15 ms·

Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

514 points by dirtyaura 12y ago

sabalaba 12y ago
Pretty alarmist writing. "I therefore can’t resist showing a new piece of Google technology: the military robot ‘WildCat’ made by Boston Dynamics which was bought by Google in December 2013". And goes on to show a video of something that was funded by DARPA well before Google purchased Boston Dynamics. Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any military contracts.
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  And goes on to show a piece of technology owned by Google. Who funded it and when is irrelevant to whether it belongs to google.
  - maxmcd 12y ago
    Really? Google owns a fighter jet. What kind of conclusions am I supposed to draw from that?
    - nightski 12y ago
      Probably not much since they do not own the company that designed and built that fighter jet (at least that I am aware of).
    - desdiv 12y ago
      Google owns a fighter jet. The jet you're talking about is owned by a private company, H211 LLC, that's owned by Page, Brin, Schmidt et al. It's not a subsidiary of Google, nor does it have any relationship with Google[0]. [0] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-for-googles-founders/?_r=0 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-f...
      - xtian 12y ago
        You must have a pretty sad definition of the word "relationship" to exclude two companies that share executives.
    - jodrellblank 12y ago
      I don't understand your point. I was arguing "the Boston dynamics robot is not Google technology because darpa funded it" with "it is fair to describe it as Google technology because Google own the technology". You can draw whatever conclusions you like about the fighter jet for all I care. But if you start saying things like "they bought a fighter jet but they don't own it because someone else paid for the design" then I'll argue about your reasoning.
- yohui 12y ago
  Rather disjointed, too. Even if Google were developing robots for the military, as the author implies, it's a bit of a stretch to jump from discussing Snowden, to Boston Dynamics, and then back to the NSA within the span of a paragraph. I felt a bit of whiplash there. (Incidentally, Google declined to pursue future military contracts after acquiring Boston Dynamics, along with a host of other robotics companies, so presenting that pre-acquisition video after accusing Google of being ”part of the military industrial complex” is bit of a non-sequitor.)
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  > Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any military contracts. And you so quickly trust one of the biggest corporations in the world to "keep its promise" over following whatever its biggest interest will be in the future? Google also said it won't deal at all with the military before they bought the robots, and a few months later it was selling them Google Glass...so yeah. And Google Glass is something anyone barely wants. Imagine Google's robots were so great that it would cause a "revolution" in what we can do with robots. Do you really believe that if Pentagon came knocking at Google's door saying "Here, we want 1 million of these robots for $100,000 a piece". Google would say "Um, no thanks buddy, we already said in public 10 years ago (under a different CEO) that we wouldn't sell to you...but you could pay that $100 billion to Microsoft's robot division if you like. Our shareholders won't mind". Is that how you imagine it going down? That said, I'm already pissed off because Oculus/Facebook have decided to sell Oculus Rifts to the military to make drone assassinations that much more convenient.
  - pcthrowaway 12y ago
    That's not exactly the same thing though. Google glass wasn't made for the military, but of course Google isn't going to refuse to sell them a product that they have made publicly available. Perhaps the military will want to buy more of Google's tech, but it sounds like Google isn't (currently) planning on building robots for the military.
- joelthelion 12y ago
  Google also said they wouldn't be evil.
jgon 12y ago
This is easily the most important article currently on the front page. At times its poignancy reminded me of some of the talks by Maciej Ceglowski, aka the guy who runs Pinboard, but this talk is a bit more direct and a bit less funny. The world of coveillance or sousveillance sounds attractive, but I think that a quick look at the state of computing for the average person, and their ability to organize photos, run their own email server, or any number of tasks that would be somewhat analogous to the ability for citizens to have some form of meaningful technological power against large corporations and the government, should dispel this notion pretty quickly. The frog is being slowly boiled right now, and I honestly don't have any answers about what to do. All I can think is just to do what I can to use free software, support organizations like the EFF and Mozilla, and work to make sure that my life isn't completely captured by giant companies like Google and Apple, as I also try to remain politically engaged at home. Maybe that's all any of us can do.
- rdrey 12y ago
  I would like to design my next side-project to be decentralised and federated, giving people the option to run it on their own hardware. It's a small step in the right direction, I think, and it makes me feel slightly happier about the direction we are heading in. (With the frog definitely in the pot, but not boiling yet.)
guoqiang2 12y ago
Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. I was so amazed the author can connect Ai Weiwei with the WildCat robot, an image of Obama's calling from a camp, and a kid in a car using Disney product. How this can connect together?! If you want to talk about surveillance or privacy, won't NSA's Snowden be a more famous and impacting example?
- saryant 12y ago
  > Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. > How this can connect together?!
- bbcbasic 12y ago
  The connection is lack of privacy.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Read the damn article. The author goes through many examples of things that are eroding privacy. Ai Weiwei lives under total surveillance. Google is producing technology for the military. Obama has to use a tent in his hotel room to block surveillance. The disney wristband tracks your movements and spending. Surprisingly the NSA is barely mentioned at all. The author is primarily concerned with how technology is enabling surveillance, not the organizations currently using it.
  - charleslmunger 12y ago
    What technology is google producing for the military?
    - desdiv 12y ago
      Boston Dynamics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, produced the WildCat robot for DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program[0]. [0] http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_and_manipulation_%28m3%29.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_...
ageek123 12y ago
We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. We just need to make sure government doesn't get too much power. This doesn't have anything to do with Google or Apple (they can't put you in jail).
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  I guess I'm confused. Aren't Google and Apple under the government's power? Couldn't congress make a law mandating big technology companies give the government access to user data?
  - desdiv 12y ago
    Arguably they don't even need to pass such a law, since national security letters already enables the same thing.
sfeng 12y ago
> The young boys that had to guard Ai Weiwei in his cell had to stand completely still, weren’t allowed to talk and couldn’t even blink their eyes. This is complete nonsense. You can't order someone to not blink.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  OP probably meant "blink their eyes in response to a question."
- frabcus 12y ago
  Yes you can - at least my experience of seeing some Chinese guards (e.g. outside an embassy) is that they don't blink. This article claims 1 hour shifts of not blinking for a guard: https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-the-demerits-and-bounds-of-extreme-job-discipline/ https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-...
  - knowtheory 12y ago
    You can order people to do all manner of things, but i think you'd be much harder pressed to enforce such a stricture. You're not going to shut down someone's corneal reflex obviously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex but that requires poking a guard in the eye or shining a bright light at them.
brianbarker 12y ago
The mentioned novels seem cool, but an even better reference is Feed. Published in 2002 before MySpace was a household name, it pretty much hits the nail on the head in terms of surveillance, marketing and connectedness.
- hansdezwart 12y ago
  Thanks! I'll check it out.
LiweiZ 12y ago
