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New Book Argues Silicon Valley Will Lead Us to Our Doom (sandiegouniontribune.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Zorro quotes the San Diego Union-Tribune:
To many Americans, large technology firms embody much of what's good about the modern world. Franklin Foer has a different perspective. In his new book, "World Without Mind," the veteran journalist lays out a more ominous view of where Big Tech would like to take us -- in many ways, already has taken us... These firms have a program: to make the world less private, less individual, less creative, less human... Big Tech has imposed its will on the resident population with neither our input nor our permission.
The reviewer summarizes the book's argument as "Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments."
Interestingly, Foer was fired from The New Republic in 2014 by its new publisher -- Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes -- and Foer's new book includes strong criticism of the way companies are assembling detailed profiles on their users. "They have built their empires by pulverizing privacy; they will further ensconce themselves by pushing boundaries, by taking even more invasive steps that build toward an even more complete portrait of us."
The reviewer summarizes the book's argument as "Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments."
Interestingly, Foer was fired from The New Republic in 2014 by its new publisher -- Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes -- and Foer's new book includes strong criticism of the way companies are assembling detailed profiles on their users. "They have built their empires by pulverizing privacy; they will further ensconce themselves by pushing boundaries, by taking even more invasive steps that build toward an even more complete portrait of us."
I myself have no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or otherwise social media presence. You hand over power over you because you believe you get something back, but that something is often just an illusion.
If you aren't paying for the product you are the product.
Franklin Foer wrote an article "How Silicon Valley is erasing your individuality", which seems to be an abridged version of the book.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
Silicon Valley, he argues, may say it wants to improve the world. But its true endgame is the advancement of an ideological agenda.
That's an endgame? For "Our Doom" I expect something juicier.
What's to be done about it? Nothing, really... it's better than television as a narcotic to keep the masses sedated, it allows the mega-corporations to target market like never before, and the governments are happy with their automated, mostly voluntary, data collection behemoth.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The only company that lead us to Doom is id Software and it isn't based in Silicon Valley.
Don't listen to the doomsayers, unless they are from id Software of course.
Proximo: In the end, we're all dead men.
I'm sure somewhere among them there's a group dedicated to learning Latin. Why not join it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments."
Now that you know it's addictive, you can simply not use what they are offering. Of course if you are already hooked then you should leave them behind. If that means quitting social media completely, you quit that shit. If that means not using Android or iOS then get a smartphone that lets you choose a libre mobile OS or *gasp* don't use a smartphone. Hell, if that means going off the power grid you go invest in some solar panels and batteries, dammit! ;)
If you don't like your situation, you change it, you don't sit around and cry about it.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Every dollar we spend on technology is EXPRESS permission. It is not only "permission" it is active encouragement.
Also, it always makes me laugh when people comment about articles like this online with "I don't use x, y, or z technology" but here you are on a website commenting about how little technology you use.
That term is new on me, but maybe I'm not keeping up with things like that. Whenever some refers to a subject as Big XXXX (Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc.) you should be very skeptical of everything they say.
It's no small irony that the first link in the summary brings you to Amazon's page for the book. Although I suppose we should expect that in a slashvertisement for a book.
Who will lead us to Duke Nukem Forever?
Just spotted it, DNF also stands for Did Not Finish.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But I gotta say, he's not wrong.
Their program isn't to make the world less private per se; it's to make money. The means by which they make money happens to be making the world less private. He fails to deal with the fact that this forfeit of privacy is voluntary and that those who forfeit some amount of privacy also get something in return. It's a transaction. I give up some privacy, but I get a platform to connect with old friends, dialogue about current events and share pictures. I give up some privacy but I get a pretty decent web-based email client without having to pay any money for it. I get a nice search engine. I get free cloud-based storage. A decent web browser. Etc.
How does any of this make me "less individual" or "less human"? In what way has this been done without my permission? I know these platforms allow Google, Facebook, et. al to collect information about me.
If he was a paramecium, he'd be arguing against multicellularity on all the same points.
Jesus Christ is resurrected from the deads. My hope. Our hope.
Big Tech has imposed its will on the resident population with neither our input nor our permission.
What does he mean "with neither our input nor our permission"? Is he not aware that people WANT to use these services? That some people A. are not paranoid and B. have social lives and desire to remain in touch?
People get a lot from Facebook: job offers, notifications of social events, parties, birth announcements, people changing jobs, everything going on so you can decide to go or not go.
Some people actually have social lives. We signed up for Facebook ON PURPOSE idiot.
I blame Canada!
What if we're already there and we don't even realize it? Oh, and it isn't SiV, it's our own, inescapable, biology. FTFY
As far as that goes, I'll go with hoping Richard Feynman is resurrected. At least people actually paid attention to his messages rather than just posturing and pretending.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"We IDIOTS signed up for Facebook ON PURPOSE."
FTFY
The article on The New Republic's collapse after its buyout by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes describes how Foer's being ousted as editor was what prompted this book. The problem was a bicoastal clash of cultures: the writers at the magazine, proud curators of a hundred-year tradition of in-depth coverage of topics, suddenly faced a pack of young interlopers spouting Silicon Valley marketing buzzwords. It wasn't long before an article critical of hedge fund bro culture was spiked in the face of a financing deal with exactly these people, causing so many of the writers to jump ship that TNR had to skip publishing the issue.
I just un-followed almost a thousand people on a major social media network.
I'm deleting two other accounts.
