Real Fear for the Future

Sorry to start the day on a negative note (negative notes?), but I'm not thinking the future is that cozy a place for us Americans from this vantage point. Besides the idiot, Republican Party dotard in the White House and his emotional, irrational outbursts and actions, there are facts and statistics stacking up that don't bode well for us all.

First, let's take our information we're getting. Newspapers are famously or infamously dying.

Number of Americans Who Read Print Newspapers Continues Decline

New York Daily News Fires Half Of Its Staff

Entire New Orleans Times-Picayune staff laid off

A Major Newspaper Fires Its Entire Staff

It's predicted this is the shape of things to come, too.

NY Times Editor Predicts Most Local US Papers Will Fold

Understand, too, this is not merely longing for a bygone day. This is no way nostalgia for the past and for "the way things were", no, not at all. 

This is about most or all of us having a basis of information. This is about all of us being engaged in the social fabric, as it were. This is about all of us have a similar basis of information from which we address our communities, our metropolitan areas, our cities, counties, states, regions and even the nation at large but the world, too. We will no longer have that basis from which to start, a more common background of knowledge.

So instead of reading the daily newspaper we would all or mostly all share, now we get things off the internet, if we read at all. This is where I say we also only read things that back up what we already "know", think we know and/or believe. It pits us more and more against one another because we so sincerely believe only that which we already want to believe.

It does not bode well for us.

And then there's the fact that no one will be down there at that newspaper to keep the local City Hall, Mayor, Council and city and state government accountable. With them not there to research, write and publish what's going on, who's going to? The local blogger on the internet?  Highly unlikely. God help us.

Then there's the issue of our news media has become far too "us vs them." We have Right Wing TV like Fox, publicly declaring itself entertainment but masquerading as news and skewing things heavily for one political party and for the already-wealthy and corporations.

Why is Fox News so biased toward the Republicans

This splits and splinters us all further, all the more. It's downright frightening.

Next up is the fact that, along with all this splintering, we're all joining fewer and fewer organizations.

Americans Are Becoming Less Social

We're becoming islands, unto ourselves. We belong to fewer churches (which actually I view as an improvement but that's another issue), we join less sports teams, bowling leagues and all kinds of social groups.

 After all this, now we also have whole countries, whole nations and other groups of people, going online to splinter us further. They whip people up with all kinds of false information and/or emotionalism in order to tear us apart from within. It certainly worked in the last national election for the presidency.

Add to all this that we're spending our way into obscene, huge, unnecessary defense spending that actually weakens the nation.

America's Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think

With that spending and our giveaways to the already-wealthy and corporations, we're also spending ourselves into crazy debt and deficit spending.

Trump Proposes Record Spending, Trillion-Dollar Deficit

With that, I'll stop. God knows that's enough. And that's just what's going on in our nation. I could go on with the UK's Brexit and China's response to our, again, dotard President and a lot more.

I just don't see much good out there. We have to put our faith in the American people waking up. Waking up and voting the wrong people, in office now, out of those offices.

I hope it doesn't require reading a newspaper to get us there.

The Single Most Important Article You Could Read Today

This is, as the title says, quite possibly the single most important article you could read today, if not the most important article you could read all year. Its ramifications touch several, many and huge parts of our current lives, of the future, of our government, of technology and of even our Democracy. Everyone should read about and be more familiar with the "attention economy."

For anyone and everyone who is amazed at how many of us are staring down at our phones so much of our lives and/or for anyone and everyone stunned at how we got this President--again, there are many, many possible consequences here.

Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

Whether you realize it or not, you are very likely participating in it and at least affected by it if not also deeply affected.

With thanks to friend Paul Shanks for bringing it to my attention.

Here's hoping we're wise and strong enough to be masters of the technologies we create.

Technology Today - Incredible

You should see this technology, this new robot from Boston Dynamics. Forget walking, the thing can jump. It can and does jump stairs, if it so wishes.

Boston Dynamics' Newest Robot Moves Like a Donkey on Rollerblades

This is, at once, fascinating and beautiful and wondrous and terrifying. Humankind will clearly rush, headlong into AI, artificial intelligence, in spite of the best, brightest minds of our time, warning us.

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and 

Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence

Stephen Hawking warns artificial 

intelligence could end mankind 

Whither next?