Sorry to digress here. Just want to comment on Ai. He is like many other iconic/famous people in the country, who got awards aboard, do things that seem against the ruling party in the country and basically walk away with way less consequences almost every time. Some of them get into short-term jail like hero and after that their experiences worth much more. This is very interesting since average people would probably face fatal consequences, if they did something like that, even once.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Good point. The government in the propaganda domain at least is bound by high ideals and promises -- "We are for freedom. We represent the people. We don't stiffle expression. (Unlike those other countries out there...)". So doing anything too harsh to a public figure, known internationally, is going to create a big hassle. At another level you can argue that he is also a token, and thus implicitly somehow part of the system. He is a representative example of how "tollerant and open" the country is. "Hey look, a harsh critic of the system is still alive and still working". So it is important to keep him around but tighten the screw periodically a bit so he stays in check, so to speak. On the topic of the article. I think the interesting part is how Ai tried to manage the surveilance and how he responded to it. Installing cameras around and basically making his life completely public, for everyone. At some level that mocked and maybe emasculated the watchers. Monitoring, is a power play of course too. This mocking was probably rather infuriating for them. "Oh you want to monitor me, fine I'll monitor myself 10x better than you and will let everyone participate". But also this is also possible because he is already a public figure. His public image is the only thing that shields and protects him and allows him to do this. He knows it of course. The other example, is him approaching the undercover officers watching him. Also a great way to mock and in way difuse their power. Extrapolating to how we (in US) are watched and monitored by Apple, Google, NSA, not sure how and what can be learned here. The difference that it is rather impersonal and mocking doesn't work in the same way. You know people insert signatures with [al-Qaeda, bomb, president, blah blah] in their emails. Not sure what that does. We might never know.
  - LiweiZ 12y ago
jeffhiggins 12y ago
The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.
- NANDXORNOR 12y ago
  Just another example of the bay attitude '---- you, I got mine'
  - mmanfrin 12y ago
    What?
    - NANDXORNOR 12y ago
      :^)
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
  Even more uncomfortable: most of us are using them - even knowing all the dangers and even knowing how much we are giving control to others - because we find the tools useful.
- zzalpha 12y ago
  Do you really think said hackers are "gleefully building these tools" specifically in order to enable a surveillance state? Of course not. It's been said a million times before: every technology can be used for good or for ill. After all, the technology that enables you to drink the water coming out of your tap, one of the most important developments in the history of mankind, is the very same technology that makes mustard gas possible. And of course there's that quintessential example: nuclear fission, equally capable of saving or destroying billions. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that every technology mankind has ever invented to benefit itself has eventually been turned against us. After all, last I checked fire was a pretty common weapon of war. So is it possible that folks at Google are nefariously turning us all into biological components of their computing infrastructure, and in the process deliberately and consciously empowering a government-corporate surveillance state? Yes, it's possible. It's equally (I'd like to believe more) likely someone just thought it'd be cool if my phone tracked my location and could provide me sight-seeing suggestions when I'm in a new city. Now, this doesn't take away from the fundamental point of the article: that technology available today is changing our lives with consequences we have yet to fully comprehend, and will likely fundamentally change the way society functions. But I think it's unnecessarily cynical to believe those inventing said technology are deliberately attempting to bring about the dystopian future the author envisions.
Punoxysm 12y ago
Even if his criticisms of coveillance are correct, I still think the world is headed that way. Simply put, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We passed a similar threshold with industrialization, and the consequent removal of autonomy for workers on several levels (is the 1800's factory of exacting time cards and constant repetitive movements that far behind the warehouse the author describes?). It was a tumultuous transition (strikes, revolution, communism, etc.) but we made it through. The transformation in state and corporate power that tools like surveillance bring will be similar, but just like in the industrial revolution we can't turn back the clock and have to instead ride out whatever happens.
- c1sc0 12y ago
  Serious question: where do we start when we want to fight this? We made it through the industrial revolution because people stood up for their rights. I'm at a total loss for where to start. (Edit: grammar)
  - krenoten 12y ago
    By decoupling function from identity. Fake faces, portable faraday cages, blockchained trust, onion routed transport, free hardware and software.
    - EGreg 12y ago
      Identity is pretty easy to reconstruct though. The big question one has to ask is what do you do in a world where you are more and more living in a zoo with robots making sure you do the right thing to more and more exacting standards? I think the answer is that expectations will get so high that robots will do everything. And humans will be free to do anything, as long as they don't involve anyone else. Want to ask a question to your dad? Why bother, google will answer better and your dad won't be pissed at you for asking while he's glued to his facebook
  - thaumaturgy 12y ago
    Like with many other causes, you start with yourself -- and that might be enough. These days, not participating in the latest electronics and social sites and whatnot is enough to make people ask you questions. If you think carefully enough about why you're making the choices you make, then you can give pretty reasonable answers. I don't own a smart phone, or have a Facebook or LinkedIn account. I still buy paper books. I don't blog (much). And I don't really evangelize these choices; I don't do any of this for attention or to try to change other people's minds. But, when someone notices their tech guy is carrying an old-school flip phone, they ask questions. Usually the first thing I say is, "they're really convenient, really good tools," immediately followed by, "but, I've noticed that people seem to have a lot of trouble ignoring them, and I don't need another distraction in my life. I don't really want an internet connection to follow me everywhere." As far as I know, I haven't made anyone else give up their smart phone or Facebook account or whatever. But a surprising number of people take a moment to think about that. They often kinda look at their phone and go, "...huh, I wonder what that would be like..." And, y'know, just the fact that I get by and live pretty well without these things I think speaks more about how valuable they really are than any sermon I could think of.
bluekeybox 12y ago
No, he's not.
mmanfrin 12y ago
Egger's book that he mentions, The Circle, has unnerved me since I read it. I've noticed myself looking at things I do through the lens of that book, and then continuing with that action. It's like I'm on a bus that's headed for a cliff, and I've resigned myself to the fact that it's going to go over, so I might as well sit comfortably than make a fuss.
kingkawn 12y ago
In the efforts to improve surveillance they have given us the tools to subvert it. Yes, they can watch us all, but we can also all watch each other. Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of, and they no longer control the ability to spread ideas about what is shameful. When they are abusing one person, everyone can know. Ai Wei Wei would not still be in communication with the world without the same technology that is permitting his surveillance. At the same time as the surveillance state is growing, we are being told that all of the platforms that have the broadest potential reach are lame. That facebook is not cool, so any messages you send out on it will be judged by the medium, not the message. We have more than enough power already to reach other with messages that spread faster than a security state can quash them. The Chinese government's control isn't growing, its faltering. The US government's control isn't growing. They know more about us all, and can do less to us.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  > Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of I'm going to mostly side-step the de facto response to this ("surveillance isn't about shame, it's about control, etc. etc."), because the more interesting thing here is that there's a good chance your point of view is going to become the predominant one in future generations. Generations like mine were taught that privacy was important for freedom (e.g. 1984), and even though the lesson didn't really stick with all of us, I think that there's still some clear generational divisions when it comes to privacy. Younger people seem to see this as old-fashioned, or are completely uninterested in privacy and happy to accept the tradeoffs for convenience. Year by year I'm increasingly expecting that the future won't hold some kind of social agitation for more privacy and less surveillance, it will instead have nearly complete surveillance and absence of privacy, and everyone -- or almost everyone -- will be glad for it.
  - desdiv 12y ago
