Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘government’ category: Page 225

Nov 20, 2014

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology — Voting Systems

Posted by in categories: automation, big data, bitcoin, business, complex systems, computing, disruptive technology, economics, encryption, engineering, ethics, geopolitics, government, hacking, hardware, information science, innovation, law, materials, open access, open source, philosophy, policy, polls, privacy, science, security, software, supercomputing, transparency, treaties

Quoted: “Bitcoin technology offers a fundamentally different approach to vote collection with its decentralized and automated secure protocol. It solves the problems of both paper ballot and electronic voting machines, enabling a cost effective, efficient, open system that is easily audited by both individual voters and the entire community. Bitcoin technology can enable a system where every voter can verify that their vote was counted, see votes for different candidates/issues cast in real time, and be sure that there is no fraud or manipulation by election workers.”


Read the article here » http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239809?hootPostID=ba473f…aacc8412c7

Nov 8, 2014

World Inequality, Digital Life & the State

Posted by in categories: futurism, geopolitics, government
. @hjbentham. @TheVenusProject. @clubofinfo. #futurism. #LOrdre. #antistatism.

Continue reading “World Inequality, Digital Life & the State” »

Nov 1, 2014

BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology — A Brief Q&A

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, disruptive technology, economics, finance, geopolitics, government, information science, innovation, law, open source, transparency

My Brief Q&A session with Christoffer De Geer, about BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology.

This Q&A was first published by Mr. Geir Solem, Director of Cryptor Trust Inc., on the Cryptor Primary Investor Blog (Date: October 31, 2014).

Quote: “BitCoin was the first small step in what I believe will be a truly transformational journey, for each and every one of us. In 10 Years Cryptocurrency and Blockchains have every chance to have the same, or greater, impact on our lives, society, and civiliation, as the creation of Email had to the Postal Service, and the Fax Machine as compared to the Internet; in 25 Years Monetary Systems, Systems of Trade and Exchange, Systems of Transaction of Goods, Ledger and Recordation Systems, Everything You Know – Will – Be – Different – and, Unrecognizable relative to what we know today at the end of the year 2014.”

See the Q&A article here » [Article: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology] (more…)

Oct 22, 2014

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown

Posted by in categories: defense, government, security

— The Guardian

Pentagon Building in Washington

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

Read more

Oct 18, 2014

Pa. department backs seed library protocol as reaction grows

Posted by in categories: environmental, food, government
Joseph T. Simpson Public Library's new seed library

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture sees its new protocol for seed libraries as an opportunity to safely regulate them while saving an organization or person from liability.

Proponents of seed libraries, however, see the department’s efforts as a way to effectively shut down movement to grow and maintain local seed varieties.

The issue at hand stems back to April 26, when the Joseph T. Simpson Public Library opened a seed library, in which it would allow residents to “borrow” seeds and then offer seeds back to the library to start the process over again. It’s the second part of that process that caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, which then contacted the Cumberland County Library System to rectify what it saw as a violation of the Pennsylvania Seed Act of 2004.

Read more

Sep 29, 2014

Towards a ‘Right to Science’

Posted by in categories: ethics, genetics, government, law, philosophy, policy, science

In 1906 the great American pragmatist philosopher William James delivered a public lecture entitled, ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’. James imagined a point in the foreseeable future when states would rationally decide against military options to resolve their differences. While he welcomed this prospect, he also believed that the abolition of warfare would remove an important pretext for people to think beyond their own individual survival and toward some greater end, perhaps one that others might end up enjoying more fully. What then might replace war’s altruistic side?

It is telling that the most famous political speech to adopt James’ title was US President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 call for national energy independence in response to the Arab oil embargo. Carter characterised the battle ahead as really about America’s own ignorance and complacency rather than some Middle Eastern foe. While Carter’s critics pounced on his trademark moralism, they should have looked instead to his training as a nuclear scientist. Historically speaking, nothing can beat a science-led agenda to inspire a long-term, focused shift in a population’s default behaviours. Louis Pasteur perhaps first exploited this point by declaring war on the germs that he had shown lay behind not only human and animal disease but also France’s failing wine and silk industries. Moreover, Richard Nixon’s ‘war on cancer’, first declared in 1971, continues to be prosecuted on the terrain of genomic medicine, even though arguably a much greater impact on the human condition could have been achieved by equipping the ongoing ‘war on poverty’ with comparable resources and resoluteness.