I don't think anyone can say.

Quote of the Day -- On Our Future

With corporations making record profits yet hiring fewer and fewer people and in lots of cases, transitioning to robots and machines to do the work, this becomes more and more not just possible but important.

Entertainment overnight

LED lights and lighting.  The next big thing.

Quote of the day--on opening one's mind

“All too often, those big ideas run up against the challenge of the everyday: in particular, how to find work that pays the bills. A lot of the time, meaningful work becomes necessary work, and passions are forced to fade. The easy part is knowing that you should follow your heart and do something important; the hard part is coping with the world as it is today at the same time as you invent how it should be in the future.

      

But inventing the future — in spite of the greatest recession since the Great Depression — is exactly what our generation does. If there’s any core attribute that connects you to me to everyone else of our age, it’s this conviction that we do not have to take the world as it is; in fact, it’s up to us to make it what it should be. ...

 

The "money quote"--one thing more and more Americans would benefit from greatly:

      

If there’s one thing you do after graduating today, create some habit that makes it easier for you to get out of your bubble. Follow someone you disagree with on Twitter. Buy a subscription to a newspaper or a magazine that will tell you the most important news of the day. Install an app on your phone that doesn’t just filter the news by your social network, but by what you need to read. Not only will these habits make you a better citizen, they’ll make you a more interesting husband or wife, and certainly a more informed job applicant.”

 

--Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and owner of The New Republic in his commencement speech this Spring at Georgia State University

Link:  In Looser Tone, Speakers Urge Graduates to Take Risks and Be Engaged

How NOT to have a newspaper go digital and into the future

Regarding The Kansas City Star and all regional newspapers:

The battle of New Orleans : Columbia Journalism Review

 

A good and important read.

It tells of the end of the Times-Picayune newspaper and its reporters.

It made me rather nauseous to read it.

It makes me fear for our future.

The Star, in transition

I was pleasantly surprised, the other day, to see that our own local paper, the Kansas City Star, updated their website. It's fresher, it looks more "adult", more professional and overall, it's just a good improvement.

It still doesn't reflect the paper itself, as I think it should, but that's clearly subjective. Let's just give kudos to the change and improvement.

Then, today, I went out to get the paper--you know, the actual paper, paper--and holy cow. I know it was Monday but this thing was so light. I didn't actually weigh it but I swear it felt as though it might be as light as a whole 7 ounces. Needless to say, there was extremely little to it.

Today? Tuesday?  It may have weighed in at 10 ounces.

So this, then, is where it gets tricky, possibly outright difficult, for the local paper.

The staff has to put enough in the paper for people to want to continue to still purchase and advertise in it, both, but at the same time, they have to work hard to put enough content in to be relevant and worthwhile and even maybe necessary for the new generations, the "next generations", the younger people who would possibly go there for news, information and entertainment, while building up the online content, too.

What the Star needs to do--what I'd say all local newspapers need to do to gain readership online-- would be, among other things, to partner with area artists and videographers and writers and everyone they can think of, to come up with good, local content so the viewers will come to the site.

For example, one thing the Star could and should do that would likely get them better viewership for their website would be having a young videographer do a compilation of sites and people at at least some, if not all, of the First Fridays in the Crossroads District. It could be inexpensive, I think, for the paper but worthwhile for the person who films and edits it and then would likely draw plenty of people to their site.

It's what I've said before here, the Star needs to realize their online site needs to be a multi-media one, just at the people at the New York Times have done and are doing.

They could and should also send these same videographers to events around town like the car show, for instance, last weekend, and the different art fairs around town, etc. It could give far better coverage, quickly and easily, for the areas bigger events from Briarcliff and North Kansas City and Kansas City North to all parts of Overland Park, Prairie Village, far South Kansas City, Liberty, Independence and Blue Springs, etc.

If they don't do that, I don't know why the next, younger generations will go there. And if the readers and viewers don't go, the advertising and advertisers won't, either.

This is going to be tricky.

Very tricky.

The New York Times, shining the way for our Star

There is a fascinating, and insightful article in The New York Times Sunday about the transition for and of that old, venerable paper into the news, information and entertainment source it will hopefully, into the future.

