Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Gullible Billions of People Aren’t Prepared for This

Vin

To say that humans evolve at a glacial pace is to call glaciers as race cars. Evolutionary changes to our bodies, including our physical brains, take hundreds of thousands of years or more. Evolutionary changes to our thinking occur more quickly yet still take hundreds of years. Civilization has progressed remarkably since the year 1524, shortly after the beginning of the Renaissance and globalization; and the changes since the years 1024 (tjhe medieval period) and 524 (the ‘Dark Ages’) have been striking. Nonetheless, due to technological innovations, our physical senses, which we’ve depended upon since time immemorial, can now be easily fooled.

For some 30 years now, it has become easily for anyone with personal computer software to alter still photographs (‘It’s been photoshopped!’) And for the past 20 years, first in Hollywood and lately by any video blogger who owns a $20 ‘greenscreen’ rig, video can be altered in such a way as to me or you in any video scene. Yet now the nascent technologies of machine learning and Artificail Intelligence (AI) have become able to create entirely artificial but incredibly realistic videos. The first video here is an example from the Open AI company’s Sora software. I daresay most consumers nowadays who see a print advertisement or television advertisement or cinema scene may not realize that much, even possibly most, of what they see was ‘photoshopped’ or ‘greenscreened’. And I submit to you that if you show consumers this Sora video without telling them that it is artificial, most will believe that it is real. The second video here takes this even further: allowing the artificially-generated people–or even dead actual people–realistically to say things that they never said.

We are no entring a time in which it will become difficult to tell whether something in still photography, audio, or video is real or not, because the retouched, artificial, or entirely faked will be too perfect for the average consumer to tell the difference. What’s known as ‘media literacy’–namely the ability and knowledge how to tell the difference, isn’t much or at all taught in schools. If caveat emptor is Latin for ‘buyer beware’. then videntium cave or ‘viewer beware’. I estimate that at least ten percent of my some 800 Facebook ‘friends’ are so naturally gullible that they wouldn’t be able to tell, might even not think it even possible, that such a video is artificial or fake. I think there is another ten to fiften percent who if a faked video supports their political opinions, would ‘Share’ it (i.e., spreading lies) so that others of their ilk or the gullible would themselves virally ‘Share’ it. I fear that a ‘golden age’ of deceptive propaganda and deceptive marketing has begun.

2.4 US$100 Notes per Each Man, Woman, and Child on the Planet

Vin

It’s interesting to note (no pun intended) that the most numerous U.S. currency note in circulation is the $100, not the $1, note. Although the $1 note is perhaps the most numerous within the U.S., around the world–in which the principal reserve currency in international trade is U.S. , the $100 note is the most popular and numerous. There are 1.43 billion $1 notes in circulation worldwide, but there are 18.5 billion $100 notes ($1.85 trillion). That’s equal to 2.3 $100 notes for every man, woman, and child on Earth.

The Future Smartphone Will Be Without Apps

Vin

I wholeheartedly agree with this five-minute video story by Android Authority that the smartphone of the future won’t have or use Apps (i.e., individual single-purpose software applications) but instead simply use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to communicate/find/view.obtain/what its users wants. That Deutsche Telecom, one of the world’s largest cellular telephone services provider (such as its T-Mobile network in the United States) is experimenting with this concept (I’m sure that other cellular networks also are) shows how likely this might be. Watch the video and discover why this will happen. The this video uses a regular Android phone from today as an example.

Insanely Expensive Dining Insanely Done

Vin

I’ve been fortunate to have eaten at three Michelin-starred restaurants (Le Bernadin, New York City,  3 stars:  ABaC, Barcelona, 2 stars; and Man Wa, Hong Kong, 1 star) in recent years, and am a fam of the Hungarian restaurant owner (42, Budapest, 1 star)  Alexander ‘The Guest’  Varga’s YouTube channel about visiting Michelin-starred restaurants. His most recent review, however, is about Alchemist, a 2-star restaurant in Copenhagen which is so ridiculously over-the-top that viewers of movies and TV shows such as ‘The Menu‘, ‘Tampopo‘, or ‘The Bear‘ will chuckle. The 50-course (yes, fifty!) meal, it’s price, and the diner’s experience are insane.

By contrast, the world’s #1 ranked restaurant is Central in Lima, Peru. Here is Alexander’s review of that excellent but non-insane restaurant.

The World’s Best Airline Cabin Crew

Vin

Yesterday, I blogged about Singapore. For much of the past 20 years, its airline has been ranked as the best in the world. How do they do they achieve that? In this sixteen-minute video by Sam Chui, the most popular airline blogger in the world, learn some of the answer.

I’ve been fortunate to have flown on Singapore Airlines many times, including one around-the-world (honeymoon) trip, as well as thrice on the world’s longest non-stop flight. I will fly them again anywhere. Watch and learn why.

Don’t Go to Hong Kong: visit Singapore Instead

Vin
Sinapore

For several centuries, Hong Kong was called the ‘Gateway to the the East‘. Western businessmen make the British Crown Colony their Far Eastern base of operations. Western tourists planning to make their first trip to Asia more often than not made it their first stop. I know many retirement age Americans who still want or suggest Hong Kong as a destination.

