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Also: > I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for

Also: > I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit. -- Jacob Appelbaum, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Technological progress is not driving us towards more rape. It is driving us towards less privacy. The comparison is bullshit.
- kardos 11y ago
  Privacy erosion is enhanced/enabled by use of technology, but it's ultimately a social issue. This is not an us-vs-skynet situation. Our society is simply organised incorrectly; power/control over private information is misallocated and the result is a privacy hostile world. It's not the first time we've run into this kind of power misallocation. And we've solved a variety of them: slavery, women's suffrage, segregation, gay rights, etc. We've tackled privacy before [1] in the dead-tree context. We can fix social problems, and privacy/surveillance is one for our generation to handle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Like I responded to the parallel commenter, I think social issues are driven by technology level, not the other way around. We have privacy issues because computing and the Internet, and we may solve them if the technology allows us, but I have a feeling it won't. All of history and numerous attempts at appealing to force change in people's characters (many of them ending bloody) tells us that, sans brainwashing[0], you can't make people do something else than whatever makes sense for them in their conditions by just asking nicely. Society seems to be reaching a stable state given a particular technology level it has. As long as giving away privacy means people can get the things they want and need easier, they will give away privacy. Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". OTOH, if the process reaches the point when giving away privacy actually starts to hurt them in a visible way, they'll start caring. By the way, secrecy of correspondence is just a courtesy. Your letters don't get opened on the way because you live in a prospering state where people have better things to do than read your mail and couldn't care less about you personally. It wasn't and it isn't always the case; there are still countries in which you'd better not send money in an envelope. We may, and will, develop some limits around individual privacy that will be similar to the privacy of correspondence - i.e. just courtesy. But it's important to recognize them for what they really are. [0] - I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but rather in a technical one. I grew up in a religion that is pretty serious about its beliefs and values. Most of the members were sincerely trying to improve their own characters, and would rather suffer horribly than lie or steal from a stranger. I saw that it's entirely possible to rewrite even scumbags to be like sheep, willing to help and improve lives of others, but it comes at a cost of accepting a particular belief system and joining close-knit communities that frequently remind themselves of their values and reasons for following them.
    - kardos 11y ago
      I agree that technology /enables/ behaviours, but it's people who use/abuse it and the society who needs to instate the controls. If we attack this purely from a technological angle and manage to ramp up to ubiquitous E2E encryption, society can ban encryption: jailtime for possession of data that the government can't read. Is that a technology problem or a social problem? > Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". This is a defeatist attitude. There's always going to be people who don't care. What's the voter turnout rate in your country? I'm sure you can find some starving people who will pick food over privacy, or some junkies who'll pick drugs. Those people are not part of the privacy conversation because they have other priorities. Anyhow: the goal is not to nag everybody into locking up all their personal information. The goal is (or should be) to build a society where people have control over the dissemination of their personal details/communication, rather than "everything is collected by powerful entities, deal with it".
- eveningcoffee 11y ago
  I think you are wrong. Social processes are driving us towards less privacy and not technology. If we consider physical strength disparity between men and women, then an average strength man could rape as many women he likes, there is no technical restriction. Yet this does not happen.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I'm becoming more and more strongly convinced that technology is what drives social processes. I.e. feudalism because agriculture, reformation because printing press, women's right movements because wars and washing machines, privacy because dirt cheap computing and the Internet. In a way, I feel social norms are like a gas in a multi-dimensional parameter space; they expand to cover all the volume allowed by the technology we have.
    - eveningcoffee 11y ago
      Yes, of course, some social processes are made available by technology, but this is not inevitable course. I would say that agriculture made possible the first known democracy and women rights are still subpar in many parts of the world despite the washing machines.
    - PavlovsCat 11y ago
      > In a way, I feel social norms are like a gas in a multi-dimensional parameter space; they expand to cover all the volume allowed by the technology we have. I'd say if anything technology is a gas that fills a space restricted by both what is technically possible (both generally and for us in particular), and our social norms [0]. The (lack of) prevalence of rape is not just a result of the technical possibility and the efficiency of law enforcement. Most people don't want to do it, just like most people don't want to be terrorists, and like at least some people genuinely don't want to spy on others (which is hard to believe for some I know). [0] that is, our individual choices - since individuals are the only place where things like norms, laws, societies, nations and even technology actually exist, as fragments that together with other fragments in other actually existing people form shape the emergent patterns and behaviours (in the context of technology: hardly anyone, if anyone, understands everything involved in making a CPU, and that involves medicine and food and infrastructure for the workers required, I really mean everything, which for even things much simpler than a CPU is a lot). To consider technology or other things actual agents is just false IMHO, technology doesn't do anything, and it can be pretty much be forgotten within one generation. In that sense, it's not like gas at all, it doesn't just "march on" or "expand".

