Mereja.Forum

[DefendTheTruth]

Those who have got data (well, we may all have data) will control the world in the near future. It is not those who have got nuclear power, it is definetly not those who have got a lot of oil or master any other industry.

Those who have got data and also be able to process it will rule over the rest.

There were nations in the world, which idly sat over their rich oils and waited for starvation to knock at their doorsteps. Others with the same resources were utilizing them and building empires for themselves at the same time. The problem was that the former group simply lacked the necessary knowledge to make use of their "raw materials". The ability to transform the resources into a valuable commodity was absent, which later made the difference between what we now know as rich and poor.

Those who had the knowledge also managed to arm themselves with nuclear weapons even if they may not had the required raw-material, like Uranium, while counries rich in the "luxury metal" were unable to arm themselves and use it to secure their national interests. Knowledge was the key factor but it was missing for the latter group.

The next most valuable resource of the world will be data, those who can process data will control this world, those who can't will be controlled. Data processing requires knowledge, if you lack knowledge, then you are gone. To put it differently, you will vacate your places for AI, the product of data (processing).

Like those who slept on their own crude oil or uranium to remain poor and self insufficient those who can't process their data will be out of the game very soon, the consequence of which could be even more devastating than those of the former two examples.

Mark this thread, if you would be lucky enough to live somewhat longer and be a witness to what is coming.

[Abere]

How do you, first, define data? Is it the same as information? Which one should come first, education or use of data? There are those who claim education is the new currency or the passport to the world. Where should be the priority of developing African countries? Africans have gravely competing priorities: bad governance/instability/, food insecurity, low level of education, etc. Certainly, data helps for making better choices in any sphere ( personal, enterprise or state or national level). It can be a commodity helping to generate revenues, if it if meaningful and scientific. But this requires higher level and quality education as well as a country and people that have built culture of transparency, accountability, trustworthiness and relatively durable institutionalism. Also, in an era of sea of information there those who fabricate data, sell pack of lies and these entities are also dangerous eroding public use data. For instance, government agencies in Africa publish fake census figures to inflate figure that favors their ethnic constituents.

[DefendTheTruth]

Aberu,

please stay away from this thread, it is beyond what you can comprehend. I have told you that you are blinded by a pile of fabricated political propaganda, under which you have succumbed already.

Having said that you raised a legitimate question about the difference between data and information, the rest is pile of garbage, as usual.

I can answer the legitimate question according to my understanding: data is a raw-material, while information is a commodity. Go figure out the difference between the two.

[Abere]

DDT,

You come out public? Why are you afraid of the heat, I mean challenging idea. Thanks for giving the definition. Where can Ethiopian fill out Freedom of Information (FIOA)? people want to know:

# Internally displaced people (IDP)
# victims who lost homes due to house demolition project of Adanech Abebe
# war fatalities - fatality statistics
# Disabled veteran population, etc

Aberu,

please stay away from this thread, it is beyond what you can comprehend. I have told you that you are blinded by a pile of fabricated political propaganda, under which you have succumbed already.

Having said that you raised a legitimate question about the difference between data and information, the rest is pile of garbage, as usual.

I can answer the legitimate question according to my understanding: data is a raw-material, while information is a commodity. Go figure out the difference between the two.

[Sam Ebalalehu]

I agree on the power of data. British mathematician Clive Humbly declared " data is the new oil." He meant data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. It has to be refined. But to refine it, first you have to have it. DTT I am afraid the big Tech companies have already monoplized it.

[Selam/]

blinded by a pile of fabricated political propaganda

Hmm…Look into the mirror, my friend!

Aberu,

please stay away from this thread, it is beyond what you can comprehend. I have told you that you are blinded by a pile of fabricated political propaganda, under which you have succumbed already.

Having said that you raised a legitimate question about the difference between data and information, the rest is pile of garbage, as usual.

I can answer the legitimate question according to my understanding: data is a raw-material, while information is a commodity. Go figure out the difference between the two.

[Abere]

For countries with volatile government system, such as Ethiopia, where shall be the repository of data of critical importance such as Education, Health, city and housing plans etc. Marinating big data is not a choice, but a must because modern tasks demand it. As we know when TPLF invade Amhara region. cities, universities, health care institutions were burnt down and computers storages destroyed. I am not sure even Mekelle city had protected its housing and residential unit plans. The problem in Africa is disaster of peace and what coping strategies should be in place for such disaster? It is good to put the horse before the cart. What about individual privacy protection, the so-called government is invasive of privacy of individual citizens. Should not transparency and accountability come first? In a country when boldly claims he is the 7th king, everyone is his subject.

