my favorite and the best part of this is the implicit conviction that "we" are part of a simulation and yet that "we" could "break out" of it.
far more likely would be the same thing we see in our own simulations: there is no person "in there" separate from the "in there" to begin with. if we are simulated, we are simulated, period. then in some ultimate "real" reality, "we" don't exist at all. so there is no breaking out, any more than it would make sense for Mario to break out of Super Mario Brothers.
believing otherwise is reflective of the typical unthinking arrogance of tech billionaires: "we're inside a simulation, but WE ARE SPECIAL PARTS OF THE SIMULATION." that's not how simulations work.
statements with "is" about complex social phenomena with multiple definitions always strike me as quite bizarre.
capitalism has multiple definitions depending on the source. as a ballpark definition that conforms with most Economics texts, Wikipedia isn't bad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism):
Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industries, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labour and, in many models, competitive markets. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.
Since all economic systems are descriptions created by scholars & advocates, there is no "real" definition of capitalism beyond what various people think.
I tend to agree with the above posters, and Wikipedia, that "capitalism" as it is used in most economic and political discussions today does entail the ability to collect, store, and earn income from market transactions, and that this is conceptually distinct from markets.
what I don't agree with is that empirically these things can ever be separated, apart from very limited and highly constrained circumstances. any relatively free market allows participants to hoard, causing supply/demand imbalances; that hoarding eventually turns into capital, if by no other power than by the hoarder's ability to loan out his supply and receive interest income (aka "rent") from the party lent to.
i am completely unconvinced by the libertarian socialist arguments for free markets without capitalism, especially given the libertarian commitment to (at best) a "night watchman" state: without constraints on hoarding and manipulation, and without some worldwide and unimaginable resetting of the economy so that everyone starts at 0--a resetting that itself would be an amazing political event that would probably obviate any need for this kind of political strategic discussion--those who already have a lot will always be able to use that to their advantage, to corner markets and manipulate supply/demand imbalances.
so while "free markets" and "capitalism" are conceptually distinct, my view is that in the real world, you can't have free markets without capitalism. whether you could have capital itself without free markets is a more complex and esoteric question--arguably, to use your example, the USSR functioned as a storer of capital in the world economy, but the international markets were not "free" by anyone's definition.
what part of "the Bitcoin technology licenses me to make up and redefine words however I see fit" don't you understand? only Bitcoin has intrinsic value, because "intrinsic value" means "the cool thing only Bitcoin has."
confused by your joint mention of "workplace monitoring" and being "more careful about your privacy." In most corporations, privacy and monitoring settings are, as your headline suggests, determined by the employer, and employees currently have no legal rights that trump the employer's right to determine those settings, in part to enable monitoring which the company is legally entitled and in some cases required to do, and in many cases is required to allow its systems to be open in various ways to law enforcement examination. If by "more careful about your privacy" you mean "don't search for backpacks to buy at work," I'm honestly not sure how to turn that into an effective privacy principle, beyond "don't do anything at work."
what is the difference between "presenting ads to Google glass users" and "internet browsing"? Is Glass going to come with built-in ad-blockers for all web pages? Are they going to build special software to prohibit Glass-specific advertising on web pages that are not in any kind of partnership with Glass? This seems to me like a way of controlling the advertising revenue streams for Google more than anything else, since Google's pages are larded with ads and Glass will inherently drive traffic to those pages, both inside and outside of the Glass environment. I wonder if it even raises antitrust implications, as it tremendously biases the products toward Google's advertising & commerce platforms while pushing others out.
unfortunately for your accusations, O'Reilly IS a technolibertarian, overtly supports outsourcing of critical government functions, is mostly concerned with getting government "out of the way" to allow corporate "innovation," and the responsibility part of government is of little interest to him, as Morozov's piece suggests.
Read:
O'Reilly's "government as platform": http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html
Harvard Law Professor Jennifer Shkabatur's "Transparency With(out) Accountability: Open Government in the United States": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028656
this is a particular kind of fallacious pro-technology argument that deserves some attention: "it has a good use, so it should be allowed." this is a fallacy because the good use doesn't discount or prevent the bad use. they are, generally, entirely separate issues.
