4 ms·

It is interesting thought, especially as few days back someone in HN wrote completely opposite view, that everything should be controlled and spied on (and for

It is interesting thought, especially as few days back someone in HN wrote completely opposite view, that everything should be controlled and spied on (and for the love of universe I cannot find it again, it was on first page of HN I would appreciate link ...), because with progress we are becoming more powerful and more destructive - so any human in future with enough knowledge, would have ability to destroying entire humanity. Where is the middle ground between those two ends? Maybe it is similar to what we have now?

jillesvangurp 6y ago
It's basically fighting the inevitable. Technical progress is relentless and basically impossible to control. You can unilaterally choose to not participate. But that just means giving more control to exactly those people you are most afraid of. The best way to stay ahead of that game is to be a part of it. I take it as a given that a few generations from now, every move, expression, twitch, etc. will be recorded, persisted (in perpetuity), analyzed, etc. by many mutually hostile parties. Even right now, we're never far away from dozens of active microphones (i.e. phones) that may or may not be live streaming an audio feed over the network. Many cities are covered in cameras. A lot of financial traffic is electronic already. So, you could argue that although incomplete, it's already getting hard to cover your tracks. Tin foil hats don't really suffice anymore. In fact, I believe we are just living through a very narrow window of time where this is all technically feasible but not common practice or practical yet on a global scale. I'm talking about a cradle to grave thing. It's not going to be opt in or opt out for anyone ultimately. It's basically an arms race. However, I take some comfort from the notion that there will be many parties doing that and watching each other and thus keeping each other honest. The irony of that is that this applies equally to dictators, corrupt politicians, criminals, terrorists, military, etc. as well. They may be empowered to misbehave but they won't be able to do so covertly. If you are powerful enough, you get to rewrite history. But in the future that will require access to the digital archives of all your enemies. And you can never be sure that you got every bit of that.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

It's basically fighting the inevitable. Technical progress is relentless and basically impossible to control. You can unilaterally choose to not participate. But that just means giving more control to exactly those people you are most afraid of. The best way to stay ahead of that game is to be a part of it. I take it as a given that a few generations from now, every move, expression, twitch, etc. will be recorded, persisted (in perpetuity), analyzed, etc. by many mutually hostile parties. Even right now, we're never far away from dozens of active microphones (i.e. phones) that may or may not be live streaming an audio feed over the network. Many cities are covered in cameras. A lot of financial traffic is electronic already. So, you could argue that although incomplete, it's already getting hard to cover your tracks. Tin foil hats don't really suffice anymore. In fact, I believe we are just living through a very narrow window of time where this is all technically feasible but not common practice or practical yet on a global scale. I'm talking about a cradle to grave thing. It's not going to be opt in or opt out for anyone ultimately. It's basically an arms race. However, I take some comfort from the notion that there will be many parties doing that and watching each other and thus keeping each other honest. The irony of that is that this applies equally to dictators, corrupt politicians, criminals, terrorists, military, etc. as well. They may be empowered to misbehave but they won't be able to do so covertly. If you are powerful enough, you get to rewrite history. But in the future that will require access to the digital archives of all your enemies. And you can never be sure that you got every bit of that.