[HN Gopher] The hacking of culture and the creation of socio-tec...
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The hacking of culture and the creation of socio-technical debt
Author : BorgHunter
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-06-19 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schneier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schneier.com)
| alextheparrot wrote:
| Really enjoyed the piece.
|
| A passing thought: the ethe of individuals in the 70s and 80s is
| important because of the people it informed in subsequent years.
| While many people still like to hack, code, etc., the relative
| proportion of people doing this and working in tech continues to
| diminish as the popularity and importance of the sector grows. I
| wonder if debt without values / a more cohered zeitgeist is
| better or worse?
| siliconsorcerer wrote:
| "The history of the tech industry and culture is full of this
| tension between the internet as an engineering plaything and as a
| surveillance commodity."
|
| Great article, wish it talked about how we might address the
| issue.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I think the hints are in there, and I have my opinion.
|
| 1) Chinese Tiktok scaring the US government: Sure OUR corps can
| mentally rape our citizenry, but someone else?
| Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real debate on
| pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.
|
| 2) Are we really out of "think of the children" political
| movements? With the polarity of Democratic and Republican
| parties changing, we may be ripe for protections for children
| (I mean, the tactics that childrens games use in the app store
| are utterly depraved: gambling games, social payouts, a litany
| of PTW strategies for fleecing adults applied to children) that
| may bleed into general society and adult welfare
|
| 3) fear of AI: AI is a boogeyman, and will continue to be. AI
| is just an algorithm, the next mass corporation/state
| algorithmic weapon to be deployed.
|
| 4) democratic institutions. maintain a functioning government
| and the core aspects of western "free" society such that they
| maintain a massive competitive advantage over totalitarian
| states in the long run.
|
| One thing I will say is that people are smarter from the first
| (pre-social-network/mobiles) internet, and the initial stages
| of mobile/social network internet. I think people are educated
| at a rapid rate to deal with advertising and manipulation, and
| from an early age. I think it is making saavier people, even if
| in the short run your kids will get swept up in some
| manipulation/scam at some point. Better they get manipulated
| and conned early on by the Nigerian prince before they have
| real money to lose.
|
| We shall see with AI.
|
| What is abundantly apparent with the later stages of
| social/mobile internet is the massive distrust users of social
| networks now have of the platforms, even if they continue to
| consume it. This is what is underlying the very very correct
| distrust people have of corporate AI: if the social network
| corps have gone to such depraved degrees with the last round of
| algorithms, what will they do with new AI weapons? We already
| know: nothing remotely good.
|
| The larger social network companies are firmly in their
| ossification phases: the biggest hallmark, publicly and openly
| having contempt for their customers. They are all ripe for
| collapse.
|
| In a perverse gradiose manner, consider Conway's Law applied to
| the entire internet: the current internet mirrors the open
| trade period provided and maintained by post-WWII US hegemony.
|
| Many many many people predict that globalization and trade is
| coming to an end, and the internet will change to reflect a
| less global and guarded real world.
|
| We are also in a world of first-world demographic decline.
| Despite the rise of AI, people are about to get MORE important,
| because there will be less of them in the peak/prime years. If
| regard for human rights tracks the economic value of a
| productive human, it may increase substantially in the coming
| decades.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Sure OUR corps can mentally rape our citizenry, but someone
| else? Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real
| debate on pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.
|
| It will not, in any way, because it is only a pretense. The
| original push to ban Tiktok was for the government to get
| access to Tiktok moderation. After they got it, the push
| petered out to a few local loudmouthed Republicans who had
| run with a hardcore anti-China stance. Then, after October
| 7th, when Tiktok _accurately reflected_ the views of the
| younger half of the American public on Palestine, the push
| was renewed by the usual arms dealers and allies, which got
| it through.
|
| Nobody cares about Tiktok's algorithm. They care that people
| are anti-Israeli on Tiktok. When all of those people move to
| another app, they'll suddenly be concerned about that other
| app, or young people's access to social networks in general.
| Tell them girls are killing themselves over social networks,
| they don't care, tell them that arms dealers incomes are
| threatened by girls talking on social networks, our
| government gets very concerned.
| mistermann wrote:
| [delayed]
| just_steve_h wrote:
| I find Schneier to be one of the most cogent observers and
| commentators on the influence of technology and corporate
| organization on our society. His writing is compelling.
|
| Agree with others that I'm left wanting for solutions to the
| challenges he so clearly articulates.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The trends he is discussing are so macroscopic that it's hard
| to even identify a single thing that can fix the system. For
| example privacy, yes it would be nice to have some basic
| privacy laws but there are entire industries dependent on the
| status quo, and government/police as customers. So as a
| politician doing "the right thing" immediately makes entrenched
| national security interests into enemies.
|
| We need to find opportunities for more and better means of
| civic engagement. Democracy can't just be a thing that happens
| every 4 years. One small example: maybe something like a
| "customer service hotline" at a local level. Local government
| could also send out "UX" people to better understand local pain
| points. Hyperlocal representation at the subdivision or even
| block level would also be interesting.
| janalsncm wrote:
| It is an interesting thought, what would the world look like if
| these global trends continue, if the role of the state continued
| to dissolve under the influence of multinational corporations.
| Perhaps Liberalism (individual rights/political equality) will
| turn out to be only a passing fad in 1000 years' time.
| Corporatism allows transnational groups of people to coordinate
| in ways and at fidelities that have only recently been possible.
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