    I disagree. Public opinion polls clearly show that the younger generation is more intolerant of the NSA mass surveillance[0][1], for example. Sometimes the difference can be startling: Once again, there was a significant relationship between age group and support for monitoring everyone’s online activity. Only 15% of Canadians aged 18 to 29 believed that the Canadian government should monitor online activities if officials say it might prevent future terrorist attacks compared with 34% of those aged 30 to 44 and 43% for those aged 45 to 59.[2] That's almost a three fold difference between the 18 to 29 group and the 45 to 59 group. [0] http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/ http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph... [1] http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over-impact-of-nsa-leak-but-most-want-snowden-prosecuted/ http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over-imp... [2] http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa-snowden-canadians-terrorism-online-privacy/ http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa-snowden...
ekianjo 12y ago
That was a painful essay. No real point hammered through, jumping from one topic to another without clear logic, and again making it look like companies will be ruling the world in the future, while the surveillance capabilities of goverments far exceed what companies can hope to achieve because they cannot centralize all channels of information.
- Thev00d00 12y ago
  I agree, but then I noticed at the bottom it was originally a speech, and in Dutch at that, so I let them have some slack.
rasengan0 12y ago
We'll all take the red pill someday, but I swallowed the blue one already. I found the article enlightening, reminding me of the continued complacency and abject indifference in favor of convenience and other affordances of mindless empty rewards (yay, startups!) much like the Radiohead 1997 song, Fitter Happier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer I missed the whole Ai Weiwei media storm due to disinterest and made up assumptions about yet another dissenter getting hammered down by the State; like duh? What else is new over "there"? Well on the internets, where is there or here? The article actually made me pause playing FTL to Google Ai WeiWei and watch the streamed Netflix documentary: http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ Wow, here was someone who could have kept his mouth shut and kept kowtowing to rake in the bucks, but instead choose a new "career path" out of politics and got a fat tax bill for the trouble. Gutsy move or sending a message? Let's hope the next generation gives damn.
- abandonliberty 12y ago
  Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is surprisingly enjoyable and it does a great job of giving some in-depth understanding of Chinese culture. You can watch it a few minutes at a time. Ai Weiwei is a troll who has some degree of safety due to his and his father's fame. His arrest was encouraged by a work of art whose title could be interpreted as, "fuck your mother Communist Party Central Committee" (NSFW) http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical-creatures-grass-mud-horse http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical-crea... Less accessible, but still potentially informative and hilarious is his music video of his detention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs
deanclatworthy 12y ago
This documentary looks fantastic. I'm looking forward to watching this and Citizen Four. A note to anyone who might be reading this before the article, don't read it all as it contains spoilers from the documentary.
courtf 12y ago
"According to him, we have allowed efficiency thinking to optimize our world to such an extent that we have lost the flexibility and slack that is necessary for dealing with failure. This is why we can no longer handle any form of risk." This rings true to me in many ways, particularly in the way we treat our children. I may have to read Anti-fragile.
- badsock 12y ago
  Do - it's a great book.
- ibz 12y ago
  Please do. Not an easy read, but totally worth it.
rcyn 12y ago
"One of the best artists in the world." Since when do people rank artists. For me, this ruins the whole article. Maybe successful artist or artist with a high media profile. But best? Seriously?
- buro9 12y ago
  The article is a translation of a transcript of a speech originally given in Dutch. Shift "best" to "renowned" if it helps you read it.
- hansdezwart 12y ago
  You are right. So I changed it.
EGreg 12y ago
I wrote quite extensively about this. For example: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
Kiro 12y ago
That's a fantastic trailer. I need to see this.
Intermernet 12y ago
"Your lunchtime is exactly 29 minutes. You are fired on the spot if you take a 31 minute lunch as that messes with the planning capabilities of the system." This is meant to describe "a large shipping warehouse in the US ... (think Amazon)" logistics system. Is this actually in any meaningful way true? If so, I'm disgusted, naive and disappointed.
- goodmachine 12y ago
  Abusive work practices and tax avoidance are complementary pillars of the model. What a world we live in. http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491 http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491 See also http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazo...
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    Thanks for the links. It's always somewhat gratifying to find my cynicism well-placed. But depressing all the same... Is there a word for that? Something like "Schadenfreude", but including yourself in the suffering, and taking the "joy" as some form of second-rate consolation?
sp4ke 12y ago
I have always been fascinated by computers and passionate about programming. I never taught I would ever feel ashamed of my passion ... that maybe I have been part of the decline of freedom and privacy, the same things I've always believed in and fought for . I've finished reading again 1984 a short time ago, and I felt sick reading this article and realizing we're making a monster. I stopped using Facebook a few months ago and it was not so easy as I thought. Since then, whenever I people ask me I give them my views about keeping privacy and such ... they always have the same reply: Why would you want to hide something ? or We can do nothing about it, everyone does it ... it makes me even sicker when it comes from Tech friends who understand the consequences but just don't care about it.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  the old microphone/webcam in the bedroom retort usually illustrates to people that they have got something to hide, then in their own time they will discover they have more they don't want to share. make stuff that doesn't leak privacy, then you should feel no shame.
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  You feel awful now, but what you've written is very encouraging. You're doing the right thing. Coding can be put to good use too. Perhaps there's an open-source project you can contribute to that has a positive benefit to offer society? What social injustices are you most passionate about? I also intend to leave Facebook (again) very soon. The only reason I haven't in the past is that I didn't want to lose contact with some people, but I figure if I share my email address as I leave anyone that wants to contact me can do. We don't have to employ a scorched earth policy every time we want to change, losing everything we got from something, we often have better alternatives. I should move away from Gmail for similar reasons, does anyone have suggestions of a secure email service with webmail and Android app access?
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    you can go with yandex, but it's all very much a case of pick your poison.
tim333 12y ago
Ai Weiwei is not living our future. I'm a big fan of Weiwei but being the best known opposition figure against the worlds largest dictatorship is something that's unlikely to happen to most of us. Also his "Fuck your mother, the party central committee" themed photos are obviously trying to wind them up. Here in London we have CCTV everywhere and the secret services no doubt have the ability to bug me and read my mail but it effects me and most people not at all - no one is interested especially. I'd be honoured to be Weiwei.
knappador 12y ago
I don't really buy the privacy paranoia anymore these days. It was the internet that first grew the distance between people so that we could pretend-anonymous say things about anything without repercussion an it will be the internet that shrinks that distance down to where you better be talking about what matters to you and putting your money where your mouth is. In ten years I'll be sharing and leaking at least 10x as much information out of all kinds of devices. 90% of my engagement will happen inside programs will be automatically syncing data across cloud services. Security is inevitably a growing target in the networked world, and privacy requires security. Increasingly for the sake of productivity and collaboration, everything I use will be sharing and syncing more and more. The desire of most people to be connected and productive, not some autocratic slide in the worlds governments will be the death of privacy. One of the features of Facebook I liked in the early days was just the slight exclusiveness that made it basically okay to talk about having a giant hangover without fear of looking like an alcoholic to an interviewer scratching up dirt (I think zero interviews I care about do this). When Facebook started making the defaults public etc without notifications, there was understandably some uproar about being unknowingly thrust out into the public. Eroding privacy causing blunders is not the same thing as not having privacy. For the most part anxiety about not being able to control your privacy or security really need to be analyzed in the context of just how hidden you really need to make your words (in the case of anti-dissent government) or actions (in the case of socially conservative laws) to be able to practice or advocate what it is you care about. To an almost absolute degree, very little of things you want to see in the world that don't exist yet are going to require going to war for the cause of security or privacy before your end goals can be pursued, so it's just not really worth it. EFF does great work to defend people against stupid laws and to promote better laws with regard to IP etc. They protect anonymity for regular people that happen to cosplay and have very odd taste in character appropriateness. However, the area where the EFF pulled really hard to ensure that the future of the internet would be egalitarian in the United States was about Title II common carrier law, not about privacy. The 1st amendment protects what you say, not some mythical right to say it without consequences; you only get that when nobody cares about your opinion. Even in the case of socially conservative laws, stand up for respect for individual beliefs before you stand up for privacy as an extra-social cure. Privacy is not close to as fundamentally important as the security that is required to achieve it, and privacy advocacy is to an extent like whining about how someone took your tree-house and you can't have any secret clubs anymore. Most privacy is not used to do productive things, and few productive things outside of already entrenched, authoritarian governments require privacy to pursue.
