SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Hannes Grassegger contemplates the themes of Big Data and the price of free in this essay (and his book). Probably most of that will be familiar to fellow Soylentils but I think it made a surprisingly refreshing read anyways. Now would be a great time to cut the cord, stop feeding the monsters.
Privacy. Transparency. Surveillance. Security gap. I can’t stand to hear the words anymore. They simply downplay a radical new condition: We no longer own ourselves.
You want proof? If personal data is the oil of the 21st century—a commodity companies pay billions of dollars for—then why aren’t we, the source of such data, the oil sheiks?
This new oil, this content, big data, it’s personal data—it's me. My digital personality. Today "going online" is no longer a choice or a potentiality, but rather a necessary condition of existence. It is essential. Part of me. I spend at least half of my time online: both professionally and privately. As Artie Vierkant recently said, we live in a “post-internet” reality. The internet is not a separate realm anymore, it’s become an integral part of life. My identity remains unified, but it’s become partially digital. We’re made of atoms and of bits. The internet is the externalization of my inner world. And this inner world is clearly linked to the rest of me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 20 2016, @11:47AM
Technology caused our current concentration of wealth? The Internet polarized communities? I don't quite buy that.
Those are only the means of the day. Society's ability to distribute the fruits of advancement determines how much wealth concentration is possible. The powerful have done a great deal to hinder distribution (as they always do), quite literally in the case of copyrights and patents and the accompanying propaganda that equates distribution with theft. The biggest problem is that so many people accepted their propaganda. The powerful have cleverly used fearmongering, including improved understanding of human psychology, to stir our irrational fears of loss to help push thoughts of gain out of our minds. Our public libraries should be much more digital than they are currently, and really, the private bookstore and recorded music store should be dead. Nevertheless, we have scored a big win with means of distribution now in the hands of the masses, no more expensive printing press and network of paper delivery services needed.
People aren't stupid when it comes to smelling a rat. We know we're being ripped off, even if we can't quite put our fingers on how. In many cases we do know how, but can't agree or aren't sure on what to do about it. For instance, Internet access in the US is overpriced thanks to lack of competition. Among the most egregious cases are the successes these private ISP business have had in shutting down government initiatives to hook up neglected communities. They even seem to feel a sort of service to each other when one of them goes to bat to sue a government backed service to force it to shut down, like wolf packs marking territory and divvying up the available sheep. It's as if we accepted an argument that the US Postal Service is unfair competition to FedEx, because they're government and so they have all these "unfair" advantages, and should be shut down for that reason. Our own representatives accept bribes to run with these ludicrous justifications to kill competition.
It's the same with employment. They say raising the minimum wage will kill jobs, complain they can't find talent and need to bring in foreigners (H1B), and generally grumble endlessly about expenses, while they hypocritically pay themselves exorbitantly, with such clever trickery as stock buyback schemes and golden parachutes. The finance people have not been serving humanity well in current times, instead abusing their knowledge and power to squeeze citizens for more money.
Imagine if hackers used their superior knowledge for gain in similarly unethical ways. There'd be no end of loud complaining about the unfairness of it all. Fear of hackers has lead to all kinds of overly harsh and extreme punishment for things that shouldn't even be a problem. Aaron Swartz gets the book thrown at him, despite great doubt that he did anything wrong at all. But somehow it's more okay for the finance folks to cheat and corrupt others, and be bailed out when they screw up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @04:45PM
It sounds like you're more than OK with the loss of jobs in the music, publishing, film, and journalism industries, but you insist of protectionism for American technology workers.
Can you imagine having an argument about H1-B with an unemployed musician who graduated from music school? Maybe he's on another forum saying we need more H1-B tech workers, but government needs to get off its butt when it comes to enforcing copyrighted works on the Internet.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:52PM
Are you okay with the loss of jobs in the horse and carriage industry? Maybe we should all go back to horses for personal transport? Might even help with Global Warming.
You make a connection that is unwarranted. I agree that artists deserve compensation. I do not agree with copyright as the means. Let's use crowdfunding and other means, and stop trying to turn back the clock. Copyright simply does not work since the rise of the Internet and cheap storage. Only inertia and the will of the people, who do feel that artists deserve compensation, has kept copyright shambling along in a semblance of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:17PM
What Carr is saying is that the profession of IT administrators, and of many other techies, is going the way of the music and journalism professions. It won't disappear entirely, but industry won't need nearly so many workers.
I just find the juxtaposition of "Unlimited sharing of digital content: YAY! Migration of tech jobs away from pricey American workers: BOO!" to be jarring. They're really just manifestations of the same economic tidal wave. People say that one can't be stopped and the other can, given our political and economic environment. I think they're wrong.