6 ms·

> Most people do not subscribe fully or exclusively to the ideals embedded in the smart-tech utopian vision, yet they’ll have no choice but to live by those ide

by bem94 8y ago

> Most people do not subscribe fully or exclusively to the ideals embedded in the smart-tech utopian vision, yet they’ll have no choice but to live by those ideals. All too true. The kinds of comment like "but they can just not use X" always appear in the context of Facebook/Google (often when they appear on HN). But that's like saying you should just "not use CCTV". I'm not a user of FB/Google/Smart Tech, it uses me, and when it is deployed pervasively, it becomes by definition, impossible to avoid. I can't stop my friends getting an Alexa / Siri / Google Home thing, so I can't help coming into contact with them. We can't have it both ways. Making tech / apps / etc addictive or indispensable or "impossible to live without" (once you've had it a few weeks and so do your friends), and then asserting people can "just not use it" is contradiction 101. As a corpus of people, I think we engineers need to look much harder at the world we are building and the constraints / motivators that are causing us to do it.

MrMember 8y ago
"Smart speakers" are getting to be everywhere and it really makes me uncomfortable. Like if I book a hotel I now have to remember to check if one is installed so I can unplug/disable it. Or if I'm at someone's house I have to decide if I want to look like a tinfoil wearing loony and ask them to unplug it or just accept that everything I say gets sent to some remote server.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  One of the truly sad aspects of this phenomenon is that smart speakers, in principle are totally fucking cool. That's literally Star Trek technology! You have a cheery computer you can boss around! Except now corporate greed had to shit all over it. It would be one thing if the Alexa was free... but they actually charge for the thing, and they don't even develop their own apps/skills, that's on the community.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    To me it would be more concerning if the Alexa was free. I would always be wondering what the nefarious business model was (data collection, advertising...) Free as in open source would be nice though
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    > Except now corporate greed had to shit all over it. One of the big plot holes of the Star Trek universe is that money and bartering would ever go away (they ended up back tracking in a major way on this) or that anything like the Federation would ever be as benevolent or magnanimous as it is portrayed. That is, I don't think taking corporations or greed out of it will make the tech better. People are people, whether they report to the Minister of Stuff or the Chief Whatever Officer.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      Personally I don't see it as a plothole so much as not receiving sufficient backstory justification - or doing so not fitting the genre well. Like if the earth spent a while as a cyberpunk dystopia and had "ancestors" of Augments who had lesser issues but were used to give the elites a self-perpetuating edge writ large, disregarded space as having no profit, and refused to provide any welfare despite a pitance of their production being required to prevent horrific suffering could give justification for why the federation is so radical on certain issues and why Ferngari would consider Wall Street worthy of pilgrimage - awed that humans of all species once "bested" them. Granted that should probably be regarded with about as foreigners visiting sites of travesties to celebrate them.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - wowzerz 8y ago
        Starship Troopers had that sort of thing going on, in the sense that Heinlein portrayed the society of the novel as a militaristic, conservative authoritarian regime born out of economic turmoil of a vaguely sketched past that alluded to predecessors being too laissez faire, sloppy and permissive. On some level it was a joke shot through with distortions, deliberately inaccurate misinterpretations of history, and willful ignorance among the characters of the xenophobia’s capacity to forge bonds among the ingroup of humans volunteering to accept the burden of fighting outsiders as a gateway to other privileges. This part is glossed over with the premise of starfleet academy, or the motivating factors that impel characters toward their rank and status. So, we start to see that star trek is something of a cartoon, with “post-scarcity economics” being a deus ex machina for unlimited resources, leading to unlimited technology, leading to unlimited resources, with only a vague line connecting warp drive to first contact with vulcans, which then grants all other technologies for free as originating from alien discoveries. Anyway, I think we’re pretty close to the idea of robots doing a lot of tedious things for us, if we play our cards right, which means we start to see a lot of things essentially growing on trees. Automatic hamburger machines mean less people slaving away over a hot grill