I came to the realization that social media doesn't do anything for me. I don't need it for my business. I don't need it to make friends. I don't need it to keep in contact with people. It's just junk food for the ego that makes people feel more important than they are.
In the next 18 months I'm hoping to step back even farther from the net, start a garden, ditch my smart phone (after it dies), and basically just have quiet time to do things instead of watching other people do things online and pretending that I'll do something someday.
The net is great for shopping and tutorials, but the social media stuff I am done with. It's completely vapid. I'm sorry I didn't notice it ten years ago when I got into it.
It's the fault of businessmen and capital holders
we've been letting a lot of money accumulate at the top. So much that it's easier for companies to buy out potential rivals before they get too big. Microsoft was famous for this and I've been seeing EA & Activision doing it for decades too.
I'm less worried about losing privacy than I am about the affects of wealth inequality and having that much money/power at the top. Most people don't abuse privacy for fun, they do it to take all the world's money for themselves. Solve income inequality and the privacy problems will take care of themselves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...was the original problem here. Since 99% of all internet services are delivered "for free", primarily as a result of the internet's decentralized nature, the service providers had to find a way to make money. It went from banner ads to now mining all of your personal data for profit.
Why doesn't e.g. Netflix get mentioned with the GAFA quadruplet? Because you pay 9.99/month for Netflix, so Netflix doesn't care who your friends are and how to sell that to advertising companies. The problem is that even if people would now be willing to pay 9.99/month for Facebook, Facebook wouldn't want it that way - they've seen they can make much more massive profits by mining people's personal data. There's no going back now.
Humans exist because single-celled organisms gave up their privacy. And freedom, for that matter.
If each neuron in your brain insisted that it be free to choose by itself when to fire, when not to fire, and to do so without any other neurons knowing whether or not it fired, you would not be able to think.
Networking is the basic operating principle of a brain, and it is precisely that principle that allows higher-level organisms to survive.
Such problems as world hunger and poverty will never be solved by a bunch of individuals keeping secrets and furthering their selfish interests at the expense of others. So long as we embrace unrestrained individuality, we will live with the horrors of human domination forever. The *only* way to rise above to a higher level of existence is to shirk these things and accept integration into the group. It's the *only* way. There is no other way.
We fear making ourselves vulnerable to evil leaders who will exploit our lack of privacy and freedom to their selfish ends. It is a justifiable fear so long as such a thing is possible. But realize; the brain has no un-integrated parts. Our ascension requires the same. There will be no individual leader. Just the collective, furthering the interest of the whole collective, and by doing so, furthering the interest of each of its parts.
Just as your whole brain prospers when it can make good decisions; a product of proper integration of all its parts....so too will humanity prosper once it can make good decisions; a product of proper integration of all its members.
Welcome to China.
As we all have free will. That said, I personally do find tech companies and their contributions these days highly dubious if not straight up destructive. Why do so many have so much difficulty ackowledging that they are corporations, just like any others before them? They are not magically more ethical due to familiarity. The notion of 'friending' brands was a step in entirely the wrong direction. They are not, and never will be, your 'friend'.
then don't let yourself lol...
Not a bad book, interesting in sections with some recondite information, but the author makes a glaring fooking mistake referring to the great economist (economic surplus, etc.), Thorstein Veblen, as a sociologist!
Way to go, patriot. No hope, right? Guess we're all in Eeyore mode. There's a city that celebrates his birthday, you should move there.
Originally, the narrative was 'beware the government' because they have guns. But the likes of Twitter and Reddit reveal the unwashed masses, while most-times less deadly, can be deleterious to a person's lifestyle; causing untold panic and paranoia.
Last year, Slashdot revealed the real horror of big data. It's not corporations deciding what price they can make one pay: But them deciding what service one is allowed to receive: What credit limit and interest rate one receives is obvious, but also what plea-bargain, or parole or promotion or salary, one receives. One is no-longer consumer X who will do Ybut an X who is worth Z and nothing else.
People do have an built-in value: The most obvious one being "you are your job". But much of our lives is controlled by undetected consensus. One's health, wealth and beauty means one can fuck this group of people. One's personality, training and experience means one can receive these job promotions. It's why we depend on romantic love and drugs; they make us forget that we are controlled by laws, by a socio-economic status (assigned to us), by our own inadequacies and ignorance.
The difference between corporations and the unwashed masses is conformity. That undetected consensus allows small victories: I can meet someone who hates pickles, who demands the government fight climate change, who doesn't watch the latest Kardashian bio-drama: It's how most people find a place (their assigned value) in the world and find love. A corporation with an algorithm is absolute: You don't deserve a cheaper house, a better credit-card, or astronaut training. It's what Gattica (1997) promised, what every dictatorship becomes: A society full of conformity, uniformity and decay.
Will that world happen? First we need to address a world where corporations own all information: It's a theme in movies: RollerBall (1975) and Johnny Mnemonic (1995). Will corporations still invade our privacy? Will there be a market or even value to spying on us? Or, will we demand that we are entitled to privacy, to see the information, about us, that others own?
Yet another of the many social issues presented on Slashdot that is big news to Americans, yet common sense to the rest of the (non-English-speaking) planet who simply miss out on "the digital life" sterile Americana has to offer nowadays.
Eben Moglen has been saying this for years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY
Somehow I think we'll survive. Some societies thought (and think) you can't live without honor, hence the execution of rape victims and rituals of suicide. Now we think we can't live without privacy. I'll bet we can.
`Perche non reggi tu, o sacra fame de l'oro,l'appetito de' mortali?'
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooomed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on