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No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had na

No, you and I just had the singular luck to exist at a time where computers were for weirdos, deviants, and dreamers. The internet was full of people who had naive ideas of what it would be used for and built beautiful and horrible things but they were built largely on ideology, not the banal mediocre lukewarm lawful neutral selfish tribal beige tyranny of the rest of the world. The technology is mature enough now that laws and rules and rent seeking and all the old power games are here and and will continue to increase in concentration. At least we got to see something new.

alentred 3y ago
My goodness, you are right. Your comment is like a cold shower, I never thought of it in this way. *We are hippies.* I'll keep being a naive optimist as I am, but this way of thinking offers an important perspective to add some realism to my judgment. Thank you, I mean it.
ctrw 3y ago
You just need to be as disreputable to the current establishment as we were to the previous one. Slap a swastika on it and you'll never have people trying to take over your project. Same way goatse kept the old forums from being overran by normies: https://web.archive.org/web/20040109213953/http://www.goatse.cx/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040109213953/http://www.goatse...
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
No. The technology is different this time. I argue software is a form of literacy, and literacy demands openness. My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. In a git repo. We can see your crimes now. Wikipedia is this in microcosm - we can see the edits, we can use software to watch for us, everything is in the open and the feudalism and rent seeking exist best in the hidden darkness What we do with that is up to us.
- quiet_cool 3y ago
  [dead]
- gruez 3y ago
  >My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. There's zero chance that the CTO at a company as big as VW is going to be personally committing to code repos.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
    I thought it was already established that's exactly what happened?
    - ctrw 3y ago
      [flagged]
- almatabata 3y ago
  > My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. We know that VW did not write the code. It was the supplier Bosch that did it. VW simply activated a feature through configuration.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    I understood that the VW CTO committed the config chnage ?
    - almatabata 3y ago
      Do you remember where you read that information?
    - serf 3y ago
      the statement of facts[0] essentially disagrees with that perspective. "33. Supervisors B, C, and F, and others, however, realized that VW could not design a diesel engine that would both meet the stricter US NOx emissions standards that would become effective in 2007 and attract sufficient customer demand in the US market. Instead of bringing to market a diesel vehicle that could legitimately meet the new , more restrictive US NOx emissions standards, VW AG employees acting at the direct of Supervisors B, C, and F and others, including Company A employees, designed, created, and implemented a software function to detect, evade, and defeat US emissions standards. tl;dr : Bosch (company A) along with VW employees created the evasion function at the behest of supervisors. [0]: https://www.mass.gov/doc/vw-statement-of-factspdf/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/vw-statement-of-factspdf/download
lawrenceyan 3y ago
You should get into crypto! Seriously, all of them are still here.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  If there's a space where the creative impulse is more thoroughly commidifed than crypto, I don't know what it is. I say that as an early, often, and continuing crypto enthusiast for the same naive reasons I am an internet technology enthusiast. I do think, however, that the two movements share a common ancestor in the certain and nearly evangelical belief that technology holds the answers to messy people problems- early internet culture was largely about assuming the best in people, and crypto by it's design is about assuming the absolute worst and harnessing that to make tech. Of the two, I think crypto is probably more sustainable!
  - lawrenceyan 3y ago
    I like to take the more optimistic viewpoint for crypto that it’s about creating resilient systems that will thrive regardless of external conditions.
quartesixte 3y ago
Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?
- JPLeRouzic 3y ago
  Deep space but not with rockets, rogue/advanced biology/medicine?
- vjk800 3y ago
  Alternative internet communities with higher (even if only slightly) barriers for entry and no financial incentives to ruin everything. Maybe mastodon/matrix communities or something? I honestly am not up to speed on what exists in geek online communities space nowadays.
  - ctrw 3y ago
    No, the people who run those are the people who couldn't cut it as reddit mods. If you want the old internet vibe the dark Web is the place to be. Tor, freenet, i2p. I'm quite partial to freenet because it's completely segregated from the regular internet and refreshes as the speed of dial up. No interactive web2.0 here.
- mihalycsaba 3y ago
  Outside
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Be the change you want to see. Create quality content.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mike_hock 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - 3y ago
neilv 3y ago
Yeah, I think that's the biggest part of a lot of disappointing things that have happened and are happening. There's also a separate factor in some problems, which is that the power and reach of bad actors are increased by tech. To use a familiar and relatively innocuous example, before the popular Internet, virtually no scammers from some developing nation halfway around the globe would be able to reach the US, which would effectively mean a lot fewer jerks in the world, as far as people in the US knew. I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before (at the same time that some positive memes are also propagated). I don't know what would be a good baseline for evaluating, nor whether there are good historical analogs for some of the recent sociopathy -- including that practiced by the tech industry, and that merely enabled by the tech.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before I doubt it, bad behaviour is more likely to be called out and borderline cases probably pushed towards cooperation. Sociopathy is, I think, the condition where one can't be pushed towards cooperation by social pressure. I think that the acts of calling people out (in addition to your point about tech empowering bad actors), just makes it seem like they are being normalised.
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  > increasing normalization of sociopathy I think this is the case and appears in many shapes. * libertarians lift their individual freedom above societal needs but they fail to see their own dependence on them, like any public services funded by taxes. * Crypto bros advertise new "currencies" but use them as volatile investments or foster such expectations. With this volatility it will never become a fully stable currency. There is a common wisdom in traditional trading that you dont do arbitrage / speculate on real currencies because of their _intended_ stability. Another failed realization (because of personal gain attached to it). * Right leaning people argue against criminal migrants but discriminate not by commited crimes but simply foreignness. Their percieved superior cultural identity is their solution to internal cultural problems but they fail to realize how criminal sociotopes emerge and that its independent of ethnicity. I could go on if i had time.

alentred 3y ago

My goodness, you are right. Your comment is like a cold shower, I never thought of it in this way. *We are hippies.* I'll keep being a naive optimist as I am, but this way of thinking offers an important perspective to add some realism to my judgment. Thank you, I mean it.

ctrw 3y ago

You just need to be as disreputable to the current establishment as we were to the previous one. Slap a swastika on it and you'll never have people trying to take over your project. Same way goatse kept the old forums from being overran by normies: https://web.archive.org/web/20040109213953/http://www.goatse.cx/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040109213953/http://www.goatse...

