It will be fascinating to see how the Yokohama Green Expo blends cutting-edge technology with inspiration from Japan's past.

The strange economic role of software (economists call it fancy names like non-rivalrus, zero marginal reproduction costs etc.) and in particular the radical nature of open source software is not really internalized.This has some bizarre implications. Case in point: coding "AI" that is supposed to be a real "business model", one which is worth "trillions". It would literally not have been possible without all the open source repositories and most likely will end up being open source itself.

One thing I would be curious about: what does the OWL layer let someone ask that the e-CF taxonomy on its own did not answer. In my own measuring the vocabulary was rarely the weak part. The gap sat a level down, in whether anything outside the project ever queried it. Documentation and a working vocabulary look identical until something tries the second.

@thejapantimes

@noam Online participation is possible (registration is required)digital4sustainability.eu/euro

@openrisk Sounds good! Are there any online sessions or broadcasts?

@yala Are you referring to specific flaws of Hardin's historical article and views or more broadly the concept of negative externalities?

@openriskBut you are aware that the whole story about that Tragedy is flawed, and that it has often been proven wrong?I'm willing to find references, if that interests you.

@hynek cool! If you take into account that the production of IT hardware is a big part of its environmental footprint this is a good development

@Gord1i what characterises this wretched era is that - from a pure digital technology perspective - collecting, processing, disseminating "ground truth" has never been easier.Yet somehow our trajectory is the exact opposite, factual reality increasingly buried under hard to identify "AI" creations and other algorithmic manipulation 🤦

@openrisk the only nuance I would add is around the availability of trusted public data that reflects the crisis.It is necessary (but by no means sufficient) to help the public understand why a decision is made, even if they don't agree.But what's also fundamentally true about your point is that a lot of the solutions to big crises are also inherently democratic in nature - lots of distributed, small actions that actually move the needle

So instead of waiting like lemmings to fall over a cliff before we change direction, we need to change directions, adjust our consensus smoothly and continuously, as new factual information arises. It sounds ambitious, if not completely utopic, but this is ultimately imho the real task for the #fediverse and genuine #socialnetworks more broadly.Its not a technology issue - all the hardware and software exists. Its primarily a sociopolitical choice to better ground discourse on reality.

This innate conservatism and resistance to change is of course well known. This is why we have expressions like "never let a crisis go to waste". The idea is that during stress periods collective behavior is more open to extraordinary measures and changes. But as a strategy for steering ourselves to a safer place this is a deeply problematic approach. Leaving aside that waiting for crises to change anything is absurdly risky, it is also very undemocratic: Bypassing consensus at gun point.

@crispin indeed. but that doesn't change that we have a bunch of it, and we're trying to dispose of it in the most responsible way.

@bloopmuseum Tetra Paks are not easily recyclable.mashable.com/article/tetra-pak

@thejapantimes I don't think the Philippines has heard of Asia's green pivot.

@thejapantimes this will be transformative. My son toured Japan last year (loved it) but couldn't get over how pervasive plastic was. It's everywhere, and everything is excessively over-wrapped

@esoastronomy The "good" news is that, if they put a million satellites in low earth orbit, the inevitable will likely happen and we'll see what it is like to live on a planet with rings consisting of dust and small chunks left over after the satellites start hitting each other.

@esoastronomy Permitting the use of near orbital space would be a perfect job for the UN. The sky belongs to all of us. The decisions regarding what goes up there should be up to all of us too. Not just some first world cockroach capitalists.Save the Stars!

@esoastronomy If you're not already in contact – @sundogplanets is working on the same issue.I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you can save the world for us.😅 🫠

@openrisk Searching for the truth was the job of philosophers, scientists and journalists (and more) in the past. Nowadays Elon Musk thinks, ultimate goal of his AI grok is to search for truth and be max curious 😭 if he would not be lying, then the problem with that approach would be that AI might decide to simulate reality (which would cause many deep problems). And surprise surprise he thinks most likely reality is simulation, aka. what is 'truth' if reality is simulation.Ground truth is quite not known, one can only search for it like philosophers, scientists and journalists did in the past.Going AI route, AI may get so smart manipulating, that people might start believing what AI is telling is the truth, but it may be false but receiver may be too dumb to realize it.Believing in false truth is dangerous. So believing in absolute truth or establishing it, when it is not, is dangerous.But not believing in truth is likewise dangerous, as people don't trust the truth which scientists manage to establish.

@mindaugas the most critical aspect imho (and it's not trivial neither philosophically nor practically) is to be able to establish "ground truth", less affected by opinion. People were excited about early Twitter because it seemed to provide a completely new digital platform to do so. Everything went wrong afterwards, but it did hint there is a new era of possibilities. The fediverse is still too immature but if people start building credible digital institutions on it it may evolve to be that.

@openrisk in theory, it could be possible, but do we know what to do to get out of the current mess in politics?mess for a large part is driven by people who vote for messy politicians; and that is driven by manipulators who manipulate people to vote for messy politicians; and that in part is driven by social media where manipulators can manipulate unchecked in their bubbles; and fediverse not necessarily would solve it. For example, I would guess there there is dark fediverse (like dark web) with all those servers who a blocked by the surface fediverse including network of the president; or even surface fediverse quality may not necessarily be better (but can't be rules out)(p.s. I like your positive notes a lot, but still questions arise)

@thejapantimes@mastodon.social surely if one country could lead the solution it would be Japan.

@renwillis All I need to know about Microsoft is the $97 million it was forced to pay because it classified 8,000 employees as temps to keep from paying them benefits.computerworld.com/article/1354