Slashdot Mirror
Issues for the Internet Society
DenOfEarth writes "The Economist has published a series of articles detailing some of the issues facing our current society and the technological leaps and bounds that are leading to the future internet society. They include: Protection of Privacy, Constant internet connectivity, Copyright 's Role in the Future, Technology-based Democratic Process, Government Authority, and Social and Political Ramifications. There's a good deal of information to waste one's time with here, but some good discussion is bound to come out of it."
How about environmental issues? I'm rethinking my future career in Computer Science since I heard that a single microchip takes 2 pounds of oil and 1 pound of toxic chemicals to create. Obviously most of that is going to the environment as waste byproducts, since chips don't weigh three pounds.
Also what about the issue of disposal of old computer equipment. All these toxic chemicals are dangerous, and old monitors contain large amounts of lead and some radioactive components.
We really need to deal with these environmental problems before we can continue along the path of technology in good conscience.
How to deal with the random internet outages caused by Slashdot?
I also have a problem with the Great Lumping Together of Internet Users. People use it for widely different purposes. And how it affects society? I think it mostly wastes a lot of our time which we could be using to better purposes. Don't get me wrong, I find a lot of information really fast on it, but did anyone ever think that having a copy of the Yellow Pages would "Change Society?"
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
From the article:
Maybe his father has the right idea. Dick hardly sees the old man these days because he always seems to have his video image and live-communicator access blocked. Blocking access is considered rude, even suspicious, but Dick wonders if he shouldn't do the same.
Find - or make - time to unplug. Don't be a Dick.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
How 'bout they just tell us what the Internet's not fucking up? ;-)
Check out *nix.org , a dynamic, informative, and fun portal for fans of BSD, Linux, OS X, & Solaris!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
A few objections to Constant interntet connectivity.
so she briefs herself on politics and votes on some of the half-dozen referendums held every day.
First off, if we ever get to the point where government is producing more than a half dozen referendums every day, I'm finding another country. Enough garbage gets out with elections "only" once a year as it is.
Also, Terrorism eliminated just because of security cameras? As though a security camera can stop someone intent on, say, blowing themselves up. I suppose, on the bright side, you would be able to identify him, after he had blown himself up.
And traffic, a thing of the past, thanks to the hand-held portable and 3d image viewer. I don't see working from home ever happening on the scale it's been touted. It is far more efficient to have your employees at the same place at the same time, rather than off at the opera, supposedly working "on the go". But back to the article, there are plenty of people who's business it is to drive for a living. There will always be traffic in a moderately large city.
I guess my problem with articles like this is that they make it sound like with just a few more GHZs and MBs, we'll somehow eliminate all the problems of modern society. A toast to foolhardy optimism!
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
In other news, poster reads the rest of the article, and is shocked, SHOCKED to find out that all this surveilance and fancy tech bothers some people. The traffic Dick! Think of the lack of traffic!
I suppose in this future, slashdot posters will end with sigs reading "Those willing to sacrifice freedom for Unencumbered access to public roads deserve neither."
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Sure it's been going to hell in a handbasket for a while now, with the US govt and their corporate lackeys out to kill freedom of expression and all.
But when enough people get sick of it, won't they just build something else?
Who's up for internet 2.0?
Machine9dotNet
We cannot hope, in our endeavors with such legal decisions, which are in themselves very similar to unsolvable philosophical problems, that we would ever achieve an answer that really pleased or was even intrinsically correct (morally and/or practically) to everyone. What matters more is this: knowing how to change things afterward.
Look at prohibition. It didn't work in this country. Granted, it took crime, death, and scandal to prove, but prove it did, and here we are. This may seem like a gloomy way to perceive the future, but to try perceiving the future is quite futile past a certain expunging of efforts, anyhow.
With tricky issues, the ugly-halves cannot be permanently concealed; somebody will get burned, no matter what the final vote decrees. What is so much more important (and infinately more effective) is that we pay attention to the situation that is Right Now, and deal with it, affecting change (which is highly necessary and extremely possible) as soon as need be.