I agree on the power of data. British mathematician Clive Humbly declared " data is the new oil." He meant data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. It has to be refined. But to refine it, first you have to have it. DTT I am afraid the big Tech companies have already monoplized it.

[Horus]

አበረ፣
Datum by itself is meaningless. We now have what is called The Knowledge Pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid is Data, then data gives rise to Information. (I will skip the method of processing data into information). Then information gives rise to knowledge. (there is a separate process of transforming information into knowledge). Then knowledge gives rise to principles which we also call Wisdom. (this also has its own method of processing knowledge into wisdom or principle.

[Selam/]

Apart from the politics, Africa will generally continue to lag behind the rest of the world in data collection. That’s primarily due to the lack of human capital and weak power infrastructures. In fact, the gap will increasingly grow wider if the current energy infrastructure remains unaltered. Likewise, instead of politicizing the youth, they should be trained to grow as independent thinkers, problem solvers and innovators, so the continent becomes self-sufficient in education & economy. Without doing that, we will continue to linger behind the rest of the world and what we consider an accomplishment will be controlled by others.

For countries with volatile government system, such as Ethiopia, where shall be the repository of data of critical importance such as Education, Health, city and housing plans etc. Marinating big data is not a choice, but a must because modern tasks demand it. As we know when TPLF invade Amhara region. cities, universities, health care institutions were burnt down and computers storages destroyed. I am not sure even Mekelle city had protected its housing and residential unit plans. The problem in Africa is disaster of peace and what coping strategies should be in place for such disaster? It is good to put the horse before the cart. What about individual privacy protection, the so-called government is invasive of privacy of individual citizens. Should not transparency and accountability come first? In a country when boldly claims he is the 7th king, everyone is his subject.

I agree on the power of data. British mathematician Clive Humbly declared " data is the new oil." He meant data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. It has to be refined. But to refine it, first you have to have it. DTT I am afraid the big Tech companies have already monoplized it.

[DefendTheTruth]

For countries with volatile government system, such as Ethiopia, where shall be the repository of data of critical importance such as Education, Health, city and housing plans etc. Marinating big data is not a choice, but a must because modern tasks demand it. As we know when TPLF invade Amhara region. cities, universities, health care institutions were burnt down and computers storages destroyed. I am not sure even Mekelle city had protected its housing and residential unit plans. The problem in Africa is disaster of peace and what coping strategies should be in place for such disaster? It is good to put the horse before the cart. What about individual privacy protection, the so-called government is invasive of privacy of individual citizens. Should not transparency and accountability come first? In a country when boldly claims he is the 7th king, everyone is his subject.

I agree on the power of data. British mathematician Clive Humbly declared " data is the new oil." He meant data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. It has to be refined. But to refine it, first you have to have it. DTT I am afraid the big Tech companies have already monoplized it.

Data has got a "repository" and that is part of the tooling of data processing. The issues you raised don't only potentially come from just "volatile governments" but also in any sort of a setup. That "repository" should ensure what is called DR (Disaster Recovery). America is not a "volatile government" hopefully in your definition but still can face a situation of a "Disaster", such as natual disaster like Earth Quake, Fire, Tsunami, powerful Sorms like Tornado, etc.

Do you think those issues are left at the "mercy of God"? Go ask the likes of Meta (owner of FB), Alphabet (owner of Google), Apple, Microsoft, American Department of Defense (The Pentagon) and many more.
You can write a lobby letter to instruct you on those issues to the American law-makers, like you did to sanction the nation of over 120 Million souls and come out to show that as a achievement, የታርክ አተላዎች.
The money you are lobbying to hinder from getting to Ethiopia would have helped to curb some of the too many problems the country has at the moment and will going have in the future, way much after the current government has gone.

Those who think they are special in anything come back and tell us "the last round of the war destroyed the age old historic and national heritages and other valuable materials", an elderly Tigrean man was enumerating painfully the gone heritages of the nation in a video clip I came across and shared somewhere today.

I am not sure if Lalibala might have been spared from the calamity of the last round of war or prepared itself for such a scenarion in the future.

[Naga Tuma]

I agree on the power of data. British mathematician Clive Humbly declared " data is the new oil." He meant data like oil isn't useful in its raw state. It has to be refined. But to refine it, first you have to have it. DTT I am afraid the big Tech companies have already monoplized it.

