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Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention
- freedomben 9y agoAlways interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say. While this particular blog post isn't about DRM, his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think. I highly recommend reading up on what Cory has to say on DRM and the war on general purpose computing. It may change your mind. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cory-doctorow-says-fight-against-drm-laws-more-important-than-blogging/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/cory-doctorow-says-fight-agains... https://www.eff.org/press/releases/cory-doctorow-rejoins-eff-eradicate-drm-everywhere https://www.eff.org/press/releases/cory-doctorow-rejoins-eff... Also watch the various youtube videos of his talks, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
- limaoscarjuliet 9y agoSame here. I personally like the guy for correctly pointing my attention at things that are important, as opposed to vast majority of journalists, who just follow the mainstream subject du jour.
- maxerickson 9y agoHe's an author and activist. No surprise that he does different things than journalists. This is a "commentary" column in a science fiction magazine. He bills himself just as I said: https://boingboing.net/about https://boingboing.net/about
- 0xWilliam 9y agoCan you summarize what you mean instead of wasting my time with useless platitudes like: >his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think.
- dm319 9y agoIt's difficult to generalise his work, so this is a reasonable summary. He seems to write about subjects he thinks are important to society - covering topics such as copyright, DRM. I'd agree that with others here that he is an excellent writer, and his piece on 'the war on general purpose computing' is something which stands out in my mind as one of the most profound pieces I've read in tech. EDIT: I think this is the article I had in mind [1] [1] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
- vog 9y ago> I highly recommend reading up on what Cory has to say on DRM and the war on general purpose computing. It may change your mind. Does he argue convincingly in favour of DRM? Otherwise, I don't see how he would change my mind about DRM.
- C0d3r 9y agoThe name of one the articles is: Cory Doctorow says fight against DRM laws is more important than his blogging So, no, he won't change your mind about DRM because he is not in favour of it.
- vog 9y agoI was just making fun of freedomben's overexaggerated phrases "highly recommend ... It may change your mind" bla bla stuff.
- dahart 9y ago> Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital. He was an absolute and utter jerk to me. He took one look at my badge that said "Disney" and started hurling sarcastic insults at me about my employer and suggesting my character was tarnished for working for them. I managed to ask my question and he blew it off completely as a non issue and acted like it was a stupid question. I said "thanks" and started walking away, and he called after me saying "tell those thieves at Disney I said hi." I don't care if he's interesting or right anymore. I still mildly wanted to read his book, but I haven't been able to. When I see it or read about him, the memory of that moment comes back to me. I wish I could go back to liking his writing and not having met him.
- belorn 9y agoIt is obviously clear that not everyone who works at Disney supported the idea to take works of art and culture from the public and retroactively put them back under copyright, nor the idea that lobbying from such organizations should have such enormous power in dictating policy in a democratic country where a democratic vote would had gone in an other direction. Cory Doctorow has dedicated a large part of his life (and wealth) towards combating such behavior, and obviously it's not fair when such polarized views conflict with people who just happen to work for a large company. That said, I personally don't judge him too harshly for it. If you spend your whole life working and using your money to save the oceans and meet a representative for BP, I strongly suspect that images from the Gulf oil spill will pop up and the meeting will be very frosty. It comes with the territory, as people rarely do spend their whole life and worldly possessions unless they also have strong views on the issue. Its not uncommon to see such personalities to be founders of movements but at the same time be rather poor diplomats.
- KingPrad 9y agoThat's a good point about long past experience shading future interactions, but I don't feel it exempts from harsh judgment. The ability to consider individuals separately from some of their membership groups is a core skill of being a mature adult. If Doctorow doesn't have the mental "executive control" we expect of adults, we need to be aware of it. This includes being ready to defend people he insults and to give him less opportunity for it. The grandparent poster might actually be doing the hard labor of doing good within Disney, as are thousands of others. I contrast that with how easy it is to stand outside the castle (almost literally in Disney's sense) and throw stones at the walls. If GP is someone working for good within a bad organization (aren't a lot of us?) then I have respect for them. That is really hard, wearing work. Anyway, on the sliding scale of judgement and forgiveness, just stating that I judge Doctorow more harshly than you and am less forgiving of his attacking a person for the behavior of one group they happen to be a member of.
- hugo0384729109 9y agoA bit odd to open an article about an arms race for my attention and see an ad for a book (A whirlwind out-of-this-galaxy adventure! #1 New York Times best selling author...) in the menu that takes up the top half of the page, and then only the title of the article and no actual text before scrolling (mobile safari)... and then a donate now box also came up over 80% of the screen. Also a nice touch to have all the social media widgets connected so my attention can be weaponized while I read about my attention being weaponized.
- dragonsky67 9y agoFunny, I didn't even notice the adverts. Looking back I now see them. I guess my attention filtering is fairly well tuned. I did notice the banner asking that I subscribe.
- superkuh 9y agoThere's no better time than now (Meltdown/Spectre) to switch to whitelist only JS (NoScript works). The menu/ads completely fail to display but the text is just fine.
