App faith: how religions are embracing technology

From apps that remind you to confess or help Muslims find halal food, to cashless church donations, religious practice is being inextricably linked to tech (1) The research paper “Survey, Analysis and Issues of Islamic Android Apps” presents an extensive survey of about 300 Islamic apps that are available on Google Play Store.(2) There are even dating apps for modern Muslims that solve some romance problems, but not all. (3) However, Apps to help Muslims practice their faith can create new conundrums (Is My Smartphone Now a Quran?) (4). A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people’s personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military. (5)

In “Ethical Aspects of The Internet of Things from Islamic Perspective”, (6) the authors point out examples that clearly show that IoT applications have inflated serious ethical problems:

“Smart meters, smart baby monitors, Smart TV models…. Whether it is a smart thermostat, smart refrigerator or any other smart house hold device, there are many reports that these internet connected devices escalated unwanted invasions.” (6)

China’s hi-tech war on its Muslim minority

Smartphones and the internet gave the Uighurs a sense of their own identity – but now the Chinese state is using technology to strip them of it.  Article by Darren Byler.

Snippet: Alim learned that he had been placed on a blacklist maintained by the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (Ijop), a regional data system that uses AI to monitor the countless checkpoints in and around Xinjiang’s cities. Any attempt to enter public institutions such as hospitals, banks, parks or shopping centres, or to cross beyond the boundaries of his local police precinct, would trigger the Ijop to alert police. The system had profiled him and predicted that he was a potential terrorist. Alim’s biometrics and his digital history were being used to lock him in place. “I’m so angry and afraid at the same time,” he told me. He was haunted by his data. 60% of the world’s Muslim-majority nations are part of China’s premier international development project, the Belt and Road Initiative, so there is “unlimited market potential” for the type of population-control technology they are developing in Xinjiang. All Uighurs were required to install nanny apps , which monitored everything they said, read and wrote, and everyone they connected with, on their smartphones.

In thousands of cases, years of WeChat history was used as evidence of the need for Uighur suspects to be “transformed”. (7)

Different viewpoints on the Islamification of technology

Bart Barendregt of Leiden University, who has keenly studied South-East Asia’s ever expanding digital usage: “Muslim youngsters are adopting technology to distance themselves from older, traditional practices while also challenging Western models.” (8) In contrast, the author of the book “Problems of The Mobile Phone”, Muhammad Tufail Ahmed Misbah, belongs to the Barelvi school, which follows the 8th century Islamic jurist Imam Abu Hanifa. Reviewer Tufail Ahmad quotes the author:

“The biggest religious benefit of mobile phones is that today, due to mobile phones, religious work is being carried out on a large scale,” and adds: “The disadvantages of mobile phones are greater than its advantages.” In the author’s opinion, because of mobile phones, happiness has disappeared, women’s dignity has vanished, etiquette and civility have been buried; mosques are no longer venerated, the new generation becomes adults before its time. Advising Muslim women to recite Qur’anic verses during pregnancy, the author notes: “A dangerous aspect of the mobile phone is that its very bad impact registers on a pregnant woman and the health and morality of the child growing in her belly.”

Regarding taking photos with phones, Misbahi observed that this is “totally illegitimate and haram [forbidden by Islam]… The [shari’a] order for making a statue and taking a photo of a living being is the same [haram].”

On the issue of taking photographs of animate objects/entities, there are differences of opinion amongst Islamic scholars regarding the appropriateness of such an act.

The author also prohibited Muslims from stealing electricity from mosques, and described a likely future situation in which the azan (call to prayer) is given by phone, not by a person, and concluded that such a step would not be legitimate according to shari’a. (9)

“Everything can be used in good work, and it can be used for evil purposes. The fault is not about things or technology. Rather, the user is basically responsible“ (10)

Concerns:

“Everything, when lost, can be regained, except time.”

How about we stop robbing ourselves?

//muslimvillage.com/2018/09/15/130693/how-about-we-stop-robbing-ourselves/

If a year, a day, an hour, a minute or even a second goes by, there is absolutely no way one can regain it. That is why time is the most precious thing that a person can ever possess in this life.

