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Veteran author and longtime Silicon Valley resident Andrew Keen has stepped up his criticisms of the Internet. Describing the net as a platform that has devolved from its initial ideals and promise into a vehicle of monopolistic, manipulative and exploitative practices, a Guardian article summarizes views now gaining traction. By using Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber or any other online giant, are we striking a Faustian pact, behind which lays a mass of suffering, surveillance and ruthless harvesting?
Keen supports his arguments by mentioning that even online businesses that cite individual collaboration, those of the 'sharing' economy, are mere cynical fronts for firms already valued in the billions. As money has been sucked out of retail, transportation, photography, research and other industries into the coffers of new Internet giants, the net result has been losses of jobs and the compromise of working conditions. As for the Internet's much-touted 'individual empowerment', Keen counters with the rise of mob mentality - “Rather than creating more democracy, it’s empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it’s unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network". Keen's book - The Internet is not the Answer - is, a touch ironically, available on Amazon.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 11 2015, @02:15PM
First, gewg_, if you sign your posts, why bother to post as Anonymous Coward? It doesn't make sense.
But I do agree that the Slashcode mod system is the best way I've yet seen to boost the signal-to-noise ratio. For me it supplants Robert's Rules of Order, which is the nah-nah-nah tyranny of lawyers from the 17th century that persists to this day among those of that ilk, and MUNUC enthusiasts.
There is still room for improvement on Slashcode. One that occurs to me is to borrow an idea from hackathons, whereby you post your project idea, the kinds of help you need, and have functionality whereby people can pile on with you. It doesn't really work so well with hackathons because those mostly tend to be one-off affairs, but here it could work brilliantly. It's also a more structured version of what Linus did originally when he asked people to help him build Linux; that turned out pretty well and I think many other excellent projects could likewise develop here.
Washington DC delenda est.