Wednesday 27 February 2008

Multinational corporations in 5th gear towards the 'global village'?

Multinational corporations are gearing up the way to a certified 'global village' reality. The world, in all its aspects, does follow up a path towards global integration. It is inevitable as the transactions between individuals or groups of individuals, in disparate locations around the globe, grow exponentially as time goes by. Multinational corporations have the organisation to achieve that.

Lots of thoughts which are needed to be channeled appropriately. Questions in seek for answers.

Their expansion a result of a multitude of all the wrong reasons, paramount being the maximisation of profits, but at the same time, they only possess the know-how and have the necessary organisational structures to bring the world closer together.

Someone can argue that the profits drive tends to leave places in their path bone dry, lunar landscapes. Using up, remorselessly all resources a place can offer. Human and natural resources alike.

But on the other hand they push the world nearer to its attractors. Amidst conflicting forces, they spread the means for development and bring the world communities together.

Whereas I find this necessary, a major concern is the extent of the damage to environment and to human lives. Would they manage to bring the world in an unrepairable state beyond recovery? If they are left on their own they would certainly do.

Their course unstoppable. Supported to the hilt by the multitude of legislation and the more effective underlying web of power in governments and states, what spawned them in the first place. Spring out of their home countries, to spread all over the world. Assisted by the dominant, in most individuals, ego-centred facet of the human persona, to look after dear self blind of others, driving its insatiable hunger for profiting, at all costs.

sk5otia

Monday 25 February 2008

Services. Building up monetisation-free zones?

Services, starting by vital key public services, should be declared as monetisation-free zones and they should be left to develop unhindered along these lines.

A definition of service as given by Wikipedia is:

"A service is a set of benefits delivered from the accountable service provider, mostly in close co-action with his service suppliers, generated by the functions of technical systems and/or by distinct activities of individuals, respectively, commissioned according to the needs of his service consumers by the service customer from the accountable service provider, rendered individually to the authorized service consumers on their dedicated request, and, finally, utilized by the requesting service consumers for executing and/or supporting their day-to-day business tasks or private activities."

Taking the subject further, every human activity regarded as collective is mostly employed in the provision of some form of service and is hugely influential in the development of social structures. A small amount of the services at large, are public services, a term used to mean services provided by governments for its citizens.

As it is described:

"Public services tend to be those considered so essential to modern life that for moral reasons their universal provision should be guaranteed, and they may be associated with fundamental human rights."

and further

"A public service may sometimes have the characteristics of a public good (being non-rivalrous and non-excludable), but most are merit goods, that is, services which may (according to prevailing social norms) be under-provided by the market."

Public good which is non-rivarlous and non-excludable, essential to life, their universal provision should be guaranteed. What guarantees its provision? It should be government. Is it?

The modern state system was born with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War in Europe. As it is described in the book 'World Politics: Trend and Transformation' by Charles W. Kegley, Eugene R. Wittkopf, p.58

"The newly independent states all gave to rulers the same legal rights: territory under their sole control, unrestricted control of their domestic affairs, and the freedom to conduct foreign relations and negotiate treaties with other states."

Unrestricted control in domestic affairs geared mainly to protect the rights of the 'haves' from the 'have-nots'. An eons-long struggle. Certainly, governments and states have not shaken off the remnants of their past. The same can be seen at work in America the "greatest democracy in the world," as David Sirota, author of "Hostile Takeover" (Crown Publishers, 2006) states that 'it often seems impossible to figure out exactly who controls our government'.
And continues on:

"We get to see how there no longer is a boundary between Big Business and government, and how our politicians are wholly owned subsidiaries of Corporate America. We get to see, in short, exactly how our government has been the victim of a hostile takeover."

History stands witness as public services were only introduced in late nineteenth century

"provision of public services in developed countries usually began in the late nineteenth century"

and certainly not out of good will for the "commoners".

and its main concern is the service provided to the individuals concerned. It should not have any ties apart from the quality, as it is judged solely on the grounds of its effectiveness of the particular content of the provided service. As service

a no-monetisation zone, a monetisation-free zone

Health service, education, environment simply can not function in the current environment that everything is measured up in hard currency. Quite regularly is announced how much a certain disaster cost the local authority a government, a state. Human lives are liberally given price tags

and certainly becomes the focus of a government, an authority, a state springing out from the prevalent environment spawn out of directives that monetise human activity

almost every collective human activity comes in a form of a service for other individuals in the community to use

the service is compromised by criteria lien to the services provided, the monies from the means they should be they have become the ends. The go-betweens acquire more value than the activities of the individuals involved. The efforts, the labour the time put from the part of the individuals that offer the service should directly reflect the needs of the individuals that benefit from the service. It should develop in step with each other. There is no need for monetising concerns to enter the procedures, it should not be translated into monies, it should be monetisation-free zones.