j_lev 12y ago
I wish I had read this before Christmas as I was stuck for gifts for younger people.
hansdezwart 12y ago
For me as the author of the piece, it is wonderful to find an informed and critical discussion of the themes that I tried to discuss here in the comments. I will likely try and answer some of them here in the next couple of hours and am happy to answer any questions.
- zzzeek 12y ago
  how about more background info on the "US Warehouse (think amazon)" that will actually fire someone "on the spot" for taking a 31 minute lunch? (think actual company / location names, backing documentation?) I find it hard to believe that's not just a bit exaggerated.
  - hansdezwart 12y ago
    I got it from this podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/
- driverdan 12y ago
  Please link to your sources. You reference most of your material from other places but don't link to anything.
MichaelTieso 12y ago
For those in the SF area, I highly recommend going to Alcatraz to experience some of Ai Weiwei's work. http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/ http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/ Never Sorry is a fantastic documentary on Ai Weiwei's life. I contributed to documentary while it was Kickstarter and got to see it in a theater in DC. http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ http://aiweiweineversorry.com/
drumdance 12y ago
That picture of him in a cell with two guards looks like something out of a wax museum.
- hansdezwart 12y ago
  I actually is a piece of art he made about his experience in the cell.[1] It is titled S.A.C.R.E.D. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential-work-in-venice/ http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential-wor...
squozzer 12y ago
Pardon me for "going meta" but it seems that power in the internet age may be less about how much information you have than on how much information you can keep out of the hands of others. For example, just how transparent is Schmidt's or Zuckerberg's lives compared to ours? Or why the US govt seems to be classifying greater and greater quantities of information? And whether such asymmetries of power help or hurt our welfare.
narrator 12y ago
The Pavlok is really disturbing but cool at the same time. It's such a perfect example of technology that could be used for good or evil.
tomaskafka 12y ago
"Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the political domain of the classic city would agree with the equation of walls with law and order. According to Arendt, the political realm is guaranteed by two kinds of walls (or wall like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. The almost palindromic linguistic structure of law/wall helps to further bind these two structures in an interdependency that equates built and legal fabric. The unwalling of the wall invariably becomes the undoing of the law." "The breaching of the physical, visual and conceptual border/wall exposes new domains to political power, and thus draws the clearest physical diagram to the concept of the ‘state of exception’." "Future military operations in urban terrain will increasingly be dedicated to the use of technologies developed for the purpose of the ‘unwalling of the wall’. This is the architect’s response to the logic of ‘smart weapons’. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments where they cannot be used without endangering, injuring or killing civilians. The imagined benefits of ‘smart destruction’ and attempts to perform ‘sophisticated’ swarming thus bring more destruction over the long term than ‘traditional’ strategies ever did, because these ever more deadly methods combined with the highly manipulative and euphoric theoretical rhetoric used to promulgate them have induced decision makers to authorize their frequent use. Here another use of ‘theory’ as the ultimate ‘smart weapon’ becomes apparent. The military’s seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, sterile, easy, quick, intellectual, exciting and even economic (from their own point of view). Violence can thus be projected as tolerable, and the public encouraged to support it." Eyal Weizman Lethal Theory http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf
jqm 12y ago
Eh... in my experience, most people simply aren't worth watching very closely. Favorite part of the article... "he used Craigslist to hire somebody to help him improve his productivity. The idea was that the person would come sit next to him and give him a slap whenever he would not be working..." Love the idea. I recently had a talk w/ my boss about I was thinking about leaving because I was making many times more on the side than I was with the company. But the one caveat... I needed him to keep being my boss and check on what I was doing. Make sure I was at my desk at 7:30 coding away and didn't go home until 5. He laughed quite a bit and said to think about it. I am. I'm not in favor of massive surveillance, but sometimes knowing we are watched a little helps us at certain times....
XorNot 12y ago
Ai Weiwei isn't living in our future, he's living in an actual totalitarian-ish nationstate. The degree to which there's this encouraged ignorance to what the Chinese government is all about is the story which is of greater concern here: they're never not been a brutal regime, they're just a trade partner now so the narrative has shifted. What they do, and what they can do isn't enabled by technology. It's enabled by the simple political and military will to actually kick in doors and arrest and execute people. You want to not live in that world? Then you inform people why the no-fly list is stupid, for a start. How such a list is distributed, generated or updated is irrelevant.
patcon 12y ago
Hm. This was a hodgepodge. I really sympathized with many criticisms, but others lacked focus. Specifically, I'm frustrated with the author picking on the idea of police officers wearing cameras. I'm interested in how we can decentralize and unpackage law enforcement services, so this hit home for me. I'd like to expound on (de)centralization, community and transparency for a sec, if I can be indulged. Democracy and society today implies distributed power (citizens) mediated by necessary centralized power (law enforcement, elected representatives, judicial systems). This was a choice we made as our societies grew, as it was the only one that technology (postal service, telegraph, horse, guns, etc.) allowed at the time we were working through our options. The small, manageable communities of our past were ones where everyone knew everyone else. There was gossip. Secrets were hard. But this was bundled up with the security we had in these communties. We're being dishonest if we become nostalgic for that security and community, and yet conveniently deny the nakedness that is implied. Democracy has been the only way we've known stability in recent history. But it doesn't mirror these small communities of our past. We trusted centralized powers to mediate the trust relationships the we lost when we grew up. This allowed us to live in a world where we didn't need to ask transparency. So we got used to that being a norm in a society where we felt security and stability. But if we want to build more decentralized a robust societies, we need to accept that sometimes radical transparency is needed for certain institutions to lose their corruptible centers. We need radical transparency for any institution that operates at the scale where we can't know and trust one another through the nakedness of personal relationships. We CAN build a decentralized society that has privacy, and we should demand that privacy for situations where it need not be sacrificed. But we can't always demonize all forms of radical transparency, as this is the crucial element that will allow the most corruptible of our institutions to be reimagined. OK, sorry, this was perhaps a bit of a rant. If you're thinking in similar areas, perhaps the words above will resonate with you. Otherwise, it might sound like an abstract rambling :)
ikusalic 12y ago
Beautifully written and expressing most of the concerns that bother me in today's world. If you liked the article, I'd also suggest [1] by moxie. I really liked how he dismantles the I-have-nothing-to-hide argument. Scary, but so true. [1] http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/ http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...

