5 ms·

>Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came

by apo 7y ago

>Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you. > Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money. How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? This line about perception of reality somehow being different today than it was, say, in the 1980s keeps coming up. The main shift is that the number of (dis)information sources has risen sharply and they've become much more efficient. Secondarily, entire media channels (newspapers and TV) have lost relevance to all but the older generation. Increasingly, those news outlets just track social media, which may be the oddest development of all. In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands.

paganel 7y ago
> How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Because size matters, and in this case social media is a lot more pervasive (I'd say at least an order of magnitude more) compared to TV news of the 1980s or to newspapers. I knew of lots and lots of people who to didn't read newspapers 30 years ago, also the majority of the people around me didn't give that much thought on what was presented as "news" on TV because we knew they were mostly lies anyway (I grew in an Eastern-European country located on the wrong side of the Wall), but nowadays even the remotest shepherd has a cheap Android phone with an Internet connection which he mostly uses for Facebook and Whatsapp. In other words social media is a quantitative change (billions of people are using it) which has transformed into a qualitative one (because billions of people are using social media things are different this time).
Torwald 7y ago
He later relativizes that with: > So that means that access to that kind of higher-quality view of the world becomes a class-based situation where people who've got the money to pay for or partially pay for human editors and curators are getting higher-quality info, which I think is just a slight kind of magnification or intensification of the way things are now anyway. I repeat: > …intensification of the way things are now anyway. Now, here I disagree with Mr. Stephenson, these things were much more intense in prior times. What he observes seems to be the development in the U.S. in terms of tonality of political discussions. If you look at Asian countries as a counterexample, there is no such "intensification" happen because of SN at all. To the contrary, even the house of suckage, FB, is contributing positively, because a lot of people would not go online without FB or other easy ways. Operating keyword here is easy. For many people, who just made the jump into being alphabetised, or being the first in their family to be so, many SN outlets are a somewhat more comprehensible access point to info, then "Google Fu".
- theoh 7y ago
  He is referring to increasing economic inequality. This information inequality helps the rich get richer.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >If you look at Asian countries as a counterexample, there is no such "intensification" happen because of SN at all. To the contrary, even the house of suckage, FB, is contributing positively, because a lot of people would not go online without FB or other easy ways. That's hardly an argument in favour of social media. The US is a democracy where people used to have civic debates around a shared reality. That social media isn't going to ruin the debate climate in corporate-governmental societies where civilians don't have any input anyway doesn't really calm my nerves. In fact it frightens me. If the future of the internet is a cluster of entertainment bubbles with business and government bending reality to their will, and China is an example of the future, I'm not really keen on duplicating it. It's actually a very prescient observation: There seems to be a strong correlation between societies with high technological development but no democratic tradition, and the demise of traditional channels of media in favour of social media.
devoply 7y ago
Human beings have always been mythological beings. It's just that the myths that they now believe are amplifications of their own beliefs, or what they want to believe, rather than the collective beliefs of their societies, elites, thought leaders, and media masters. So yeah that's doomsday for society, in that there are no longer any shared myths holding everyone together. Those myths were never really true... they were just a tool of control, maybe even self-control of society. Without them the chaos amplifies. Heck even without social media it seems like there was a progression in politics where things were becoming unhinged. Things were becoming more and more polarized and what is/was considered progress was more further and further from many people's ideas of progress. So there is a series of issues that are coalescing together in our time with a background in the century of self, identity politics, etc.
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  its actually terrifying how accurate this is. most people live extremely mundane lives so they latch onto some lore whether its a book or their twitter feed. just the recent game of thrones petition/outrage shitstorm, the show gave people something to war over twitter about, with their coworkers, their family its definitely why politics now is incredibly toxic and i dont really understand why anyone contributes or even cares about political twitter dunking, its definitely not healthy a community in chaos, full of micro tribes following their own lore used to be cause for war and now we have it, in extremely quick replies at all times anywhere
coldtea 7y ago
>How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? In the sense that having some hot oil spill on your hands while frying something is not the same as being submerged in burning oil as a medieval punishment. Network and scale effects affect the impact of technological innovations. Even quantitative increase, over time, leads to different qualitative impact. But here we also have qualitative differences (e.g. TV networks didn't know shit about you, social networks know everything about your preferences, searches, friends, and so on).
jdietrich 7y ago
>How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Accountability. Someone is ultimately responsible for every newspaper article and every TV program. If a national newspaper decided to publish a piece of paid foreign propaganda, someone would have a lot of explaining to do, possibly in a court of law. There's no such accountability for algorithmically-driven systems. It's not our fault that our platform keeps promoting propaganda, it's just a quirk of the algorithm; we don't really know why our algorithm is doing this and we're not going to let you review the source code. I don't know what the possible solutions might be, but there's clearly a problem. Social media companies have largely abnegated responsibility for what goes on their platform and their platforms can't function without that abnegation of responsibility.
CM30 7y ago
> In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands. Interestingly, that shift seems to have happened everywhere, not just in politics. Many companies have also realised that they don't need to go through the media/journalists any more, and started advertising directly to their customers/users/fans too. Wonder if there's a term for that sort of social shift?
- doctorless 7y ago
  Decentralization. Although this term does not yet apply to the avenues through which this outreach occurs, but give it ten to twenty years and that too will change.
bassman9000 7y ago
How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? This is like saying why being scared of atom bombs when we already had swords.
addicted 7y ago
Newspapers and TV couldn't (a) Collect as much, if any, individual data (b) They couldnt tailor their content on an individual basis (c) There were not as many sources of data tracking your likes, location, buying patterns, eating patterns, entertainment patterns, writing patterns, voting patterns, reading patterns, etc. (d) Those sources of data could not be collated together I think fundamentally the issue is that too much personal data is being collected, and put together, making profiles on people that can be used and abused. Social media is the first major area where that data is being employed and often being deployed irresponsibly (although I question the idea that so much personal information could ever be deployed responsibly).

by apo 7y ago

paganel 7y ago

> How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Because size matters, and in this case social media is a lot more pervasive (I'd say at least an order of magnitude more) compared to TV news of the 1980s or to newspapers. I knew of lots and lots of people who to didn't read newspapers 30 years ago, also the majority of the people around me didn't give that much thought on what was presented as "news" on TV because we knew they were mostly lies anyway (I grew in an Eastern-European country located on the wrong side of the Wall), but nowadays even the remotest shepherd has a cheap Android phone with an Internet connection which he mostly uses for Facebook and Whatsapp. In other words social media is a quantitative change (billions of people are using it) which has transformed into a qualitative one (because billions of people are using social media things are different this time).