Unfortunately, in this digital age people have absolutely no value for time . We see them wasting their free time as if it has no worth at all. (11)

The above is indeed a very powerful set of statements of the critical role of spending one’s time effectively, meaningfully and productively. There is a dedicated short chapter (Chapter 103) in The Qur’an entitled “Time” which is loosely translated as follows:

“By the token of Time! Verily humankind is in a state of loss. Except such as have Faith, and do righteous deeds, and (join together) in the mutual teaching of Truth, and of Patience and Constancy.”

Smart phones, social media, and Muslim kids:

Children have developed a strong obsession with modern technological gadgets.  They are literally being psyched to use every type of gadget available – computer, tablet, smartphone, – the list is endless- and we parents seem to have lost control over them. The flip side to this situation is that some of us actually encourage our children to use these gadgets. We give these devices to them as their birthday gifts or as inducements to pass their exams.(12)

Disconnect: How Is Your Phone Changing You? | The Problem With Our Phones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3daYbsIF-Hw

Is A.I. the Antichrist? and other questions religions like Islam pose about emerging technology.

From an article by Aneesa Bodiat: ‘…In Islamic belief, the Antichrist — known to Muslims as Dajjaal — will appear before the world ends. The prophecy says he will bring tyranny and misguidance to the world, use trickery to proclaim himself a prophet, and ultimately be defeated by the Prophet Eesa — the Muslim name for Christ. It is believed that some of Dajjaal’s identifying characteristics were passed down from the Prophet Muhammad so we can recognize him when he comes. One translation of these descriptions reads: “He will be a young man” who is “blind or defective” in his right eye. This eye will be “neither prominent nor sunken, and will look like a floating grape.” He will also be “sterile, with no children born to him,” and will deceive people, using special abilities, to bring rain. Islamic scholars in eschatology, the branch of theology relating to the end of the world, use examples of current technology to link A.I. to Dajjaal. One example is Sheikh Imran Hosein, who has used scripture to theorize that Dajjaal will have a human form but will lack a soul and a self. He could be a robot — human-looking but soulless. The “eye like a floating grape” could be a computer or camera lens. Cloud seeding by A.I. could be the means through which he brings rain. The author asks:  “As a society, are we walking a dangerous line toward worshipping A.I.?” (13)

Pope Francis has asked believers around the world to pray that robots and artificial intelligence “always serve mankind.” Although the message sounds similar to warnings issued by tech notables like Elon Musk (the Tesla CEO famously compared work on artificial intelligence to “summoning the demon”), the Pope’s focus is more prosaic. He doesn’t seem to be worrying about the sort of exotic doomsday scenario where a superintelligent AI turns the world into paperclips, but more about how the tech could exacerbate existing inequalities here and now. (14)

“When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously.”

Pope Francis
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/francis/396686/

“Technology makes life more convenient and, like religion, seems to hold the answers for how to deal with old age and death. Again paradoxically it is our striving for immortality that will expand the suffering for others. Our attempts at perfection, may eventually doom all species on earth.”

Tianzhu Buddhist Network
https://tianzhubuddhistnetwork.org/buddhism-and-technology-historical-background-and-contemporary-challenges/

This post was compiled by Wilma Miles on behalf of EMFSA (www.emfsa.co.za.). We thank B.Omar for his guidance.

References

2. Anum Hameed, Hafiza Anisa Ahmed & Narmeen Zakaria Bawany: Survey, Analysis andIssues of Islamic Android Apps https://jurnal.ar-raniry.ac.id/index.php/elkawnie/article/view/4541/pdf

3. Dating apps for modern Muslims solve some romance problems, but not all https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2020/01/29/online-dating-and-devout-modern-muslims-looking-for-love.h

4. My Smartphone Now a Quran? https://slate.com/technology/2017/08/is-my-smartphone-now-a-quran.html

5. How Muslim Pro App Sold Users Location Data To The U.S. Military https://hydroponify.co.uk/2020/11/16/how-muslim-pro-app-sold-users-location-data-to-the-u-s-military/

6. Ethical Aspects of Internet of Things from Islamic Perspective Wazir Zada Khan, Mohammed Zahid, Mohammed Y Aalsalem, Hussein Mohammed Zangoti, Quratulain Arshad https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.11386v1  Submitted on 29 Jun 2018

7. China’s high war on its Muslim minority https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china-hi-tech-war-on-muslim-minority-xinjiang-uighurs-surveillance-face-recognition

8. The Impact of Technology on Islam https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/islam/articles/the-impact-of-technology-on-islam.aspx

