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I feel like a lot of people read cyberpunk fiction and didn't realize that it's a dystopia, and tried to make it real because it was fun to read. Like... peopl
by ModernMech 4y ago
I feel like a lot of people read cyberpunk fiction and didn't realize that it's a dystopia, and tried to make it real because it was fun to read.
Like... people had to make these things. They put a lot of work into them. Someone had to come up with this idea, then they had to prototype it, then actually manufacture it, and install it.... and all the people in that chain resulted in advertisements being fed to you while you pee. That's what all those people spent their time doing.
If you ask any of the people in the supply chain, they'll tell you this kind of thing is stupid and probably shouldn't exist. And yet, it does, while other more pressing things we urgently need don't. The incentives of society are totally backwards. This is a priority inversion, which is the kind of thing that can cause a system to fail.
It started out cute ("Alexa, I need TP!"). Now it's getting dystopian while still having a cute outer shell (tracking your genitals and selling you ads while you urinate... but it's a game!). Soon it's going to get real, and we'll end up in Cube (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(1997_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(1997_film)). No one was having fun in that cyberpunk future.
> I fear the implementation details. Cameras are ~$15 and computer-vision is free. Let’s pray they’re not connected to Wi-Fi.
If it's not now, it will be soon. We need a new Moore's law for privacy. It states that anything that is private now, will be opened up and made public in the future if it can be monetized through advertisements. It starts with your biographical info on Facebook; it moves on to tracking your body through its location, how often it moves, its weight, and now urination in public places (soon there will be a scale under the urinal and they'll know how much you weigh); and it will end at your medical records, financial records, religious records, and even what you do in your bedroom. If the trend continues, if corporations can find a way to make money off of those records and data, it will be monetized and it will become public information when it's (of course) hacked and leaked.
- karaterobot 4y agoThis feels like an archetypal bad product idea I would have worked on in my contractor days. It's always some dude. Usually they made money doing something else, and they had a (really dumb) idea one day, involving gamifying something, or putting ads somewhere, or both. If by some miracle they get the right people around them, and don't just waste all their money, they can actually put something on the market. 99% of the time, it goes nowhere, once in a great while it does. I'm not totally convinced this product will be a success — they are probably just burning runway. But your overall point is valid, because there will always be some dude who will keep trying this kind of thing until eventually, by statistical oddity, it sticks. Then, it will stay around, and we'll be on to the next fresh hell. You talk about a Moore's law for privacy. My mental model is more like a ratchet: it takes a some force to advance the mechanism, but once it clicks into place it is locked there forever. There's no going back, only forwards, so you should be extremely careful about anything that pushes you ahead.
- ModernMech 4y ago> Then, it will stay around, and we'll be on to the next fresh hell. Yes exactly, and your ratchet analogy works here too. Because in our society, the guy who does end up making a billion dollars on a genital surveillance network is lauded as a genius hero meant to be emulated. His business model will be remixed and rerun by countless others, and will spread to other countries. Once something is shown to work, it will be tried and tried again.
- zacharycohn 4y agoAs Cyd Harrell says, "Cyberpunk was a warning, not an instruction manual."
- jhbadger 4y agoWilliam Gibson himself has said that he finds it odd when at talks and book signings people come up to him to thank him for inspiring them to pursue a career in technology. What about the futures he imagined where there was no middle class and everybody who wasn't super rich were criminals trying to get some of the wealth from the super rich made people think "yes, that's what I want to be a part of"?
- __d 4y agoI think it's because prior to that, their imagined future had only the super rich and the super poor, and the super poor had no agency whatsoever. Cyberpunk showed a path via which an average person could at least eke out _some_ sort of life in the dystopian hellscape.
- goodpoint 4y ago> a lot of people read cyberpunk fiction and didn't realize that it's a dystopia People can be really dense but this is puzzling.
- xwdv 4y ago> Soon it's going to get real, and we'll end up in Cube (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(1997_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(1997_film)). No one was having fun in that cyberpunk future. I disagree. We always see cyberpunk dystopia stories from the lowly peasant consumer side, but I bet the people actively building the technology behind the dystopia are having fun. I know I would.
- ModernMech 4y agoYeah until it gets you too! That was one of the points of cube; one of the guys building the tech ended up being trapped inside of it. Point being no one is safe from the death machine once society builds it. That means the technologists having along the way.
- hulitu 4y agoYeah, but try to tell this to 3 letter agencies.
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