Sam,

I have no doubts about the big tech companies using and, more likely than not, misusing it exclusively. Thinking otherwise would be thinking one couldn't see it in Elon Musk's awkward dance in China, or in Jeff Bozo's cowboy hat in Texas, or in Bill Gates' glasses, or that Charles III would be crowned King of England in a few days without a crown jewel. What is more, who knows if they haven't been doing the using and misusing by showing their middle fingers to the U.S. Congress every moment of any given day for a long time already.

One of Dan Brown's fiction books is Digital Fortress. It is one of his books that I wanted to read after Da Vinci Code, Angles and Demons, and The Lost Symbol. In his Angles and Demons fiction, he puts The Vatican on fire.

Digital Fortress was first published in 1998. Fortress is not a raw matter. Digital data are what billionaires have been hiding behind for long already. In that sense, it has been evidently a common knowledge, at least among some. I am unsure if the British mathematician's "data is the new oil" expression is to mean it is in a raw state or if it is a dog whistle from the British Empire in the digital age.

The good news in my view is that the fortress is a house of cards in the eyes of the average mathematician. Numbers don't lie even if the misusers of data assign them arbitrarily and manufacture artificial intelligence. Here, I am talking about computers being programmed to assign a person artificial data to tell that person how intelligent he or she is naturally. Either a Thomas Jefferson incarnate must be in it, or that some are determined to perpetuate his terminal fallacy using artificial or manufactured intelligence, or that some are insecure about the natural intelligence of others that they are determined to artificially suppress it. Terminal fallacy because he was willing to travel back in time but went to his grave without going past Goddess Athena.

The Arab invented Algebra is not in favor of that terminal fallacy. A quick observation of a sample digital fortress can spot a broken model in it. A broken model in the digital fortress is like a house of cards if it can be brought under the pyramid of law. A while back, I pointed to Jeff Bezos' suspected broken model and no one has come forward with concrete data to prove that it is not a broken model.

In my view, law is the most powerful invention by humankind since the dawn of civilization. By definition, at least in my view, the dawn of civilization is the reckoning by humankind that law is supreme over supremacy.

[ethiopian]

How do you, first, define data? Is it the same as information? Which one should come first, education or use of data? There are those who claim education is the new currency or the passport to the world. Where should be the priority of developing African countries? Africans have gravely competing priorities: bad governance/instability/, food insecurity, low level of education, etc. Certainly, data helps for making better choices in any sphere ( personal, enterprise or state or national level). It can be a commodity helping to generate revenues, if it if meaningful and scientific. But this requires higher level and quality education as well as a country and people that have built culture of transparency, accountability, trustworthiness and relatively durable institutionalism. Also, in an era of sea of information there those who fabricate data, sell pack of lies and these entities are also dangerous eroding public use data. For instance, government agencies in Africa publish fake census figures to inflate figure that favors their ethnic constituents.

Aberu's skull is filled with a pile of shi*t ...He is just a bum !

[Sam Ebalalehu]

some people argue not law, electronics brains is an invention that has changed society tremendously. The English mathematician meant to say before it is refined data is like oil before it is processed into different carbon compounds.
The data you see in spreadshhets is nothing until you bring the power of excel to disect it.

[AbyssiniaLady]

Abere makes me laugh (How do you, first, define data?) smart question, Some people like to talk about things they know nothing about.

[Naga Tuma]

Within the premise of the thread, which started with this sentence: "Those who have got data ... will control the world in the near future," I resign to the maxim that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

[DefendTheTruth]

Abere makes me laugh (How do you, first, define data?) smart question, Some people like to talk about things they know nothing about.

ፈረሱም ይሄዉ ሜዳዉም ይሄዉ፣ አሉ።

ከዚህ በላይ ምን ቀረሽ የምታዉቂዉን ለማሳየት? You are on a forum to exchange what you think to know, not for attention seeking.

ምንም አይነት ወንድ ጠጋ ጠጋ አልል ስላአሌሽ (የዕድሜ ባለፀጋ ሆነሽ) ትኩራታቺዉ ወደ እኔም ይሁን ለማለት ነዉን?

[Abere]

AbyssiniaLady,

Defining the subject is very important no matter how common it appears. For instance, in physical science or physics "matter" is commonly understood but it shall be defined for the readers. There are things that people say they know but misunderstood it. I come across people who interchangeably use data and information, although I am no one of them.

