[YEDG]2 articles for the meeting on the 5th of Jan. 2014
jiyoen park
Dear YEDGers!
Here is this week's facilitator, Serena Ha.
Come to Kyungbok Palace station exit 3, go straight around 50 m, there is a coffee place called "JK coffee"
refer to the map as follows. FYI, you can park ur car near coffee shop just in case!
Then, I look forward to meeting you this week!
Pls refer to the below 2 articles
EU migration
The gates are open
Rich EU countries fret about social-benefits tourism after the lifting of restrictions on the free movement of workers from Romania and Bulgaria on January 1st
Jan 4th 2014 | LONDON and SOFIA | From the print edition“WHEN British people come—in thousands—to our Black Sea, to our resorts, and behave like cave men, drink and fight, we don’t say anything… We are going to be much better behaved when we go to Britain. We are not going for fun, we are going for work, for a decent living,” says Petar Dobrev, who has been employed in several Black Sea resorts as a concierge in the past 12 years. Mr Dobrev is planning to move away from Bulgaria before next summer, to Britain or another European Union country. He says employers in his home country exploit people and pay them much less than they deserve.
Mr Dobrev is hoping for fair pay in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and six other EU countries that fully opened their labour markets to workers from Bulgaria and Romania when transitional controls expired on January 1st. He is not sure where he will go, maybe London, because the city “has many good hotels and they always need people”. And he is determined to work hard to make a living for himself and for the family he wants to start.
The 31-year-old Bulgarian is representative of the typical migrant from Romania and Bulgaria: he is young, eager to work and frustrated with the slow pace of reform and development in his home country. Yet he is unlikely to receive the warm welcome he hopes for. The public, politicians and the press in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, France and Austria, have spent the months leading up to the dismantling of transitional controls fretting about how many Bulgarians and Romanians will come, whether they will take away low-skill jobs, how their access to social benefits can be restricted and whether begging and sleeping rough will shoot up, in particular in big or industrial cities such as London, Rotterdam, Berlin, Duisburg and Dortmund.
Is Europe facing another big migratory wave from east to west? Ion Jinga, Romania’s ambassador in Britain, does not think so. The last one (the Poles coming to Britain in the aftermath of their country’s EU accession in 2004) happened when only three big countries (Britain, Ireland and Sweden) opened their labour markets and the British economy was booming. Moreover, the population of Romania and Bulgaria combined is only three-quarters the size of Poland’s 39m. And Romania is not doing badly: economic growth has picked up, rising to 4.1% in the latest quarter, and wages are increasing fast. The unemployment rate is below 5% nationally and only 2% in Bucharest, the capital (see chart).
Of Romania’s 7m strong active labour force, around 1.1m have a secure job in the state sector, which they will hesitate to give up. Some 3m have already left in the wake of Romania joining the EU in 2007: about 1m went to Italy, another million to Spain, half a million to France, up to 400,000 to Germany and 120,000 to Britain. They worked in a “self-employed” capacity (40% of the workforce building London’s Olympic Stadium were self-employed Romanians) or as seasonal or low-skill workers. Some were exploited, as they did not have the same legal protection as nationals; others didn’t pay tax. Neither abuse is as likely now that they can be legally employed.
None of the rich EU governments wants to make firm predictions about how many Bulgarians and Romanians will migrate—they are worried about being wrong. Germany’s IAB, a research institute, predicts that 100,000 to 180,000 will go to Germany this year. “This cannot be called poverty migration,” insists Herbert Brücker of the IAB. Only 7.4% of Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany are unemployed, a bit lower than the national average of 7.7%, and considerably lower than the average of 14.7% among the general immigrant population. Up to 65% work and pay taxes. Although the share of Bulgarians and Romanians, who receive means-tested benefits, is at 10% slightly higher than the 7.5% of the native population, they are net contributors to the pay-as-you-go pensions system. Thanks mainly to favourable demography, the average immigrant contributes around €2,000 ($2,760) annually to the welfare state and the contribution of Romanians and Bulgarians is estimated to be even higher, says Mr Brücker.
Germans do have some reason to be concerned, however. More than a third of Romanians and Bulgarians working in Germany are unskilled (compared with 11% of the general population) so they crowd native Germans out of low-skill jobs. Another justified worry is that those who neither work nor receive social benefits—many of them Roma—tend to settle in Duisburg, Dortmund, Berlin and a few other big cities. This creates tensions as they mainly live off the black market, begging and petty crime and live in slum-like conditions on the cities’ outskirts. The IAB proposes compensatory payments by the federal government to help the worst-affected municipalities.
Politicians woke up very late to the public’s worries. Britain’s prime minister came out at the end of November with proposals on restricting the access to social benefits for new immigrants. Germany’s coalition agreement in late November contained measures on how to curb poverty migration. “Germany is Britain’s strongest ally in the EU migration debate,” says Mats Persson of Open Europe, a think thank. Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister of Germany’s previous government, even suggested talks outside of the EU framework with Britain, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on how social-benefit tourism might be curbed, because he was so unhappy about the Commission’s insistence that the EU law on freedom of movement cannot be changed.
