Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Standardized Tests & the Hell of Empiricism

"...decisions made by individuals who lack perspective, and aren't really accountable..."
Source
Kudos to his brass balls for doing this; he deserves a medal. Instead, he'll be ostracized and ridiculed.

This is great! It proves that "successful people" are testing our kids at levels they can't pass NOW (after years of "success"), which probably proves that they are a) not as smart as they think they are, and therefore have no business "managing" our children's education AND b) our children are being crammed into tighter & tighter molds to produce perfect "drones" for the one-world order based on applied technology, data, & numbers which they plan to cover the planet. Welcome to Matrix-World! And others justify this. This Yahoo overlooks several things - a) Walmart will probably employ just as many people as the mom & pop hardware stores it annihilates b) it may be good for the immediate customers, but Walmart employees won't even be able to afford shopping at Walmart, or maybe they'll have to, because they can't anywhere else (say, maybe they could bunk 'em in the back, as well, and you could have a "mom & pop" atmosphere, except without the familial spirit, just Walmart calisthenics every morning!) c) eventually, when we all work for the "Corp-Man", the markets won't "clear" anymore & we will actually have cheaper products, it's just our wages will decrease even more (and isn't this exactly what is happening in late-stage capitalism?).

Demographic Dystopia (from John Robb)
Back in 1996, I worked on the implications of matching just-in-time advertising with highly accurate personal data with the senior leadership of Firefly. My conclusion was that once that connection could be made, we create the opportunity for a demographic dystopia. In short, because you have great data (money, spending habits, public/network influence, etc.) you will get lots of free stuff. For example, you walk into a movie theater, ping the kiosk with you phone, and it says, "John Robb, it's so great to have you here. Please let us offer you a free ticket." The next guy in line pings it with his phone, "$17.95 please."In short, a demographic dystopia, where having more gets you more, built into the fabric of our lives. Dave has a different take on this. He calls it, "The mother of all business models."Source

We are creating, with the emphasis on Number, and solely Number alone, a "hell of our own making" (in Joel Dietz's words).


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