That was fine advice until the turn of the millenium. In 1997, the British handed Hong Kong back to the the mainland Chinese government, and the Chinese Communiist Party (CCP) has since wasted no time transforming the Hong Kong into another province or city of the People’s Republic. Shanghai, rather than Hong Kong, has become the largest business city regarding China. International businesses are moving either there or to another ity that I’m about to mention. The CCP has enacted censorship and cracked down on political dissent. Hong Kong is a democracy no more. It’s still a wonderful, fascinating place, but it’s not the old Hong Kong of the 20th Century.

Instead, as The Economist news magazine verifies, Singapore has replaced Hong Kong as the major business city, with the exception of Tokyo, in the Far East:

“Singapore is no paradise. The pleasantness of its urban fabric is thanks mainly to the toil of the foreign migrant workers who make up nearly a third of the workforce. Their contribution is a curious blind spot. Meanwhile, politics is tightly constrained, as is civil society: you may be arrested for holding up a placard with a smiley face. The media is cloyingly tame, while foreign journalists, it is made clear, are here on sufferance. With nearly 500 executions in the past three decades, 70% of them for drug offences, Singapore’s use of capital punishment is grotesque.

“Still, a far brighter future beckons for Singapore’s young than for their counterparts in Hong Kong. They are slowly pushing at Singapore’s rigid boundaries. This month, in a first, a few hundred activists gathered on Labour Day to call for greater rights for, among others, foreign workers. The launch of Jom reflects a growing desire for independent voices. In Hong Kong, by contrast, a transport-news website promoting road safety, of all things, this week became the latest target of the authorities and was forced to close. Singapore is at a crossroads. Hong Kong has hit a dead end.”

I know both cities. Hong Kong is fun to visit, but always daunting for first-time travelers to Asia. By contrast, Singapore has much of the exoticism such travelers crave, but is twice as prosperous and much more educated than Hong Kong. The majority of Singapore’s citizens speak English (the ‘Singlish’ version of it) as fluently as Mandarin Chinese. Singapore is also a democracy, albeit with rather authoritarian and censorous rule by its dominant political party which has been governing it since it founding. Nevertheless, it is a better place to do business or vacation or shop than Hong Kong. I’d heartily recommend Westerners who want to visit the Far East for their first time to visit Singapore rather than Hong Kong. It’s one of my favorite cities in the world.

[Likewise, as I’ll write sometime, westerners who are planning to make their first visit to the Middle East should visit Qatar or Oman, rather than Egypt or Dubai. They won’t see the pyramids or the world’s tallest building, but they’ll be welcome and see true Arab cultures.]

Island of the World’s Greatest Beaches

Vin

Over the years, I’ve visited five of the eight island that comprise my wife’s native Canary Islands archipelago. I hope sometime next year to spend time on the one renowned as having–no kidding–the best beaches in the world. That island is Fuerteventure. Its 1,660 square kilometers (640 sq. miles), about the size of the Isle of Man or half of Rhode Island) have over 304 kilometers (189 miles) of white sandy beaches in the Atlantic. See for yourself: here is a three-and-a-half minute look at its beaches.

Hey, Dunkin’ Donuts! Are You Listening?

Vin
Considering that nearly one of every five Americans is of Hispanic descent, I’m waiting for America’s major donut franchise restaurants to begin selling Spain’s major breakfast treat: churros. Virtually every pub, bar, and restaurant open during mornings sells these fried dough sticks that you dunk into a coffee cup of melted chocolate before eating. Who wouldn’t like that? Here’s a short [six-minute] video by a neutral authority, Germany’s Deutsche Welle television network, explaining it in English with some English-subtitled Spanish.

Recognizing the Economic Rise of China

Vin

The main reason why I frequently posted here about the historically amazing revival of China as a world economic power is that most of the American with whom I grew up during the 1950s-60s, most of whom have never travelled outside of Anglophone North America, nonetheless anywhere else in the world, still visualize China as a Third World nation of Mao suit-wearing Communist drones traveling on bicycles, rickshaws, steam locomotives, and 1950s Soviet-built automobiles. None of that is true, except to some degree the Communist part (approximately 100 million of China’s 1.3 billion people are members of the Chinese Communist Party). For most of the past 4,000 years, China had the world’s #1 economy. It has been only during the past 400 years that China had been in eclipse, no longer one of the world’s top ten, nonetheless top one or two, most powerful nations. Napoleon Bonaparte knew that China’s decline was a temporary exception to history. “Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world,” he supposedly said. With the death of Mao Tse-Tung some 50 years ago and the decision by his replacement Deng Xiaopeng to embrace capitalism in the Chinese economy, (“It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Deng said), China has come roaring back as a world power.

Most of the American men I grew up with want to deny this fact. They don’t like America having competition, and particularly not Communist-ruled, albeit capitalist, competition. But China is a reality that can’t, and shouldn’t be denied. Some of them try to excuse China’s economic power by noting that by Gross Domestic Product and other economic measurements China now has an economy equal or greater than of the United States simply because it has four times the population of the U.S. who produce only one-quarter or more of the economic output the average American does. This is true. However, the economic output of the average Chinese is constantly growing and at a much faster pace than the average American’s. China now has some 300 million members of its population enjoying a middle class lifestyle, a number equal to (and soon to be larger) than the entire American population. This graphic from Visual Capitalist predicts the relative size of the world’s major national economies by the year 2050.

Until recently, the entire history of the United States had occured while China slept. The U.S. isn’t used to having such an economic competitor: a nationl that has been major power for most of the past 4,000 years. That is the reality.