Posts by JDEvolutionist 6 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Oct 2011
“....because replacing functional tech was rarely prioritised over new policy requirements.”
This is and has been one of the major problems of the modern approach to organisation. Ideas come far faster than our ability to evaluate and implement them. The consequences are potentially disasterous but, unfortunately, are also almost impossible to avoid.
We all discuss and argue about everything continuously, mostly without ever achieving a great deal - the media are a personification of this; in reality things actually get done in spite of all the waffle and as a result of the evolutionary process of adaptation to prevailing condition, the condition of existence. We, as humans, can and do influence this process but cannot pre-determine its outcome.
It is not because we are dumb (stupid) but our thinking is inevitably prone to significant error because we are never in possession of all the facts and even if we were, actually an impossibility, we would never be able to process all the information correctly. This is fundamentally due to the inherent nature of our interface with reality that is inescapably based on a process of interpretation of representative sensation.
Bruce Schneier is right to the extent that the situation is dire and he is right in trying to promote awareness of the problem but unfortunately the exponential nature of the advance in knowledge, information and technology, all key components in the wholeness of existence, means that it is beyond the capabilities of living entities to structure an appropriate and effective plan for its future control and the security that it requires.
The future is becoming increasing rapidly (exponentially) less predictable and progressively more uncertain. A reality that increasing diminishes our ability to constructively influence the future, the process of evolution. Oh, dear!!
Darwin was wrong to say that Natural Selection superseded conditions of existence and unity of type.
In my terms, Condition of Existence is the driver of evolution and not Natural Selection and it IS random. With hindsight everything appears to be deterministic but at the time immediately prior to entering the present in any location the condition that will exist is both unknown and unknowable for all components entering that existence and MUST, I believe, consequentially be random. Change (mutation) is constant and 'stable' components of existence enter the present, their new existence, with a high degree of probability that their new 'present' condition will tolerate their existing state, hence giving rise to the expectation of continuity of form and the appearance of non-random being. However the realisation that the new condition is itself a product that IS random means that the influence it has on its components must be random. The components of existence have varying degrees of tolerance to the prevailing Condition of Existence, the greater the tolerance the higher the likelihood of continuation of form for the individual components into the future (e.g. simplistically, liquid water has a tolerance range governed by temperature and pressure) but the process IS random.
(Many will contest the assertion that Condition of Existence is the driver of evolution but for me Condition of Existence preceded Natural Selection, the evolutionary process of components of existing possessing the attributes of life, it is more fundamental; evolution is the process of existence not just of life forms; although the primary concepts are the same.)
From my experiences around the UK, I don't think your findings are that surprising! In general, as soon as you get a few miles outside of a major city it seems that coverage and speed drops significantly. And no, that does not do a lot for downloading data and programmes let alone 'cloud services' !! It's like so many aspects of the UK, we're constantly told we have / are the BEST but it's a LIE - generally we are very second / third rate only in the amount that we are PAY OUT and are TAXED do we excel!,
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