514 points by dirtyaura 12y ago

Pretty alarmist writing. "I therefore can’t resist showing a new piece of Google technology: the military robot ‘WildCat’ made by Boston Dynamics which was bought by Google in December 2013". And goes on to show a video of something that was funded by DARPA well before Google purchased Boston Dynamics. Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any military contracts.

jodrellblank 12y ago
And goes on to show a piece of technology owned by Google. Who funded it and when is irrelevant to whether it belongs to google.
- maxmcd 12y ago
  Really? Google owns a fighter jet. What kind of conclusions am I supposed to draw from that?
  - nightski 12y ago
    Probably not much since they do not own the company that designed and built that fighter jet (at least that I am aware of).
  - desdiv 12y ago
    Google owns a fighter jet. The jet you're talking about is owned by a private company, H211 LLC, that's owned by Page, Brin, Schmidt et al. It's not a subsidiary of Google, nor does it have any relationship with Google[0]. [0] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-for-googles-founders/?_r=0 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/a-new-fighter-jet-f...
    - xtian 12y ago
      You must have a pretty sad definition of the word "relationship" to exclude two companies that share executives.
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    I don't understand your point. I was arguing "the Boston dynamics robot is not Google technology because darpa funded it" with "it is fair to describe it as Google technology because Google own the technology". You can draw whatever conclusions you like about the fighter jet for all I care. But if you start saying things like "they bought a fighter jet but they don't own it because someone else paid for the design" then I'll argue about your reasoning.
yohui 12y ago
Rather disjointed, too. Even if Google were developing robots for the military, as the author implies, it's a bit of a stretch to jump from discussing Snowden, to Boston Dynamics, and then back to the NSA within the span of a paragraph. I felt a bit of whiplash there. (Incidentally, Google declined to pursue future military contracts after acquiring Boston Dynamics, along with a host of other robotics companies, so presenting that pre-acquisition video after accusing Google of being ”part of the military industrial complex” is bit of a non-sequitor.)
higherpurpose 12y ago
> Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any military contracts. And you so quickly trust one of the biggest corporations in the world to "keep its promise" over following whatever its biggest interest will be in the future? Google also said it won't deal at all with the military before they bought the robots, and a few months later it was selling them Google Glass...so yeah. And Google Glass is something anyone barely wants. Imagine Google's robots were so great that it would cause a "revolution" in what we can do with robots. Do you really believe that if Pentagon came knocking at Google's door saying "Here, we want 1 million of these robots for $100,000 a piece". Google would say "Um, no thanks buddy, we already said in public 10 years ago (under a different CEO) that we wouldn't sell to you...but you could pay that $100 billion to Microsoft's robot division if you like. Our shareholders won't mind". Is that how you imagine it going down? That said, I'm already pissed off because Oculus/Facebook have decided to sell Oculus Rifts to the military to make drone assassinations that much more convenient.
- pcthrowaway 12y ago
  That's not exactly the same thing though. Google glass wasn't made for the military, but of course Google isn't going to refuse to sell them a product that they have made publicly available. Perhaps the military will want to buy more of Google's tech, but it sounds like Google isn't (currently) planning on building robots for the military.
joelthelion 12y ago
Google also said they wouldn't be evil.

jgon 12y ago

This is easily the most important article currently on the front page. At times its poignancy reminded me of some of the talks by Maciej Ceglowski, aka the guy who runs Pinboard, but this talk is a bit more direct and a bit less funny. The world of coveillance or sousveillance sounds attractive, but I think that a quick look at the state of computing for the average person, and their ability to organize photos, run their own email server, or any number of tasks that would be somewhat analogous to the ability for citizens to have some form of meaningful technological power against large corporations and the government, should dispel this notion pretty quickly. The frog is being slowly boiled right now, and I honestly don't have any answers about what to do. All I can think is just to do what I can to use free software, support organizations like the EFF and Mozilla, and work to make sure that my life isn't completely captured by giant companies like Google and Apple, as I also try to remain politically engaged at home. Maybe that's all any of us can do.

rdrey 12y ago
I would like to design my next side-project to be decentralised and federated, giving people the option to run it on their own hardware. It's a small step in the right direction, I think, and it makes me feel slightly happier about the direction we are heading in. (With the frog definitely in the pot, but not boiling yet.)

guoqiang2 12y ago

Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. I was so amazed the author can connect Ai Weiwei with the WildCat robot, an image of Obama's calling from a camp, and a kid in a car using Disney product. How this can connect together?! If you want to talk about surveillance or privacy, won't NSA's Snowden be a more famous and impacting example?

saryant 12y ago
> Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. > How this can connect together?!
bbcbasic 12y ago
The connection is lack of privacy.
Houshalter 12y ago
Read the damn article. The author goes through many examples of things that are eroding privacy. Ai Weiwei lives under total surveillance. Google is producing technology for the military. Obama has to use a tent in his hotel room to block surveillance. The disney wristband tracks your movements and spending. Surprisingly the NSA is barely mentioned at all. The author is primarily concerned with how technology is enabling surveillance, not the organizations currently using it.
- charleslmunger 12y ago
  What technology is google producing for the military?
  - desdiv 12y ago
    Boston Dynamics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, produced the WildCat robot for DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program[0]. [0] http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_and_manipulation_%28m3%29.aspx http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_...

ageek123 12y ago

We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. We just need to make sure government doesn't get too much power. This doesn't have anything to do with Google or Apple (they can't put you in jail).

droopyEyelids 12y ago
I guess I'm confused. Aren't Google and Apple under the government's power? Couldn't congress make a law mandating big technology companies give the government access to user data?
- desdiv 12y ago
  Arguably they don't even need to pass such a law, since national security letters already enables the same thing.

sfeng 12y ago

> The young boys that had to guard Ai Weiwei in his cell had to stand completely still, weren’t allowed to talk and couldn’t even blink their eyes. This is complete nonsense. You can't order someone to not blink.

vinceguidry 12y ago
OP probably meant "blink their eyes in response to a question."
frabcus 12y ago
Yes you can - at least my experience of seeing some Chinese guards (e.g. outside an embassy) is that they don't blink. This article claims 1 hour shifts of not blinking for a guard: https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-the-demerits-and-bounds-of-extreme-job-discipline/ https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-...
- knowtheory 12y ago
  You can order people to do all manner of things, but i think you'd be much harder pressed to enforce such a stricture. You're not going to shut down someone's corneal reflex obviously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex but that requires poking a guard in the eye or shining a bright light at them.

brianbarker 12y ago

The mentioned novels seem cool, but an even better reference is Feed. Published in 2002 before MySpace was a household name, it pretty much hits the nail on the head in terms of surveillance, marketing and connectedness.

hansdezwart 12y ago
Thanks! I'll check it out.

