3 ms·

Cory gets it, that computing is a battleground for the future. Code is war by other means. We will all be forced to pick a side. It would be wise to familiarise

Cory gets it, that computing is a battleground for the future. Code is war by other means. We will all be forced to pick a side. It would be wise to familiarise ourselves with the lay of the land.

criddell 4y ago
What are the sides?
- mjh2539 4y ago
  The manufacturing of microprocessors and other ICs requires such an enormous amount of capital that all sides are practically indistinguishable. But more realistically, if you have access to the hardware, in principle, you can do whatever you want.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Too many issues and too many sides. Too much grey within each debate, too. Computing appliances vs. general purpose machines. End-user control vs. vendor. Privacy vs. transparency. Freedom of expression vs. curated/"safer" experiences. Algorithms vs. humans in the loop. Governmental vs. corporatist vs. end-user freedoms. Cloud/timeshare/virtualization vs. on-premises/own your own machine/etc. Perpetual copyright and central ownership of culture vs. information wants to be free. Security vs. flexibility. Not to mention after you get past the whole ideological debates, you have active state vs. state cyberwarfare and information warfare and other proxy battles... and cybercrime. Computing and networking as mass-market phenomena is still new. As much as we pat ourselves on the back in tech for rapid progress, the social mechanisms and business models for all of this are still unstable.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > Freedom of expression vs. curated/"safer" experiences I would tweak this to user-controlled curation vs platform-controlled curation. By itself, curation is not opposed to freedom of expression, it can be transparent (incoming emails sent to your spam folder) or hidden from end-users view.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  One side is people like me, who largely try to use software to run our lives and at odds with all the following sides. There are at least three surveillance apparatuses that seeks to record everything we do. * the state-surveillance apparatus to extend its own power (see Snowden) * the ad-industry-surveillance apparatus to increase their own profits. * the social-media-surveillance apparatus that wants to increase our engagement and in-collusion with the ad-industry increase their profits. The social-media companies + email companies that refuse to standardize their protocols. Then there is the copyright industry that has created DRM with no regards to stopping legitimate usage of media bought by us. There is the cloud-service providers that use open-source software to rake in billions of profits but won't donate 5 dollars to the creators of the open-source software. The OS creators that make it harder and harder for power-users to use their computer as they want to. The state-departments that force that use of apps on non-free OS/computers to access essential services.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    I'm not sure those last two are different. You can however split the ad industry surveillance into (at least) two kinds. The first is surveillance aimed at increasing the power of each individual advertisement by personalizing them to the victim, by their nature these typically seek all kinds of deeply personal information about someone's psyche but not necessarily their daily life. The second is surveillance aimed at 'proving' the effectiveness of ads, these typically ignore people's interests but dig deeply into their daily activities, what they buy, what they see, what they hear, just to be able to claim it was their ad that made someone buy something.
  - nuc1e0n 4y ago
    I wouldn't even call it an opposition of ideas. There's just people who understand, like Doctorow, and those that are flailing around.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  - Team computers-control-the-humans (CCH): run by a small group of humans on a power trip and staffed by a much larger group of humans who don't mind the control as long as they get to be Better than Somebody™ in the overall hierarchy. - Team humans-control-the-computers (HCC): those of us for whom not being in control of the computers around us is enough of a problem to warrant doing something about it. CCH can't win because as they get closer they end up treating the muggles poorly, which give HCC a recruiting uptick. But HCC can't win either because as they get closer it stops feeling important to continue the fight. It'll be one of those forever wars.
  - prpl 4y ago
    HCCH
    - thomastjeffery 4y ago
      Is that "Humans Control Computer Humans" or "Human Computers Control Humans"? Does it matter? Fuck.
      - prpl 4y ago
        I think I forgot the extra C Humans controlling computer-controlled humans or the molecular H3CH

Cory gets it, that computing is a battleground for the future. Code is war by other means. We will all be forced to pick a side. It would be wise to familiarise ourselves with the lay of the land.

criddell 4y ago

What are the sides?

mjh2539 4y ago
The manufacturing of microprocessors and other ICs requires such an enormous amount of capital that all sides are practically indistinguishable. But more realistically, if you have access to the hardware, in principle, you can do whatever you want.
mlyle 4y ago
Too many issues and too many sides. Too much grey within each debate, too. Computing appliances vs. general purpose machines. End-user control vs. vendor. Privacy vs. transparency. Freedom of expression vs. curated/"safer" experiences. Algorithms vs. humans in the loop. Governmental vs. corporatist vs. end-user freedoms. Cloud/timeshare/virtualization vs. on-premises/own your own machine/etc. Perpetual copyright and central ownership of culture vs. information wants to be free. Security vs. flexibility. Not to mention after you get past the whole ideological debates, you have active state vs. state cyberwarfare and information warfare and other proxy battles... and cybercrime. Computing and networking as mass-market phenomena is still new. As much as we pat ourselves on the back in tech for rapid progress, the social mechanisms and business models for all of this are still unstable.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > Freedom of expression vs. curated/"safer" experiences I would tweak this to user-controlled curation vs platform-controlled curation. By itself, curation is not opposed to freedom of expression, it can be transparent (incoming emails sent to your spam folder) or hidden from end-users view.
abdullahkhalids 4y ago
One side is people like me, who largely try to use software to run our lives and at odds with all the following sides. There are at least three surveillance apparatuses that seeks to record everything we do. * the state-surveillance apparatus to extend its own power (see Snowden) * the ad-industry-surveillance apparatus to increase their own profits. * the social-media-surveillance apparatus that wants to increase our engagement and in-collusion with the ad-industry increase their profits. The social-media companies + email companies that refuse to standardize their protocols. Then there is the copyright industry that has created DRM with no regards to stopping legitimate usage of media bought by us. There is the cloud-service providers that use open-source software to rake in billions of profits but won't donate 5 dollars to the creators of the open-source software. The OS creators that make it harder and harder for power-users to use their computer as they want to. The state-departments that force that use of apps on non-free OS/computers to access essential services.
- contravariant 4y ago
  I'm not sure those last two are different. You can however split the ad industry surveillance into (at least) two kinds. The first is surveillance aimed at increasing the power of each individual advertisement by personalizing them to the victim, by their nature these typically seek all kinds of deeply personal information about someone's psyche but not necessarily their daily life. The second is surveillance aimed at 'proving' the effectiveness of ads, these typically ignore people's interests but dig deeply into their daily activities, what they buy, what they see, what they hear, just to be able to claim it was their ad that made someone buy something.
- nuc1e0n 4y ago
  I wouldn't even call it an opposition of ideas. There's just people who understand, like Doctorow, and those that are flailing around.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
- Team computers-control-the-humans (CCH): run by a small group of humans on a power trip and staffed by a much larger group of humans who don't mind the control as long as they get to be Better than Somebody™ in the overall hierarchy. - Team humans-control-the-computers (HCC): those of us for whom not being in control of the computers around us is enough of a problem to warrant doing something about it. CCH can't win because as they get closer they end up treating the muggles poorly, which give HCC a recruiting uptick. But HCC can't win either because as they get closer it stops feeling important to continue the fight. It'll be one of those forever wars.
- prpl 4y ago
  HCCH
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    Is that "Humans Control Computer Humans" or "Human Computers Control Humans"? Does it matter? Fuck.
    - prpl 4y ago
      I think I forgot the extra C Humans controlling computer-controlled humans or the molecular H3CH