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We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information. American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap and reassuring personal narratives. Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge. The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures. This is our brave new world.Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail. In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both. The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth. We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror. It feels good not to think. All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires. Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6., as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need for constant stimulus. News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain. Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are condemned as elitist and impenetrable. Hannah Arendt warned that the marketization of culture leads to its degradation, that this marketization creates a new celebrity class of intellectuals who, although well read and informed themselves, see their role in society as persuading the masses that “Hamlet” can be as entertaining as “The Lion King” and perhaps as educational. “Culture,” she wrote, “is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.”“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect,” Arendt wrote, “but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers—our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues—who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/america-illiterate
América la iletrada:CitarWe live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information. American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap and reassuring personal narratives. Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge. The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures. This is our brave new world.Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail. In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both. The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth. We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror. It feels good not to think. All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires. Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6., as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need for constant stimulus. News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain. Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are condemned as elitist and impenetrable. Hannah Arendt warned that the marketization of culture leads to its degradation, that this marketization creates a new celebrity class of intellectuals who, although well read and informed themselves, see their role in society as persuading the masses that “Hamlet” can be as entertaining as “The Lion King” and perhaps as educational. “Culture,” she wrote, “is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.”“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect,” Arendt wrote, “but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers—our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues—who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/america-illiterateNo he podido evitar pensar en ésto:
América la iletrada:
Sí, hemos pasado la "peak literacy", me se perdone el anglicismo...
“En las próximas dos décadas veremos más transformaciones para la humanidad que en los últimos dos milenios. Todavía no hemos visto nada de lo que viene”. Categórico, José Luis Cordeiro, de la Singularity University de Silicon Valley, transmite un futuro próspero de la mano de la inteligencia artificial. Un buen porvenir para la humanidad que ha analizado en el ciclo de conferencias “La vida en el futuro” organizada por La Vanguardia, con la colaboración de Seat e ICL.Los exponenciales avances tecnológicos, la robotización, la propia inteligencia artificial. Son los grandes cambios que se presentan en el horizonte. “El futuro es realmente increíble”, afirma Cordeiro. “Vamos a ver el fin de la especie humana y todo lo que conocemos. Viene la edad posthumana”, asegura. No sólo conviviremos con los robots, sino que nosotros también seremos robots. ¿De qué forma? “Nos vamos a fusionar con la tecnología”, repite más de una vez, decidido. A modo de ejemplo, prevé que los niños nazcan conectados a la red en unos cinco años o que creemos un “cerebro internacional” compartido en el que se descarguen los conocimientos de cada uno, pudiendo a su vez acceder a ellos.Aprovechar la inteligencia artificialEn cualquier caso, Cordeiro huye de visiones catastrofistas. No imagina que los robots, cada vez más avanzados, destruyan nuestros puestos de trabajo. Por un lado, porque la vida podría girar en torno a la autorrealización personal y no al trabajo, con una renta básica universal que nos libere del mismo. Por otro, porque en cualquier crisis hay dos factores: el peligro y la oportunidad.Con la oportunidad en mente, llama a aprovechar al máximo los avances en investigación para mejorar nuestras vidas. Su visión a medio plazo sorprende. De entrada, plantea la desaparición de la muerte. “Ya podemos visualizar la muerte de la muerte”. Es una frase que siempre lo acompaña. “Yo no pienso morir”, confiesa. Y pide que los demás sigan su ejemplo: “la vida es tan apasionante, tan maravillosa… Quien no quiere vivirla es un burro”.