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- FredMcWoozy0
Please see:
- mrghost0
http://www.qbn.com/topics/627004…
tried to tell you guys
- lukus_W0
Well - we can disagree about dystopia, but would you at least say there's a danger that needs to be avoided?
I'd say that this is most certainly the case.
The immediate solution is:
a) make lobbying impossible or at least very difficult.
b) legislate to moderate the behaviour of corporations to preserve our rights.During the industrial revolution, laws were eventually introduced to help protect the worker. Similar legislation needs to be developed for this newer digital age we're moving towards.
At the moment, due to the lobbying powers of corporations - laws are being introduced which _moderate_ the behaviour of the public and _protect_ the rights of corporations (e.g. the recent UK Digital Economy Bill).
It's absolutely the wrong way round.
- airey0
at what stage in history has power ever been equal? power has never been equal and never will be. if it was equal it wouldn't be power would it?
seriously, 1984 was written to warn of the police state through our own inactions. v for vendetta also whistled this tune much more obviously and simplistically (in the movie version anyway). our failing-ability to close our minds and submit to so-called safety when we perceive a threat to our staus quo. a parallel to our ongoing war against a noun (terrorism) overlays perfectly to 1984, think of all the freedoms ditched in the usa in the years following 911. a battle against a bogeyman that can never actually be finalised.
as for the points you mentioned, privacy has always been a fragile thing and in many cases more imagined than real. and in places like social networks, people are literally sharing their shit with the public domain, so it's a tad rich for them to then complain or even concern themselves with the lack of privacy. if you worry then don't use facebook, twitter or whatever comes next.
the corporations statement is a capitalist argument and honestly, it might be a shit system but it's about the best we have presently. the irony i like is that people complain about the shareholders expecting profits right up to the point they buy shares and then guess what, they want a return on their investment. illustrating the point that people are the issue not some evil corporation.
i see your point on the whole thing i just don't really agree but that's the point of these threads and places i think.
- lukus_W0
"how does this create an orwellian dystopia?"
Because digital technology has the potential to creates an inequality of power.
In one sense, at the moment it's difficult to lay down the law, restrict and control the things a person does - because geography and physicality makes it very expensive.
In digital spaces, it's simple and straight-forward to have this kind of control. Right now, if someone wants to moderate someone's behaviour on a site - or read through their emails or private data .. it's possible.
Lack of privacy (or total access to a person’s thoughts and ideas) gives any unacceptable amount of power to the person or organisation which has access to it. Any government or corporation - even when set up in a benign capacity - operates via interactions with regular people .. and these people have flaws like you or I do. Without a doubt, some will choose abuse power
When corporations are unaccountable to no-one but shareholders - they're tacitly restricted to only really caring about profit. This means that they're sometimes going to do stuff that's ethically dubious, if they can get away with it.
Take this propensity for corporations to go for profit at any cost, add increased power (due to the majority of our meaningful transactions being carried out online on sites controlled by private organisations) and I reckon potentially we could have a dystopia.
I reckon the only way to deal with potential bad stuff, is to think about what might happen and ensure that there's legislation (or at least general consensus) in place to stop it.
- airey0
how does this create an orwellian dystopia? you know what creates this - fucking mindless fear and the lack of acceptance of difference.
what this can lead to is more like minority report than orwell. imagine fucking billboards talking to you personally at shopping malls and bus stops. it would be years before you realise you were actually schizophrenic and these billboards aren't that advanced yet.
- lol - yeah .. mental illness would become the normlukus_W
- lukus_W0
A company like Facebook stands to make more money from behavioural data (how we use the site), than any other possible revenue stream.
Why is this important? Maybe it isn't so important now, but I reckon it will be in the future. The possibility of society heading towards some kind of low-rent 1984 knock-off dystopia is pretty compelling. Human nature pretty much guarantees it. We're pretty much sitting ducks.
While it's naive to believe that there are nameless entities out their filtering through all our shit - it's also naive to believe that all these companies aren't making the most of all commercial opportunities available to them.
There is a gap between big business and a lot of consumers - and it's caused by ignorance.