- Splines 9y agoI've done the same thing, but I wonder how much I am really protecting myself. I need to whitelist sites that I use to get them to work (HN, for example), but that doesn't stop HN from attacking me. I suppose it raises the bar, but how soon until I whitelist a site that attacks me?
- pferde 9y agoThat's why javascript blocker is just one layer of a multilayer defense.
- Majestic121 9y agoYou'll never have perfect security, but whitelisting JS does raise your defense a lot : mainly because you'll be able to block most attacks from third parties/ads
- whatshisface 9y ago>"Not everyone has this reaction, of course: people in the fifth or sixth sigma of slot-machine susceptibility go out and[...]" Every time a new one of these mental attacks gets invented, a new five-sigma cohort falls off the "normal life" wagon. How many times can this happen before expansive hordes of people who have had their priorities destroyed start a new social crisis?
- gozur88 9y agoI wonder if that's really a problem or if it's the same group people getting manipulated over and over.
- dm319 9y agoI guess it depends when people get afflicted. If you spend your adult life all day playing a slot-machines or a dopamine-enriching computer game, you are unlikely to be starting a family anytime soon, and so it won't be your children who go on to be the afflicted population in the next generation. If you had children, they might be more aware of the dangers of these attentional assaults, and actually more resistant to it.
- lmm 9y ago~200000 times, if we take five sigma literally and assume it takes 5% of the population to start a crisis. One assumes evolution will work its way before that happens.
- PeterStuer 9y agoSadly the collateral damages in our attention habituation seems to be our empathy and social lives.
- Const-me 9y agoAnd maybe even mental health. I recently saw research that links social network usage with depression, e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-links-heavy-facebook-and-social-media-usage-to-depression/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-l...
- Eupolemos 9y ago> "There may be a rump of voters who’ll remain susceptible to Mercerism and its persuasion tactics," Having just read "Do Androids Dream Of Electrical Sheep", I see what you did there Cory.
- titzer 9y agoCory is a great writer and gives an entertaining history of attention-grabbing in advertising and games. His main point is that we are continually able to adapt to escalating intrusions that attention grabbers throw at us. However, overall I disagree that we are adapting fast enough. Not only is the escalation so rapid that most cannot adapt, the cultural shift in what is an acceptable level of intrusion is like boiling us frogs alive. On the Web, it is absolutely acceptable nowadays to have a fullpage interstitial or a whole-page darkening nag box on a news article. And to block adblockers. Wat. A newspaper or the web of just 5 years ago would never have considered this acceptable. This makes me worry about the future, especially augmented reality. Don't you want ads right ON YOUR FACE!? It's OK. You'll adapt!
- avoutthere 9y agoYou will adapt...by never visiting that site again.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>This makes me worry about the future, especially augmented reality. Don't you want ads right ON YOUR FACE!? It's OK. You'll adapt! I have a dream that augmented reality will one day enable you to visually block virtually every advertisement and billboard in meatspace, by covering them up with an image to your liking such as a forest
- hopefullypoetic 9y agoAt the risk of being censured for a frivolous, redditlike comment by a new account, I am reminded of a snippet of doggerel by Ogden Nash, and compelled to share it: I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all
- bmj 9y agoI would highly recommend reading Matthew Crawford's The World Outside Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. (https://www.bookdepository.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Matthew-B-Crawford/9780374292980 https://www.bookdepository.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Matthe...)
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI'm not sure if I agree with the tone of his conclusion - don't worry, that we always evolve defenses. It doesn't matter we evolve defenses. They're always in lock-step with new attack vectors. Which means the only thing that changes is the players. Yesterday it was Zynga and Upworthy, today it's Cambridge Analytica, tomorrow it will be something else. Bad new for individual attackers, yes, but it's also bad news for all of us too - because we don't know and can't predict what the next attack will be and where will it come from. Basically, the defense can't outpace offense, and we're doomed to forever be pwnd by manipulative people.
- Bartweiss 9y ago> Basically, the defense can't outpace offense, and we're doomed to forever be pwnd by manipulative people. This might be a decent summary of where we are now, but I don't think it's inherent to the problem. To stretch a metaphor, antibodies to viruses are reactive, but white blood cells are proactive against new diseases. I run a stack of privacy and attention defenses on my browser. Sometimes new attacks come out and I lose ground, as with browser fingerprinting. But sometimes new attacks come out and run aground on the protections I already have - the various cryptocurrency mining scripts, for instance, were all stopped because I disabled Javascript for unrelated reasons. Blocking the intrusion of the day is a Red Queen situation, agreed. But it's possible to make the game asymmetric, to raise the cost of future attacks and so do better with each round of the pattern.
- mar77i 9y agoThat reminds me: Cory will always have my attention because, as with Ron Paul, I will take literally anything from an xkcd cartoon stick figure.
- coldtea 9y ago>As we all know, time travelers have to be very careful when they visit the past, because their evolved immune systems allow them to harbor pathogens that the olde timey people are defenseless against. Actually it goes both ways. Evolution doesn't have an arrow, and a because their evolved immune systems allow them to harbor pathogen that the 10.000B.C people had evolved to defend against might be lethal in the 22nd century.