9. Review of Indian Islam cleric’s book on “Essential Problems of the Mobile Phone” https://www.memri.org/reports/review-indian-islamic-clerics-book-essential-problems-mobile-phone-criticizing-muslim-girls

10. Islam T.Md. (2019). The Impact of Social Media on Muslim Society: From Islamic Perspective. International Journal of Social and Humanities Sciences (IJSHS), 3(3), 95- 114 https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/891734

11. How about we stop robbing ourselves? https://muslimvillage.com/2018/09/15/130693/how-about-we-stop-robbing-ourselves/

12. Smart phones, social media, and Muslim kids https://jamiat.org.za/smart-phones-social-media-and-muslim-kids/ 

13. Is A.I. the Antichrist? and other questions religions like Islam pose about emerging technology https://onezero.medium.com/is-a-i-the-antichrist-a2fd6d853610

 14. Pope Francis urges followers to pray that AI and robots ‘always serve mankind’ https://tinyurl.com/y2jbrt6q

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Available online at www.sacities.net

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Katie Singer writes about technology and nature. “An Electronic Silent Spring” is her most recent book. In 2018, she spoke about the Internet’s footprint at the United Nations. She dreams that every smartphone user knows the supply chain of one substance (of 1000+) in every smartphone.

Her websites include www.DearGreta.com, www.ourweb.tech and www.electronicsilentspring.com.

13 OCTOBER 2020, KATIE SINGER

“Behind Our Screens: An Invitation to Learn a Smartphone’s True Costs” (Letter #3 to Greta) has just been posted at Wall St. International Magazine: https://wsimag.com/science-and-technology/63710-behind-our-screens

Snippet:

Dear Greta,

In 2018, when I met Soumya Dutta, co-founder of India Climate Justice, he spelled out my privileges as a U.S. American. (I think you know what he shared, but I did not.) “In the twentieth century,” Mr. Dutta explained, “the human population increased four-fold, from 1.6 to 6.1 billion people. During the same time, global energy consumption increased between twelve and sixteen-fold¹. Whenever one unit of energy is produced and consumed, water, land and other bio-resources are also consumed; and hazardous waste is generated. In other words, because of cars, electricity, air conditioning and televisions, the average person now uses over four times the amount of natural resources that our grandparents consumed. Meanwhile, in 2020, six billion more of us are alive.”

I added two items to Soumya Dutta’s list: because of cars, electricity, air conditioning, the Internet and smartphones, the average person now uses over four times the amount of natural resources that our grandparents consumed.

“Actually,” Soumya Dutta continued, “referring here to ‘average’ people is not correct. According to the World Bank, the average Indian consumes about 630 kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per year. The average Bangladeshi consumes less than 300 kgoe. The average U.S. American annually consumes over 6000 kgoe. “To provide every global citizen with a decent opportunity for a healthy life (starting with clean water and toilets), poor countries with the lowest emissions might need to increase their per capita energy consumption. To reduce human-imposed burdens on natural ecosystems sufficiently, people who consume excessively will need to reduce their energy and water consumption by at least 70%² and eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions completely.” ³

Soumya Dutta got me wondering how I could reduce my consumption by 70% and eliminate my greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more at: https://wsimag.com/science-and-technology/63710-behind-our-screens

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SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

A group of over 50 of the largest European tech and industrial firms have criticized EU members for lagging behind other countries in the rollout of 5G networks, calling for urgent measures before it is too late to close the gap.

The latest analysis by the European Round Table for Industry (ERT), released recently, shows that the 27-nation bloc’s progress on the development of the next-generation networks is too slow, compared to other parts of the world, especially South Korea, Switzerland and China.

“Concern is growing that Europe is far behind other world regions, in spite of being home to two globally leading mobile infrastructure companies,” the report read.

The ERT outlined setbacks in both commercialization and infrastructure deployment. According to its data, more than half of the EU member states have not yet launched 5G commercial services, while the EU countries as a whole have fewer than ten 5G base stations per million citizens. The report added there were “equally poor” rates of upgrading 4G infrastructure to 5G.

To put this in perspective, South Korea had around 1,500 5G towers per million last year. China previously announced plans to install an additional 600,000 5G base stations by the end of the year.

