5 ms·

Inevitablities from the Internet of things: Software glitches, personal data sold or served to the government, personal data stolen by a foreign government, ha

Inevitablities from the Internet of things: Software glitches, personal data sold or served to the government, personal data stolen by a foreign government, hackers that freeze your house or crank up the heater till it breaks, hackers that spy on your kids with the cameras you installed, automated customer support lines. For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me more vulnerable to risk and gives me less control over my life. I'll stick with my dumb house. After all, it was Socrates of all people who criticized writing and reading because he believed it made you worse at remembering things.

jarek 11y ago
> For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me more vulnerable to risk and gives me less control over my life. Oh, of course it does. Consider: when are you more in control, when you know the city you're in inside-out, or when you're depending on Google Maps?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Well, lemme think... 2012, October. I, an American from upstate NY, am traveling on the Queen Elizabeth Way to visit a friend in Toronto, a city I last saw at the age of 3. There are at least 6 lanes on the highway, packed with drivers so cantankerous and forceful that save for the autumn gray I could swear I was in LA. I'm approaching the city and a display by the road says the route is closed for construction. My maps app redirects me to another highway, which is completely closed after 15 miles of driving. Another redirect, all while forcing my way through the automobile equivalent of a massive hockey team. Suffice to say, I didn't know the city, and I didn't have the chance to unfold a map. The only part that was out of my control was the $300 in roaming charges.
  - jarek 11y ago
    Ah but I bet that the animations were beautiful and the icons all lined up perfectly
    - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
      This was iOS6 Maps...
      - iofj 11y ago
        How did you survive ?
- VikingCoder 11y ago
  You're considering only one dimension. Consider: When you are in a new city, when are you more likely to learn the city inside-out, when you don't have Google Maps, or when you do?
  - jarek 11y ago
    Depends if you like talking to people IRL (Disclaimer: I usually don't)
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    It's a mix. If I need to get somewhere specific I'll follow directions, but if I'm browsing then I don't learn much by looking down at a screen the whole time. Last time I was in DC for a conference in Foggy Bottom I got a recommendation for a pizza shop a few blocks from my hotel. &pizza, not bad. Next day I went to that general area and browsed around looking for a bar. Because I didn't just look up bars on Yelp I was able to distinguish the character of the places I walked around, like the feel of a neighborhood that primarily houses GWU students, and another that is for unreasonably wealthy urban homeowners. tl;dr I get what I want from a maps app when I know what I want. If I don't know what I want, I go out and learn by experience.
lmm 11y ago
Did Socrates actually say that or was it just something Plato had him say in his book?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  We can't tell for sure, but it teaches us something, and that's the best we can hope for.
  - iofj 11y ago
    Socrates also taught that we should fight to kill democracy because it effectively means that the state is not run according to what is "morally right", but instead is run by idiots who don't think they're idiots. Socrates also claims the fact that his students overthrew the government and implemented this idea of governing by "moral right" and proceeded to kill thousands of people. He claims that the fact that they did so had nothing to do with him.
    - justifier 11y ago
      i addressed your seeming confusion on the subject in another thread.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109040
CaptSpify 11y ago
I hate IOT too, but I love smart devices. The answer I see to smart things: manual overrides, and no phone-home requirements. Give the control back to the user. If I put up a smart device, and someone breaks into my network, that's on me. If google screws up my house, that's on them, and they should be held liable.
justifier 11y ago
that seems an egregious misreading of the parable: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. from Plato's Phaedrus(o) much different than claiming Socrate's criticised reading and writing it's a parable, and one i read as intending to warn people of technology's ability to encourage the thinking that one can inform without comprehending memory without understanding mastery without failure this reading allows for readers to be able to ask questions (o) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html
- justifier 11y ago

jarek 11y ago

> For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me more vulnerable to risk and gives me less control over my life. Oh, of course it does. Consider: when are you more in control, when you know the city you're in inside-out, or when you're depending on Google Maps?

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Well, lemme think... 2012, October. I, an American from upstate NY, am traveling on the Queen Elizabeth Way to visit a friend in Toronto, a city I last saw at the age of 3. There are at least 6 lanes on the highway, packed with drivers so cantankerous and forceful that save for the autumn gray I could swear I was in LA. I'm approaching the city and a display by the road says the route is closed for construction. My maps app redirects me to another highway, which is completely closed after 15 miles of driving. Another redirect, all while forcing my way through the automobile equivalent of a massive hockey team. Suffice to say, I didn't know the city, and I didn't have the chance to unfold a map. The only part that was out of my control was the $300 in roaming charges.
- jarek 11y ago
  Ah but I bet that the animations were beautiful and the icons all lined up perfectly
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    This was iOS6 Maps...
    - iofj 11y ago
      How did you survive ?
VikingCoder 11y ago
You're considering only one dimension. Consider: When you are in a new city, when are you more likely to learn the city inside-out, when you don't have Google Maps, or when you do?
- jarek 11y ago
  Depends if you like talking to people IRL (Disclaimer: I usually don't)
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  It's a mix. If I need to get somewhere specific I'll follow directions, but if I'm browsing then I don't learn much by looking down at a screen the whole time. Last time I was in DC for a conference in Foggy Bottom I got a recommendation for a pizza shop a few blocks from my hotel. &pizza, not bad. Next day I went to that general area and browsed around looking for a bar. Because I didn't just look up bars on Yelp I was able to distinguish the character of the places I walked around, like the feel of a neighborhood that primarily houses GWU students, and another that is for unreasonably wealthy urban homeowners. tl;dr I get what I want from a maps app when I know what I want. If I don't know what I want, I go out and learn by experience.

lmm 11y ago

Did Socrates actually say that or was it just something Plato had him say in his book?

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
We can't tell for sure, but it teaches us something, and that's the best we can hope for.
- iofj 11y ago
  Socrates also taught that we should fight to kill democracy because it effectively means that the state is not run according to what is "morally right", but instead is run by idiots who don't think they're idiots. Socrates also claims the fact that his students overthrew the government and implemented this idea of governing by "moral right" and proceeded to kill thousands of people. He claims that the fact that they did so had nothing to do with him.
  - justifier 11y ago
    i addressed your seeming confusion on the subject in another thread.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109040

CaptSpify 11y ago

I hate IOT too, but I love smart devices. The answer I see to smart things: manual overrides, and no phone-home requirements. Give the control back to the user. If I put up a smart device, and someone breaks into my network, that's on me. If google screws up my house, that's on them, and they should be held liable.

justifier 11y ago

that seems an egregious misreading of the parable: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. from Plato's Phaedrus(o) much different than claiming Socrate's criticised reading and writing it's a parable, and one i read as intending to warn people of technology's ability to encourage the thinking that one can inform without comprehending memory without understanding mastery without failure this reading allows for readers to be able to ask questions (o) http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

justifier 11y ago