To worry about not-yet-defined internet rights, taxes, government policies is an overrated endeavor. Why? Because it keeps us focused on the future, which is full of unreal imagery.
You counter with this: "let's make the right decisions now, because to affect change in the government takes so much time, lobbyist dollars, and a scattering of bi-annual elections". This is where my decree fits in precicely: we CAN'T make the right decisions now; we don't know what the right decision will be.
Let's use our vote for the purpose for which it was invented: to cast our selection of what we individually want. Do that first, don't vote for a group or with a group. Vote for what you want, and it will all be sorted out afterwards; just like Prohibition, just like 55 m.p.h. speed limits, just like government's involvement with business, just like segregation, just like woman's suffrage, just like anything that has mattered so far in our history. None of those issues were ever decided "correctly" when they were first made law. It took dilligent change (albeit human suffering, which is unavoidable) after the fact.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
"There's a good deal of information to waste one's time with here, but some good discussion is bound to come out of it."
/.
Hi, you must be new here. Welcome to
Sent from your iPad.
From the privacy article:
Engineers are now developing cameras that employ low-level radiation to "see" through clothing, walls or cars.
Wasn't there a Sony camcorder out a couple of years ago which could see through clothing in night vision mode with a special filter?
Oh my god! Robots with screw guns know how to drive SUVs? Now where will we hide? My cabin on the mountain would be easily accessible by SUV, and they can unscrew the access bolts to the secret lab. I guess it will have to be the caves. The dampness should impede their functioning, and the SUVs won't fit. And of course, there is nowhere to plug in/recharge the screw guns. Damn! Whose idea was it to teach the screw gun using robots how to drive anyway? Is there no self-preservation instinct in you people at all?
but did anyone ever think that having a copy of the Yellow Pages would "Change Society?"
No, but the internet is quite diffrent from the Yellow Pages...
Ok, general information aside, here is what I could do, if I wanted to, from my computer on the internet right now.
1)Order all my groceries and have them delivered to my door (if I use the right companies).
2)Read all the news I want to and look at all of opions from editiors, experts, slashdot users, etc. i want to. Most of it's free too.
3)Buy all the books, CD's, antiques, DVD's, video's, comics, etc. I want and have it delivered to my door.
4) With a microphone I can effectively call people anywhere in the world for no interntaional call charges. Or I can chat to them online in chat rooms, instant messaging and so on.
5) I can send my reports to work/university/wherever without having to pay postage.
How do these things change society? like this...
1)No more need for supermarkets or checkouts, o people running them... just a few big warehouses arount the area to deal with demand.
2)No more need for newspapers or magazines, or the newsagents who sell them.
3)No more need for most of the high street.
4)I pay less money to my phone operators and as I'm on a flat rate for my internet connection anyway I don't care how many people I call.
5) No more need for offices.
If everyone were to use the internet to it's full capability, and order everything they could exclusively through it, then society would change a lot. Our city's would have no need for malls or supermarkets, which seeing as we've used a place like that to shop for at least 2000 years, (think markets, then shops... and so on) it would be a huge change from the past.
Obviously shopping is an extreme example, but it shows well how having the ability to view everything you need (almost) in one central place (the screen on my desk) could have a huge effect on society.
Eventually, people would vote directly from the comfort of their own homes. The political apathy which has spread through western countries in recent decades would be reversed.
Why is it assumed that making it possible to vote online etc, is a cure for voter apathy? Sure, for a while we might see increased turnout by people who are considering venturing out to cast their vote, and the easy option swings it, BUT the reasons for voter apathy still exist & it will continue to increase, whilst people feel so disjoined by it all....
One of democracy's greatest virtues is its flexibility, but the changes about to be wrought by new communication technologies will stretch the adaptive abilities of western democracies to their limit.
But will it? How do these advances change the process of democracy? Will it make our governemnts more acountable, as suggested in the article? Though we like to complain in the west about corruption & spin, I like to think that the media do a good job of holding our politicians to account. Will it renew our ailing interest in politics? Maybe not - the nature of the web is that you have to go looking in the first place.
Interesting articles though...
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
I think it mostly wastes a lot of our time which we could be using to better purposes.
