6 ms·

How a half-educated tech elite delivered us into chaos

33 points by jrepinc 9y ago

jstewartmobile 9y ago
From the article: 'One of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well, antisocial consequences.' Perhaps that is true for some of the employees, but for the founders, I'm calling BS. Zuckerberg, Thiel, Parker, Moskovitz, etc. are sharp, well-read guys who knew exactly what they were doing from square-one. They did it anyway. Probably thanks to the fact that in 2017, if you have enough money and you flush one country down the toilet, there's always another one that will welcome you with open arms for the right price. India's elite have been making the same migration to the US for two generations, and Thiel just built a house for himself in NZ.
fpisfun 9y ago
The elites have controlled the narrative basically forever and now their control slipped a bit because new tools have come about that allow less mainstream ideas to be pushed through to people. Now they're in panic mode so we get articles like this I guess.
- endorphone 9y ago
  “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” It isn't about "less mainstream ideas". It's about this notion that expressing a thought -- however irrational, uneducated, poorly considered and rash -- makes it like a democracy of ideas, where it instantly has the same weight as any other expression. It is the root of so-called "populism".
  - fpisfun 9y ago
    Yes that's what's known as freedom of speech.. yes I realize a platform like Facebook doesn't have to allow freedom of speech because it's not the government but why not instead say, hey this is what a lot of people seem to think and feel, why not figure out how we can get people on the same page and being less divisive, whether it be through education or whatever. A lot of tech products seem to just rot people's brains in my opinion, the constant vapid use of things like Snapchat and Instagram, for example, I find repulsive. Maybe the next generation of apps can find ways to engage people better in things that matter like learning more things that are of use and then we can have a more educated populace overall so the elites won't constantly feel the need to censor and curate the masses.
    - jstewartmobile 9y ago
      You're absolutely right. The same way FOX, CNN, CNBC, ABC, CBS, etc. rotted people's brains before everyone went online. Same shit, different medium.
- mcguire 9y ago
  "The elites have controlled the narrative..." Which elites are these? The leftist elites, the liberal elites, the conservative elites, the right-wing elites, the military-industrial elites, the corporate elites, or the religious elites?
  - fpisfun 9y ago
    A combination of them I suppose.
  - ggg9990 9y ago
    Outside of the religious elites and the "leftist elites" who are virtually nonexistent, these are all the same group of people. They basically believe in the primacy of education and intelligence which not everyone agrees with.
SamReidHughes 9y ago
The "chaos" in this case being the electorate receiving political messages from unapproved sources.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  And uncritically accepting lies as the truth on a daily basis.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    This is, frankly, something that completely did not change since times immemorial.
  - curtisblaine 9y ago
    Compared to?
retrac98 9y ago
I expect this will level itself out, it’s just a new engine for propaganda the population aren’t used to yet. In time people will begin to realise what Facebook puts in front of them isn’t necessarily the whole picture the same way posters from WWI and II seem crude and obvious to us now.
danblick 9y ago
Lousy, snobbish article. Blames innovators for changing the world. So? What does the author suggest could have been done differently? Perhaps the author could draw on his elite liberal arts education to reflect on the history of planned (as opposed to unplanned) social change? (The record there is not so hot.)
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  John Naughton, from Wikipedia: "Starting as an electrical engineer who worked in systems modelling and analysis, Naughton subsequently developed an interest in the public understanding of technology and—later—in the social, political and cultural impact of internet technology."
LeoJiWoo 9y ago
This article seems to forget about PRISM. I highly doubt the tech elite weren't contacted at one point or another by an alphabet agency, or they weren't being monitored by the government. I personally think tech has shown us how deeply divided we have always been. We just didn't realize it because we didn't start sharing so much of our personal lives on social media until around 2007.
Noos 9y ago
I wish the elites would stop constantly blaming magical powers that somehow manipulate the poor, deluded masses and instead possibly consider that people don't trust the elites because they are divorced from the masses and populate ideas that will harm them. Arguments like this really are arguments that we need much more control of the discourse to choke out ideas that challenge the elite mode of thinking. The writer is more along the lines of educating the tech barbarians, but it isn't much of a step to direct control when the barbarians don't particularly want to be educated. The idea that maybe the elite should reflect a bit never really occurs.
mcguire 9y ago
"Now mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines – intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about society or history – or indeed about human nature." ...which is why most university STEM programs have requirements and electives outside the STEM fields. Of course, it's possible to avoid the harmful influences of the liberal arts, but then,... "The cynical answer is they knew about the potential dark side all along and didn’t care, because to acknowledge it might have undermined the aforementioned licences to print money."
- bigger_cheese 9y ago
  I don't know about in the US but for my engineering degree at an Australian university there were mandatory Ethics classes. One of the courses we were required to take talked about precisely this sort of thing the long term consequences of technology. I remember debating case studies in tutorial groups about things like Asbestos, CFC's, GM crops, cloning and the like. Being considerate of the unintended consequences of technology was very much something we were encouraged to think about. Another class we took covered the ethical responsibilities of an engineer, regulatory compliance, liability, disclosure, whistle-blowing and the like I still recall vividly hearing during a lecture the story of American Engineer William LeMessurier who was made aware of critical structural defect in a building he had designed and then risked his career and professional reputation to resolve the problem. I'm a bit saddened to hear other people have these negative opinions about engineering. A lot of us do take the moral and ethical implications of our work quite seriously.
woodandsteel 9y ago
A lot of why these tech leaders go wrong is due to a techno-utopianist ideology which assumes that if bad is happening in the world it is always only because people don't have the technology needed to do good. This in turn rests on some very mistaken ideas about why humans behave in good or bad ways. That is in turn due in part to the great influence Ayn Rand's crackpot ideas have had on technologists. The books Naughton recommends are much more realistic.
PhilWright 9y ago
I love how a journalist thinks that anyone without an humanities education is only half-educated. In that case the reverse must also be true, all journalists without a science education are also only half-educated. You cannot have it both ways.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  As someone with a solid but not exceptional education in both, I would agree with both statements.
blakewatters 9y ago
There is a fundamental disconnect here in the analysis and attribution of malice and disregard for social duty. Building a product and company is a messy affair. You have to earn your way into having a perspective and responsibility to society. Engagement and virality and advertising revenue built off digital addiction may have a dark side but you have to build the business before the self reflection. This is the reality of capitalism: make enough money that you can afford the luxury of guilt.
curtisblaine 9y ago
> It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters. I still don't understand where the problem is, to be honest. It's not that political parties didn't advertise their messages in a targeted way before and, as long as both sides are able to target their potential electors, it's normal political propaganda. (or maybe the problem is "Trump won and we can't just accept that"?)
- otempomores 9y ago
  They revealed that the left and the liberals are a socially dominating minority.