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Technological progress is not driving us towards more rape. It is driving us towards less privacy. The comparison is bullshit.

kardos 11y ago
Privacy erosion is enhanced/enabled by use of technology, but it's ultimately a social issue. This is not an us-vs-skynet situation. Our society is simply organised incorrectly; power/control over private information is misallocated and the result is a privacy hostile world. It's not the first time we've run into this kind of power misallocation. And we've solved a variety of them: slavery, women's suffrage, segregation, gay rights, etc. We've tackled privacy before [1] in the dead-tree context. We can fix social problems, and privacy/surveillance is one for our generation to handle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Like I responded to the parallel commenter, I think social issues are driven by technology level, not the other way around. We have privacy issues because computing and the Internet, and we may solve them if the technology allows us, but I have a feeling it won't. All of history and numerous attempts at appealing to force change in people's characters (many of them ending bloody) tells us that, sans brainwashing[0], you can't make people do something else than whatever makes sense for them in their conditions by just asking nicely. Society seems to be reaching a stable state given a particular technology level it has. As long as giving away privacy means people can get the things they want and need easier, they will give away privacy. Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". OTOH, if the process reaches the point when giving away privacy actually starts to hurt them in a visible way, they'll start caring. By the way, secrecy of correspondence is just a courtesy. Your letters don't get opened on the way because you live in a prospering state where people have better things to do than read your mail and couldn't care less about you personally. It wasn't and it isn't always the case; there are still countries in which you'd better not send money in an envelope. We may, and will, develop some limits around individual privacy that will be similar to the privacy of correspondence - i.e. just courtesy. But it's important to recognize them for what they really are. [0] - I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but rather in a technical one. I grew up in a religion that is pretty serious about its beliefs and values. Most of the members were sincerely trying to improve their own characters, and would rather suffer horribly than lie or steal from a stranger. I saw that it's entirely possible to rewrite even scumbags to be like sheep, willing to help and improve lives of others, but it comes at a cost of accepting a particular belief system and joining close-knit communities that frequently remind themselves of their values and reasons for following them.
  - kardos 11y ago
    I agree that technology /enables/ behaviours, but it's people who use/abuse it and the society who needs to instate the controls. If we attack this purely from a technological angle and manage to ramp up to ubiquitous E2E encryption, society can ban encryption: jailtime for possession of data that the government can't read. Is that a technology problem or a social problem? > Most people won't give up their Facebook or e-mail, or start learning how to do PGP because some vague notion of "privacy". This is a defeatist attitude. There's always going to be people who don't care. What's the voter turnout rate in your country? I'm sure you can find some starving people who will pick food over privacy, or some junkies who'll pick drugs. Those people are not part of the privacy conversation because they have other priorities. Anyhow: the goal is not to nag everybody into locking up all their personal information. The goal is (or should be) to build a society where people have control over the dissemination of their personal details/communication, rather than "everything is collected by powerful entities, deal with it".
eveningcoffee 11y ago
I think you are wrong. Social processes are driving us towards less privacy and not technology. If we consider physical strength disparity between men and women, then an average strength man could rape as many women he likes, there is no technical restriction. Yet this does not happen.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'm becoming more and more strongly convinced that technology is what drives social processes. I.e. feudalism because agriculture, reformation because printing press, women's right movements because wars and washing machines, privacy because dirt cheap computing and the Internet. In a way, I feel social norms are like a gas in a multi-dimensional parameter space; they expand to cover all the volume allowed by the technology we have.
  - eveningcoffee 11y ago
    Yes, of course, some social processes are made available by technology, but this is not inevitable course. I would say that agriculture made possible the first known democracy and women rights are still subpar in many parts of the world despite the washing machines.
  - PavlovsCat 11y ago
    > In a way, I feel social norms are like a gas in a multi-dimensional parameter space; they expand to cover all the volume allowed by the technology we have. I'd say if anything technology is a gas that fills a space restricted by both what is technically possible (both generally and for us in particular), and our social norms [0]. The (lack of) prevalence of rape is not just a result of the technical possibility and the efficiency of law enforcement. Most people don't want to do it, just like most people don't want to be terrorists, and like at least some people genuinely don't want to spy on others (which is hard to believe for some I know). [0] that is, our individual choices - since individuals are the only place where things like norms, laws, societies, nations and even technology actually exist, as fragments that together with other fragments in other actually existing people form shape the emergent patterns and behaviours (in the context of technology: hardly anyone, if anyone, understands everything involved in making a CPU, and that involves medicine and food and infrastructure for the workers required, I really mean everything, which for even things much simpler than a CPU is a lot). To consider technology or other things actual agents is just false IMHO, technology doesn't do anything, and it can be pretty much be forgotten within one generation. In that sense, it's not like gas at all, it doesn't just "march on" or "expand".