The End of the Internet Dream • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#171

Post by gue5t » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 3:50 PM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #169

anon1385 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web has done more to centralise computing and take it out of the hands of ordinary people than any other technology. People don't even control their own data anymore, never mind having control over the software they run. It's hard to see that as a win.

The web has done more to decentralize networked computing than any other technology, because the web is basically decentralized. Only the agreements (IETF and W3C) are somewhat centralized, but even then we are seeing a proliferation of REST APIs to encourage decentralized data management. These usually aren't exactly "RESTful" of course because we are so busy with our own startups we aren't really working towards in…

The web separates endpoints into two classes: the "land-owning" pays-for-a-domain-name server class, and the disenfranchised client class where users live.

Interactions between users are necessarily mediated by a server, which is why the economics encourage centralization. You don't need "major parties" to "adhere to agreements" if users just use the software they like to interact with each other. The problem with the Web is everyone using software on third-party servers to write rows in third-party databases because everything else is technically infeasible given the architecture of Web protocols.

You need a DHT or some other kind of decentralized matchmaking service in order to actually connect users to each other. At that point using HTTP makes no sense either, and users don't have the time or resources to write complicated HTML or hire web devs to write it. Web technologies are not really useful for users-talking-to-users without server-based mediation.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#172

Post by verisimilidude » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 3:51 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #35

natrius wrote: post #25

This is one of my favorite topics because I have cause for hope. The story of internet centralization is one of network effects. Even though the internet connects every computer on the planet directly, finding people to interact in the ways we want is difficult. We post things to Facebook and Twitter because that's where our friends and like-minded strangers are actually looking for things. To fight this, we tried fe…

How does IPFS deal with censorship/takedowns, if every piece of content has a unique ID? Physically distributed systems can choose (or be induced) to implement central policy.

At least one cultural solution might involve people adding a new letter or word to any blocked content. I understand this would result in a new hash/ID. Republish, redistribute, and repeat. Would this work?

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#173

Post by parasubvert » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #92

austerity wrote: post #36

Good article. However I don't understand why so many smart people fear decision-making machines. In my experience the decision makers in bureaucracies, government and private alike, never ever show the "humanity" ascribed to them in arguments about this issue. Instead they follow their instruction (which is actually a program written in human language) to the letter and are usually so obtuse and unempathetic it seems…

The dream of decision-making machines has been with us for 70 years, since Wiener wrote Cybernetics in the '40s, but it keeps falling flat. Ultimately, computers remain a tool, no matter how sophisticated, and they will never be capable of reason. Tasked with implementing a policy, they will implement it deterministically, based only on the available input data, without judgment or context. You may implement a very c…

What is reason, beyond sensing, sense-making, logic, verification of facts/premises, and response/conclusion?

Computers absolutely will be (and are today!) capable of reason - but as with humans it will be limited and imperfect - just in different ways than humans. Having worked in the semantic web space for example, some logical inferences are computationally way too expensive to bother with, and a human will often be better. Other cases are better. Research on building reasoning systems for medical diagnosis , prescription and contra-indication are getting very sophisticated for example.

I suspect what computers will long be bad at are imagination, curiosity, ambition, emotion, and intuition... All of which relate to your examples of weaving through the bureaucracy.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#174

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

mdpopescu wrote: post #138

pjc50 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to opt out of people falsely calling SWAT teams to your house.

Maybe the problem is the existence of SWAT teams?

That was an example; the general problem of people whipping up a mob, hate campaign, harrasment or slander against someone remains as something the victim cannot easily opt out of. Even if they try to go off-net completely.

(Trigger-happy policing is certainly its own problem)

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#175

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

SpaghettiCat wrote: post #157

pjc50 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software and hardware are sufficiently complex that the user has only the vaguest idea of what they actually bought. They cannot possibly make a fully informed decision and have to go on partial information. I don't think it's sensible to say that customers "wanted" VW cars with "defeat devices". In that case, it's not even clear how much of the vendor company knew what was in the product.

Clearly VW engaged in deception of the customer as they cheated their test results. Customers are protected from such deception by the law. My point was to criticise the "Internet Dream" utopian fairy tale advocated by commenter TEMPORAL--where a user gets everything but pays nothing--and to explain that the internet's commercialisation is perfectly OK.

I think there's a legitimate question to ask about how some kinds of commercialisation (selling privacy; expensive in-app purchases bought by children or compulsive gamblers; etc) are in some way deceptive or dishonest. It's certainly not as simple as a direct upfront payment for goods or services.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#176

Post by simonh » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

stevetrewick wrote: post #153

eludwig wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your starred comment beautifully allowed you to knock down your own strawman. Nicely done. :D It is worth looking at his comment with the "red" filters removed. The point is that every game has winners and losers. You actually can't have one without the other, by definition. One creates the other. The real question is just how far do you want to tilt the board before all of the pieces fall off? Money is just a repres…

>The point is that every game has winners and losers. If so, then the point is wrong, because Game Theory[0]. With very few exceptions (e.g. futures and options contracts, IIRC) trade - that thing markets do - is a positive sum cooperative game, that is to say win/win. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Non-zero-sum

Your general point is quite correct.