Sufficient funds? Viable? Is that the framework upon which services should be established?


As states were first formed from the need of individuals to protect their belongings of the ones that have from the ones that they have not.

John Kenneth Galbraith had recognised the need for a change in the development of societies in his book of affluent society as early as as 1958.

"In The Affluent Society Galbraith asserts that classical economic theory was true for the eras before the present, which were times of "poverty"; now, however, we have moved from an age of poverty to an age of "affluence," and for such an age, a completely new economic theory is needed."

The late 50s affluent society and the even more affluent society of the dawn of the 21st century and the same ills are widespread all over the world as it was then. Still even worse services to the communities are accounted in terms of monetary values ever so ruthlessly and mechanically. Services dropped with the sole reason of not sufficient funds. They are not economically viable, classed in the same categories that provide useless products.

Government agencies advertising heavily on radio and television competing alongside private companies to raise revenues. Local governments leasing facilities, introducing monetising criteria in the dissemination of the public good. And in the meantime, alongside lives are continually broken, unaware of by the government machine, as it is busy to translating heartaches into economic cost.

States should assume their natural role, to provide the environment where societies, communities flourish towards the integration of all their individuals amidst them.

Wednesday 20 February 2008

Wayward thoughts on Gödel's incompleteness theorem

As the Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem got me going, I felt that I have to look at it more thoroughly. The thoughts brought forward in the Miskatonic University Press website by William Denton, give an account which I feel it would direct my thoughts.

It is mentioned that:

"In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms ... of that mathematical branch itself. You might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system by going outside the system in order to come up with new rules and axioms, but by doing so you'll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements."

As my objective is to use Gödel's theorem beyond the discipline it is meant for, namely mathematics, to include all disciplines, and not all. It is evident, even in the Miskatonic University Press website, that the implications far exceed the narrow boundaries of mathematics, and extends into all structures built by the human kind. Even the individual itself is under the command of the incompleteness theorem. I wonder whether that is a result of the limitations of the human mind, as is incapable of being anything other than a simplified mind, and it affects us in more ways than we could imagine. The further implications are that all systems built in humanity's tenacious attempts to understand reality as well as the application of these constructed systems in organising our social structures bears the hallmark of our imperfect consciousnesses. Which it might be attributed to the structure of our brains.

And this tendency affects all systems built, no matter how awesome, elaborate or elegant they might appear to be, to us. Certainly nobody can deny that humanity has achieved great things in its passage through life, therefore the acceptance of imperfect consciousnesses is invalidated. However it betrays a constant yearning towards even more achievements never to be satisfied with what has previously been accomplished. The doubt in-built within the human mind carries it along even further.

What it reveals is the futility of rigidly adhering to rules and other forms of prescriptive norms since these should constantly be questioned and modified in the same way as in mathematics, where you might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system, by going outside the system, in order to come up with new rules and axioms, regardless whether you'll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements. Evolution will take care of the new larger system that has been created.

Evolution will rule and provide the direction that a given system will take and adjust the rules which will apply for the new larger system. Constitutions and laws that govern relationships of individuals in societies bear witness as a brief look at history shows. As in the first societies the laws started to protect the rights of a king or a monarch and gradually they were engineered to protect the rights of even more and more individuals in a society to the state they are now. Are the laws in modern societies engineered to protect all individuals amidst them? Continued unrest and dissatisfaction in all societies globally, says not. The larger system, the global world, demands new rules and axioms and to that drive nobody can go against, no matter what they do. The force is exponentially strengthened as more and more individuals are involved.

Systems will crumple and their fall will reflect in intensity to the resistance they put out. Inversely proportional of how hard they fight to stall such process. Going against the free exchange of thoughts in whatever way imagined, is the same as going against the rules and axioms our larger global world demand for, what evolution will eventually bring forth.

Monday 18 February 2008

Consciousness digressions.