in a low paying fast food chain, which is great, but this premise of automation won’t really save us unless robots can solve the human condition end-to-end. It means we need a place to stay, clothes to wear, food and water, and something to keep us stimulated and occupied in such a way that we don’t get lonely. All this so that we can go out and find things that keep life interesting, once all our basic needs are met by default. That doesn’t seem to be where all our great inventions are taking us though. With a harsh light and a strong lens, a lot of consumer oriented inventions do nothing for anyone. Business still seems to aim at bankrupting customers and competitors alike in furtherance of bigger business. Taken to logical conclusions those coziest with successful businesses get taken care of, and it’s near total neglect everywhere else. But that doesn’t exist in a vaccuum. Really all the most extraordinary inventions have been miitary concepts. Preparing for war makes peace. Maybe that’s the proper inspiration at work here...
  - goldfeld 8y ago
    No, they're not that cool in day-to-day beyond a geeky gimmick, that's the point. Maybe it's cool in dated sci-fi, but not everyone subscribes to the idea of needing a dumb serf to boss around, much less of looking dumb bossing around a cheap circuit built by a cheaper company as if that's cooler than actually knowing your way around technology and keeping a modicum of control in one's life. Maybe I'm old school, I'll go back to vim now.
    - wowzerz 8y ago
      Okay, so wait a second. Hold it right there. @nerdponx is onto something here. This is really important. You take your fingers, and take your 100+ key keyboard, and you think about how reliable your structured articulation of codified text syntax can be, when storing files on a file system the UNIX way. Take that same philosophy, and make that happen with spoken word, and a language that has ~65,000 words. Phrases over text files, spoken through the air, instead of written down, saved and interpretted. If that were what these speaker/microphone combo systems were about, and they weren’t internet connected, and exclusively piping profitable surveillance data home to some corporate data center to mine for buying habits in aggregate, this would all be very different. Anyway, the future is fucking stupid, and I hate it. I hope JavaScript bitcoin mining eventually sucks so much accidentally wasted computational energy into some quantum computer with an unterminated while loop, that it conjures a black hole and erases us all. Just my two cents.
- JacobJans 8y ago
  > everything I say gets sent to some remote server. Why do you think everything is recorded and sent to a remote server?
  - chj 8y ago
    That's a basic instinct of a HN reader. Since it's a blackbox, you have to assume the worst scenario.
  - tjr225 8y ago
    Why don't you think that?
_bxg1 8y ago
It's even more the case in China, where their big tech companies have integrated with the government. Imagine being unable to get a loan without a Facebook account, or being unable to vote without Google. It's tempting to see these trends and just cut yourself off even further; boycott Big Tech and claim that they don't affect you because you're opting-out. But we're reaching a point where that's not enough, because eventually we won't have the option to opt-out unless we do something about it now. Instead we have to engage with our society and take action in our democratic channels, to change things before they get to that point.
- herewulf 8y ago
  Well, in the good ol' USA, gov't seems to be increasingly shifting to Twitter these days. That's more than a little disconcerting.
antidesitter 8y ago
Concerning Facebook and Google specifically, what makes them “impossible to live without”? That would be very surprising considering I (and many others) don’t use them. Not that I disagree with your overall sentiment.
- rapnie 8y ago
  See the siblings' comment by brundolf. In China they are implementing a system without cash, and with a social credit reputation system, where you have no choice but to use government-approved apps provided by Tencent and Alibaba and others.
- bem94 8y ago
  So yeah, I guess they aren't "impossible" to live with out in the strictest sense. But having lived with them for some years and then going cold turkey becomes impractical to the point of impossible the next time you organise some get together and dont have a way to coordinate with a large group of people. Don't get me wrong, that is a really excellent feature of FB/Google tools, which is what keeps people around in spite of the creepyness. Like you say, lots of people get by fine without, but is that because you have never really used them so much as to become dependent on them? The world worked without the internet, but try taking it back to that place now and you'd be laughed at!
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    Why not use email or group SMS for organizing events? You can also use E2EE if needed. There are viable alternatives to Google and Facebook that don’t require giving up on technology. It’s important for people to realize that.

