from the changing-the-world-one-line-at-a-time dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow9088
The Lines of Code That Changed Everything
Back in 2009, Facebook launched a world-changing piece of code—the "like" button. "Like" was the brainchild of several programmers and designers, including Leah Pearlman and Justin Rosenstein. They'd hypothesized that Facebook users were often too busy to leave comments on their friends' posts—but if there were a simple button to push, boom: It would unlock a ton of uplifting affirmations. "Friends could validate each other with that much more frequency and ease," as Pearlman later said.
It worked—maybe a little too well. By making "like" a frictionless gesture, by 2012 we'd mashed it more than 1 trillion times, and it really did unlock a flood of validation. But it had unsettling side effects, too. We'd post a photo, then sit there refreshing the page anxiously, waiting for the "likes" to increase. We'd wonder why someone else was getting more likes. So we began amping up the voltage in our daily online behavior: trying to be funnier, more caustic, more glamorous, more extreme.
Code shapes our lives. As the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has written, "software is eating the world," though at this point it's probably more accurate to say software is digesting it.
Culturally, code exists in a nether zone. We can feel its gnostic effects on our everyday reality, but we rarely see it, and it's quite inscrutable to non-initiates. (The folks in Silicon Valley like it that way; it helps them self-mythologize as wizards.) We construct top-10 lists for movies, games, TV—pieces of work that shape our souls. But we don't sit around compiling lists of the world's most consequential bits of code, even though they arguably inform the zeitgeist just as much.
So Slate decided to do precisely that. To shed light on the software that has tilted the world on its axis, the editors polled computer scientists, software developers, historians, policymakers, and journalists. They were asked to pick: Which pieces of code had a huge influence? Which ones warped our lives? About 75 responded with all sorts of ideas, and Slate has selected 36. It's not a comprehensive list—it couldn't be, given the massive welter of influential code that's been written. (One fave of mine that didn't make the cut: "Quicksort"! Or maybe Ada Lovelace's Bernoulli algorithm.) Like all lists, it's meant to provoke thought—to help us ponder anew how code undergirds our lives and how decisions made by programmers ripple into the future.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday October 17 2019, @12:45PM (1 child)
Can we have synthetic consciousness?
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:26PM
Yes. To be concurrently released with:
* mechanized empathy
* Sincere deep fakes
* JavaScriptless browsers
* Systemd simplicity
* Inferior Vi Lisp Mode
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @12:58PM (1 child)
What's all this "like" crap anyway, I've never clicked on one (don't use "social media").
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:32PM
Yeah, but look. SN has this "Moderate" creature. But it requires the two-step because it doesn't use JavaScript. It needs to be frictionless, like a Windows Update or a demonitized video.
SN could implement a simple thumbs up and double thumbs up to provide mutually exclusive options for you to signal how you feel about a post such as this one. Only one step, a single click. I have experts who assure me that this could be implemented with less than four megabytes of JavaScript code loaded from fewer than twenty different sources.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:07PM (2 children)
The lack of a dislike button says something rather concrete about a website.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:40PM
The browser window or tab has this little X button to close that page. But it can be
hijackedenhanced by JavaScript to open 42 pop up windows asking "are you sure?".The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @06:13PM
Yup. It says a website is a LEA-tard pre-crime trollfest for stalkers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:44PM
My new favorite phrase.
Hollywood, are you paying attention?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 17 2019, @04:08PM (1 child)
Number one: The "agree" button. Slate shows me one, and won't show me the actual content without me clicking on it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 17 2019, @06:07PM
My number one is the Close Browser Tab button.
On Android phone favorite: Report Spam call button.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.