3 ms·

"The Soviet Union made a similar" Oh come on, one is a market proposition and the other is a forced choice at the barrel of a gun. Is the "no shirt no shoes n

by Steko 14y ago

"The Soviet Union made a similar" Oh come on, one is a market proposition and the other is a forced choice at the barrel of a gun. Is the "no shirt no shoes no service" sign at the store down the street the second coming of Stalin too?

veidr 14y ago
Ha ha, OK I admit that analogy was too heavy-handed for the context. It didn't feel so as I wrote it, maybe because I had already walked it back from 'Arbeit macht frei', which was the first thing to come to mind. The point I wanted to make was that it feels kinda creepy when people start believe the propaganda (of a government, corporation, cult, or whatever it may be) that calls it "freedom", when it's actually the other thing.
- Steko 14y ago
  You're right that it's certainly not freedom that Apple is selling. The correct counterargument to Doctorow et al has to take the freedom issue head on, it looks like this: When people move from the country to a small town they are forced to give up some freedoms. When the small town turns into a large town even more. A large city, even more. I can't crank the stereo to 11 and play it at all hours every night on my block of dense apartment buildings. I also can't keep a pet rhino, walk around outside naked or throw my tv out the window onto the sidewalk 14 floors down. I could list these all day and there are some legitimate things I should be free to do but I can't, that's a slightly harmful byproduct we accept for convenience. Regulation is an easy scapegoat but every 'wild west' town with no rules either got a serious government willing to make those trade offs or it died out. That's universal not just in the US. One of the well known promises of technology is to shrink the world and connect everyone to everyone. In short we'll all be much closer cyberneighbors then today and there will be large sacrifices to privacy and other freedoms just like people who moved or found themselves in cities had to make. Another well known byproduct of technology has been the amount of potential damage a small group of people can do (Aum cult, McVeigh, Unabomber, Amerithrax). This again will act as a multiplier on the trade offs we will be forced to make as we move from the ability to 3d print guns to bomb materials to nuclear and biologic molecules. The deeply interconnected world of tomorrow will need people to wear virtual pants. QED.
  - aethertap 14y ago
    You make some good points, but I think it's important to make a distinction between the management of behavior by fiat and the management of behavior by response to improper actions. The examples you give for restricted behaviors are clearly valid, but they don't imply that I should not be allowed to own a stereo or TV on the chance that I might crank it to 11 or throw it out the window. I think that the issue at stake here is more closely related to the opposite case, where we would be disallowed from owning those things for fear of future misbehavior. In my opinion, there is a profound difference between limiting a person's behavior by eliminating their ability to decide versus limiting it by responding to transgressions. The logic of limiting ability to decide ends with a gilded cage, which is something I'd prefer to avoid.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    So will we be able to have sex without the entire 3D full-sensory experience recording immediately being uploaded to 2050 Youtube?

by Steko 14y ago

veidr 14y ago

Ha ha, OK I admit that analogy was too heavy-handed for the context. It didn't feel so as I wrote it, maybe because I had already walked it back from 'Arbeit macht frei', which was the first thing to come to mind. The point I wanted to make was that it feels kinda creepy when people start believe the propaganda (of a government, corporation, cult, or whatever it may be) that calls it "freedom", when it's actually the other thing.

Steko 14y ago
You're right that it's certainly not freedom that Apple is selling. The correct counterargument to Doctorow et al has to take the freedom issue head on, it looks like this: When people move from the country to a small town they are forced to give up some freedoms. When the small town turns into a large town even more. A large city, even more. I can't crank the stereo to 11 and play it at all hours every night on my block of dense apartment buildings. I also can't keep a pet rhino, walk around outside naked or throw my tv out the window onto the sidewalk 14 floors down. I could list these all day and there are some legitimate things I should be free to do but I can't, that's a slightly harmful byproduct we accept for convenience. Regulation is an easy scapegoat but every 'wild west' town with no rules either got a serious government willing to make those trade offs or it died out. That's universal not just in the US. One of the well known promises of technology is to shrink the world and connect everyone to everyone. In short we'll all be much closer cyberneighbors then today and there will be large sacrifices to privacy and other freedoms just like people who moved or found themselves in cities had to make. Another well known byproduct of technology has been the amount of potential damage a small group of people can do (Aum cult, McVeigh, Unabomber, Amerithrax). This again will act as a multiplier on the trade offs we will be forced to make as we move from the ability to 3d print guns to bomb materials to nuclear and biologic molecules. The deeply interconnected world of tomorrow will need people to wear virtual pants. QED.
- aethertap 14y ago
  You make some good points, but I think it's important to make a distinction between the management of behavior by fiat and the management of behavior by response to improper actions. The examples you give for restricted behaviors are clearly valid, but they don't imply that I should not be allowed to own a stereo or TV on the chance that I might crank it to 11 or throw it out the window. I think that the issue at stake here is more closely related to the opposite case, where we would be disallowed from owning those things for fear of future misbehavior. In my opinion, there is a profound difference between limiting a person's behavior by eliminating their ability to decide versus limiting it by responding to transgressions. The logic of limiting ability to decide ends with a gilded cage, which is something I'd prefer to avoid.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  So will we be able to have sex without the entire 3D full-sensory experience recording immediately being uploaded to 2050 Youtube?