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> Second, just because it doesn't describe your government now doesn't mean it won't in the future, unfortunately. Consider examples of a 1920s German, or a 196
by matte_black 8y ago
> Second, just because it doesn't describe your government now doesn't mean it won't in the future, unfortunately. Consider examples of a 1920s German, or a 1960s Iranian (the old regime was oppressive too, but in different ways), or a 2000s citizen of Poland.
This is the risk averse argument against certain technologies. If you believe your government won’t change and are willing to take that bet, you can lean into technologies very hard and reap the benefits.
Of course, if you think there may be a day where your government will change and use technologies against you, you could live out in the boonies and never even touch a computer, and thus get no benefits from emerging tech.
It’s a trade off between being at the bleeding edge and being as secure and private as possible. Personally, I have made my decision. Could it be my undoing one day if government decides I’m guilty of everything? Sure, but I doubt it will happen. I’ll take the bet.
- bzbarsky 8y agoAs I said above everyone can make this decision for themselves, and should. It's just important to me to not paint any of the decisions here as "only criminals would do that"! Past that, I figure adults can and should decide these things for themselves. That said, I also think we should work toward changing the nature of the tradeoff, e.g. by changing how voice assistants work to minimize the privacy issues. I suspect there's a lot of work we could do on that front while not compromising the functionality of the voice assistants.