by bem94 8y ago

MrMember 8y ago

"Smart speakers" are getting to be everywhere and it really makes me uncomfortable. Like if I book a hotel I now have to remember to check if one is installed so I can unplug/disable it. Or if I'm at someone's house I have to decide if I want to look like a tinfoil wearing loony and ask them to unplug it or just accept that everything I say gets sent to some remote server.

nerdponx 8y ago
One of the truly sad aspects of this phenomenon is that smart speakers, in principle are totally fucking cool. That's literally Star Trek technology! You have a cheery computer you can boss around! Except now corporate greed had to shit all over it. It would be one thing if the Alexa was free... but they actually charge for the thing, and they don't even develop their own apps/skills, that's on the community.
- gitgud 8y ago
  To me it would be more concerning if the Alexa was free. I would always be wondering what the nefarious business model was (data collection, advertising...) Free as in open source would be nice though
- humanrebar 8y ago
  > Except now corporate greed had to shit all over it. One of the big plot holes of the Star Trek universe is that money and bartering would ever go away (they ended up back tracking in a major way on this) or that anything like the Federation would ever be as benevolent or magnanimous as it is portrayed. That is, I don't think taking corporations or greed out of it will make the tech better. People are people, whether they report to the Minister of Stuff or the Chief Whatever Officer.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Personally I don't see it as a plothole so much as not receiving sufficient backstory justification - or doing so not fitting the genre well. Like if the earth spent a while as a cyberpunk dystopia and had "ancestors" of Augments who had lesser issues but were used to give the elites a self-perpetuating edge writ large, disregarded space as having no profit, and refused to provide any welfare despite a pitance of their production being required to prevent horrific suffering could give justification for why the federation is so radical on certain issues and why Ferngari would consider Wall Street worthy of pilgrimage - awed that humans of all species once "bested" them. Granted that should probably be regarded with about as foreigners visiting sites of travesties to celebrate them.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - wowzerz 8y ago
      Starship Troopers had that sort of thing going on, in the sense that Heinlein portrayed the society of the novel as a militaristic, conservative authoritarian regime born out of economic turmoil of a vaguely sketched past that alluded to predecessors being too laissez faire, sloppy and permissive. On some level it was a joke shot through with distortions, deliberately inaccurate misinterpretations of history, and willful ignorance among the characters of the xenophobia’s capacity to forge bonds among the ingroup of humans volunteering to accept the burden of fighting outsiders as a gateway to other privileges. This part is glossed over with the premise of starfleet academy, or the motivating factors that impel characters toward their rank and status. So, we start to see that star trek is something of a cartoon, with “post-scarcity economics” being a deus ex machina for unlimited resources, leading to unlimited technology, leading to unlimited resources, with only a vague line connecting warp drive to first contact with vulcans, which then grants all other technologies for free as originating from alien discoveries. Anyway, I think we’re pretty close to the idea of robots doing a lot of tedious things for us, if we play our cards right, which means we start to see a lot of things essentially growing on trees. Automatic hamburger machines mean less people slaving away over a hot grill in a low paying fast food chain, which is great, but this premise of automation won’t really save us unless robots can solve the human condition end-to-end. It means we need a place to stay, clothes to wear, food and water, and something to keep us stimulated and occupied in such a way that we don’t get lonely. All this so that we can go out and find things that keep life interesting, once all our basic needs are met by default. That doesn’t seem to be where all our great inventions are taking us though. With a harsh light and a strong lens, a lot of consumer oriented inventions do nothing for anyone. Business still seems to aim at bankrupting customers and competitors alike in furtherance of bigger business. Taken to logical conclusions those coziest with successful businesses get taken care of, and it’s near total neglect everywhere else. But that doesn’t exist in a vaccuum. Really all the most extraordinary inventions have been miitary concepts. Preparing for war makes peace. Maybe that’s the proper inspiration at work here...
- goldfeld 8y ago
  No, they're not that cool in day-to-day beyond a geeky gimmick, that's the point. Maybe it's cool in dated sci-fi, but not everyone subscribes to the idea of needing a dumb serf to boss around, much less of looking dumb bossing around a cheap circuit built by a cheaper company as if that's cooler than actually knowing your way around technology and keeping a modicum of control in one's life. Maybe I'm old school, I'll go back to vim now.
  - wowzerz 8y ago
    Okay, so wait a second. Hold it right there. @nerdponx is onto something here. This is really important. You take your fingers, and take your 100+ key keyboard, and you think about how reliable your structured articulation of codified text syntax can be, when storing files on a file system the UNIX way. Take that same philosophy, and make that happen with spoken word, and a language that has ~65,000 words. Phrases over text files, spoken through the air, instead of written down, saved and interpretted. If that were what these speaker/microphone combo systems were about, and they weren’t internet connected, and exclusively piping profitable surveillance data home to some corporate data center to mine for buying habits in aggregate, this would all be very different. Anyway, the future is fucking stupid, and I hate it. I hope JavaScript bitcoin mining eventually sucks so much accidentally wasted computational energy into some quantum computer with an unterminated while loop, that it conjures a black hole and erases us all. Just my two cents.
JacobJans 8y ago
> everything I say gets sent to some remote server. Why do you think everything is recorded and sent to a remote server?
- chj 8y ago
  That's a basic instinct of a HN reader. Since it's a blackbox, you have to assume the worst scenario.
- tjr225 8y ago
  Why don't you think that?

_bxg1 8y ago

It's even more the case in China, where their big tech companies have integrated with the government. Imagine being unable to get a loan without a Facebook account, or being unable to vote without Google. It's tempting to see these trends and just cut yourself off even further; boycott Big Tech and claim that they don't affect you because you're opting-out. But we're reaching a point where that's not enough, because eventually we won't have the option to opt-out unless we do something about it now. Instead we have to engage with our society and take action in our democratic channels, to change things before they get to that point.

herewulf 8y ago
Well, in the good ol' USA, gov't seems to be increasingly shifting to Twitter these days. That's more than a little disconcerting.

antidesitter 8y ago

Concerning Facebook and Google specifically, what makes them “impossible to live without”? That would be very surprising considering I (and many others) don’t use them. Not that I disagree with your overall sentiment.

rapnie 8y ago
See the siblings' comment by brundolf. In China they are implementing a system without cash, and with a social credit reputation system, where you have no choice but to use government-approved apps provided by Tencent and Alibaba and others.
bem94 8y ago
So yeah, I guess they aren't "impossible" to live with out in the strictest sense. But having lived with them for some years and then going cold turkey becomes impractical to the point of impossible the next time you organise some get together and dont have a way to coordinate with a large group of people. Don't get me wrong, that is a really excellent feature of FB/Google tools, which is what keeps people around in spite of the creepyness. Like you say, lots of people get by fine without, but is that because you have never really used them so much as to become dependent on them? The world worked without the internet, but try taking it back to that place now and you'd be laughed at!
- antidesitter 8y ago
  Why not use email or group SMS for organizing events? You can also use E2EE if needed. There are viable alternatives to Google and Facebook that don’t require giving up on technology. It’s important for people to realize that.