Read more at https://dailytimes.com.pk/669095/europe-far-behind-on-5g-deployment-warn-experts/

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We tweet, we like, and we share— but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media? As digital platforms increasingly become a lifeline to stay connected, Silicon Valley insiders reveal how social media is reprogramming civilization by exposing what’s hiding on the other side of your screen. https://Netflix.com/thesocialdilemma

ABOUT THE SOCIAL DILEMMA

The world has long recognized the positive applications of social media, from its role in empowering protesters to speak out against oppression during the Arab Spring uprisings almost a decade ago, to serving an instrumental role in fighting for equity and justice today. And in 2020, during an astonishing global pandemic, social media has become our lifeline to stay in touch with loved ones, as well as proving to be an asset for mobilizing civil rights protests. However, the system that connects us also invisibly controls us. The collective lack of understanding about how these platforms actually operate has led to hidden and often harmful consequences to society—consequences that are becoming more and more evident over time, and consequences that, the subjects in The Social Dilemma suggest, are an existential threat to humanity. The Social Dilemma is a powerful exploration of the disproportionate impact that a relatively small number of engineers in Silicon Valley have over the way we think, act, and live our lives. The film deftly tackles an underlying cause of our viral conspiracy theories, teenage mental health issues, rampant misinformation and political polarization, and makes these issues visceral, understandable, and urgent. Through a unique combination of documentary investigation and entertaining narrative drama, award-winning filmmakers Jeff Orlowski (Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral) and Larissa Rhodes (Chasing Coral) have once again exposed the invisible in a manner that is both enlightening and harrowing as they disrupt the disrupters by unveiling the hidden machinations behind everyone’s favorite social media and search platforms.

The film features compelling interviews with high-profile tech whistleblowers and innovation leaders including Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology; the co-inventor of the Facebook “Like” button, Justin Rosenstein; Tim Kendall, former President of Pinterest and former Director of Monetization at Facebook; Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction; Rashida Richardson, Director of Policy at the AI Now Institute, and many others. Demonstrating how social media affects consumers on a personal level, these fascinating insider insights are seamlessly woven into a captivating narrative, including Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men), that illuminates the very real consequences these seemingly innocent technologies can have on our everyday lives.

The post The Social Dilemma | Official Trailer | Netflix appeared first on EMFSA.

The post Australia Fires And Technology’s Climate Vampire: Why The Environmental Impact Of 5G Expansion Could Be Massive appeared first on EMFSA.

Crawford, Kate, Roel Dobbe, Theodora Dryer, Genevieve Fried, Ben Green, Elizabeth Kaziunas, Amba Kak, Varoon Mathur, Erin McElroy, Andrea Nill Sánchez, Deborah Raji, Joy Lisi Rankin, Rashida Richardson, Jason Schultz, Sarah Myers West, and Meredith Whittaker. AI Now 2019 Report . New York: AI Now Institute, 2019, https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2019_Report.html .

Extract:

2.4 AI and the Climate Crisis
On September 20, workers from 12 tech companies joined the global climate strike.369 They highlighted tech’s role in climate change and demanded “zero carbon emissions by 2030, zero contracts with fossil fuel companies, zero funding of climate denial lobbying or other efforts, and zero harm to climate refugees and frontline communities.”370

This might have surprised some people, as tech’s contribution to the climate crisis is rarely acknowledged. Indeed, industry marketing often highlights green policies, sustainability initiatives, and futures in which AI and other advanced technologies provide solutions to climate problems.

But the tech sector is a significant contributor to climate change and environmental harms.371

AI Makes Tech Dirtier
The tech industry faces criticism for the significant energy used to power its computing infrastructure. As a whole, the industry’s energy dependence is on an exponential trajectory, with best estimates showing that its 2020 global footprint amounts to 3.0–3.6 percent of global greenhouse emissions, more than double what the sector produced in 2007.372

This is comparable to that of the aviation industry,373 and larger than that of Japan, which is the fifth
biggest polluter in the world.374 In the worst-case scenario, this footprint could increase to 14 percent of global emissions by 2040.

