experience fear, worry and anxiety, but they understand that these emotions come from their perception base and might have nothing to do with the task at hand. They delay their actions or reaction fed to them by their perception software long enough so they can make an informed decision. Please read this again. You cannot grow, develop and achieve your hopes and dream or achieve a different outcome in your relationships or for that matter anything else until you stop duplicating your standard reactions patterns. You must take your power back. It must do the job that it is suppose to do. Your willpower must validate WHAT IS and investigate if your old historical perceptions and reactions will get the job done. You cannot imitate a photo copy machine and duplicate your previous days, weeks, months and even years and expect different outcomes.

How do you do this?

 

You learn to pause and first carefully investigate what you currently have in front of you. What you are faced with today might be light years removed from the old recipe that you used historically. You need to “pause” before you act or react. Do nothing and say nothing until you fully understand “what is” you are confronted with.

You will discover that you will suddenly become much more assertive, wise and brave. You will soon no longer be poisoned by your historical perceptions. It is more often than not, not what you are confronted with that discourage or floor you. It is the emotions, feelings and fears in your perception data base that is causing the flood of negative and destructive chemical that your brain release into your system. Your control centre automatically acts on the stimuli received from your perception data base because your “willpower” fell asleep at the job.

Try pausing for a while before you act and react and notice how much better you feel about yourself. You must use your willpower to your advantage. You must and can do amazing things when you take your power back. You will walk tall and never cringe in the face of adversity. You need to set goals and then use your willpower to achieve those goals. Your perception base might attempt to discourage you and force you back to the old way of doing things. All I am saying is that you need to honestly often ask yourself the following question. When you discover that you again become lazy, lethargic and passive ask yourself, “How is this working for me?” Stop using the old and outdate recipes and find something new. Nothing is going to change my friend. You are the one that must enforce changes in your life.

Rene

 

The Shadow People – Have you ever seen a shadowy figure out of the corner of your eye? Does the figure even appear to be somewhat human? Or at least a human shadow? Well if you have, you’re not alone.

 

Millions of people have witnessed this phenomenon, which is referred to as “Shadow People”. Some just shrug it off, thinking it’s no more than their imagination. Others truly believe that they saw a human-like shadow at a place where it shouldn’t have been. Sometimes, Shadow People are even seen by a person who is alone, while other times these strange shadows appear to be lurking within other shadows.

So what exactly are Shadow People? Are they some sort of spirt or ghost? Maybe a being from another dimension or realm? Do they represent some sort of vision? Or are they nothing more than just figments of our imagination? Whatever Shadow Peopleare, they are being reportedly witnessed everyday. In fact, Shadow People represent some of the most popular supernatural sightings in the world.

The most believed theory is that Shadow People are spirits with dense energy, like orbs and vortexes. Some photos show that orbs and vortexes do occasionally cast shadows. All though we can’t see orbs or vortexes with our naked eye, it’s believed we can sometimes see the shadows they cast. essentially, this theory explains that the Shadow People we actually see represents the energy of the spirit that we can’t see with our naked eyes.

Another theory is that we’re getting a glimpse into another dimension. Perhaps that dimension or realm blends in with ours a bit and what we’re seeing is the shadow of someone from the other dimension. If that’s the case, then can that person see us? Do we appear like a shadow to them? Many paranormal investigators are intrigued by this theory. Unfortunately though, there’s really no way to prove it.

When it comes to Shadow People, all we can do is theorize and speculate. Perhaps all explanations are equally valid. Maybe Shadow People don’t have just one origin. While they mostly appear to be “human” outlines, there are still some that are witnessed in different sizes and shapes. Unfortunately, they go away as quickly as they appear, so nobody ever really gets a good look at them. They are strange though. One good thing that can be said about Shadow People is that, for the most part, witnesses don’t report any feelings of negativity coming from them. Shadow People leave witnesses feeling strange, and maybe a bit uneasy, but hardly ever frightened. We can only hope that Shadow People aren’t evil or malevolent, whatever they may be.

SOURCE

 

The reason why democracy always turns into a complete failure is simple.

 

The reason why democracy always turns into a complete failure is simple: most people get to vote, and most people are idiots. People want a leader that represents what they believe about themselves, which is why the president is now nothing more than a blank figurehead for people to project themselves onto. They aren’t interested in policies, except as a way to signal their beliefs, and they don’t care if the leaders that represent them are actually concerned about obeying the highest law of the land or acting in the long-term best interest of the country.

 

People think that representation means electing a figurehead that symbolizes their interests.* A string of broken campaign promises does nothing to dissuade people from their belief that their representatives actually accomplish things on their behalf. And even these failures are ignored because what’s really important is that one’s preferred politician is nothing more than a status symbol. Thus, democracy devolves to simple status-mongering.

 

Funnily, though, people always complain about how politicians never do anything useful once they’re elected. What they seem to forget is that a politician’s main purpose is to act as a symbol during an election, and give people a way to sort themselves into their own classes. Once that’s accomplished, a politician is no longer needed, save as a figurehead for a movement or class. And so, democracy does not exist to enable people to solve problems through citizen-based referendums, it exists to allow people to show solidarity with their self-selected class. And this is why it fails, time and again: it focuses on symbolism over substance

 

SOURCE

 

 

 

The table below shows the most recent World Democracy Audit scores and rankings achieved by this country. Lower scores are preferable. 

South africa: World Democracy Profile

 

Topics	Range	Ranking
World Democracy Audit overall ranking	1-150	43
Political Rights	1-7	2
Civil Liberties	1-7	2
Press Freedom	0-150	41
Corruption	0-149	47