LiweiZ 12y ago

Sorry to digress here. Just want to comment on Ai. He is like many other iconic/famous people in the country, who got awards aboard, do things that seem against the ruling party in the country and basically walk away with way less consequences almost every time. Some of them get into short-term jail like hero and after that their experiences worth much more. This is very interesting since average people would probably face fatal consequences, if they did something like that, even once.

rdtsc 12y ago
Good point. The government in the propaganda domain at least is bound by high ideals and promises -- "We are for freedom. We represent the people. We don't stiffle expression. (Unlike those other countries out there...)". So doing anything too harsh to a public figure, known internationally, is going to create a big hassle. At another level you can argue that he is also a token, and thus implicitly somehow part of the system. He is a representative example of how "tollerant and open" the country is. "Hey look, a harsh critic of the system is still alive and still working". So it is important to keep him around but tighten the screw periodically a bit so he stays in check, so to speak. On the topic of the article. I think the interesting part is how Ai tried to manage the surveilance and how he responded to it. Installing cameras around and basically making his life completely public, for everyone. At some level that mocked and maybe emasculated the watchers. Monitoring, is a power play of course too. This mocking was probably rather infuriating for them. "Oh you want to monitor me, fine I'll monitor myself 10x better than you and will let everyone participate". But also this is also possible because he is already a public figure. His public image is the only thing that shields and protects him and allows him to do this. He knows it of course. The other example, is him approaching the undercover officers watching him. Also a great way to mock and in way difuse their power. Extrapolating to how we (in US) are watched and monitored by Apple, Google, NSA, not sure how and what can be learned here. The difference that it is rather impersonal and mocking doesn't work in the same way. You know people insert signatures with [al-Qaeda, bomb, president, blah blah] in their emails. Not sure what that does. We might never know.
- LiweiZ 12y ago

jeffhiggins 12y ago

The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.

NANDXORNOR 12y ago
Just another example of the bay attitude '---- you, I got mine'
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  What?
  - NANDXORNOR 12y ago
    :^)
lazaroclapp 12y ago
Even more uncomfortable: most of us are using them - even knowing all the dangers and even knowing how much we are giving control to others - because we find the tools useful.
zzalpha 12y ago
Do you really think said hackers are "gleefully building these tools" specifically in order to enable a surveillance state? Of course not. It's been said a million times before: every technology can be used for good or for ill. After all, the technology that enables you to drink the water coming out of your tap, one of the most important developments in the history of mankind, is the very same technology that makes mustard gas possible. And of course there's that quintessential example: nuclear fission, equally capable of saving or destroying billions. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that every technology mankind has ever invented to benefit itself has eventually been turned against us. After all, last I checked fire was a pretty common weapon of war. So is it possible that folks at Google are nefariously turning us all into biological components of their computing infrastructure, and in the process deliberately and consciously empowering a government-corporate surveillance state? Yes, it's possible. It's equally (I'd like to believe more) likely someone just thought it'd be cool if my phone tracked my location and could provide me sight-seeing suggestions when I'm in a new city. Now, this doesn't take away from the fundamental point of the article: that technology available today is changing our lives with consequences we have yet to fully comprehend, and will likely fundamentally change the way society functions. But I think it's unnecessarily cynical to believe those inventing said technology are deliberately attempting to bring about the dystopian future the author envisions.

Punoxysm 12y ago

Even if his criticisms of coveillance are correct, I still think the world is headed that way. Simply put, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We passed a similar threshold with industrialization, and the consequent removal of autonomy for workers on several levels (is the 1800's factory of exacting time cards and constant repetitive movements that far behind the warehouse the author describes?). It was a tumultuous transition (strikes, revolution, communism, etc.) but we made it through. The transformation in state and corporate power that tools like surveillance bring will be similar, but just like in the industrial revolution we can't turn back the clock and have to instead ride out whatever happens.

c1sc0 12y ago
Serious question: where do we start when we want to fight this? We made it through the industrial revolution because people stood up for their rights. I'm at a total loss for where to start. (Edit: grammar)
- krenoten 12y ago
  By decoupling function from identity. Fake faces, portable faraday cages, blockchained trust, onion routed transport, free hardware and software.
  - EGreg 12y ago
    Identity is pretty easy to reconstruct though. The big question one has to ask is what do you do in a world where you are more and more living in a zoo with robots making sure you do the right thing to more and more exacting standards? I think the answer is that expectations will get so high that robots will do everything. And humans will be free to do anything, as long as they don't involve anyone else. Want to ask a question to your dad? Why bother, google will answer better and your dad won't be pissed at you for asking while he's glued to his facebook
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Like with many other causes, you start with yourself -- and that might be enough. These days, not participating in the latest electronics and social sites and whatnot is enough to make people ask you questions. If you think carefully enough about why you're making the choices you make, then you can give pretty reasonable answers. I don't own a smart phone, or have a Facebook or LinkedIn account. I still buy paper books. I don't blog (much). And I don't really evangelize these choices; I don't do any of this for attention or to try to change other people's minds. But, when someone notices their tech guy is carrying an old-school flip phone, they ask questions. Usually the first thing I say is, "they're really convenient, really good tools," immediately followed by, "but, I've noticed that people seem to have a lot of trouble ignoring them, and I don't need another distraction in my life. I don't really want an internet connection to follow me everywhere." As far as I know, I haven't made anyone else give up their smart phone or Facebook account or whatever. But a surprising number of people take a moment to think about that. They often kinda look at their phone and go, "...huh, I wonder what that would be like..." And, y'know, just the fact that I get by and live pretty well without these things I think speaks more about how valuable they really are than any sermon I could think of.

bluekeybox 12y ago

No, he's not.

mmanfrin 12y ago

Egger's book that he mentions, The Circle, has unnerved me since I read it. I've noticed myself looking at things I do through the lens of that book, and then continuing with that action. It's like I'm on a bus that's headed for a cliff, and I've resigned myself to the fact that it's going to go over, so I might as well sit comfortably than make a fuss.

kingkawn 12y ago

In the efforts to improve surveillance they have given us the tools to subvert it. Yes, they can watch us all, but we can also all watch each other. Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of, and they no longer control the ability to spread ideas about what is shameful. When they are abusing one person, everyone can know. Ai Wei Wei would not still be in communication with the world without the same technology that is permitting his surveillance. At the same time as the surveillance state is growing, we are being told that all of the platforms that have the broadest potential reach are lame. That facebook is not cool, so any messages you send out on it will be judged by the medium, not the message. We have more than enough power already to reach other with messages that spread faster than a security state can quash them. The Chinese government's control isn't growing, its faltering. The US government's control isn't growing. They know more about us all, and can do less to us.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
> Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of I'm going to mostly side-step the de facto response to this ("surveillance isn't about shame, it's about control, etc. etc."), because the more interesting thing here is that there's a good chance your point of view is going to become the predominant one in future generations. Generations like mine were taught that privacy was important for freedom (e.g. 1984), and even though the lesson didn't really stick with all of us, I think that there's still some clear generational divisions when it comes to privacy. Younger people seem to see this as old-fashioned, or are completely uninterested in privacy and happy to accept the tradeoffs for convenience. Year by year I'm increasingly expecting that the future won't hold some kind of social agitation for more privacy and less surveillance, it will instead have nearly complete surveillance and absence of privacy, and everyone -- or almost everyone -- will be glad for it.
- desdiv 12y ago
  I disagree. Public opinion polls clearly show that the younger generation is more intolerant of the NSA mass surveillance[0][1], for example. Sometimes the difference can be startling: Once again, there was a significant relationship between age group and support for monitoring everyone’s online activity. Only 15% of Canadians aged 18 to 29 believed that the Canadian government should monitor online activities if officials say it might prevent future terrorist attacks compared with 34% of those aged 30 to 44 and 43% for those aged 45 to 59.[2] That's almost a three fold difference between the 18 to 29 group and the 45 to 59 group. [0] http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/ http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph... [1] http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over-impact-of-nsa-leak-but-most-want-snowden-prosecuted/ http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over-imp... [2] http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa-snowden-canadians-terrorism-online-privacy/ http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa-snowden...

ekianjo 12y ago

That was a painful essay. No real point hammered through, jumping from one topic to another without clear logic, and again making it look like companies will be ruling the world in the future, while the surveillance capabilities of goverments far exceed what companies can hope to achieve because they cannot centralize all channels of information.