In response, the major tech companies have made data centers more efficient, and have worked to ensure they’re powered at least in part by renewable energy—changes they’re not shy about, announcing them with marketing blasts and much public fanfare.375 These changes are a step in the right direction, but don’t come close to tackling the problem. Most large tech companies continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, and when they do commit to efficiency goals, these are most often not open to public scrutiny and validation.376,377

The AI industry is a significant source of further growth in greenhouse emissions. With the emergence of 5G networks aiming to realize the “internet of things,” the increased acceleration of data collection and traffic is already underway.378 In addition to 5G antennas consuming far more energy than their 4G predecessors,379 the introduction of 5G is poised to fuel a proliferation of carbon-intensive AI technologies, including autonomous driving 380 and telerobotic surgery.381

A core contributor to the AI field’s growing carbon footprint is a dominant belief that “bigger is better.” In other words, AI models that leverage massive computational resources to consume larger training datasets are assumed to be inherently “better” and more accurate.382 While this narrative is inherently flawed,383 its assumptions drive the use of increased computation in the development of AI models across the industry.
Last year, researchers Dario Amodei and Danny Hernandez at OpenAI reported that “[s]ince 2012, the amount of [computation] used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.4 month doubling time (by comparison, Moore’s Law had an 18 month doubling period).”384 Their observations show developers “repeatedly finding ways to use more chips in parallel, and . . . willing to pay the economic cost of doing so”.

As AI relies on more computers, its carbon footprint increases, with significant consequences. A recent study from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst estimated the carbon footprint of training a large natural-language processing model. Emma Strubell and her coauthors reported that training just one AI model produced 300,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions.385 That’s roughly the equivalent of 125 round-trip flights from New York to Beijing.

AI and the Fossil Fuel Industry
Adding to their already sizeable climate impact, big AI companies are aggressively marketing their (carbon intensive) AI services to oil and gas companies, offering to help optimize and accelerate oil production and resource extraction. Amazon is luring potential customers in the oil and gas industry 386 with programs like “Predicting the Next Oil Field in Seconds with Machine Learning.”387 Microsoft held an event called “Empowering Oil & Gas with AI,”388 and Google Cloud has its own energy vertical dedicated to working with fossil fuel companies.389 And C3 IoT, an AI company originally created to facilitate the transition to a society fueled by renewable energy, now helps large oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Baker Hughes, and Engie, to expedite their extraction of fossil fuel.390 A recent article in Logic points out that oil and gas account for 30 percent of the total addressable market, making “the success of Big Oil, and the production of fossil fuels . . . key to winning the cloud race.”391 Recently, the Guardian examined the role of Big Tech in sustaining the market for fossil fuel, illuminating the massive amounts of money tech companies invest in organizations that actively campaign against climate legislation, and promote climate change denial.

Opacity and Obfuscation
When researchers and policymakers attempt to account for tech’s climate footprint, it is immediately clear how little information is available. They are left to rely on voluntary company disclosures, without access to the information they would need to make a thorough accounting of tech’s true energy use.

There is very little public data available, and few incentives for tech companies to release it. Without the information necessary to reach robust conclusions, researchers Lotfi Belkhir andAhmed Elmeligi had to estimate 2018 data-center energy consumption using data from 2008.393 It was all they had to work with, even though, over the past ten years, both the scale of computation and the technologies powering it have changed radically.The authors of Greenpeace’s report make similar observations, stating that while efficiency metrics have been eagerly adopted by the industry, “very few companies report under newer metrics . . . that could shed any light on the basic question: how much dirty energy is being used, and which companies are choosing clean energy to power the cloud?”394 More frustratingly, the unwillingness of cloud providers to provide customers with insight into the energy use of procured services forms a critical barrier to meaningful carbon accounting across all sectors and organizations that rely on digital technology.

For the full report please see the pdf below:

AI_Now_2019_Report

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Video available from this link: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/11/expert-says-there-is-no-evidence-to-support-argument-that-5g-network-causes-harm.html

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We find our speakers through a combination of literature reviews and calls with experts and community leaders. This year, we wanted to share the fruits of that research. Sources written by or featuring our speakers are listed first and are followed by other sources in alphabetical order.

General Historical Background:

In Our Times, “The Poor Laws,” BBC Radio, Dec. 20, 2018.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001m73

Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (2015).

https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/147/Dark-MattersOn-the-Surveillance-of-Blackness

Matthew Desmond, “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.” The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 14, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html

For more please see the pdf below:

CoS4 Reading List

Snippet:

Automation is coming for truckers. But first, they’re being watched:

https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/11/20/16670266/trucking-eld-surveillance

The post The Color of Surveillance: Monitoring of Poor and Working People Reading List appeared first on EMFSA.