33 points by jrepinc 9y ago

From the article: 'One of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well, antisocial consequences.' Perhaps that is true for some of the employees, but for the founders, I'm calling BS. Zuckerberg, Thiel, Parker, Moskovitz, etc. are sharp, well-read guys who knew exactly what they were doing from square-one. They did it anyway. Probably thanks to the fact that in 2017, if you have enough money and you flush one country down the toilet, there's always another one that will welcome you with open arms for the right price. India's elite have been making the same migration to the US for two generations, and Thiel just built a house for himself in NZ.

fpisfun 9y ago

The elites have controlled the narrative basically forever and now their control slipped a bit because new tools have come about that allow less mainstream ideas to be pushed through to people. Now they're in panic mode so we get articles like this I guess.

endorphone 9y ago
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” It isn't about "less mainstream ideas". It's about this notion that expressing a thought -- however irrational, uneducated, poorly considered and rash -- makes it like a democracy of ideas, where it instantly has the same weight as any other expression. It is the root of so-called "populism".
- fpisfun 9y ago
  Yes that's what's known as freedom of speech.. yes I realize a platform like Facebook doesn't have to allow freedom of speech because it's not the government but why not instead say, hey this is what a lot of people seem to think and feel, why not figure out how we can get people on the same page and being less divisive, whether it be through education or whatever. A lot of tech products seem to just rot people's brains in my opinion, the constant vapid use of things like Snapchat and Instagram, for example, I find repulsive. Maybe the next generation of apps can find ways to engage people better in things that matter like learning more things that are of use and then we can have a more educated populace overall so the elites won't constantly feel the need to censor and curate the masses.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    You're absolutely right. The same way FOX, CNN, CNBC, ABC, CBS, etc. rotted people's brains before everyone went online. Same shit, different medium.
mcguire 9y ago
"The elites have controlled the narrative..." Which elites are these? The leftist elites, the liberal elites, the conservative elites, the right-wing elites, the military-industrial elites, the corporate elites, or the religious elites?
- fpisfun 9y ago
  A combination of them I suppose.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Outside of the religious elites and the "leftist elites" who are virtually nonexistent, these are all the same group of people. They basically believe in the primacy of education and intelligence which not everyone agrees with.