Both sides can certainly win in a futures contract and often do. A farmer sells his future crop now at a discount so he can buy fertilizer he couldn't otherwise afford, but without which there would be less crop to sell. Meanwhile the future crop buyer gets the crop at a discount. Win-win.

Pure financial derivatives trading can generate absolute winners and losers, but they know that getting into the game, and the advantage for commercial participants is that the 'gamblers' increase liquidity in the market.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#177

Post by parasubvert » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

Decade wrote: post #94

As a lawyer, I don't think Granick appreciates just how the Internet has become a realm of haves and have-nots. She talks about right to tinker and end-to-end communications. Back in the 90s, I played with HTTP and SMTP services on my Mac. It was just install a program and go. No root permissions for special ports. No configuring port forwarding, because even on dial-up I had a global IP address. And HTTP was a simpl…

I grew up through the 80s and 90s too and I'm not sure why you're that concerned:

- we mainly all still have global IP access on our broadband

- HTTP and SMTP are still fundamentally text even if you need TLS (just need the key to be able to read it)

- HTTP/2 has clear semantics that can make it look like text with a simple script

- NAT is annoying and yet essential ; it will be in an IPv6 world too.

the dream of everything having a public IPv6 address was always unlikely precisely because people want privacy for their devices, a (misplaced?) belief they're one step off the grid.

I suspect the work we are seeing with cloud technology around automated dynamic provisioning of firewall & routing will make its way into consumer edge routers and ISPs some day when the right app is there. Tinkerers always find a way.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#178

Post by zby » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

randomname2 wrote: post #127

Are any politicians explicitly defending the kind of Internet/technology-related civil liberties mentioned in the article? The ones that are often written about are Wyden (D), Rand Paul (R), Amash (R), Massie (R), any others?

Look up Pirate Party.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#179

Post by simonh » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

eludwig wrote: post #120

simonh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's complete rubbish. Anthropologists and historians use measures in terms of nutrition, health, life expectancy, child mortality and leisure time that apply regardless of the economic system in operation and track changes over time in order to characterize changes in lifestyle. You can set benchmarks to characterize poverty regardless of whether the population in question live in an agrarian, capitalist, Marxist…

Your starred comment beautifully allowed you to knock down your own strawman. Nicely done. :D It is worth looking at his comment with the "red" filters removed. The point is that every game has winners and losers. You actually can't have one without the other, by definition. One creates the other. The real question is just how far do you want to tilt the board before all of the pieces fall off? Money is just a repres…

> Hopefully this is a true circle, where those at the top allow those on the bottom to stand on their shoulders.

Of course this is true. The company I work for was founded by, and is run by very successful wealth members of the top 0.1%. The salary I get from that company feeds and clothes me any my children, provides us with a car, holidays, health care, a pension plan and all the other trappings of western civilization. Just because I work for them doesn't mean I have in any way 'lost'. I have gained massively. I hope they go on winning so they can employ even more people like me.

When my wife arrived in this country, she got a bottom-of-the-ladder job at a coffee shop. Within 2 months she was an assistant manager. She used the money she earned to support herself and pay the course and transport fees to go to a community college 'access to nursing' course and now 13 years later is head nurse at a specialist fracture clinic. Everybody won. They got a hard working Barista, and she got the resources she needed to build a successful career and their customers got great tasting coffee. Nobody lost a single thing.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#180

Post by Coincoin » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

gue5t wrote: post #171

parasubvert wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web has done more to decentralize networked computing than any other technology, because the web is basically decentralized. Only the agreements (IETF and W3C) are somewhat centralized, but even then we are seeing a proliferation of REST APIs to encourage decentralized data management. These usually aren't exactly "RESTful" of course because we are so busy with our own startups we aren't really working towards in…

The web separates endpoints into two classes: the "land-owning" pays-for-a-domain-name server class, and the disenfranchised client class where users live. Interactions between users are necessarily mediated by a server, which is why the economics encourage centralization. You don't need "major parties" to "adhere to agreements" if users just use the software they like to interact with each other. The problem with th…

And once again we stumble on the Internet's weak point we could never fix -- the DNS.

Google wanted to fix the problem and, despite their best intention, became evil in the process. Now instead of racing for a .com name, people are fighting for search terms, bending to the opaque, machine enforced rules of a single entity driven by advertising revenues.