Further, in this case, there are specific technologies available and in development to do the driving-specific tasks you name.There has already been controversy about computer technologies in automobiles not directly related to driving. I believe the state of law and industry practice right now is that HUD interfaces that give driving information, like dashboard tools directly related to driving, are acceptable, but that there is great concern over displays (even ones for controlling the stereo, heat of the car, etc.) that aren't directly related to the road in front of the driver. This is why GPS systems get locked out, even though they are directly related to driving--even the little bits of interaction drivers do with them can be distracting. People wildly overestimate their ability to focus on such tools, even when they are related to the drive. (I include myself.)
the issue with Google Glass has nothing to do with this: it is the availability of tools *not* related to driving. slashdot readers know that there is no way to put a "lock" on Glass that creative users won't get around.
if and when someone develops a HMD that is solely devoted to driving, I suspect that would have to be legislated separately, although it's hard to see why that would be more useful and/or not integrated into the manufacturer's HUD.
Of course, Google's Driverless Cars will soon make much of this moot anyway. Sort of.
i can't have been the only one to notice that MtGox, Dwolla, & many others involved in the BTC exchange circuit now require extensive amounts of pre-authorization identification (including scans of official photo IDs!) for exchanges any more. I am intrigued by BTC (and even more intrigued that the 6 BTC I bought for $4ea are now worth $70ea) but like many claims for "outlaw" technologies "taking over" from existing regimes of institutional power, I have trouble seeing how any potential "takeover" will immunize itself from just the sort of regulation that we see here. For a currency to be useful it has to have effective means of exchange into the existing forms of capital; but once it does, the existing forms of regulating capital will also come into play--or be blocked if regulation proves impossible. Like others have said here, even if BTC is in certain ways unregulable, exchanges between BTC and other currencies, and the use of BTC by regulated businesses in exchange for goods or services, absolutely can. I think there is evidence now that BTCs are being hoarded (& now probably sold off for nice profits!) & used (mostly) for illegal activities, & that the more "real" they become, the more untenable they will become for the latter & the more the former will be taken over by the professionals, & the more like any other currency they will become. but that's a guess, not a prediction--it's interesting to watch and I don't think the future of BTC is at all obvious.
it was wildly unpopular but among a minority of the US population. Pew Research Poll (which I consider fairly reliable) reports 2003 support at 72%, opposition 22%. American propaganda definitely downplayed the worldwide opposition to it, and I don't agree that the supporters believed the WMD claim--I think most (but not all) of them knew it was garbage but wanted to go along with a belligerent show of force anyway. Pew Poll: http://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008/
but, navel-gazing about the super-powers of Twitter might help increase our practical ineffectiveness by a few percentage points!!! let them eat Twitter.
obviously you have no reason to believe my testimony, and i'm not going to risk the anonymity of the people who told me this, but they were real google employees. I presume there are many real Google employees on Slashdot and maybe some of them will weigh in, if they feel comfortable doing so.
Google's internal philosophy that algorithms solve everything is well-known. So is its investment in a variety of predictive technologies; even reading through the documentation of its cloud-based Prediction API (likely much less extensive than Google's own internal systems) suggests many services that, when applied to the workplace itself rather than interactions with customers/projects, would make this sort of capability not just possible but even likely. Look especially at things like "sentiment analysis"
https://developers.google.com/prediction/https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/sentiment_analysis
Third-party companies sell related technology as well:
http://toatech.com/company/
Google (and the CIA, if you want me to play the excited alarmist) have both invested in a company called Recorded Future, apparently a successful purveyor of "predictive analytics":
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/
Recorded future appears to be a real company:
https://www.recordedfuture.com/this-is-recorded-future/
i hear from acquaintances who work in Google that the algorithms they run on emails do something much like this. among other things, they know when you are thinking of taking another job almost before you do. word is, among the things you must not say on the phone inside the pure-freedom, do-no-evil world of Google, is "let's take this offline" or anything else indicating you don't want to talk about something on the phone, since that's an instant tip that you want to say something unsurveilled. coming soon to our entire society!