“It is very difficult to just come here and get benefits,” says Jonathan Portes of Britain’s National Institute for Economic and Social Research. Restrictions on benefits have been in place since 2004 and the new proposed restrictions mainly reinforce what is already on the books. Britain is however alone among rich EU countries to have a universalist welfare system—all the others are more contribution-based. It therefore has the strongest case for reviewing access to benefits.
Will tightening benefits rules do the trick? For the first time, EU citizens are conflating anti-EU sentiments with anti-immigration feelings. Mixed with an increasing distrust of politicians and a debate on the welfare state, this creates a “perfect storm”, says Mr Persson. Europe’s best hope is that by the end of 2014 not much will have changed. A manageable number of Romanians and Bulgarians will have migrated westward and most of them will be young and in work. Isolated crimes, benefits fraud and trouble with rough sleepers will no doubt sometimes spill over into the headlines. But, by and large, the arrival of Romanians and Bulgarians will work as well (or as badly, depending on your point of view) as previous openings to new EU members from the east.
We need to talk about TED
- theguardian.com, Monday 30 December 2013 09.30 GMT
Alain de Botton speaks during during TEDGlobal 2011, in Edinburgh. Photograph: James Duncan Davidson/TEDIn our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky.
But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?
I write about entanglements of technology and culture, how technologies enable the making of certain worlds, and at the same time how culture structures how those technologies will evolve, this way or that. It's where philosophy and design intersect.
So the conceptualization of possibilities is something that I take very seriously. That's why I, and many people, think it's way past time to take a step back and ask some serious questions about the intellectual viability of things like TED.So my TED talk is not about my work or my new book – the usual spiel – but about TED itself, what it is and why it doesn't work.
The first reason is over-simplification.
To be clear, I think that having smart people who do very smart things explain what they doing in a way that everyone can understand is a good thing. But TED goes way beyond that.
Let me tell you a story. I was at a presentation that a friend, an astrophysicist, gave to a potential donor. I thought the presentation was lucid and compelling (and I'm a professor of visual arts here at UC San Diego so at the end of the day, I know really nothing about astrophysics). After the talk the sponsor said to him, "you know what, I'm gonna pass because I just don't feel inspired ...you should be more like Malcolm Gladwell."At this point I kind of lost it. Can you imagine?
Think about it: an actual scientist who produces actual knowledge should be more like a journalist who recycles fake insights! This is beyond popularisation. This is taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing. This is not the solution to our most frightening problems – rather this is one of our most frightening problems.So I ask the question: does TED epitomize a situation where if a scientist's work (or an artist's or philosopher's or activist's or whoever) is told that their work is not worthy of support, because the public doesn't feel good listening to them?
I submit that astrophysics run on the model of American Idol is a recipe for civilizational disaster.
What is TED?
So what is TED exactly?
Perhaps it's the proposition that if we talk about world-changing ideas enough, then the world will change. But this is not true, and that's the second problem.
TED of course stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and I'll talk a bit about all three. I Think TED actually stands for: middlebrow megachurch infotainment.
The key rhetorical device for TED talks is a combination of epiphany and personal testimony (an "epiphimony" if you like ) through which the speaker shares a personal journey of insight and realisation, its triumphs and tribulations.
What is it that the TED audience hopes to get from this? A vicarious insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it's all going to work out after all? A spiritual buzz?
I'm sorry but this fails to meet the challenges that we are supposedly here to confront. These are complicated and difficult and are not given to tidy just-so solutions. They don't care about anyone's experience of optimism. Given the stakes, making our best and brightest waste their time – and the audience's time – dancing like infomercial hosts is too high a price. It is cynical.
Also, it just doesn't work.
Recently there was a bit of a dust up when TEDGlobal sent out a note to TEDx organisers asking them not to not book speakers whose work spans the paranormal, the conspiratorial, new age "quantum neuroenergy", etc: what is called woo. Instead of these placebos, TEDx should instead curate talks that are imaginative but grounded in reality. In fairness, they took some heat, so their gesture should be acknowledged. A lot of people take TED very seriously, and might lend credence to specious ideas if stamped with TED credentials. "No" to placebo science and medicine.
But ... the corollaries of placebo science and placebo medicine are placebo politics and placebo innovation. On this point, TED has a long way to go.
Perhaps the pinnacle of placebo politics and innovation was featured at TEDx San Diego in 2011. You're familiar I assume with Kony2012, the social media campaign to stop war crimes in central Africa? So what happened here? Evangelical surfer bro goes to help kids in Africa. He makes a campy video explaining genocide to the cast of Glee. The world finds his public epiphany to be shallow to the point of self-delusion. The complex geopolitics of central Africa are left undisturbed. Kony's still there. The end.
You see, when inspiration becomes manipulation, inspiration becomes obfuscation. If you are not cynical you should be sceptical. You should be as sceptical of placebo politics as you are placebo medicine.
T and Technology
T – E – D. I'll go through them each quickly.
So first technology ...
