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Finally that kind of stuff starts landing on the main page of HN. I highly recommend a unique book: "Surveillance Valley", Yasha Levine. Although not without c

Finally that kind of stuff starts landing on the main page of HN. I highly recommend a unique book: "Surveillance Valley", Yasha Levine. Although not without cons, the book makes a very strong case for the Internet to be planned from the very start as a surveillance vehicle of the future. The founding grounds of some well-known companies are at lest surprising. The first 50% of the book is about (rather unknown) history of the net industry, 1950-1990, with focus on three letter agencies and their impact on tech. The remaining half is about a broader picture regarding what we've found ourselves in and how the future is going to be like. Surveillance capitalism is just a tip of an iceberg... If you're someone who gets that the future by necessity will be both totalitarian and technocratic and you have a high-level technical ability / awareness of how one can plan for that, please LEAVE A COMMENT HERE, so I can at least take a look on your profile, read your entries on HN and follow you in the future. It's incredibly hard to try to be a cypherpunk today due to a lot of BS people tend to recommend. A lot of awareness once quite common in the past has been forgotten. If you can help in any reasonable way, please do. I still have some time to make myself knowledgeable enough to be able to operate in that new world, but the topic is so huge and I truly think that one day my life is going to depend on that knowledge -- so I'm stressing too much instead of methodically work on it. (I'm a web dev, I get some Linux, maybe even more than a little bit, I'm to some degree knowledgeable about both networking and security, unfortunately more on the level of enterprise products than fundamentals. I know a little bit about everything, which is far from thorough understanding of what's going to be really important in the future, and I have a persistent feeling that obscure / not well known solutions / tools are going to be a cornerstone of making it right).

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
I just checked your book recommendation, the writing is much better than this article. Although it's still trying to create an impression that everything is a giant government conspiracy (which I don't agree, I'd rather see it as a complex interplay between groups with shared interests, and it's probably why you are being downvoted), but the book is concretely based on history and evidences with reasonable citations. Already added to my read list, thanks.
- user_agent 6y ago
  I don't care that much about my HN rank, but truth is a very important value in my life. The book I've recommended is a unique one (although I was able to point to a couple of misinterpretations the author made, but nothing critical), in a sense that it has a lot of that kind of information in one place (and I think it might be the only one book of that kind available; I have a dedicated book shelf on the topic, so I'm more or less aware of what's on the market). I'm not going to make anyone here to change his mind. People have their own right to decide. Moreover, I think that's the only way we can reasonably coexist with each other. What I don't like and I won't accept is people acting-out their negative emotions when challenged with a point of view that they don't like. We aren't children anymore. Either something is a fact or a logical extension of thereof, or it's a BS. I refuse to pay attention to inappropriately configured emotional "processors" in case of some individuals. Consider that the book offers only unpleasant kind of information. The one that makes you think that maybe you should change your approach toward matters you've been associating yourself with. It derails you. The one that says: ups, shit hits the fan, and there's going to be a lot of work regarding making it right again. I'm also a psychologist and the mentioned phenomena is well know to me. I expected nothing else. But I'll keep my expectations regarding maturity and logical integrity if one wants to get into a discussion with me. But I also guarantee that the book does all of that for a good reason and not without one. I would never recommend someone a piece of knowledge not in line with the truth, or one that hasn't been well checked by myself. It's a matter of honor to me. What I'd like to ask people to do is to assess an importance of a given advice / recommendation by the actual importance of the topic itself first, even before one is going to move to fact checking. In other words: we should be vigilant when confronted with something of utmost importance and we should inspect the topic in that spirit. This is how one makes proper risk assessment BTW. For people who can't transcendent themselves when challenged with reality - there's no hope. Would anyone be interested what position a hopeless person takes regarding anything? I guess that's a rhetorical question. OK, whining mode off ;) Thank you for your encouragement and you're welcome. PS: I completely agree on your "I'd rather see it as a complex interplay between groups with shared interests". We might be differently approaching the conclusions / predictions, though. That's not a big issue. But I must say I'm rather on the be prepared side and I consider the potential technocratic future to be a very real scenario at this point. One thing is sure: the phenomena discussed can't be ignored by a thoughtful individual. That would be against facts.
neffy 6y ago
I disagree with the inevitability - but it does seem to be the future that we are barreling into in some countries - and of course already there in China. @segfaultbuserr is right in that a lot of this is due to blind opportunism, and an apparent inability to see it as the trap that it is. The books looks very interesting - thanks for the recommendation.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

I just checked your book recommendation, the writing is much better than this article. Although it's still trying to create an impression that everything is a giant government conspiracy (which I don't agree, I'd rather see it as a complex interplay between groups with shared interests, and it's probably why you are being downvoted), but the book is concretely based on history and evidences with reasonable citations. Already added to my read list, thanks.

user_agent 6y ago
I don't care that much about my HN rank, but truth is a very important value in my life. The book I've recommended is a unique one (although I was able to point to a couple of misinterpretations the author made, but nothing critical), in a sense that it has a lot of that kind of information in one place (and I think it might be the only one book of that kind available; I have a dedicated book shelf on the topic, so I'm more or less aware of what's on the market). I'm not going to make anyone here to change his mind. People have their own right to decide. Moreover, I think that's the only way we can reasonably coexist with each other. What I don't like and I won't accept is people acting-out their negative emotions when challenged with a point of view that they don't like. We aren't children anymore. Either something is a fact or a logical extension of thereof, or it's a BS. I refuse to pay attention to inappropriately configured emotional "processors" in case of some individuals. Consider that the book offers only unpleasant kind of information. The one that makes you think that maybe you should change your approach toward matters you've been associating yourself with. It derails you. The one that says: ups, shit hits the fan, and there's going to be a lot of work regarding making it right again. I'm also a psychologist and the mentioned phenomena is well know to me. I expected nothing else. But I'll keep my expectations regarding maturity and logical integrity if one wants to get into a discussion with me. But I also guarantee that the book does all of that for a good reason and not without one. I would never recommend someone a piece of knowledge not in line with the truth, or one that hasn't been well checked by myself. It's a matter of honor to me. What I'd like to ask people to do is to assess an importance of a given advice / recommendation by the actual importance of the topic itself first, even before one is going to move to fact checking. In other words: we should be vigilant when confronted with something of utmost importance and we should inspect the topic in that spirit. This is how one makes proper risk assessment BTW. For people who can't transcendent themselves when challenged with reality - there's no hope. Would anyone be interested what position a hopeless person takes regarding anything? I guess that's a rhetorical question. OK, whining mode off ;) Thank you for your encouragement and you're welcome. PS: I completely agree on your "I'd rather see it as a complex interplay between groups with shared interests". We might be differently approaching the conclusions / predictions, though. That's not a big issue. But I must say I'm rather on the be prepared side and I consider the potential technocratic future to be a very real scenario at this point. One thing is sure: the phenomena discussed can't be ignored by a thoughtful individual. That would be against facts.

neffy 6y ago

I disagree with the inevitability - but it does seem to be the future that we are barreling into in some countries - and of course already there in China. @segfaultbuserr is right in that a lot of this is due to blind opportunism, and an apparent inability to see it as the trap that it is. The books looks very interesting - thanks for the recommendation.