Slashdot Mirror
my favorite and the best part of this is the implicit conviction that "we" are part of a simulation and yet that "we" could "break out" of it. far more likely would be the same thing we see in our own simulations: there is no person "in there" separate from the "in there" to begin with. if we are simulated, we are simulated, period. then in some ultimate "real" reality, "we" don't exist at all. so there is no breaking out, any more than it would make sense for Mario to break out of Super Mario Brothers. believing otherwise is reflective of the typical unthinking arrogance of tech billionaires: "we're inside a simulation, but WE ARE SPECIAL PARTS OF THE SIMULATION." that's not how simulations work.
Since all economic systems are descriptions created by scholars & advocates, there is no "real" definition of capitalism beyond what various people think. I tend to agree with the above posters, and Wikipedia, that "capitalism" as it is used in most economic and political discussions today does entail the ability to collect, store, and earn income from market transactions, and that this is conceptually distinct from markets. what I don't agree with is that empirically these things can ever be separated, apart from very limited and highly constrained circumstances. any relatively free market allows participants to hoard, causing supply/demand imbalances; that hoarding eventually turns into capital, if by no other power than by the hoarder's ability to loan out his supply and receive interest income (aka "rent") from the party lent to. i am completely unconvinced by the libertarian socialist arguments for free markets without capitalism, especially given the libertarian commitment to (at best) a "night watchman" state: without constraints on hoarding and manipulation, and without some worldwide and unimaginable resetting of the economy so that everyone starts at 0--a resetting that itself would be an amazing political event that would probably obviate any need for this kind of political strategic discussion--those who already have a lot will always be able to use that to their advantage, to corner markets and manipulate supply/demand imbalances. so while "free markets" and "capitalism" are conceptually distinct, my view is that in the real world, you can't have free markets without capitalism. whether you could have capital itself without free markets is a more complex and esoteric question--arguably, to use your example, the USSR functioned as a storer of capital in the world economy, but the international markets were not "free" by anyone's definition.
Bitcoin has repealed the dictionary
what part of "the Bitcoin technology licenses me to make up and redefine words however I see fit" don't you understand? only Bitcoin has intrinsic value, because "intrinsic value" means "the cool thing only Bitcoin has."
confused by your joint mention of "workplace monitoring" and being "more careful about your privacy." In most corporations, privacy and monitoring settings are, as your headline suggests, determined by the employer, and employees currently have no legal rights that trump the employer's right to determine those settings, in part to enable monitoring which the company is legally entitled and in some cases required to do, and in many cases is required to allow its systems to be open in various ways to law enforcement examination. If by "more careful about your privacy" you mean "don't search for backpacks to buy at work," I'm honestly not sure how to turn that into an effective privacy principle, beyond "don't do anything at work."
the story says "the technology is designed to facilitate internet browsing." Is it wrong? do we know for sure?
what is the difference between "presenting ads to Google glass users" and "internet browsing"? Is Glass going to come with built-in ad-blockers for all web pages? Are they going to build special software to prohibit Glass-specific advertising on web pages that are not in any kind of partnership with Glass? This seems to me like a way of controlling the advertising revenue streams for Google more than anything else, since Google's pages are larded with ads and Glass will inherently drive traffic to those pages, both inside and outside of the Glass environment. I wonder if it even raises antitrust implications, as it tremendously biases the products toward Google's advertising & commerce platforms while pushing others out.