We hear that not only is change accelerating but that the pace of change is accelerating as well. While this is true of computational carrying-capacity at a planetary level, at the same time – and in fact the two are connected – we are also in a moment of cultural de-acceleration.
We invest our energy in futuristic information technologies, including our cars, but drive them home to kitsch architecture copied from the 18th century. The future on offer is one in which everything changes, so long as everything stays the same. We'll have Google Glass, but still also business casual.
This timidity is our path to the future? No, this is incredibly conservative, and there is no reason to think that more gigaflops will inoculate us.
Because, if a problem is in fact endemic to a system, then the exponential effects of Moore's law also serve to amplify what's broken. It is more computation along the wrong curve, and I doubt this is necessarily a triumph of reason.
Part of my work explores deep technocultural shifts, from post-humanism to the post-anthropocene, but TED's version has too much faith in technology, and not nearly enough commitment to technology. It is placebo technoradicalism, toying with risk so as to reaffirm the comfortable.
So our machines get smarter and we get stupider. But it doesn't have to be like that. Both can be much more intelligent. Another futurism is possible.
E and economics
A better 'E' in TED would stand for economics, and the need for, yes imagining and designing, different systems of valuation, exchange, accounting of transaction externalities, financing of coordinated planning, etc. Because states plus markets, states versus markets, these are insufficient models, and our conversation is stuck in Cold War gear.
Worse is when economics is debated like metaphysics, as if the reality of a system is merely a bad example of the ideal.
Communism in theory is an egalitarian utopia.
Actually existing communism meant ecological devastation, government spying, crappy cars and gulags.
Capitalism in theory is rocket ships, nanomedicine, and Bono saving Africa.
Actually existing capitalism means Walmart jobs, McMansions, people living in the sewers under Las Vegas, Ryan Seacrest … plus – ecological devastation, government spying, crappy public transportation and for-profit prisons.
Our options for change range from basically what we have plus a little more Hayek, to what we have plus a little more Keynes. Why?
The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in improving quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now –whatever you want to call it – is in the short term what makes the amazing new technologies possible, but in the long run it is also what suppresses their full flowering. Another economic architecture is prerequisite.
D and design
Instead of our designers prototyping the same "change agent for good" projects over and over again, and then wondering why they don't get implemented at scale, perhaps we should resolve that design is not some magic answer. Design matters a lot, but for very different reasons. It's easy to get enthusiastic about design because, like talking about the future, it is more polite than referring to white elephants in the room.
Such as…
Phones, drones and genomes, that's what we do here in San Diego and La Jolla. In addition to the other insanely great things these technologies do, they are the basis of NSA spying, flying robots killing people, and the wholesale privatisation of biological life itself. That's also what we do.
The potential for these technologies are both wonderful and horrifying at the same time, and to make them serve good futures, design as "innovation" just isn't a strong enough idea by itself. We need to talk more about design as "immunisation," actively preventing certain potential "innovations" that we do not want from happening.
And so…
As for one simple take away ... I don't have one simple take away, one magic idea. That's kind of the point. I will say that if and when the key problems facing our species were to be solved, then perhaps many of us in this room would be out of work (and perhaps in jail).
But it's not as though there is a shortage of topics for serious discussion. We need a deeper conversation about the difference between digital cosmopolitanism and cloud feudalism (and toward that, a queer history of computer science and Alan Turing's birthday as holiday!)
I would like new maps of the world, ones not based on settler colonialism, legacy genomes and bronze age myths, but instead on something more … scalable.
TED today is not that.
Problems are not "puzzles" to be solved. That metaphor assumes that all the necessary pieces are already on the table, they just need to be rearranged and reprogrammed. It's not true.
"Innovation" defined as moving the pieces around and adding more processing power is not some Big Idea that will disrupt a broken status quo: that precisely is the broken status quo.
One TED speaker said recently, "If you remove this boundary ... the only boundary left is our imagination". Wrong.
If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation.
Instead of dumbing-down the future, we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconceptualisation: the hard stuff that really changes how we think. More Copernicus, less Tony Robbins.
At a societal level, the bottom line is if we invest in things that make us feel good but which don't work, and don't invest in things that don't make us feel good but which may solve problems, then our fate is that it will just get harder to feel good about not solving problems.
In this case the placebo is worse than ineffective, it's harmful. It's diverts your interest, enthusiasm and outrage until it's absorbed into this black hole of affectation.
Keep calm and carry on "innovating" ... is that the real message of TED? To me that's not inspirational, it's cynical.
In the US the rightwing has certain media channels that allow it to bracket reality ... other constituencies have TED.
• This article first appeared on Benjamin Bratton's website and is republished with permission. It is the text of a talk given at TEDx San Diego
Casey Lartigue, Jr.
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박주하
Hi everyone!
This morning, out of my routine news monitoring on ads and marketing areas, I saw this article which we had an intense discussion over.
Just wanted to share this with you!!
http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/watch-scathing-anti-ted-ted-talk/290903/
Have a great day & week, hope to see many of u this weekend!
