So now we are all connected

June and July 2016 will be remembered by a number of events. 

Brexit, Colombian peace agreement, terrorist attacks everywhere and run up to US presidential elections.

Those things happened on top of the ones we know: economic uncertainty and deterioration of communities.

So we are faced now with a blank canvas : we need to redesign our lives. 

And we need to do so in the midst of uncertainty. 

The good thing is that we know we are all connected. 

Not only because of what quantum or systems thinking experts would say. 

But because we know more than before that actions have consequences beyond our immediate vicinity or our present generations.

We got used not to see uncertainty but it has been part of our lives. Our dependence on ourselves is no more what should drive us. 

We might not be able to claim authorship for everything we intend to.

It is time to do what we can and trust that others will do the same. 

Meet the future IT hackers: Are they Creative?

Some of my undergraduate students are passionate about technology.  They can tell you about examples of how technology transforms companies and relationships with customers and suppliers.

One student has a very clear idea of how blogs can add value to virtual games companies by enabling communication and knowledge exchange with customers.  

Another student this term impressed me with what he knows about Watson, the brain machine of IBM.  It can process millions of data and undertake millions of calculations in just seconds.

My students are not necessarily worried about, or perhaps aware of how technology is constructed or assembled. Their minds seem not to care too much about how technology works.  

As long as it works.

Still, knowing how technology works is important.  Specially if you think of hacking it! 

So I attempted to bring my own examples of how neural networks are used to build gaming competitors that can beat humans.  And of robots that can now stand hard duties.  

My aim was to raise awareness about possibilities and dilemmas raised this year (2016), the year of Artificial Intelligence as has been called by some.

Am not sure about how my examples were received.  Or if they generated the desired effects.  

Still wondering...

To me the future hackers would encounter not only operational issues but ethical ones in relation to how technology would operate.  

More than now, they will have to make decisions not only about themselves, but about human kind as a whole.

So we had better prepare ourselves and them to face up to the task.  

Borrow less and be punished

Today I learned bits about how banks are dealing with risk.

I was refused a credit card application, apparently because I was asking for a credit limit which was just above the one I had.  

Only that the one I had was too low.  The system did not understand why my limit was low.  Lower than what seems to be a minimum level.  According to someone. 

Dear system: I chose this limit.  I was offered a very high one like today a while ago.  But I refused the offer because I try to live within my means.  I could not care less if my limit was below the minimum.

Only this time the system thought that this limit had been imposed on me after some past misdemeanour.   

So maybe this system thought that it was another system which refused me before, and decided not to take risks.  

We live in an era of expert decision support systems.  But it seems that some systems decided they can make decisions for us.  

Because they know best.  

The data revolution that got away

Once upon a time, there was a house full of small data revolutions.

They were sent there by their masters, the technology and business experts, who kept them from public view.  

Occasionally they were mentioned in conversation at the house parties.  Occasionally some of them were allowed to go out under strict supervision by their masters.  

When this happened, they could visit the house of 'prospective parents'.  They stayed there for some time, until these parents decided not to adopt them.  Parents though will use revolutions to relate to other parents, giving the impression that they were a family.  

Time and time again, data revolutions kept coming back, and the masters always blamed the lack of commitment by the prospective parents.  

Funnily enough these parents were also experts who had slightly different knowledge but were experts. 

As time went on, cousins of data revolutions (technology revolutions) became more accepted in the house of parents and asked for data revolutions to be brought in.  

So they could play with relatives and in this way help parents show to others that they were family. 

One of the data revolutions decided to play the game.  She was sent to live with her cousin called big data.  Her name was open data.  

Big data and open data got on very well, until open data decided she wanted other parents than the experts.

She wanted to find out her real parents: the people who provided her data.  

So one night, when parents and other experts were debating how they could use open data and big data, she got away. And escaped.

She was helped by a butler called people's advocate.

And she lived happily ever after.  She spent the rest of her life searching for all her real parents, and trying to help them become a family themselves.