unfortunately for your accusations, O'Reilly IS a technolibertarian, overtly supports outsourcing of critical government functions, is mostly concerned with getting government "out of the way" to allow corporate "innovation," and the responsibility part of government is of little interest to him, as Morozov's piece suggests. Read: O'Reilly's "government as platform": http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html Harvard Law Professor Jennifer Shkabatur's "Transparency With(out) Accountability: Open Government in the United States": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028656
this is a particular kind of fallacious pro-technology argument that deserves some attention: "it has a good use, so it should be allowed." this is a fallacy because the good use doesn't discount or prevent the bad use. they are, generally, entirely separate issues. Further, in this case, there are specific technologies available and in development to do the driving-specific tasks you name.There has already been controversy about computer technologies in automobiles not directly related to driving. I believe the state of law and industry practice right now is that HUD interfaces that give driving information, like dashboard tools directly related to driving, are acceptable, but that there is great concern over displays (even ones for controlling the stereo, heat of the car, etc.) that aren't directly related to the road in front of the driver. This is why GPS systems get locked out, even though they are directly related to driving--even the little bits of interaction drivers do with them can be distracting. People wildly overestimate their ability to focus on such tools, even when they are related to the drive. (I include myself.) the issue with Google Glass has nothing to do with this: it is the availability of tools *not* related to driving. slashdot readers know that there is no way to put a "lock" on Glass that creative users won't get around. if and when someone develops a HMD that is solely devoted to driving, I suspect that would have to be legislated separately, although it's hard to see why that would be more useful and/or not integrated into the manufacturer's HUD. Of course, Google's Driverless Cars will soon make much of this moot anyway. Sort of.
i can't have been the only one to notice that MtGox, Dwolla, & many others involved in the BTC exchange circuit now require extensive amounts of pre-authorization identification (including scans of official photo IDs!) for exchanges any more. I am intrigued by BTC (and even more intrigued that the 6 BTC I bought for $4ea are now worth $70ea) but like many claims for "outlaw" technologies "taking over" from existing regimes of institutional power, I have trouble seeing how any potential "takeover" will immunize itself from just the sort of regulation that we see here. For a currency to be useful it has to have effective means of exchange into the existing forms of capital; but once it does, the existing forms of regulating capital will also come into play--or be blocked if regulation proves impossible. Like others have said here, even if BTC is in certain ways unregulable, exchanges between BTC and other currencies, and the use of BTC by regulated businesses in exchange for goods or services, absolutely can. I think there is evidence now that BTCs are being hoarded (& now probably sold off for nice profits!) & used (mostly) for illegal activities, & that the more "real" they become, the more untenable they will become for the latter & the more the former will be taken over by the professionals, & the more like any other currency they will become. but that's a guess, not a prediction--it's interesting to watch and I don't think the future of BTC is at all obvious.
come on. Twitter stopped the birther claims, climate change denial, & fiscal cliff/debt ceiling brinksmanship dead in their tracks. oh, wait....
it was wildly unpopular but among a minority of the US population. Pew Research Poll (which I consider fairly reliable) reports 2003 support at 72%, opposition 22%. American propaganda definitely downplayed the worldwide opposition to it, and I don't agree that the supporters believed the WMD claim--I think most (but not all) of them knew it was garbage but wanted to go along with a belligerent show of force anyway. Pew Poll: http://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008/
but, navel-gazing about the super-powers of Twitter might help increase our practical ineffectiveness by a few percentage points!!! let them eat Twitter.
obviously you have no reason to believe my testimony, and i'm not going to risk the anonymity of the people who told me this, but they were real google employees. I presume there are many real Google employees on Slashdot and maybe some of them will weigh in, if they feel comfortable doing so. Google's internal philosophy that algorithms solve everything is well-known. So is its investment in a variety of predictive technologies; even reading through the documentation of its cloud-based Prediction API (likely much less extensive than Google's own internal systems) suggests many services that, when applied to the workplace itself rather than interactions with customers/projects, would make this sort of capability not just possible but even likely. Look especially at things like "sentiment analysis" https://developers.google.com/prediction/ https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/sentiment_analysis Third-party companies sell related technology as well: http://toatech.com/company/ Google (and the CIA, if you want me to play the excited alarmist) have both invested in a company called Recorded Future, apparently a successful purveyor of "predictive analytics": http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/ Recorded future appears to be a real company: https://www.recordedfuture.com/this-is-recorded-future/
i hear from acquaintances who work in Google that the algorithms they run on emails do something much like this. among other things, they know when you are thinking of taking another job almost before you do. word is, among the things you must not say on the phone inside the pure-freedom, do-no-evil world of Google, is "let's take this offline" or anything else indicating you don't want to talk about something on the phone, since that's an instant tip that you want to say something unsurveilled. coming soon to our entire society!