Terrorists and Abusers: Ounces of Prevention Wanted

Terrorists and abusers: two groups of (mostly male) people are very much in the news this week.

Press and politicians are using words such as 'destroy' and 'punish' as the proposed remedies.

But are these words not the equivalent of saying: 'let us terrorize the terrorists' and 'let us abuse the abusers'?

By the time the terrorist or abuser acts, their mental state is well-formed. It's very late, often too late to adjust the mental processes of such people.

And even if you could 'get even' or trade an 'eye for eye' with such people, you would be doing little to stop their followers.

What really needs acting on are the circumstances and conditions that allow and enable these types of thoughts to grow and develop in young people without consideration of the consequences of their actions to society.

In turn these thoughts beg the question: What are the steps that people should take to identify and prevent abusive or potentially terrorizing behavior?

Living and working in San Francisco - a place where the Internet touches the ground - I can't help but wonder what are the technologies and the networks to be developed that will be part of the eventual solutions to these grievous issues. And who will be the people that will lead this engagement with creating a more equitable world?

Are you ready yet?

On Facebook: Incomplete Nature - a book by Terrence Deacon

Incomplete Nature - a book by Terrence Deacon that came out this week is a work that I have been studying for several months – having been the recipient of some of Deacon's early drafts.

Although I prepared a number of comments on the text for Deacon, the book is so dense that I cannot say that I fully understand it as of yet.

What I do recognize is that Incomplete Nature is an important book and perhaps one of the most important books to be written on what it is to be conscious and what it means to think about things. It is far too early, however, for me to even begin to think of how I would structure a review of the book.

Part of the process of learning to deal with such a complex work is to approach the work from a number of different points of view. One approach I am taking is perhaps a bit wacky and that is to build and manage the Facebook page for the book.

Which brings me to this: I need help!

In order to register a username on Facebook and thus be able to obtain the elegant facebook.com/incompletenature URL one needs to have twenty five people "Like" the page. As of tonight there are just three Likes.

So please, please - if you are on Facebook - click on the link below and when you get to the Facebook page then click on the Like button. Thank you!

You do not need to read the book. Just wait a while and I will tell you all about it...

Link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Incomplete-Nature-How-Mind-Emerged-from-Matter/187470574672645

A Brief Introduction to the Techie Bits of the Internet

image courtesy of Google

One of my favorite introductions the techie bits of the Internet:

What’s a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop?

For things you’ve always wanted to know about the web but were afraid to ask, read on.

Link: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/en-US/home