Thev00d00 12y ago
I agree, but then I noticed at the bottom it was originally a speech, and in Dutch at that, so I let them have some slack.

rasengan0 12y ago

We'll all take the red pill someday, but I swallowed the blue one already. I found the article enlightening, reminding me of the continued complacency and abject indifference in favor of convenience and other affordances of mindless empty rewards (yay, startups!) much like the Radiohead 1997 song, Fitter Happier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer I missed the whole Ai Weiwei media storm due to disinterest and made up assumptions about yet another dissenter getting hammered down by the State; like duh? What else is new over "there"? Well on the internets, where is there or here? The article actually made me pause playing FTL to Google Ai WeiWei and watch the streamed Netflix documentary: http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ Wow, here was someone who could have kept his mouth shut and kept kowtowing to rake in the bucks, but instead choose a new "career path" out of politics and got a fat tax bill for the trouble. Gutsy move or sending a message? Let's hope the next generation gives damn.

abandonliberty 12y ago
Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is surprisingly enjoyable and it does a great job of giving some in-depth understanding of Chinese culture. You can watch it a few minutes at a time. Ai Weiwei is a troll who has some degree of safety due to his and his father's fame. His arrest was encouraged by a work of art whose title could be interpreted as, "fuck your mother Communist Party Central Committee" (NSFW) http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical-creatures-grass-mud-horse http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical-crea... Less accessible, but still potentially informative and hilarious is his music video of his detention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs

deanclatworthy 12y ago

This documentary looks fantastic. I'm looking forward to watching this and Citizen Four. A note to anyone who might be reading this before the article, don't read it all as it contains spoilers from the documentary.

courtf 12y ago

"According to him, we have allowed efficiency thinking to optimize our world to such an extent that we have lost the flexibility and slack that is necessary for dealing with failure. This is why we can no longer handle any form of risk." This rings true to me in many ways, particularly in the way we treat our children. I may have to read Anti-fragile.

badsock 12y ago
Do - it's a great book.
ibz 12y ago
Please do. Not an easy read, but totally worth it.

rcyn 12y ago

"One of the best artists in the world." Since when do people rank artists. For me, this ruins the whole article. Maybe successful artist or artist with a high media profile. But best? Seriously?

buro9 12y ago
The article is a translation of a transcript of a speech originally given in Dutch. Shift "best" to "renowned" if it helps you read it.
hansdezwart 12y ago
You are right. So I changed it.

EGreg 12y ago

I wrote quite extensively about this. For example: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169

Kiro 12y ago

That's a fantastic trailer. I need to see this.

Intermernet 12y ago

"Your lunchtime is exactly 29 minutes. You are fired on the spot if you take a 31 minute lunch as that messes with the planning capabilities of the system." This is meant to describe "a large shipping warehouse in the US ... (think Amazon)" logistics system. Is this actually in any meaningful way true? If so, I'm disgusted, naive and disappointed.

goodmachine 12y ago
Abusive work practices and tax avoidance are complementary pillars of the model. What a world we live in. http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491 http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491 See also http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazo...
- Intermernet 12y ago
  Thanks for the links. It's always somewhat gratifying to find my cynicism well-placed. But depressing all the same... Is there a word for that? Something like "Schadenfreude", but including yourself in the suffering, and taking the "joy" as some form of second-rate consolation?

sp4ke 12y ago

I have always been fascinated by computers and passionate about programming. I never taught I would ever feel ashamed of my passion ... that maybe I have been part of the decline of freedom and privacy, the same things I've always believed in and fought for . I've finished reading again 1984 a short time ago, and I felt sick reading this article and realizing we're making a monster. I stopped using Facebook a few months ago and it was not so easy as I thought. Since then, whenever I people ask me I give them my views about keeping privacy and such ... they always have the same reply: Why would you want to hide something ? or We can do nothing about it, everyone does it ... it makes me even sicker when it comes from Tech friends who understand the consequences but just don't care about it.

throwawayaway 12y ago
the old microphone/webcam in the bedroom retort usually illustrates to people that they have got something to hide, then in their own time they will discover they have more they don't want to share. make stuff that doesn't leak privacy, then you should feel no shame.
ZenoArrow 12y ago
You feel awful now, but what you've written is very encouraging. You're doing the right thing. Coding can be put to good use too. Perhaps there's an open-source project you can contribute to that has a positive benefit to offer society? What social injustices are you most passionate about? I also intend to leave Facebook (again) very soon. The only reason I haven't in the past is that I didn't want to lose contact with some people, but I figure if I share my email address as I leave anyone that wants to contact me can do. We don't have to employ a scorched earth policy every time we want to change, losing everything we got from something, we often have better alternatives. I should move away from Gmail for similar reasons, does anyone have suggestions of a secure email service with webmail and Android app access?
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  you can go with yandex, but it's all very much a case of pick your poison.

tim333 12y ago

Ai Weiwei is not living our future. I'm a big fan of Weiwei but being the best known opposition figure against the worlds largest dictatorship is something that's unlikely to happen to most of us. Also his "Fuck your mother, the party central committee" themed photos are obviously trying to wind them up. Here in London we have CCTV everywhere and the secret services no doubt have the ability to bug me and read my mail but it effects me and most people not at all - no one is interested especially. I'd be honoured to be Weiwei.

knappador 12y ago

I don't really buy the privacy paranoia anymore these days. It was the internet that first grew the distance between people so that we could pretend-anonymous say things about anything without repercussion an it will be the internet that shrinks that distance down to where you better be talking about what matters to you and putting your money where your mouth is. In ten years I'll be sharing and leaking at least 10x as much information out of all kinds of devices. 90% of my engagement will happen inside programs will be automatically syncing data across cloud services. Security is inevitably a growing target in the networked world, and privacy requires security. Increasingly for the sake of productivity and collaboration, everything I use will be sharing and syncing more and more. The desire of most people to be connected and productive, not some autocratic slide in the worlds governments will be the death of privacy. One of the features of Facebook I liked in the early days was just the slight exclusiveness that made it basically okay to talk about having a giant hangover without fear of looking like an alcoholic to an interviewer scratching up dirt (I think zero interviews I care about do this). When Facebook started making the defaults public etc without notifications, there was understandably some uproar about being unknowingly thrust out into the public. Eroding privacy causing blunders is not the same thing as not having privacy. For the most part anxiety about not being able to control your privacy or security really need to be analyzed in the context of just how hidden you really need to make your words (in the case of anti-dissent government) or actions (in the case of socially conservative laws) to be able to practice or advocate what it is you care about. To an almost absolute degree, very little of things you want to see in the world that don't exist yet are going to require going to war for the cause of security or privacy before your end goals can be pursued, so it's just not really worth it. EFF does great work to defend people against stupid laws and to promote better laws with regard to IP etc. They protect anonymity for regular people that happen to cosplay and have very odd taste in character appropriateness. However, the area where the EFF pulled really hard to ensure that the future of the internet would be egalitarian in the United States was about Title II common carrier law, not about privacy. The 1st amendment protects what you say, not some mythical right to say it without consequences; you only get that when nobody cares about your opinion. Even in the case of socially conservative laws, stand up for respect for individual beliefs before you stand up for privacy as an extra-social cure. Privacy is not close to as fundamentally important as the security that is required to achieve it, and privacy advocacy is to an extent like whining about how someone took your tree-house and you can't have any secret clubs anymore. Most privacy is not used to do productive things, and few productive things outside of already entrenched, authoritarian governments require privacy to pursue.