You bring up an interesting point here that is in itself worthy of discussion. While there are certainly good uses for the Internet for gathering information, it seems most of the time spent with it is actually entertainment oriented. Furthermore, this entertainment is inherently anti-social. While multiplayer gaming networks and chat rooms abound, these relationships are often very shallow. They can never replace relationships built with direct interaction with other people. On of the most profound impacts on society is the generation of a perceived unity in the world even as it isolates the individual from strong, close relationships.
Another impact is taking an already entertainment driven society and expanding the problem. When you look at the new developments in the Internet, nearly all of them are driven by the demand for improved entertainment. What kind of impact is this having on our society? One could argue, as in the case with computers, that the improvements made in computer hardware to support the gaming industry also enabled work to be more efficiently performed due to GUI interfaces and more powerful applications. However, as the Internet continues to build, are we really seeing major productivity boosts as a result? When I consider the time I spend reading Slashdot, I sometimes wonder if the opposite may be true. We (and I mean we) spend so much time entertaining ourselves that we lose sight of real issues and problems that need to be addressed (poverty, pollution, abuse, etc.). The Internet may actually prove to be more of a curse than a blessing when all is said and done if we simply entertain ourselves while Rome burns to the ground.
On the other hand, one could argue that the Internet is merely a tool, and the problems mentioned above are purely a result of our society. Does anyone else have thoughts on this?
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Yeah. As opposed to using the vast increases in productivity to allow our corporate masters to extract more productivity from us in the same (or more) amount of time.
Just like all the other technological advances have.
--blob
All sweeping generalizations suck.
In a large sense, government to date has been about information control. They've able to control the information that the public receives. It was somewhat diluted by the revolutionary right to the freedom of the press. But even that was limited because it meant that "freedom of the press" was granted to everyone who owned a printing press, and no one else.
Now you have the rise of a medium that grants equal rights to anyone who can formulate a written argument. Thus the recent journalistic navel-gazing over the effect of bloggers and their role in the unmasking of Trent Lott.
Well, I see that as a good thing. Most of those who enjoy the "freedom of the press" have that right because they work for for-profit corporations. Which means that in reality their freedom of the press is limited by the need for profit. Therefore the right to "freedom of the press" has never been truly free until now.
The Internet has de-legitimized the claim of the traditional press to authoritative speech. That scares media outlets and governments to death, because they know that the time when they could control the public message is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
This is exactly why the Framers of the Constitution placed so much emphasis on the freedom of thought and expression. Without it, you have a citizenry that is enslaved because they are not allowed to think as free beings. After all, how can you act as a free citizen if you cannot think as a free citizen?
Therefore, if we as citizens can resist government/corporative efforts to limit our natural rights, we will see true freedom in our lifetimes. Free thought is ours by birth. Free culture is ours by birth. So resist the drive by government and corporations to enslave your thoughts and culture under the guise of "property." Teach the corporations and governments of the world that if the choice comes down to freedom of thought or them, they go.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
As an example, I know many people who seem to be able to "hit it off" with other people quite easily due to the fact that they watch the same television shows on a regular basis. Eliminate the common entertainment experience(which, I assume, they enjoy), and they might not be able to interact in as quick a fashion. Similarly, I can assume that there are a large bunch of like-minded indivduals who I can discuss things like this with over long distances. Also, in the days before all of this internet enabled entertainment were we surrounded by people to a larger degree, or for a longer period of time? I'm not totally sure about that one.
The second thing I'd like to bring up is the idea that everyone is too busy having fun to realize that things around them are bad. While I would guess that for a large chunk of the technologically enabled population this would be true, there are still going to be people trying to keep the flames down, not because that's what they love to do with their time, but because a stable society means a profitable society which means that these people will get paid to be the fire legion, in whatever form that may take.
Just my two cents.
For further reading on the subject of our society becoming ever more entertainment-centric, I commend to you Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. He argues logically from explicitly stated assumptions (something I always appreciate) and surprised me in several instances by bringing to my attention disturbing things to which, living in the culture I do, I had been desensitized.