DDT is raising a luxury issue simply to divert people attention off Abiy Ahmed. What kind of data he was referring to is unknown. Data could be qualitative or quantitate - it can come in many forms text, voice, number, picture, etc. The level of sophistication of the society and economic stage matters. A society that is so crude in many terms and not well literate way far from providing reliable data. (Note: Quality of "election and democracy in Africa". Data on physicals events also depends on the ability of the society to harness its physicals environment. There are also a lot of illusive phenomena. What kind of machine learning (AI) or decisions scientists would develop a predictive model that prompt Abiy Ahmed's state of mind would lead the country into chaos resulting in 1.5 million death?

Abere makes me laugh (How do you, first, define data?) smart question, Some people like to talk about things they know nothing about.

[Abere]

AbyssiniaLady,

Defining the subject is very important no matter how common it appears. For instance, in physical science or physics "matter" is commonly understood but it shall be defined for the readers. There are things that people say they know but misunderstood it. I come across people who interchangeably use data and information, although I am no one of them.

DDT is raising a luxury issue simply to divert people attention off Abiy Ahmed. What kind of data he was referring to is unknown. Data could be qualitative or quantitate - it can come in many forms text, voice, number, picture, etc. The level of sophistication of the society and economic stage matters. A society that is so crude in many terms and not well literate way far from providing reliable data. (Note: Quality of "election and democracy in Africa". Data on physicals events also depends on the ability of the society to harness its physicals environment. There are also a lot of illusive phenomena. What kind of machine learning (AI) or decisions scientists would develop a predictive model that prompt Abiy Ahmed's state of mind would lead the country into chaos resulting in 1.5 million death?

Abere makes me laugh (How do you, first, define data?) smart question, Some people like to talk about things they know nothing about.

[DefendTheTruth]

AbyssiniaLady,

Defining the subject is very important no matter how common it appears. For instance, in physical science or physics "matter" is commonly understood but it shall be defined for the readers. There are things that people say they know but misunderstood it. I come across people who interchangeably use data and information, although I am no one of them.

DDT is raising a luxury issue simply to divert people attention off Abiy Ahmed. What kind of data he was referring to is unknown. Data could be qualitative or quantitate - it can come in many forms text, voice, number, picture, etc. The level of sophistication of the society and economic stage matters. A society that is so crude in many terms and not well literate way far from providing reliable data. (Note: Quality of "election and democracy in Africa". Data on physicals events also depends on the ability of the society to harness its physicals environment. There are also a lot of illusive phenomena. What kind of machine learning (AI) or decisions scientists would develop a predictive model that prompt Abiy Ahmed's state of mind would lead the country into chaos resulting in 1.5 million death?

Abere makes me laugh (How do you, first, define data?) smart question, Some people like to talk about things they know nothing about.

I told you to stay away from this topic, which is beyond what you can ever imagine to comprehend, and concentrate yourself on your garbage politics of rewinding the changes made over the last 50 or so years.

You replied saying "You come out public? Why are you afraid of the heat, I mean challenging idea", as if I was afraid of your challenging idea and you had one.

Now you come back after a day or so to accuse me of diverting attention. You can accuse everybody around you except your mobs who think they can easily walk into the palace and catch Abiy Ahmed on his neck and remove him to put someone from Gojjam in his place.

I have offered you a division of labor what else should I do to avoid your endless accusation, just sit idle and wait until the mob arrives in Addis?

[Naga Tuma]

Speaking of digital data, I got a chance to hear Geoffrey Hinton interviewed on CNN yesterday about Artificial Intelligence or AI. Media reports say he is considered the Godfather of AI; I did not know about him before now.

He sounded an advocate of collaboration in order to avoid the risk of AI getting out of hand. That is like teaching computer models the values of nobles.

At the same time, something he said about AI went blank for me. He had the following to say: "You could have ten thousand copies of the same model, they are all identical because they are digital and when one copy learns something, all the copies note. So, if you have ten thousand people, whenever one person learns some new skill, all the others automatically note. That is kind of frightening."

The key word that went blank for me is note. Noting doesn't necessarily mean action. He didn't elaborate on what actions computers can possibly do after noting new digital information.

I was introduced to MS-DOS and FORTRAN a long time ago. My first impression about computer science is that it is mechanical on a micro scale. Mechanical because it doesn't take a full stop for a coma. Sure, it can do computations exponentially faster. Then again, computers do not know how to turn on to do anything unless a human finger or remote accessory turns them on just like a car can't turn on even if it can go exponentially faster than a human being. I haven't heard of any car on the planet that is outside the control of a human being, either by being inside it or remotely. Most cars on the planet today are idle boxes in a metal without a human being inside them.

So much about AI getting out of hand and conquering humanity.