j_lev 12y ago

I wish I had read this before Christmas as I was stuck for gifts for younger people.

hansdezwart 12y ago

For me as the author of the piece, it is wonderful to find an informed and critical discussion of the themes that I tried to discuss here in the comments. I will likely try and answer some of them here in the next couple of hours and am happy to answer any questions.

zzzeek 12y ago
how about more background info on the "US Warehouse (think amazon)" that will actually fire someone "on the spot" for taking a 31 minute lunch? (think actual company / location names, backing documentation?) I find it hard to believe that's not just a bit exaggerated.
- hansdezwart 12y ago
  I got it from this podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/
driverdan 12y ago
Please link to your sources. You reference most of your material from other places but don't link to anything.

MichaelTieso 12y ago

For those in the SF area, I highly recommend going to Alcatraz to experience some of Ai Weiwei's work. http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/ http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/ Never Sorry is a fantastic documentary on Ai Weiwei's life. I contributed to documentary while it was Kickstarter and got to see it in a theater in DC. http://aiweiweineversorry.com/ http://aiweiweineversorry.com/

drumdance 12y ago

That picture of him in a cell with two guards looks like something out of a wax museum.

hansdezwart 12y ago
I actually is a piece of art he made about his experience in the cell.[1] It is titled S.A.C.R.E.D. [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential-work-in-venice/ http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential-wor...

squozzer 12y ago

Pardon me for "going meta" but it seems that power in the internet age may be less about how much information you have than on how much information you can keep out of the hands of others. For example, just how transparent is Schmidt's or Zuckerberg's lives compared to ours? Or why the US govt seems to be classifying greater and greater quantities of information? And whether such asymmetries of power help or hurt our welfare.

narrator 12y ago

The Pavlok is really disturbing but cool at the same time. It's such a perfect example of technology that could be used for good or evil.

tomaskafka 12y ago

"Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the political domain of the classic city would agree with the equation of walls with law and order. According to Arendt, the political realm is guaranteed by two kinds of walls (or wall like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. The almost palindromic linguistic structure of law/wall helps to further bind these two structures in an interdependency that equates built and legal fabric. The unwalling of the wall invariably becomes the undoing of the law." "The breaching of the physical, visual and conceptual border/wall exposes new domains to political power, and thus draws the clearest physical diagram to the concept of the ‘state of exception’." "Future military operations in urban terrain will increasingly be dedicated to the use of technologies developed for the purpose of the ‘unwalling of the wall’. This is the architect’s response to the logic of ‘smart weapons’. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments where they cannot be used without endangering, injuring or killing civilians. The imagined benefits of ‘smart destruction’ and attempts to perform ‘sophisticated’ swarming thus bring more destruction over the long term than ‘traditional’ strategies ever did, because these ever more deadly methods combined with the highly manipulative and euphoric theoretical rhetoric used to promulgate them have induced decision makers to authorize their frequent use. Here another use of ‘theory’ as the ultimate ‘smart weapon’ becomes apparent. The military’s seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, sterile, easy, quick, intellectual, exciting and even economic (from their own point of view). Violence can thus be projected as tolerable, and the public encouraged to support it." Eyal Weizman Lethal Theory http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf

jqm 12y ago

Eh... in my experience, most people simply aren't worth watching very closely. Favorite part of the article... "he used Craigslist to hire somebody to help him improve his productivity. The idea was that the person would come sit next to him and give him a slap whenever he would not be working..." Love the idea. I recently had a talk w/ my boss about I was thinking about leaving because I was making many times more on the side than I was with the company. But the one caveat... I needed him to keep being my boss and check on what I was doing. Make sure I was at my desk at 7:30 coding away and didn't go home until 5. He laughed quite a bit and said to think about it. I am. I'm not in favor of massive surveillance, but sometimes knowing we are watched a little helps us at certain times....

XorNot 12y ago

Ai Weiwei isn't living in our future, he's living in an actual totalitarian-ish nationstate. The degree to which there's this encouraged ignorance to what the Chinese government is all about is the story which is of greater concern here: they're never not been a brutal regime, they're just a trade partner now so the narrative has shifted. What they do, and what they can do isn't enabled by technology. It's enabled by the simple political and military will to actually kick in doors and arrest and execute people. You want to not live in that world? Then you inform people why the no-fly list is stupid, for a start. How such a list is distributed, generated or updated is irrelevant.

patcon 12y ago

Hm. This was a hodgepodge. I really sympathized with many criticisms, but others lacked focus. Specifically, I'm frustrated with the author picking on the idea of police officers wearing cameras. I'm interested in how we can decentralize and unpackage law enforcement services, so this hit home for me. I'd like to expound on (de)centralization, community and transparency for a sec, if I can be indulged. Democracy and society today implies distributed power (citizens) mediated by necessary centralized power (law enforcement, elected representatives, judicial systems). This was a choice we made as our societies grew, as it was the only one that technology (postal service, telegraph, horse, guns, etc.) allowed at the time we were working through our options. The small, manageable communities of our past were ones where everyone knew everyone else. There was gossip. Secrets were hard. But this was bundled up with the security we had in these communties. We're being dishonest if we become nostalgic for that security and community, and yet conveniently deny the nakedness that is implied. Democracy has been the only way we've known stability in recent history. But it doesn't mirror these small communities of our past. We trusted centralized powers to mediate the trust relationships the we lost when we grew up. This allowed us to live in a world where we didn't need to ask transparency. So we got used to that being a norm in a society where we felt security and stability. But if we want to build more decentralized a robust societies, we need to accept that sometimes radical transparency is needed for certain institutions to lose their corruptible centers. We need radical transparency for any institution that operates at the scale where we can't know and trust one another through the nakedness of personal relationships. We CAN build a decentralized society that has privacy, and we should demand that privacy for situations where it need not be sacrificed. But we can't always demonize all forms of radical transparency, as this is the crucial element that will allow the most corruptible of our institutions to be reimagined. OK, sorry, this was perhaps a bit of a rant. If you're thinking in similar areas, perhaps the words above will resonate with you. Otherwise, it might sound like an abstract rambling :)

ikusalic 12y ago

Beautifully written and expressing most of the concerns that bother me in today's world. If you liked the article, I'd also suggest [1] by moxie. I really liked how he dismantles the I-have-nothing-to-hide argument. Scary, but so true. [1] http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/ http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...