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Virtual Zuck Fails To Connect (bbc.com)
Rory Cellan-Jones, writing for BBC: It must have seemed like a good idea. As a taster for a big announcement about Oculus VR on Wednesday, send Mark Zuckerberg on a little virtual reality trip, including a stop in Puerto Rico. But the reviews are in -- and they are not good. The sight of Mr Zuckerberg using VR to survey the devastation of an island still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria may have been meant to convey Facebook's empathy with the victims. The fact that he was there in the form of a cartoon seemed to many the perfect visual metaphor for the gulf in understanding between Silicon Valley and the real world. Sure, he was talking about all the activities which his company had initiated to help the island, from helping people tell their families they were ok using Safety Check to sending Facebook employees to help restore connectivity. But cartoon Zuck showing us a 360 degree view of a flooded street before zipping back to a virtual California just seemed a little, well, crass. Is Facebook really concerned about the plight of Puerto Rico, or is it merely a handy backdrop to promote Oculus, whose sales have so far proved disappointing?
Motive aside, I like this.
It is important that Congress connect to their constituents, see what they endure each day, talk with them, learn their problems, their needs. It's also important that Congress see the country as a whole, see the disasters which strike in remote locations, and the ones which make locations in the very heart of our nation remote by way of the sheer volume of destruction visited upon them.
We need a reasoned, rational approach to all things; yet men only move at an imperative driven by emotion. We'd best learn to restrain those emotions, because it is perhaps necessary that we face their assault so as to truly understand what need presents itself to our care. Here we have a low-cost, effective method to force direct exposure to those conditions upon ourselves, to step into a world thousands of miles away and see the hurt and the suffering around us, and to truly grasp the urgent need with which we are faced.
When men must contain their impulse to act, they are driven to seek a solution: it hurts, and it must stop.
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Is Facebook really concerned about the plight of Puerto Rico
I think we all have come to realize that the SJWs out there are really more concerned with signaling virtue more than actually solving problems.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
He's become one of these people who live in a bubble surrounded by sycophants who blow smoke up his ass all day about how great and meaningful he and Facebook is to the world, despite the fact that if Facebook actually did disappear overnight the only real effect on the world is probably greater productivity and some unemployed Facebook workers who will be needing new jobs. And this guy is coyly hinting he might want to run for President. I personally believe he'd be just as bad as Trump for mainly similar reasons - both think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. Though where Trump harms by malice, Zuck would harm by out of touch ignorance.
I think it is fair to say that most technical leaders of our time don't really understand anything about people in general. Oh they know how to make a buck off of them, but beyond that they are very out of touch.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That is just doubling down on tech bubble naivete. Do you really think that disaster relief managers don't know how to assess damage? Do you think that goofing around on a VR headset is going to give better data than reports from professionals on site?
"Do you really think that multi-billion dollar relief operations are conducted based on some "general rule of thumb" without any onsite assessment? "
In this Administration?
You can bet your ass that I think that,