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Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

locusmag.com

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Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#21

Post by titzer »

Cory is a great writer and gives an entertaining history of attention-grabbing in advertising and games. His main point is that we are continually able to adapt to escalating intrusions that attention grabbers throw at us.

However, overall I disagree that we are adapting fast enough. Not only is the escalation so rapid that most cannot adapt, the cultural shift in what is an acceptable level of intrusion is like boiling us frogs alive.

On the Web, it is absolutely acceptable nowadays to have a fullpage interstitial or a whole-page darkening nag box on a news article. And to block adblockers. Wat. A newspaper or the web of just 5 years ago would never have considered this acceptable.

This makes me worry about the future, especially augmented reality. Don't you want ads right ON YOUR FACE!? It's OK. You'll adapt!

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#22

Post by lmm »

whatshisface wrote: post #7

> "Not everyone has this reaction, of course: people in the fifth or sixth sigma of slot-machine susceptibility go out and[...]" Every time a new one of these mental attacks gets invented, a new five-sigma cohort falls off the "normal life" wagon. How many times can this happen before expansive hordes of people who have had their priorities destroyed start a new social crisis?

~200000 times, if we take five sigma literally and assume it takes 5% of the population to start a crisis.

One assumes evolution will work its way before that happens.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#23

Post by dm319 »

0xWilliam wrote: post #12
freedomben wrote: post #2

Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say. While this particular blog post isn't about DRM, his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think. I highly recommend reading up on what Cory has to say on DRM and the war on general purpose computing. It may change your mind. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cory-doctorow-s…

Can you summarize what you mean instead of wasting my time with useless platitudes like: >his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think.

It's difficult to generalise his work, so this is a reasonable summary. He seems to write about subjects he thinks are important to society - covering topics such as copyright, DRM.

I'd agree that with others here that he is an excellent writer, and his piece on 'the war on general purpose computing' is something which stands out in my mind as one of the most profound pieces I've read in tech.

EDIT: I think this is the article I had in mind [1]

[1] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#24

Post by dm319 »

gozur88 wrote: post #8
whatshisface wrote: post #7

> "Not everyone has this reaction, of course: people in the fifth or sixth sigma of slot-machine susceptibility go out and[...]" Every time a new one of these mental attacks gets invented, a new five-sigma cohort falls off the "normal life" wagon. How many times can this happen before expansive hordes of people who have had their priorities destroyed start a new social crisis?

I wonder if that's really a problem or if it's the same group people getting manipulated over and over.

I guess it depends when people get afflicted. If you spend your adult life all day playing a slot-machines or a dopamine-enriching computer game, you are unlikely to be starting a family anytime soon, and so it won't be your children who go on to be the afflicted population in the next generation.

If you had children, they might be more aware of the dangers of these attentional assaults, and actually more resistant to it.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#26

Post by maxerickson »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #6
freedomben wrote: post #2

Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say. While this particular blog post isn't about DRM, his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think. I highly recommend reading up on what Cory has to say on DRM and the war on general purpose computing. It may change your mind. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cory-doctorow-s…

Same here. I personally like the guy for correctly pointing my attention at things that are important, as opposed to vast majority of journalists, who just follow the mainstream subject du jour.

He's an author and activist. No surprise that he does different things than journalists. This is a "commentary" column in a science fiction magazine. He bills himself just as I said:

https://boingboing.net/about

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#27

Post by avoutthere »

titzer wrote: post #21

Cory is a great writer and gives an entertaining history of attention-grabbing in advertising and games. His main point is that we are continually able to adapt to escalating intrusions that attention grabbers throw at us. However, overall I disagree that we are adapting fast enough. Not only is the escalation so rapid that most cannot adapt, the cultural shift in what is an acceptable level of intrusion is like boil…

You will adapt...by never visiting that site again.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#28

Post by TeMPOraL »

I'm not sure if I agree with the tone of his conclusion - don't worry, that we always evolve defenses. It doesn't matter we evolve defenses. They're always in lock-step with new attack vectors. Which means the only thing that changes is the players. Yesterday it was Zynga and Upworthy, today it's Cambridge Analytica, tomorrow it will be something else. Bad new for individual attackers, yes, but it's also bad news for all of us too - because we don't know and can't predict what the next attack will be and where will it come from.

Basically, the defense can't outpace offense, and we're doomed to forever be pwnd by manipulative people.

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#29

Post by stewbrew »

interfixus wrote: post #11
superkuh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no better time than now (Meltdown/Spectre) to switch to whitelist only JS (NoScript works). The menu/ads completely fail to display but the text is just fine.

Nope. My personal preference is uMatrix, but that's an implementation detail. I rarely see an ad, and I didn't see any on this page. Also, I have more or less tuned out Facebook and similar sleaze, and I try to maintain some vigilance concerning anything which begins to unduly attract my attention. And then I have to wonder: Am I living in a cleanroom? Am I letting my defenses rot? Am I setting myself up for a fall i…

Didn't the author of uMatrix stop using it himself in favor of uBlock origin?

Re: Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention

#30

Post by interfixus »

stewbrew wrote: post #29
interfixus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. My personal preference is uMatrix, but that's an implementation detail. I rarely see an ad, and I didn't see any on this page. Also, I have more or less tuned out Facebook and similar sleaze, and I try to maintain some vigilance concerning anything which begins to unduly attract my attention. And then I have to wonder: Am I living in a cleanroom? Am I letting my defenses rot? Am I setting myself up for a fall i…

Didn't the author of uMatrix stop using it himself in favor of uBlock origin?

No idea. It's certainly still being maintained. Gives you loads of very finegrained control. Not quite clear to me why it's so overshadowed by the good but far less capable uBlock.
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