- airey0
obviously on a tangent but in tune with the conspiracy nutters that bang on about these dark forces at work with our twitter feeds and such, these lyrics always crack me up. maynard apparently got accosted by some nimrod who felt tool had soldout (this is after 'sober' was released). so:
tool - Hooker with a Penis
I met a boy wearing Vans, 501s, and a dope beastie-tee,
nipple rings, and new tattoos that claimed that he was OGT,
from '92, the first EP.and in between sips of coke he told me that he thought we were sellin' out, layin' down, suckin' up to the man.
Well now I've got some advice for you, little buddy. Before you point the finger you should know that I'm the man, and if I'm the man, then you're the man, and he's the man as well so you can point that fuckin' finger up your ass.
All you know about me is what I've sold you, Dumb fuck. I sold out long before you ever heard my name. I sold my soul to make a record, Dip shit, and you bought one.
So I've got some Advice for you, little buddy. Before you point your finger You should know that I'm the man. If I'm the fuckin' man then you're the fuckin' man as well, So you can Point that fuckin' finger up your ass.
All you know about me is what I've sold you, Dumb fuck. I sold out long before you ever heard my name. I sold my soul to make a record, Dip shit, And you bought one.
All you read and Wear or see and Hear on TV Is a product Begging for your Fatass dirty Dollar So ... Shut up and Buy my new record Send more money Fuck you, buddy.
- airey0
it would be nice for twitter to actually make money. fucks me how they keep going to be honest.
- lukus_W0
If twitter did sell this, I wonder how much money they sold it for?
- airey0
yeah, the cost thing is odd. of all the things money is spent on people would worry about this? and costs are so hard to determine in real life as it ignores the employment created etc.
i guess it will be interesting for the future users who can simple search for terms or phrases and read what the public opinion was at that time. not cleaned up by the media or clever writers but raw, unedited opinion. in all it's insane uneducated craziness.
still, it could very well be a case of finding uses or the meaning of it down the track. i'm sure people helping carry darwin's boxes around a fucking island in the middle of nowhere mumbled "what's the farking point of all this shit".
- dMullins0
A bit to your point here, airey.
Just read the article/blog post. I love how the first response was "how much is this shit going to cost me?" The thing that pisses me off I guess is that it is all just garbage in the long run. Printing and cataloging it all creates even more garbage. So great, we have an archive of garbage now. What's important today to most people means nothing tomorrow. Maybe in 100 years, we will look back in awe of our disillusionment—"How were the masses so fooled?" On the other hand, I sort of like that they are making this "hard" fingerprint of it all...something tangible to represent it. Will it be printed? Will it be digital/web-based? Will anyone ever care again that DJ AM died and that it was the most popular subject for like a whole week on Twitter? Or will it be more interesting that the artifacts which start to represent this information/social age will be less and less tangible?
There is something to be said though for major institutions acclimating in real-world positive ways like this. The Library of Congress essentially adopting/acknowledging professionally a trend and format of the "social age" and cataloging it in its pure form is pretty great for all industries that touch information media. But again, on the other hand you've got the White House basically crowdsourcing politics—http://bit.ly/dy9fkL #whgc—and god knows only loudmouthed dipshits like me use the Internet.
- airey0
and we all use phrases like 'marketing companies' and 'the government' which is effectively like saying 'the man'. it's all crap. many of us work for or with marketing companies and big business and sure, some look for phrases or trademarks or business mentions on social media but the idea that there's some nefarious group out there doing dark deeds is nuts.
have you read a paper lately. the same people that are apparently mining all this info for untoward ends are leaving laptops on trains, losing money to nigerian bank scams, stressing about losing their jobs and homes, etc etc.
'they' don't exist. it's 'us'. and we're to busy tweeting and reading our own blogs that we don't have time to read other peoples.
- lukus_W0
The thing is .. it must already be in the public domain - so who are they acquiring it from?
- scarabin0
i can't imagine why this would piss anyone off. it's not going to be any more useful to marketers than it is now, and even if it were, so what?
you're all in advertising in some way or another, so quit acting like you're all against "the system" or whatever
- scarabin0
it's a time capsule better than newspapers because it reflects the people's opinions on current events rather than the ones sold to us.
pretty fucking valuable if you ask me.
- lukus_W0
I agree with your sentiments airey .. but even the boring shite is interesting to marketing companies. They can analyse tweets, produce statistics and sell reports.