Snow Crash
L. Bob Rife is behind all of it.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
301–310 of 443 posts
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the more apt metaphor is lead in Roman pipes. They knew lead exposure made you crazy but they still used it in their pipes, on their plates - and it drove them mad. After the planet has warmed beyond a point of no return, after antibiotic resistant bacteria make routine surgery a life-or-death decision, after we have squandered away our resources and used what little we had left to wage futile wars, we will f…
I'm so glad you mentioned Edward Bernays. It's interesting how he was very helpful in promoting his uncle's book in the US, bringing Freud some much needed cash. At the same time, Sigmund hated Bernays, and Anna, for using a lot of his psychological work to change the face of advertising into what it is today. Bernays created the very first _Public Relations_ office (he made up the term because "Propaganda" was a bad…
Well yeah, that was basically his argument: propaganda is too effective to be left in the "wrong" hands, so the "right" people better get on it, and quick.
I'm sure it dawned on him that it wouldn't take long until everyone was using it and there would be no discernible difference between the good or bad.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dangerous doesn't mean too dangerous. Nuclear energy is dangerous but any projection of energy use that accommodates growing population and energy usage AND expects carbon reductions AND doesn't include growing nuclear use is simply impossible. EDIT: Also worth noting that there is a clear correlation between the increase of electronics/battery recycling in the West and lead poisoning cases in Kenyan children where t…
Nuclear power can be done safe, but we also have many examples of it not being done safe. Saying, "well it will be different this time. We will build systems to make corruption, laziness, and dangerous actions impossible!" is believing in a pipe dream.
We made airliner travel safe, we can make nuke plants safe.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
More problematic may have been using sugar of lead to sweeten wine. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-lead-a-d...
I was about to post that myself: the dangers of lead acetate. IIRC, that sweetener is what deafened Beethoven as well, and I'd call it a good argument for minimally-processed/natural food...
Sounds more like a good argument to avoid sugar of lead.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Offtopic ad. PDF: [1] is quite fine on Windows and has no arbitrary restrictions. But the general point holds. [1] https://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html
Nice. Apparently it uses Ghostscript in the background though? Another problem is that a Google search for "convert to PDF" turns up so much crap it's hard to even start looking. Same with "convert to MP4". I just use ffmpeg directly now, even though getting the command line options right is not easy.
Isn't it just "ffmpeg -o output.mp4 input.whatever" (AFAIR)?
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#306Apparently google has an Ethicist. Ctrl-F: Ad Huh. Zero mentions of the thing that manipulates people by design. I guess I don't blame him, because even with a blind spot to ads it would seem Google still doesn't give two shits about his input. He explicitly calls out a problem YouTube feature, which he certainly would have voiced internally before externally. And he doesn't work at Google anymore. Google must want r…
Ads don't always manipulate, they can also inform. Lets say you're looking for a new headset and have a mental buy price. The ad shows you the set you want at the price you wanted. Click, buy, and no manipulation.
> no manipulation
Because the ad is definitely a neutral source of information.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#307Kind of interesting idea about how our tools (generic) present us with limited menus, and effectively restrict our options. Facebook has expanded (barely) the options for basic responses to posts (no longer just like, but also a handful of emoticons to express laughter, anger, sadness, etc.). Not as full an option as when using the comment box, but for quick responses it allows for greater expressiveness. At least pe…
Eventually we will have a bunch of bots commending each other on their autogenerated graduation photos, and we can go outside and have actual human interactions again.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#308I loved the part about the "friction required to enact choices" bit. Like how it's outstandingly easy to get a bank account, and how as a part of the law regarding privacy, they're required to provide a method for you to opt out of them selling your data, which involves them sending you a paper privacy notice, and to opt out you have to send them a written letter (no form is provided), to an address you have to write…
I think Germany has some legislation (or a court decision) that requires that customers be able to void their contracts over the same communication channel where the contract was initially created.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.
I found Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" ( http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ ) a refreshingly action-oriented exploration of your question ("but what?"). Its interactivity and richness of presentation are icing on the cake. Incidentally, one can imagine a parallel message of informed empowerment to address the dark sides of OP's UI "mind hijacks."
Thanks. There is a lot more that could be done in that style of action oriented discussion.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear power can be done safe, but we also have many examples of it not being done safe. Saying, "well it will be different this time. We will build systems to make corruption, laziness, and dangerous actions impossible!" is believing in a pipe dream.
We have come a long way from Chernobyl. Most of the people posting here probably weren't even alive when it happened. Nuclear power is so well-controlled (unless you build reactors on earthquake hotspots or tsunami zones, I mean c'mon Japan) that you can't even use regular statistical models because the only probable risks are human. Reactors are really, really well-designed these days to seal themselves off in the (…
> unless you build reactors on earthquake hotspots or tsunami zones, I mean c'mon Japan
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, how many proponents of nuclear power considered it to be an example of a nuclear plant that was too dangerous to operate, and how many treated it as an example of modern, safe nuclear power and dismissed criticism as anti-nuclear fearmongering?