Stephen Fry Urges Young To Flee 'Dystopian' Social Networks

An anonymous reader writes: English writer, presenter and activist Stephen Fry has urged his fans to abandon social networks, comparing such platforms to 'dystopian' forms of government seen in 1970s sci-fi films such as Logan's Run and Soylent Green. In a 2,600-word essay, the comedian, who had over four million Twitter followers prior to deleting his account in February, also compared the 'surveilled conformity' of social media to the unreal state of society depicted in The Matrix. "Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies -- once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers," he writes. "Well, if you're young and have an ounce of pride, doesn't that list say it all?"

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Additional reading

[sinij]

Many prominent security researchers already spoke out against it. Including Bruce Schneier on his blog and in his recent 'Data and Goliath' book. No affiliation.

Smart Phones and Schools

[irrational_design]

This reminds me of a related issue. Apparently every teenager, except for my daughter, has a smart phone. This is assumed to such an extent that the high school teachers regularly incorporate their use into their lessons. At first they don't believe my daughter when they ask her why she isn't participating and she informs them that she doesn't have a phone (a few have actually sent her to the office for lying to them about not having a phone). Once she convinces them that she really doesn't have a phone they regularly berate her for messing up their lesson plans. I've complained to the school authorities, who assure me that a phone is not required, but to no avail. It is astonishing to me that the teachers can't comprehend that a teenager might not have a smart phone.

Re:Smart Phones and Schools

[Anonymous Coward]

The school here made Facebook mandatory and they add more homework after what I considered bedtime. They also introduced the (mandatory) ability to upload the homework to the teacher. All this totally screwed my ability to filter/block to ensure a good night's sleep. On top of that, they made bringing a laptop to school mandatory as well as a net connection at home. Smartphones aren't used for teaching, but not owning one is justified reason for bullying according to some teachers.

Back when I went to school, we used this thing called books and notebooks were made out of paper. You gave the assignments to the teacher at the start of the lecture and at the end, the teacher wrote the homework on the blackboard. After the teacher left, the homework would not be changed. There were no requirements to bring anything other than pencils and erasers. It was a wonderful setup as you could plan what you would do in the time where you were not at school and it would not suddenly be changed because some teacher decided to give homework for Monday at 7 PM on a Sunday. Using those crude learning tools, I learned enough math and physics and stuff to become an engineer. You know, I actually had to learn math and calculus using pen and paper, not some app where I would be lost without it.

And don't get me started with Common Core. Common Core math seems to be designed to avoid understanding the underlying math.

Re:But

[lgw]

Today's young are already crippled by more debt than they can ever pay off in their life times

The US national debt is over $160,000 per taxpayer. Great gift to our kids to go with their college loans. Unfunded liabilities are over $850,000 per taxpayer, so just over a million total. I'm sure today's youth will get right on paying that while I'm in retirement. (And yet, suggest on /. that maybe we could spend a bit less and someone will reply asking "why don't you move to Somalia", as if the extremes were our only choices.)

Another fun stat: the total value of all assets in America is slightly less than the total of various government debts and unfunded liabilities. This will inevitably end in "but though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy," which is actually good news for those under crippling personal debt, as enough inflation fixes that problem.