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by yogthos 3mo ago

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kfjeifjejfj 3mo ago
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- deleted 3mo ago
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- yogthos 3mo ago
  I find Orwell appeals to the pseudo-intellectual crowd because he says things that don't really have any profound insight, but seem deep to superficial people who want to feel smart. When you look at it critically, his writing has a really strong 'I'm 13 and this is deep' energy to it.
dash2 3mo ago
This is beyond silly. The guy who wrote Down and Out… and Road to Wigan Pier, and actually fought fascists in Spain, couldn’t imagine proles as anything but brainless subhumans? Orwell in 1948 didn’t predict computers? Have I been trolled?
- VonGuard 3mo ago
  Obvious troll. Calling Orwell a rich kid who got his feelings hurt is obscene. I challenge anyone who says that to work as a plongeur for even one week. Or to live on only toast and tea, bumming around the work houses in the UK. He never begged for money from anyone, he only worked during this time, and his book on the topic is remarkable. It's a must read for anyone who's ever worked in the food service industry. His work house experiences informed 1984. The original poster in this comment thread is just trolling beyond belief, and also, seems to have no grasp of the topics at hand what so ever.
  - yogthos 3mo ago
    The guy was literally just slumming it by choice. Only one trolling here is you bud.
gdsimoes 3mo ago
I find Orwell to be a much better writer than Asimov, and 1984 was praised by people like Bertrand Russell (who was arguably a greater writer than either of them, even winning a Nobel Prize). Also, Orwell was shot in the neck in Spain while literally fighting fascists. Still, thank you for the link to Asimov’s review. I’ll read it later.
- yogthos 3mo ago
  I find Orwell is infantile in the extreme.
circlefavshape 3mo ago
> having humans watch every citizen on camera instead of just using computers which even Asimov in the 1980s could see was laughably inefficient 1984 was published in 1949. It's a bit harsh to expect him to have anticipated computers
- TimorousBestie 3mo ago
  In addition, he was riffing on Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, a hub-and-spoke style prison design with a single guard at the hub observing the prisoners in each spoke. 1984 imagines a telecom-enabled nationwide panopticon, which made for good speculative fiction in the 50’s (and also does now). Asimov wishes he had been that prescient.
- yogthos 3mo ago
  Read what Asimov says in his review, the whole idea is fundamentally absurd when you think about it for even a second.
  - isx726552 3mo ago
    Asimov seems to have missed that the book does not claim that everyone is being watched at all times, but that everyone could be watched at any time, in any place, and that they have no way to know for sure if they are at any given moment. Therefore, they have to behave as if they are under surveillance at all times, just in case. It’s a very effective and practical means of control. See the famous panopticon concept. You don’t even need a guard in the tower, just the threat of one most of the time, and occasional random, unpredictable enforcement just often enough that the surveilled cannot relax. The cost of doing so is not impractical at all. Asimov is missing an important point that is pretty clearly spelled out in the novel, and this severely weakens his critique. I find this pretty funny because he starts off the essay insinuating that others who claim to love the book haven’t read it. Same to you for hating it without having understood it, Asimov!
    - yogthos 3mo ago
      [flagged]
autoexec 3mo ago
> and the technology is nonsensical like having humans watch every citizen on camera instead of just using computers I think our current world proves that being watched by humans hits people in a way that being monitored by computers doesn't. Remember those "Surveillance Camera Man" videos? You can see countless examples online of people freaking out at a human engaging in public photography because they filmed them or snapped a picture. Often they do it while standing directly under surveillance cameras. It doesn't matter to people if their ring camera is using facial recognition and logging everything within its field of view and secretly forwarding that data to law enforcement agencies, but try standing on the sidewalk in front of their house and recording everyone who comes and goes and see how they react.
- willy_k 3mo ago
  Because one scenario is more directly tied to potential (undesirable) uses of the photos, and more obviously doing something. If people saw consequences resulting from security cameras, they would pay more mind to them. People aren’t ignoring a security camera in a bathroom.
  - autoexec 3mo ago
    I mean, when it comes to things like ring/nest cameras and ALPRs everybody is pretty upfront about the fact that all the footage they collect is going to be used against you in one way or another. It's pretty hard to get a more direct tie to potential (undesirable) uses. Amazon has made headlines after being sued for giving employees and contractors "unfettered" access to personal videos, and for allowing contractors to listen to people having sex, and for giving police access to the feeds without consent, but people are still buying them up and using them. A street photographer is a much smaller threat. What's the worst some random person on a public street can do with your photograph? Compare that with the harm that can be done by a massive corporation with billions at their disposal who has been building a dossier on you for decades and who records you 24/7 and is determined to use that data in any way that makes them profit regardless of what you want or what the law says.
redsocksfan45 3mo ago
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tomhow 3mo ago
It's fine, indeed great, to express a less common point of view on HN. But could you please not fulminate like this? The guidelines specifically ask us to avoid that, and make it clear we're hoping for something better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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by yogthos 3mo ago

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kfjeifjejfj 3mo ago

[flagged]

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
yogthos 3mo ago
I find Orwell appeals to the pseudo-intellectual crowd because he says things that don't really have any profound insight, but seem deep to superficial people who want to feel smart. When you look at it critically, his writing has a really strong 'I'm 13 and this is deep' energy to it.

dash2 3mo ago

This is beyond silly. The guy who wrote Down and Out… and Road to Wigan Pier, and actually fought fascists in Spain, couldn’t imagine proles as anything but brainless subhumans? Orwell in 1948 didn’t predict computers? Have I been trolled?