SamReidHughes 9y ago

The "chaos" in this case being the electorate receiving political messages from unapproved sources.

aalleavitch 9y ago
And uncritically accepting lies as the truth on a daily basis.
- nine_k 9y ago
  This is, frankly, something that completely did not change since times immemorial.
- curtisblaine 9y ago
  Compared to?

retrac98 9y ago

I expect this will level itself out, it’s just a new engine for propaganda the population aren’t used to yet. In time people will begin to realise what Facebook puts in front of them isn’t necessarily the whole picture the same way posters from WWI and II seem crude and obvious to us now.

danblick 9y ago

Lousy, snobbish article. Blames innovators for changing the world. So? What does the author suggest could have been done differently? Perhaps the author could draw on his elite liberal arts education to reflect on the history of planned (as opposed to unplanned) social change? (The record there is not so hot.)

jstewartmobile 9y ago
John Naughton, from Wikipedia: "Starting as an electrical engineer who worked in systems modelling and analysis, Naughton subsequently developed an interest in the public understanding of technology and—later—in the social, political and cultural impact of internet technology."

LeoJiWoo 9y ago

This article seems to forget about PRISM. I highly doubt the tech elite weren't contacted at one point or another by an alphabet agency, or they weren't being monitored by the government. I personally think tech has shown us how deeply divided we have always been. We just didn't realize it because we didn't start sharing so much of our personal lives on social media until around 2007.

Noos 9y ago

I wish the elites would stop constantly blaming magical powers that somehow manipulate the poor, deluded masses and instead possibly consider that people don't trust the elites because they are divorced from the masses and populate ideas that will harm them. Arguments like this really are arguments that we need much more control of the discourse to choke out ideas that challenge the elite mode of thinking. The writer is more along the lines of educating the tech barbarians, but it isn't much of a step to direct control when the barbarians don't particularly want to be educated. The idea that maybe the elite should reflect a bit never really occurs.

mcguire 9y ago

"Now mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines – intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about society or history – or indeed about human nature." ...which is why most university STEM programs have requirements and electives outside the STEM fields. Of course, it's possible to avoid the harmful influences of the liberal arts, but then,... "The cynical answer is they knew about the potential dark side all along and didn’t care, because to acknowledge it might have undermined the aforementioned licences to print money."

bigger_cheese 9y ago
I don't know about in the US but for my engineering degree at an Australian university there were mandatory Ethics classes. One of the courses we were required to take talked about precisely this sort of thing the long term consequences of technology. I remember debating case studies in tutorial groups about things like Asbestos, CFC's, GM crops, cloning and the like. Being considerate of the unintended consequences of technology was very much something we were encouraged to think about. Another class we took covered the ethical responsibilities of an engineer, regulatory compliance, liability, disclosure, whistle-blowing and the like I still recall vividly hearing during a lecture the story of American Engineer William LeMessurier who was made aware of critical structural defect in a building he had designed and then risked his career and professional reputation to resolve the problem. I'm a bit saddened to hear other people have these negative opinions about engineering. A lot of us do take the moral and ethical implications of our work quite seriously.

woodandsteel 9y ago

A lot of why these tech leaders go wrong is due to a techno-utopianist ideology which assumes that if bad is happening in the world it is always only because people don't have the technology needed to do good. This in turn rests on some very mistaken ideas about why humans behave in good or bad ways. That is in turn due in part to the great influence Ayn Rand's crackpot ideas have had on technologists. The books Naughton recommends are much more realistic.

PhilWright 9y ago

I love how a journalist thinks that anyone without an humanities education is only half-educated. In that case the reverse must also be true, all journalists without a science education are also only half-educated. You cannot have it both ways.

ggg9990 9y ago
As someone with a solid but not exceptional education in both, I would agree with both statements.

blakewatters 9y ago

There is a fundamental disconnect here in the analysis and attribution of malice and disregard for social duty. Building a product and company is a messy affair. You have to earn your way into having a perspective and responsibility to society. Engagement and virality and advertising revenue built off digital addiction may have a dark side but you have to build the business before the self reflection. This is the reality of capitalism: make enough money that you can afford the luxury of guilt.

curtisblaine 9y ago

> It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters. I still don't understand where the problem is, to be honest. It's not that political parties didn't advertise their messages in a targeted way before and, as long as both sides are able to target their potential electors, it's normal political propaganda. (or maybe the problem is "Trump won and we can't just accept that"?)

otempomores 9y ago
They revealed that the left and the liberals are a socially dominating minority.