4 ms·

I think you're right, on all points, but that leaves us deeply screwed. I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but

I think you're right, on all points, but that leaves us deeply screwed. I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job. It's interesting you mention doctors and engineers, two professions that have more accountability and two well subscribed professional bodies. If doctors were being asked to surveil patients or report something, as governments will occasionally suggest, the BMA will shout rather loudly. The press listen, write up a piece with suitably scary headline, and the govt changes mind (usually). The IET (UK Engineering body) has double the global membership of the BCS (computing) which is in far more countries. I'm going to hazard a guess there's more in tech than engineering. I'm not aware of any tech or professional bodies that attract anything but a tiny minority. We can't blacken the web like the Googles and Facebooks can in the face of stupidity like SOPA. Without some group body we're left with signing change.org and blogging. If we don't take a job there's millions who will - FB and Google are in the top 5 best places to work, yet are part of the problem.

erlehmann_ 10y ago
> I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job. If someone does something morally wrong, it is not made morally acceptable by the possibility that someone else might have done it. Justifications that use the kind of reasoning “If I had not done it, someone else would have done it.” come most often from people who might lose something (or not gain something) from doing the morally acceptable thing. I suspect it is just selfishness that makes people cling to such justifications, no matter how weak those are.
dwaltrip 10y ago
Mass data is an all consuming fire. People want the fire. The fire is warm. It enables higher quality, more advanced tech. Every existing developer in the world could stop writing a single line of analytics or big data code, but the fire would still rage on. New developers would rise up. The allure is too great. We can only hope to find a way of managing and containing the fire before it causes too much damage. Some days I'm more optimistic, other days I fear for the next 100 years. We are now a post-big-data society -- it's one of those paradigm shift technologies that can't be undone.

erlehmann_ 10y ago

> I can try to dissuade my boss from putting in the 33rd analytics gizmo on our site, but they are remembering the sales pitch and all that lovely data. If I say no they'll ask someone else in the office, few more times I'll be needing a new job. If someone does something morally wrong, it is not made morally acceptable by the possibility that someone else might have done it. Justifications that use the kind of reasoning “If I had not done it, someone else would have done it.” come most often from people who might lose something (or not gain something) from doing the morally acceptable thing. I suspect it is just selfishness that makes people cling to such justifications, no matter how weak those are.

dwaltrip 10y ago

Mass data is an all consuming fire. People want the fire. The fire is warm. It enables higher quality, more advanced tech. Every existing developer in the world could stop writing a single line of analytics or big data code, but the fire would still rage on. New developers would rise up. The allure is too great. We can only hope to find a way of managing and containing the fire before it causes too much damage. Some days I'm more optimistic, other days I fear for the next 100 years. We are now a post-big-data society -- it's one of those paradigm shift technologies that can't be undone.