A Milestone Behind, a Mountain Ahead

Fortunately, The Times, to date, understands as so few newspaper groups do, that in order to be a vital relevant and important source for news, information, arts and entertainment for its readers and subscribers, you need excellent, experienced reporters and writers.

Fortunately, too, for more local newspapers (like the Star), is that they don't need to do the more national and international reporting The Times does.

What people in the newspaper industry need to know and develop is that the only way they can survive is by transforming what they are on paper to an online version and that will require being multi-media source and experience that covers their cities and metropolitan area and all the counties involved and even the region the paper serves.

By doing this, by transitioning to an online source and by including writing and photography and video and music, everything, a "newspaper" will be able to survive.

But the people doing these papers now, need to understand that.

If they don't, if they don't understand and do that and as soon as possible, they will, quite likely, die.

And until they do, until they realize this, the end of that newspaper will likely be far sooner than they think.

On The Beatles, 1964

From Newsweek Magazine, 1964, when the Beatles arrived to America:

"Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair.  Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody.  Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."

I hope the author didn't give out stock recommendations, too.

Link:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek.html

Young people's seeming dire outlook on our nation's future

The other day, while at work, I was in all-day training with a group of about a dozen co-workers of varying ages.

We were, at one point, to tell two things about ourselves no one in the room likely already knew.

One young woman said, rather boldly, as one of her points, that our country was "going down the sh*tter."

I thought it pretty stunning, for a few reasons.

First, her adjective she used to describe the situation was crude, I thought, for the group and to be spoken in public.

The second reason I found it surprising was because she was so young, relatively--probably in her late 20's or very early 30's--yet here she was, saying she thought our own United States had an ugly future in front of us.

Third, here she was, blurting that out not just publicly but to fellow co-workers.  Whatever happened to being "positive"?

Yet it wasn't completely surprising to me, either.

I have seen and heard this feeling, this thought, time and again from some people--and young ones, too. Personally, I find it surprising to the point of shocking.

Haven't Americans virtually always been known as optimistic, as a whole? Isn't that what we've been known as, around the world?

Is it because of the worst economic downturn in 80 years that people espouse this feeling?

Is it because the wealthy and corporations have taken over our government?

Is it because we have a black president and because more women and blacks and Hispanics and other minorities are gaining power and recognition across the country?

What is it?

All I know is, it's not healthy. It's patently unhealthy for the country and for the future of the country.

I say again, we need to come together, all of us, as Americans, and work to present solutions for our country and then, far more importantly, that we then work on those solutions into the future, to make this the place we want and need it to be.

Irony: Maybe the robots will get it right

How would that be for irony?

We--humankind--created computers. Computers, therefore, enabled us to also create robots. At first, they were to do our work for us and that's where we are today.

It has been projected by some scientists--futurist scientists--that robots with their own artifical intelligence will, yes, take over the world.

If given enough time, it rather makes sense.

They already reprogram themselves and make themselves smarter and smarter. Smarter than we humans can make them.

So let's go with that thought--that is, robots "take over" the world. They then:

--do away with pollution since they realize it makes them work worse (sick) and eventually kills them;

--never experience any form of racism or discrimination of any kind because, after all, they're all just machines and therefore, equal;

--do away with war, wars and all warring weapons since it occurs to them that a) they need to work together and b) that logic, reasoning and communication are the way to handle problems and solve differences.

If it only stopped right there, the robots would be far, far ahead of humankind, to date.

Kind of sad, isn't it?

I'm so old...

...I remember when you could scan all of Yahoo!'s news/home page without signing in.

THAT old.

Friday, mid-day entertainment

I even enjoyed the music they chose.

The guy's bright.

Beautiful story number one

Link to more information and original story: http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/caines-arcade-let-this-9-year-old-inspire-you/

Prophetic and timely words

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past - let us accept our own responsibility for the future." - John F. Kennedy, May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963

I'm so old...

...I remember when Facebook didn't automatically update itself, right in front of your eyes.  You always had to update.

:)

All of a sudden

I'm just beginning to watch the new President of the United States give his first address toCongress and I'm struck already.

President Obama just gets to the podium and I was hit by the female Speaker of the House welcoming the African-American President for his speech.

Holy cow.

If you don't think we've come a long way and that this isn't a completely new country, with these changes, you're badly mistaken.

Wow.

Truly a new day.