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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.
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most Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 25 Isn't that an argument for the younger generation being more privacy-conscious? I.e. that they're willing to forgo the convenience of a message history in exchange for more privacy in their communications?
No. Snapchat has been under fire from several directions for a while for promising more privacy than was actually provided. They had a major account leak, there have been applications for a while that can save received photos, they got a pretty poor privacy review from the EFF... Being privacy-conscious would have to include caring at least a little bit about privacy-related news (and not just Snowden-related). sigh…
Hopefully the realization that these services aren't as private as advertized will have a ripple effect in the "younger markets", but I doubt it.
> 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.
This article claims 1 hour shifts of not blinking for a guard: https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-...
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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…
Not owning a smart phone also has downsides and benefits. Many people however aren't really aware that downsides exist, so the benefits, however small they may be seem like a justification to buy one. I think it makes sense to be critical of the things you use and spend some time thinking about whether you really think that they benefits are worth the costs.
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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)
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…
What I often see is that most individuals see that the benefits outweigh the negatives (all the people that say "I have nothing to hide." over and over) of safety over privacy, and specters can be brought up to increase this fear of the unknown until you are going to have to fight against your friends and neighbors instead of the government to get any change in place.
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 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)
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.
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.
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.
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 tum…
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.