PATHLESS TRAVELS

2023-04-082023-04-18

21st-century tech arena of social struggle

LAST DECEMBER 2022 (which seemed so long ago, in infotech terms), at first I had wanted my study group at UP Open University to focus on the potentials of an AI-based operating system (think of Linux on AI steroids) that ran on an alternative PC architecture. This AI-muscled PC would rely almost purely on GPUs + a standard CPU (think of a souped-up Raspberry Pi with external GPUs).

Such an approach would make it much easier for barrio kids to assemble a fairly cheap AI-powered rural network for empowering their province’s educational-cultural and info needs. If successfully deployed in many rural provinces, it could serve as a long-term innovator-disruptor not just in the “IT industry” sense but in the wider socio-economic and political sense.

But since my group was pressed for time, and what with the hype around Midjourney, Dall-E etc., I agreed with the more popular choice to focus on AI generative art and lit — which of course have their own immense (but I now feel, short-lived) innovator-disruptor potentials. I’m still satisfied though with how the research turned out.

But now I want to return to my original interest, advocacy, and prediction: that, in the longer-term, the biggest arena of struggle for cyber-control (in the IT field) will feature the “weaponry” of streamlined mini-PC servers on AI-architecture GPUs (even just Raspberry Pi-based for now).

It would run AI-enabled open-source operating systems and software, and be capable of hosting distributed-cloud services that can empower community-based networks. The network can even shield itself from external attack, to some extent.

So here are some links that should be of interest to 21st-century tech activists:

The key elements of this future 21st-century tech arena of social/class struggles are now here, or fast looming on the horizon. #

Follow @junverzola

2021-01-172021-01-30

Anniversary musings on two 16th century events

Covid-19 notwithstanding, natives of Las Islas Filipinas should not allow to pass unnoticed several momentous anniversaries that will mark this year 2021.

At least two events will be significant to revolutionaries and activists: the 150^th anniversary of the Paris Commune (1871), and the 50^th anniversary of the Diliman Commune (1971). But for now, let me muse about how Filipinos should commemorate the 500^th anniversary of the Ferdinand Magellan expedition’s arrival on Philippine soil (March 16, 1521) and Magellan’s death in the battle of Mactan (April 27, 1521).

2020-04-232020-05-02

‘No classes until December’ shows black-and-white thinking

Since the Covid-19 pandemic and a nearly nationwide extended lockdown hit the Philippines, I’ve been repeatedly noticing a deep malaise of black-and-white, dogmatically rigid thinking, not just among the country’s elite ruling class but also among its middle classes and working masses–including quite a few among the enlightened progressives. More about this black-and-white thinking later, but for now, let me just focus on the “no classes until December” proposal or variants thereof–as if keeping the youth away from schools would automatically reduce the risks of getting infected with the Covid-19 virus.