¿Cómo cambiaremos el ahora ineludible destino de morir? Cordeiro habla del transhumanismo, utilizar la inteligencia artificial y la tecnología para trascender nuestros límites. Investigación de por medio, “somos la última generación humana mortal o la primera inmortal”, asevera. La medicina del futuro “no va a curar, va a prevenir”, dice.Con ella “vamos a vencer al envejecimiento”. Silicon Valley tiene mucho que decir en esto. Google quiere acabar con la muerte y Facebook con todas las enfermedades. Hay fijarse en las células cancerígenas, que no envejecen, o en las bacterias, que tampoco lo hacen. En ellas puede estar la clave de la inmortalidad.Vivir mil añosEn evitar la muerte también entra en juego una opción como la criopreservación. Es “el plan B” si falla el “plan A”, la inmortalidad. Congelarnos hasta encontrar la cura a esa enfermedad que nos mata. Lejos de ser algo impensable, ya se está haciendo.Influirá asimismo la clonación de órganos y la selección genómica. “Vamos a diseñar a nuestros hijos, somos la última generación humana no diseñada”, sostiene.Como resultado, la inteligencia artificial y la ciencia abren la posibilidad de vivir no solo cientos, sino miles de años. “La ciencia ficción de hoy es la realidad del mañana: lo que vamos a ver en tecnología en veinte años va a ser magia”, vaticina.Sin miedo al futuroSi vivimos más, seremos más y consumiremos más. Pero apuesta por ser positivos. Habrá recursos suficientes, puesto que se crearán. “Gracias a la nanotecnología no habrá basura, sólo materia prima en el lugar equivocado”. Y si no, a mirar al cielo: la minería espacial tiene gran potencial.Asimismo, más gente supone más cerebros. Más mentes pensantes que generan conocimiento. “El desarrollo es cada vez más rápido. Nunca imaginamos crecer a esta velocidad. Ya no hay excusa para seguir siendo un país pobre”, advierte, ya que son los que más rápido están creciendo y tienen todas las herramientas para salir de la pobreza.Tampoco habrá excusa para decir “no sé”. De la mano de la inteligencia artificial toda la información estará a nuestro alcance.
http://www.lavanguardia.com/economia/20161129/412262227187/inteligencia-artificial-jose-luis-cordeiro-la-vanguardia.htmlInteligencia artificial: el camino a la vida eterna y la liberación del trabajo[...]
Y en el año 2000 los coches volarán.Henry Ford.Empiezo a estar cansado de la campaña de propaganda publicitaria permanente de Google y Facebook. El modelo de negocio de Google y Facebook se sostiene solamente en base al valor de su cotización, y viceversa. Véase Twitter. Su acciones valen tanto porque cotizan a tanto, y cotizan a tanto porque valen tanto. Del big-data... mejor hablamos otro día (nunca nadie ha hecho un dólar con el big-data). Sus servicios son gratuitos, apenas existe monetización, y necesitan que el inversor se sienta respaldado "por algo" toda vez que sus números no encajan. Por supuesto que el gobierno federal te respalde en la sombra, ayuda. Por eso en Rusia tienen su propia red social, y en China otro tanto. respaldadas por sus respectivos servicios secretos, obviamente. Y monetizando cuasi-CERO, como es lógico en todo servicio ofrecido gratuitamente. Repito, el big data nos dice que los jóvenes consumen pornografía y que en elecciones la gente busca el resultado del ganador. A posteriori. El big-data no se puede anteponer a nada por pura definición (los datos no se han generado).En cualquier caso, es mi opinión y puede estar equivocada (aunque no lo está) porque las cuentas de google siguen sosteniéndose en futuribles indemostrables.Y las acciones vuelven a subir
[...]Y no me quedo sin rajar de Tesla. Con unas baterías peores que las que incorpora Toyota. Pero nadie verá fantasías sobre los planes de expansión eléctrica de Toyota. Porque Toyota vende coches, no sueños lunares.Estad atentos
Cita de: CHOSEN en Diciembre 01, 2016, 09:01:09 am[...]Y no me quedo sin rajar de Tesla. Con unas baterías peores que las que incorpora Toyota. Pero nadie verá fantasías sobre los planes de expansión eléctrica de Toyota. Porque Toyota vende coches, no sueños lunares.Estad atentos No puedo resistirme a citar ésto:Prospero:Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air:And like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on; and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.https://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/we-such-stuff-dreams-madeEDIT:Mad Men, cada vez que alguien confunde algoritmo con logaritmo, muere un gatito y 10 matemáticos se echan las manos a la cabeza.¡Ayyy, mis hogos!!!