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

No. The technology is different this time. I argue software is a form of literacy, and literacy demands openness. My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. In a git repo. We can see your crimes now. Wikipedia is this in microcosm - we can see the edits, we can use software to watch for us, everything is in the open and the feudalism and rent seeking exist best in the hidden darkness What we do with that is up to us.

quiet_cool 3y ago
[dead]
gruez 3y ago
>My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. There's zero chance that the CTO at a company as big as VW is going to be personally committing to code repos.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
  I thought it was already established that's exactly what happened?
  - ctrw 3y ago
    [flagged]
almatabata 3y ago
> My great hope is the VW emissions scandal where the CTO of the company had to commit lines of code that said “do billion dollar crime”. We know that VW did not write the code. It was the supplier Bosch that did it. VW simply activated a feature through configuration.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  I understood that the VW CTO committed the config chnage ?
  - almatabata 3y ago
    Do you remember where you read that information?
  - serf 3y ago
    the statement of facts[0] essentially disagrees with that perspective. "33. Supervisors B, C, and F, and others, however, realized that VW could not design a diesel engine that would both meet the stricter US NOx emissions standards that would become effective in 2007 and attract sufficient customer demand in the US market. Instead of bringing to market a diesel vehicle that could legitimately meet the new , more restrictive US NOx emissions standards, VW AG employees acting at the direct of Supervisors B, C, and F and others, including Company A employees, designed, created, and implemented a software function to detect, evade, and defeat US emissions standards. tl;dr : Bosch (company A) along with VW employees created the evasion function at the behest of supervisors. [0]: https://www.mass.gov/doc/vw-statement-of-factspdf/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/vw-statement-of-factspdf/download

lawrenceyan 3y ago

You should get into crypto! Seriously, all of them are still here.

idiotsecant 3y ago
If there's a space where the creative impulse is more thoroughly commidifed than crypto, I don't know what it is. I say that as an early, often, and continuing crypto enthusiast for the same naive reasons I am an internet technology enthusiast. I do think, however, that the two movements share a common ancestor in the certain and nearly evangelical belief that technology holds the answers to messy people problems- early internet culture was largely about assuming the best in people, and crypto by it's design is about assuming the absolute worst and harnessing that to make tech. Of the two, I think crypto is probably more sustainable!
- lawrenceyan 3y ago
  I like to take the more optimistic viewpoint for crypto that it’s about creating resilient systems that will thrive regardless of external conditions.

quartesixte 3y ago

Is there anywhere new for us to go? Or must we wait for some new leap forward still?

JPLeRouzic 3y ago
Deep space but not with rockets, rogue/advanced biology/medicine?
vjk800 3y ago
Alternative internet communities with higher (even if only slightly) barriers for entry and no financial incentives to ruin everything. Maybe mastodon/matrix communities or something? I honestly am not up to speed on what exists in geek online communities space nowadays.
- ctrw 3y ago
  No, the people who run those are the people who couldn't cut it as reddit mods. If you want the old internet vibe the dark Web is the place to be. Tor, freenet, i2p. I'm quite partial to freenet because it's completely segregated from the regular internet and refreshes as the speed of dial up. No interactive web2.0 here.
mihalycsaba 3y ago
Outside
carlosjobim 3y ago
Be the change you want to see. Create quality content.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mike_hock 3y ago
[flagged]
- 3y ago

neilv 3y ago

Yeah, I think that's the biggest part of a lot of disappointing things that have happened and are happening. There's also a separate factor in some problems, which is that the power and reach of bad actors are increased by tech. To use a familiar and relatively innocuous example, before the popular Internet, virtually no scammers from some developing nation halfway around the globe would be able to reach the US, which would effectively mean a lot fewer jerks in the world, as far as people in the US knew. I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before (at the same time that some positive memes are also propagated). I don't know what would be a good baseline for evaluating, nor whether there are good historical analogs for some of the recent sociopathy -- including that practiced by the tech industry, and that merely enabled by the tech.

ben_w 3y ago
> I also wonder whether sociopathy is being normalized more or faster than before I doubt it, bad behaviour is more likely to be called out and borderline cases probably pushed towards cooperation. Sociopathy is, I think, the condition where one can't be pushed towards cooperation by social pressure. I think that the acts of calling people out (in addition to your point about tech empowering bad actors), just makes it seem like they are being normalised.
throwawayqqq11 3y ago
> increasing normalization of sociopathy I think this is the case and appears in many shapes. * libertarians lift their individual freedom above societal needs but they fail to see their own dependence on them, like any public services funded by taxes. * Crypto bros advertise new "currencies" but use them as volatile investments or foster such expectations. With this volatility it will never become a fully stable currency. There is a common wisdom in traditional trading that you dont do arbitrage / speculate on real currencies because of their _intended_ stability. Another failed realization (because of personal gain attached to it). * Right leaning people argue against criminal migrants but discriminate not by commited crimes but simply foreignness. Their percieved superior cultural identity is their solution to internal cultural problems but they fail to realize how criminal sociotopes emerge and that its independent of ethnicity. I could go on if i had time.