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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Jan-2011
17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability

Web Log - January, 2011

17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability

IBM's supercomputer wins practice round against Jeopardy! champions

Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability

Gunfights erupted in major Tunisia cities on Sunday, two days after president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country from deadly protests, after 23 years in power. It appears that the gun battles were between the army and security forces loyal to Ben Ali, according to Al-Jazeera. The gunfights seemed to die down later in the evening.

There's widespread looting in the capital city, Tunis, according to the Telegraph. Food and fuel are in short supply, and with world food prices at historic highs, chaos is expected to continue.

However, the greater fear is that the instability will spread around the region, especially to other Arab countries that have a history of corruption and repression.

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying, "The region in which we live is unstable. We see this at several points throughout the Middle East. I would say that there is a great island of instability in the geographic expanse in which we live. We hope that there will be quiet and security."

Man burns himself to death in Algeria (Guardian)

Man burns himself to death in Algeria (Guardian)

There were riots in Algeria, and a man burned himself to death in an apparent echo of a suicide that began the Tunisian protests, according to Guardian.

The NY Times quotes leftist Beirut journalist Alfadel Chalak as follows:

"What we are witnessing is the collapse of the Arab state. Wherever we look across the Arab world, we see wars. We see civil wars, wars among ethnicities, wars between sects and ethnicities, wars among sects, and wars among authorities, sects, ethnicities and the poor. Wars among an Arab world that doesn’t have an elite or leadership that draws strategies and tactics that lead to salvation. Therefore, it looks as if we are going to witness for years and maybe decades to come a great deal of devastation, destruction and killing."

This is particularly true in North Africa (the Islamic Maghreb), according to Fordham University professor John P. Entelis, writing for CNN. "From Morocco to Egypt, North Africa has recently been rocked by a series of violent disturbances that have left scores dead, government leaders shaken and outside observers puzzled by the scope, timing and intensity of upheavals in a region normally viewed as stable, moderate and pro-Western."

As I wrote yesterday, countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, in generational Awakening eras, will not have prolonged violence beyond political chaos. But countries like Egypt, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, in generational Crisis eras, may react with civil wars of their own.

As for Tunisia itself, the country's last generational crisis war was the Algerian war for independence that climaxed in 1962, so Tunisia is in a generational Unraveling era. Thus, it's almost impossible for the violence to spiral into a full-scale civil war.

However, one reader, posting in the Generational Dynamics Forum, disagreed with me, saying that Tunisia's last crisis war was WW II. You can read my response, which I won't repeat here, but this is the kind of problem that requires a lot more research.

If you are familiar with Tunisia's history, especially if you've lived in Tunisia, then I would be interested in hearing from you on this subject, either through a comment or in the forum.

IBM's supercomputer wins practice round against Jeopardy! champions

IBM's Watson supercomputer played a practice round of Jeopardy! against two former champions of the game and won handily, according to ZDNet. The actual contest will appear on television in February.

As I wrote last month, this event, if successful, marks a significant advance towards computer intelligence and the Singularity, the point in time, around 2030, when computers become more intelligent and creative and capable than human beings.

For details about history and algorithms, see "27-Dec-10 News -- IBM vs Jeopardy! brings robotic warfare and the Singularity closer."

The following video from Engadget is fun to watch. It shows the practice round, and you can see how Watson beat the two champions.

Additional links

Israel is moving ahead with a project to build 1,400 new settlement homes in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, a development that is infuriating the Palestinians. The "peace process" was a dead as a door nail anyway, but this makes it an even deader door nail. Independent

The current international currency system, with the dollar’s primacy as a reserve currency and in trade is "the product of the past," according to China's president Hu Jintao, making a state visit to Washington this week. Bloomberg

The crippling childhood disease polio can be prevented with a few drops of bitter vaccine on a child’s tongue, but some Taliban groups have said the vaccine is un-Islamic, and so Pakistan has the highest incidence of polio in the world. Daily Times (Pakistan)

The federal National Rural Transit Assistance Program, of all people, has a pretty comprehensive guide to "generational dynamics" of customer service. Exceptional Customer Service Across Generations (PDF)

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (17-Jan-2011) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Jan-2011 17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability

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IBM's supercomputer wins practice round against Jeopardy! champions

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 17-Jan-2011
17-Jan-11 News -- Gun battles erupt in Tunisia amid fears of regional instability