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I wouldn't personally want to help create tyranny powered by advanced technology, but I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it. I'm worried a

I wouldn't personally want to help create tyranny powered by advanced technology, but I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it. I'm worried about what others will make of it, so I don't think we should be too idealistic about it.

mar77i 8y ago
If you have concerns, please add your concerns to the license and contracts around your product. Also, for someone who says "I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it", you sure seem to take a liberal - maybe even a bit contradicting? - stance not wanting to be too idealistic about it.
- swift532 8y ago
  English is not my first language, sorry, I think I didn't express myself well. I meant that we shouldn't be too naive when considering what other people might make of technology, just because we're idealistic.
  - mar77i 8y ago
    But we're still idealistic because at the end of the day, we're not only responsible of what we do with technology ourselves, but when we create things we're always enabling others to use them; be it by giving them away freely, and maybe a bit more critically when selling. There was a case once where a software project amended the GNU GPL with a no military use clause... On that note, you can never tell exactly who your customers are, and you shouldn't fit technology with a built-in kill switch or have it call home, which is just the worst of all options, as seen with several unpopular videogame companies.
murph-almighty 8y ago
I think this speaks well to my recent pessimism on the Internet as a whole. I thought reddit was great until I saw the monetization of speech push discussion in a different direction: first with corporate astroturfing, then by paying people to conduct psyops. I thought Facebook was pretty great until I realized that anything I post there is visible by people who I might not want to see it- I think of the uncles who unironically post about how "monkey is suddenly a racist word", but also "influential people saw this post that I made five years ago that might have been funny five years ago but definitely isn't now" (read: James Gunn). I thought Instagram was pretty cool until adverts and the realization that you only see the positives of people's lives through the filter they operate, and that it affected how I felt about myself! This isn't to say that everything we're producing is bad. We now have cheap, readily available sources of reliable knowledge that update quickly (encyclopedias take a year and were pretty pricey, by comparison). I also think functions like online banking and simple government actions (think re-registering your car) seriously extend our ability to operate in society. But I'm finding that the honeymoon phase of the next big internet product is all too sweet- The first six months is generally okay, then we find a few edge cases of malice, followed by the real underbelly as bad actors take over the platform.

mar77i 8y ago

If you have concerns, please add your concerns to the license and contracts around your product. Also, for someone who says "I don't think that's to say I shouldn't be worried about it", you sure seem to take a liberal - maybe even a bit contradicting? - stance not wanting to be too idealistic about it.

swift532 8y ago
English is not my first language, sorry, I think I didn't express myself well. I meant that we shouldn't be too naive when considering what other people might make of technology, just because we're idealistic.
- mar77i 8y ago
  But we're still idealistic because at the end of the day, we're not only responsible of what we do with technology ourselves, but when we create things we're always enabling others to use them; be it by giving them away freely, and maybe a bit more critically when selling. There was a case once where a software project amended the GNU GPL with a no military use clause... On that note, you can never tell exactly who your customers are, and you shouldn't fit technology with a built-in kill switch or have it call home, which is just the worst of all options, as seen with several unpopular videogame companies.

murph-almighty 8y ago

I think this speaks well to my recent pessimism on the Internet as a whole. I thought reddit was great until I saw the monetization of speech push discussion in a different direction: first with corporate astroturfing, then by paying people to conduct psyops. I thought Facebook was pretty great until I realized that anything I post there is visible by people who I might not want to see it- I think of the uncles who unironically post about how "monkey is suddenly a racist word", but also "influential people saw this post that I made five years ago that might have been funny five years ago but definitely isn't now" (read: James Gunn). I thought Instagram was pretty cool until adverts and the realization that you only see the positives of people's lives through the filter they operate, and that it affected how I felt about myself! This isn't to say that everything we're producing is bad. We now have cheap, readily available sources of reliable knowledge that update quickly (encyclopedias take a year and were pretty pricey, by comparison). I also think functions like online banking and simple government actions (think re-registering your car) seriously extend our ability to operate in society. But I'm finding that the honeymoon phase of the next big internet product is all too sweet- The first six months is generally okay, then we find a few edge cases of malice, followed by the real underbelly as bad actors take over the platform.