Torwald 7y ago

He later relativizes that with: > So that means that access to that kind of higher-quality view of the world becomes a class-based situation where people who've got the money to pay for or partially pay for human editors and curators are getting higher-quality info, which I think is just a slight kind of magnification or intensification of the way things are now anyway. I repeat: > …intensification of the way things are now anyway. Now, here I disagree with Mr. Stephenson, these things were much more intense in prior times. What he observes seems to be the development in the U.S. in terms of tonality of political discussions. If you look at Asian countries as a counterexample, there is no such "intensification" happen because of SN at all. To the contrary, even the house of suckage, FB, is contributing positively, because a lot of people would not go online without FB or other easy ways. Operating keyword here is easy. For many people, who just made the jump into being alphabetised, or being the first in their family to be so, many SN outlets are a somewhat more comprehensible access point to info, then "Google Fu".

theoh 7y ago
He is referring to increasing economic inequality. This information inequality helps the rich get richer.
Barrin92 7y ago
>If you look at Asian countries as a counterexample, there is no such "intensification" happen because of SN at all. To the contrary, even the house of suckage, FB, is contributing positively, because a lot of people would not go online without FB or other easy ways. That's hardly an argument in favour of social media. The US is a democracy where people used to have civic debates around a shared reality. That social media isn't going to ruin the debate climate in corporate-governmental societies where civilians don't have any input anyway doesn't really calm my nerves. In fact it frightens me. If the future of the internet is a cluster of entertainment bubbles with business and government bending reality to their will, and China is an example of the future, I'm not really keen on duplicating it. It's actually a very prescient observation: There seems to be a strong correlation between societies with high technological development but no democratic tradition, and the demise of traditional channels of media in favour of social media.

devoply 7y ago

Human beings have always been mythological beings. It's just that the myths that they now believe are amplifications of their own beliefs, or what they want to believe, rather than the collective beliefs of their societies, elites, thought leaders, and media masters. So yeah that's doomsday for society, in that there are no longer any shared myths holding everyone together. Those myths were never really true... they were just a tool of control, maybe even self-control of society. Without them the chaos amplifies. Heck even without social media it seems like there was a progression in politics where things were becoming unhinged. Things were becoming more and more polarized and what is/was considered progress was more further and further from many people's ideas of progress. So there is a series of issues that are coalescing together in our time with a background in the century of self, identity politics, etc.

hi5eyes 7y ago
its actually terrifying how accurate this is. most people live extremely mundane lives so they latch onto some lore whether its a book or their twitter feed. just the recent game of thrones petition/outrage shitstorm, the show gave people something to war over twitter about, with their coworkers, their family its definitely why politics now is incredibly toxic and i dont really understand why anyone contributes or even cares about political twitter dunking, its definitely not healthy a community in chaos, full of micro tribes following their own lore used to be cause for war and now we have it, in extremely quick replies at all times anywhere

coldtea 7y ago

>How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? In the sense that having some hot oil spill on your hands while frying something is not the same as being submerged in burning oil as a medieval punishment. Network and scale effects affect the impact of technological innovations. Even quantitative increase, over time, leads to different qualitative impact. But here we also have qualitative differences (e.g. TV networks didn't know shit about you, social networks know everything about your preferences, searches, friends, and so on).

jdietrich 7y ago

>How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Accountability. Someone is ultimately responsible for every newspaper article and every TV program. If a national newspaper decided to publish a piece of paid foreign propaganda, someone would have a lot of explaining to do, possibly in a court of law. There's no such accountability for algorithmically-driven systems. It's not our fault that our platform keeps promoting propaganda, it's just a quirk of the algorithm; we don't really know why our algorithm is doing this and we're not going to let you review the source code. I don't know what the possible solutions might be, but there's clearly a problem. Social media companies have largely abnegated responsibility for what goes on their platform and their platforms can't function without that abnegation of responsibility.

CM30 7y ago

> In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands. Interestingly, that shift seems to have happened everywhere, not just in politics. Many companies have also realised that they don't need to go through the media/journalists any more, and started advertising directly to their customers/users/fans too. Wonder if there's a term for that sort of social shift?

doctorless 7y ago
Decentralization. Although this term does not yet apply to the avenues through which this outreach occurs, but give it ten to twenty years and that too will change.

bassman9000 7y ago

How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? This is like saying why being scared of atom bombs when we already had swords.

addicted 7y ago

Newspapers and TV couldn't (a) Collect as much, if any, individual data (b) They couldnt tailor their content on an individual basis (c) There were not as many sources of data tracking your likes, location, buying patterns, eating patterns, entertainment patterns, writing patterns, voting patterns, reading patterns, etc. (d) Those sources of data could not be collated together I think fundamentally the issue is that too much personal data is being collected, and put together, making profiles on people that can be used and abused. Social media is the first major area where that data is being employed and often being deployed irresponsibly (although I question the idea that so much personal information could ever be deployed responsibly).