Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#111

Post by hansdezwart » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #108

hansdezwart wrote: post #98

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.

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.

I got it from this podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#112

Post by hansdezwart » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

brianbarker wrote: post #11

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.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#113

Post by hansdezwart » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

rcyn wrote: post #57

"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?

You are right. So I changed it.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#114

Post by xtian » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

desdiv wrote: post #31

maxmcd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Google owns a fighter jet. What kind of conclusions am I supposed to draw from that?

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-f...

You must have a pretty sad definition of the word "relationship" to exclude two companies that share executives.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#115

Post by tim333 » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

sp4ke wrote: post #78

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 mon…

>the decline of freedom and privacy ...1984

I'm not sure privacy in the sense of computers knowing what you're up to and freedom correlate positively. The societies with a lot of tech, eg the US, UK, EU etc are fairly free, the societies where you get killed for saying the wrong thing or having the wrong belief such as N Korea or the Islamic state are pretty low tech. I'm optimistic that computer tech will work against 1984 like systems of which I guess N Korea would be closest to in the real world.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#116

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

charleslmunger wrote: post #18

Houshalter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enab…

What technology is google producing for the military?

FTA:

>One of the technologies the NSA uses for this feat is made by Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition (‘PittPatt’), now owned by Google. We underestimate how much a company like Google is already part of the military industrial complex. 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.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#117

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

charleslmunger wrote: post #18

Houshalter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enab…

What technology is google producing for the military?

[deleted]

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#118

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

charleslmunger wrote: post #18

Houshalter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enab…

What technology is google producing for the military?

[deleted]

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#119

Post by rdrey » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

jgon wrote: post #3

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 t…

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.)

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#120

Post by ewzimm » Fri, Jan 02, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

sp4ke wrote: post #78

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 mon…

I agree that privacy is important, but whenever I hear people talk about how hard it is to abandon Facebook or similar services, it seems to me that there's a missing middle ground.

Posting to Facebook, even messaging, is publishing. People just need to remember that. There's nothing wrong with publishing. It's something that people used to work hard to achieve and only a few could afford. Now anyone can publish. This is great progress. Publishing has never been private and doesn't need to be. There's a place in society for public tools and a place for private ones as well. The problem occurs when people try to use publishing platforms as private communication. Of course that causes problems. It's a matter of using the wrong tool for the job. I think what we need is to continue to develop private communication technologies side-by-side with the public ones.

I am fine with living with tools like Facebook outside my control when they serve a purpose. We control what information we give them. There's a big problem with relying on them for all of our communication.