Science’s ability to step in as war’s moral equivalent has less to do with whatever personal authority scientists command than with the universal scope of scientific knowledge claims. Even if today’s science is bound to be superseded, its import potentially bears on everyone’s life. Once that point is understood, it is easy to see how each person could be personally invested in advancing the cause of scientific research. In the heyday of the welfare state, that point was generally understood. Thus, in The Gift Relationship, perhaps the most influential work in British social policy of the past fifty years, Richard Titmuss argued, by analogy with voluntary blood donation, that citizens have a duty to participate as research subjects, but not because of the unlikely event that they might directly benefit from their particular experiment. Rather, citizens should participate because they would have already benefitted from experiments involving their fellow citizens and will continue to benefit similarly in the future.

However, this neat fit between science and altruism has been undermined over the past quarter-century on two main fronts. One stems from the legacy of Nazi Germany, where the duty to participate in research was turned into a vehicle to punish undesirables by studying their behaviour under various ‘extreme conditions’. Indicative of the horrific nature of this research is that even today few are willing to discuss any scientifically interesting results that might have come from it. Indeed, the pendulum has swung the other way. Elaborate research ethics codes enforced by professional scientific bodies and university ‘institutional review boards’ protect both scientist and subject in ways that arguably discourage either from having much to do with the other. Even defenders of today’s ethical guidelines generally concede that had such codes been in place over the past two centuries, science would have progressed at a much slower pace.

The other and more current challenge to the idea that citizens have a duty to participate in research comes from the increasing privatisation of science. If a state today were to require citizen participation in drug trials, as it might jury duty or military service, the most likely beneficiary would be a transnational pharmaceutical firm capable of quickly exploiting the findings for profitable products. What may be needed, then, is not a duty but a right to participate in science. This proposal, advanced by Sarah Chan at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Bioethics, looks like a slight shift in legal language. But it is the difference between science appearing as an obligation and an opportunity for the ordinary citizen. In the latter case, one does not simply wait for scientists to invite willing subjects. Rather, potential subjects are invited to organize themselves and lobby the research community with their specific concerns. In our recent book, The Proactionary Imperative, Veronika Lipinska and I propose the concept of ‘hedgenetics’ to capture just this prospect for those who share socially relevant genetic traits. It may mean that scientists no longer exert final control over their research agenda, but the benefit is that they can be assured of steady public support for their work.

Sep 26, 2014

Review: When Google Met WikiLeaks (2014) by Julian Assange

Posted by in categories: big data, bitcoin, computing, encryption, ethics, events, futurism, geopolitics, government, hacking, internet, journalism, law, law enforcement, media & arts, military, transhumanism, transparency
Julian Assange’s 2014 book When Google Met WikiLeaks consists of essays authored by Assange and, more significantly, the transcript of a discussion between Assange and Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen.

Continue reading “Review: When Google Met WikiLeaks (2014) by Julian Assange” »

Sep 11, 2014

Justice Beyond Privacy

Posted by in categories: computing, disruptive technology, ethics, government, hacking, internet, law, policy, privacy, security

As the old social bonds unravel, philosopher and member of the Lifeboat Foundation’s advisory board Professor Steve Fuller asks: can we balance free expression against security?

justice

Justice has been always about modes of interconnectivity. Retributive justice – ‘eye for an eye’ stuff – recalls an age when kinship was how we related to each other. In the modern era, courtesy of the nation-state, bonds have been forged in terms of common laws, common language, common education, common roads, etc. The internet, understood as a global information and communication infrastructure, is both enhancing and replacing these bonds, resulting in new senses of what counts as ‘mine’, ‘yours’, ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’ – the building blocks of a just society…

Read the full article at IAI.TV

Aug 21, 2014

Getting Sexy and the Undivided Attention of Your Fortune-500 Client CEOs! Aug 22 2014

Posted by in categories: architecture, big data, business, complex systems, disruptive technology, economics, education, engineering, ethics, existential risks, finance, futurism, government, information science, innovation, physics, science, scientific freedom, security

Getting Sexy and the Undivided Attention of Your Fortune-500 Client CEOs! (Excerpt from the White Swan book) By Andres Agostini at www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini

0 ab

(1.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Procter & Gamble, talk to them through the notions of and by Process Re-engineering.

(2.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at GE, talk to them through the notions of and by Six Sigma, and Peter F. Drucker’s Management by Objective (MBO). While you are with them, remember to commend on the Jack Welch’ and Jeff Immelt’s master lectures at GE’s Crotonville.

Continue reading “Getting Sexy and the Undivided Attention of Your Fortune-500 Client CEOs! Aug 22 2014” »

Jun 19, 2014

Amateur Beats Gov’t at Digitizing Newspapers: Tom Tryniski’s Weird, Wonderful Website

Posted by in category: government

Reason.com

Read More