VonGuard 3mo ago
Obvious troll. Calling Orwell a rich kid who got his feelings hurt is obscene. I challenge anyone who says that to work as a plongeur for even one week. Or to live on only toast and tea, bumming around the work houses in the UK. He never begged for money from anyone, he only worked during this time, and his book on the topic is remarkable. It's a must read for anyone who's ever worked in the food service industry. His work house experiences informed 1984. The original poster in this comment thread is just trolling beyond belief, and also, seems to have no grasp of the topics at hand what so ever.
- yogthos 3mo ago
  The guy was literally just slumming it by choice. Only one trolling here is you bud.

gdsimoes 3mo ago

I find Orwell to be a much better writer than Asimov, and 1984 was praised by people like Bertrand Russell (who was arguably a greater writer than either of them, even winning a Nobel Prize). Also, Orwell was shot in the neck in Spain while literally fighting fascists. Still, thank you for the link to Asimov’s review. I’ll read it later.

yogthos 3mo ago
I find Orwell is infantile in the extreme.

circlefavshape 3mo ago

> having humans watch every citizen on camera instead of just using computers which even Asimov in the 1980s could see was laughably inefficient 1984 was published in 1949. It's a bit harsh to expect him to have anticipated computers

TimorousBestie 3mo ago
In addition, he was riffing on Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, a hub-and-spoke style prison design with a single guard at the hub observing the prisoners in each spoke. 1984 imagines a telecom-enabled nationwide panopticon, which made for good speculative fiction in the 50’s (and also does now). Asimov wishes he had been that prescient.
yogthos 3mo ago
Read what Asimov says in his review, the whole idea is fundamentally absurd when you think about it for even a second.
- isx726552 3mo ago
  Asimov seems to have missed that the book does not claim that everyone is being watched at all times, but that everyone could be watched at any time, in any place, and that they have no way to know for sure if they are at any given moment. Therefore, they have to behave as if they are under surveillance at all times, just in case. It’s a very effective and practical means of control. See the famous panopticon concept. You don’t even need a guard in the tower, just the threat of one most of the time, and occasional random, unpredictable enforcement just often enough that the surveilled cannot relax. The cost of doing so is not impractical at all. Asimov is missing an important point that is pretty clearly spelled out in the novel, and this severely weakens his critique. I find this pretty funny because he starts off the essay insinuating that others who claim to love the book haven’t read it. Same to you for hating it without having understood it, Asimov!
  - yogthos 3mo ago
    [flagged]

autoexec 3mo ago

> and the technology is nonsensical like having humans watch every citizen on camera instead of just using computers I think our current world proves that being watched by humans hits people in a way that being monitored by computers doesn't. Remember those "Surveillance Camera Man" videos? You can see countless examples online of people freaking out at a human engaging in public photography because they filmed them or snapped a picture. Often they do it while standing directly under surveillance cameras. It doesn't matter to people if their ring camera is using facial recognition and logging everything within its field of view and secretly forwarding that data to law enforcement agencies, but try standing on the sidewalk in front of their house and recording everyone who comes and goes and see how they react.

willy_k 3mo ago
Because one scenario is more directly tied to potential (undesirable) uses of the photos, and more obviously doing something. If people saw consequences resulting from security cameras, they would pay more mind to them. People aren’t ignoring a security camera in a bathroom.
- autoexec 3mo ago
  I mean, when it comes to things like ring/nest cameras and ALPRs everybody is pretty upfront about the fact that all the footage they collect is going to be used against you in one way or another. It's pretty hard to get a more direct tie to potential (undesirable) uses. Amazon has made headlines after being sued for giving employees and contractors "unfettered" access to personal videos, and for allowing contractors to listen to people having sex, and for giving police access to the feeds without consent, but people are still buying them up and using them. A street photographer is a much smaller threat. What's the worst some random person on a public street can do with your photograph? Compare that with the harm that can be done by a massive corporation with billions at their disposal who has been building a dossier on you for decades and who records you 24/7 and is determined to use that data in any way that makes them profit regardless of what you want or what the law says.

redsocksfan45 3mo ago

[dead]

tomhow 3mo ago

It's fine, indeed great, to express a less common point of view on HN. But could you please not fulminate like this? The guidelines specifically ask us to avoid that, and make it clear we're hoping for something better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html