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‘We Blew It.’ Douglas Rushkoff’s Take on the Future of the Web

21 points by inetsee 6y ago

doonesbury 6y ago
Quoting, "the whole point of crypto was to break the pyramid scheme of central bank planning and currency, yet here we are using it as a meta-pyramid scheme." and immediate following question: "There’s a sense crypto has lost its way, but it also seems like our best hope of beating the current exploitative and extractive system." In both there are unproven or unsubstantiated claims here. We're all vaguely aware banks lend fractions of deposits on the calculated risk that demand on those deposits never exceeds deposits. So what's the sense in which this is a pyramid scheme? And in what sense is central banking extractive? Presumably the implied criticism is bank bailouts, and federal government's perpetual deficit spending as in the USA?
reidjs 6y ago
Pretty bleak article. I think a lot of his points are repeated HN threads regularly. Mainly the parts about losing the DIY/hacker side of the internet to big corps like AWS and FaceBook and whatnot. Crypto currency is cool tech but I became a bit disillusioned by that scene when I got to know some people who truly drank the kool aid and tried to live a fiat-free lifestyle. It’s not there yet and it might not ever be.
8bitsrule 6y ago
I wish Douglas would focus more on solidifying a map of where we might go from here and ideas on sensible responses wherever we wind up. That'd be far less frantic-prophet-of-doom, and potentially more healthy and useful. Whatever happens we'll need some reasonable agreement on our best options. There's no 'answer' until we get there.
- pracer 6y ago
  Agree. This is another typical article about "how bad big bad companies are" because the technologies were not used as the writers wanted them to be. They are always oblivious to the possibility that the users and developers of those technologies actually wanted to explore different paths instead of their way. It always feel like anticapitalists that claim "the system" coopted good ideas and turned them evil. When "the system" is the people using those technologies. No matter what Facebook or Microsoft do, if people don't like it, it will fail. It seems the problem they have is that people think differently than they do, and they don't like that.
  - 8bitsrule 6y ago
    Yep. I know he's well-intentioned, but a lot of visionary thinkers get lost in the details and wind up going in circles. Bucky Fuller is an example of a visionary who actually attempted to think of solutions to the problems he saw, like the geodesic dome, the dymaxion car, etc. If we're going to go another way, we need a picture of what we'll need, more than we need people to keep repeating "no no, this is all wrong".
da39a3ee 6y ago
> I think climate change is the most pressing issue. I’m a believer. I look at the California wildfires, COVID-19 and other weird diseases, like mad-cow, as symptoms of climate change. This sort of total lack of clarity of thought is distressingly common. For example, tracing everything to climate change, and BLM conflating racial issues and gender issues. Those causes would be well served by ceasing to give the impression that their proponents cannot think clearly.

21 points by inetsee 6y ago

Quoting, "the whole point of crypto was to break the pyramid scheme of central bank planning and currency, yet here we are using it as a meta-pyramid scheme." and immediate following question: "There’s a sense crypto has lost its way, but it also seems like our best hope of beating the current exploitative and extractive system." In both there are unproven or unsubstantiated claims here. We're all vaguely aware banks lend fractions of deposits on the calculated risk that demand on those deposits never exceeds deposits. So what's the sense in which this is a pyramid scheme? And in what sense is central banking extractive? Presumably the implied criticism is bank bailouts, and federal government's perpetual deficit spending as in the USA?

reidjs 6y ago

Pretty bleak article. I think a lot of his points are repeated HN threads regularly. Mainly the parts about losing the DIY/hacker side of the internet to big corps like AWS and FaceBook and whatnot. Crypto currency is cool tech but I became a bit disillusioned by that scene when I got to know some people who truly drank the kool aid and tried to live a fiat-free lifestyle. It’s not there yet and it might not ever be.

8bitsrule 6y ago

I wish Douglas would focus more on solidifying a map of where we might go from here and ideas on sensible responses wherever we wind up. That'd be far less frantic-prophet-of-doom, and potentially more healthy and useful. Whatever happens we'll need some reasonable agreement on our best options. There's no 'answer' until we get there.

pracer 6y ago
Agree. This is another typical article about "how bad big bad companies are" because the technologies were not used as the writers wanted them to be. They are always oblivious to the possibility that the users and developers of those technologies actually wanted to explore different paths instead of their way. It always feel like anticapitalists that claim "the system" coopted good ideas and turned them evil. When "the system" is the people using those technologies. No matter what Facebook or Microsoft do, if people don't like it, it will fail. It seems the problem they have is that people think differently than they do, and they don't like that.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Yep. I know he's well-intentioned, but a lot of visionary thinkers get lost in the details and wind up going in circles. Bucky Fuller is an example of a visionary who actually attempted to think of solutions to the problems he saw, like the geodesic dome, the dymaxion car, etc. If we're going to go another way, we need a picture of what we'll need, more than we need people to keep repeating "no no, this is all wrong".

da39a3ee 6y ago

> I think climate change is the most pressing issue. I’m a believer. I look at the California wildfires, COVID-19 and other weird diseases, like mad-cow, as symptoms of climate change. This sort of total lack of clarity of thought is distressingly common. For example, tracing everything to climate change, and BLM conflating racial issues and gender issues. Those causes would be well served by ceasing to give the impression that their proponents cannot think clearly.