Extract from that website about William James about stream of consciousness


"In this room -- this lecture-room, say -- there are a multitude of thoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere mutually, and some not. They are as little each-for-itself and reciprocally independent as they are all-belonging-together. They are neither: no one of them is separate, but each belongs with certain others and with none beside. My thought belongs with my other thoughts, and your thought with your other thoughts. Whether anywhere in the room there be a mere thought, which is nobody's thought, we have no means of ascertaining, for we have no experience of its like. The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal consciousness, minds, selves, concrete particular I's and you's."

In free association, and following up his conjecture that hints about the independence of thought from its conduit, and that is the brain. Therefore imagining the thoughts as existing by themselves, in time and space, an entity by itself that carries a signature, no matter whether that signature is hard to comprehend and pinpoint. The only thing that we know is that each person can instantiate thoughts contents, in one way or another.

"Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no giving or bartering between them. No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned. Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. Every one will recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of something corresponding to the term 'personal mind' is all that is insisted on, without any particular view of its nature being implied. On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.' No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of personal selves. Thoughts connected as we feel them to be connected are what we mean by personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth."

Are the thoughts isolated from one another? That neither contemporaneity, or proximity in space, or quality and content can bring together and produce a common consciousness? A global consciousness?

Each personal self in a form of interaction with one another, a result of the content of the thoughts, which will dictate attention. What will be noticed and what will not. Which, in turn, will produce more thoughts. In feedback fashion. Which will merge consciousnesses in a rudimentary global consciousness. Thoughts mixing by proxy via their assigned agent. A room filled with thoughts at regular intervals, buzzing with their activity. Can that buzz be detected in any way? Does that buzz leave traces, whatsoever? That can be detected? Can the state of the room, after it has been emptied, apart from the physical evidence of the personal selves physical presence, which is not withstanding the passage of time, be the witness of the thoughts that occupied its space? That withstand the passage of time?

That space, the room occupied at that particular time interval, would have been left far behind in earth's constant rotation around the sun, the sun's constant rotation around the galaxy centre, the galaxy's constant rotation around the axis of its local system and so on coupled with its longitudinal expanding motion, making sure it never occupies the same space again.

A trail of thoughts by all earth's personal selves left behind in our planet's journey in the vastness of space. Detecting the trail? Or detecting all trails? Streaks of personal selves thoughts criss-crossing the universe.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Fractal dimensions harbour parallel worlds?

A quantum entity in a dilemma. A choice will take it to one or the other direction. Instead of choosing one but not the other, it follows both so it splits. There is a path that takes you to that direction, one of the choices and there is the path that takes you to other direction. And along with each direction, the rest of the world. Parallel worlds. Worlds residing close to one another but separate from one another.

Taken it from their origin, quantum entities, that is an awful lot of worlds, as a matter of fact(?), an infinity of parallel worlds. Where would all these worlds fit in? In fractal dimensions? A world that its path unfold in 1.345 dimension and another in 1.346 dimension. What about 1.3451 or 1.3452 dimensions? Worlds unfold there too. As well as, in 1.345213... and 1.345214675..., there is an infinity of dimensions between the whole numbers 1 and 2, as in between any other whole numbers, an infinity of fractions and fractal dimensions exist and each with its own parallel world. Fractal dimensions where all parallel worlds can fit in.

All parallel worlds packed together like the layers in an onion bulb, extremely thin layers of infinitesimal sizes, in infinitesimal distance along each other, every one of them in its own unique plane never crossing each other. Or is it not? Do they cross each other?

Certainly it makes sense, as all of them originate in the quantum realm, the classical world, the world we perceive with our senses, would only materialise in a few cases. Where the quantum entities interactions produce a viable classical world. So realisable parallel classical worlds will be fewer than parallel quantum worlds, the ratio of classical to quantum parallel in magnitudes defined by Avogadro's constant, where the thresholds of quantum to classical world must lie.

This approach limits the parallel classical worlds and makes possible the interaction between parallel classical worlds. It is expected that, at the quantum level, the boundaries between parallel worlds in close proximity, to be easily crossed. As the emergence of a classical world would be expected to materialise out of the interactions of quantum entities of closely residing parallel quantum worlds. Interactions between closely residing parallel worlds has already been suggested (quote forgotten).

As closely residing parallel worlds mingle at times, quantum entities are transported from world to world and subsequently interact with the quantum entities in the transported world, only to return back to their parallel realm later. Could that be possible for any objects in our classical world? If it is small enough?


It might be, that when you loose any small artifact and despite your persistent efforts can not find, it has been transported into a parallel universe, only to be found seconds, minutes, hours, days later on its return from the trans-parallel-world journey.

sk5otia