I wrote quite extensively about this. For example:
Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
61–70 of 181 posts
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#62Even 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 tum…
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)
We start by decentralizing power.
Web instead of cable channels Git instead of subversion Bitcoin decentralizes money Social networking will be next to decentralize Energy production - decentralized Cellphone mesh networks Open source government programs to run cities Etc
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
By decoupling function from identity. Fake faces, portable faraday cages, blockchained trust, onion routed transport, free hardware and software.
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
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#64Even 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 tum…
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)
> We made it through the industrial revolution because people stood up for their rights.
I wouldn't say we made it through. We are living it now. We are just getting automated away from it gradually over last hundred years despite all the kicking and screaming and few revolutions (the other, bloody kind). What we sort of succeeded at is getting decent share of the profits.
> Serious question: where do we start when we want to fight this?
I think you can't fight the process. You can just demand your share.
You need to fight for your right to information. Right to surveil others. Privacy will die, you just need to ensure everybody gets a piece of its corpse and all that grows on it.
Demand right to acquire and publicize surveillance footage no matter who acquired it. No matter who was surveiled. Demand transparency from your government to the point mandatory of livefeeding of all public officers.
Don't just accept that some things should be secret. Make all the people, who claim that, prove why. Enforce transparency as default and secrecy an incredibly well argued exception.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#65The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.
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 m…
[deleted]
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#66That's a fantastic trailer. I need to see this.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 boo…
Eh, by that reasoning, you could equally live without electricity or running water. Technology is leveraged, not because it's strictly necessary, but because it's useful. After all, the very website we're having this conversation on isn't necessary. You could get by just fine without it. But it's useful, isn't it? Frankly, I don't think quietly opting out solves anything. Would it have helped if some folks opted out…
I think it's a poor comparison. You need water to stay alive and to not stink. Electricity is easier to avoid, but why do that? Electricity and running water don't disturb me with notifications, are not as addictive as social networks, don't make me waste time, don't track me (as much as a smartphone).
I find that having no TV, no smart phone and no facebook reduces the noise. I don't miss them.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 boo…
A flip phone doesn't really stop surveillance. They still track where you are, who you call. Sure, maybe no app data, but since you don't use Facebook and such that data wouldn't be there anyway.
A faraday bag probably helps to reduce the tracking: http://killyourphone.com/
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#69In 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 pe…
> 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…
I have a different read on that. Control doesn't work if no one cares about social opprobrium. If the culture has changed so that whatever behavior you're engaging in is no longer considered taboo / everyone else is doing it, you cannot be controlled by others using the threat of exposure against you (this doesn't apply to behaviors that are actually made illegal, so would be protestors/dissidents get no help from this.) Now, some may say that that kind of change itself is bad (due to the newer [theorized] cultural control strategy of reverse desublimation in the west since the 1960s), but I think that ship has long sailed anyway.
For a basic example, let's take visible public inebriation. If large numbers / the majority of people do that on a regular basis - and everyone can see it - how could you use that as a threat against people? Right now it can be used against, for example, potential job seekers because of information asymmetry (job seeker has photo of being drunk on a public post / interviewer keeps their drunken photos private.) In a world where everyone can see everyone (and archives are infinite / searchable) that power goes away. As Brin discusses in The Transparent Society, people avoid eavesdropping (or at least hide it) because they know others are looking - and IS a behavior that gets social opprobrium, and so is effectively policed. An important (and perhaps obvious) caveat to all this is that social policing only applies to people with roughly symmetrical levels of power (i.e., this doesn't work for government surveillance - they can use much more powerful tools than shame / fear of exposure.)
I think another interesting thing to think about (that we have a recent data point on) is comment sections pre- and post- Facebook comments. It was often stated in the pre- area that real names attached to posts would prevent egregious public behavior due to shame / fear. What we've seen is that this is not the case. Comment sections using Facebook comments are still often filled with much of the ugliness they had before. Is it ignorance, foolishness, feelings of invulnerability, the belief that their opinions represent a silent majority? Hard to say, but I'd like to see someone take on that topic since we now have so much data on it.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#70Even 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 tum…
> "Simply put, you can't put the genie back in the bottle."
I dislike quoting films to make a point, but "the future is not set".
Instead of thinking about reversing change, think about creating an alternate path, a 'fork' in version control terms. Think about what we'd want to inherit in this fork, and what we'd like to replace.
The easier you make the choice to switch to something better, the more people will do it. There are certain parts of our current society that we do not want to live without, any compelling alternative will need to provide them.
I see the greatest hope for a viable alternative in the world of self-sufficiency, but it has to be a more complete form of self-sufficiency than we currently have access to. Healthcare is a great example, what tools would we need to have in our homes to ensure we could treat illnesses without relying on the current healthcare industry? These are the sorts of questions to ask.
For what it's worth, I've already started making steps towards the foundations of a new society. I know it can be done. So that you can understand these ideas better, can you describe to me what holds humans back from making better choices?