31–40 of 66 posts
Sadly the collateral damages in our attention habituation seems to be our empathy and social lives.
I recently saw research that links social network usage with depression, e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-l...
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…
I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.
He was an absolute and utter jerk to me. He took one look at my badge that said "Disney" and started hurling sarcastic insults at me about my employer and suggesting my character was tarnished for working for them. I managed to ask my question and he blew it off completely as a non issue and acted like it was a stupid question. I said "thanks" and started walking away, and he called after me saying "tell those thieves at Disney I said hi." I don't care if he's interesting or right anymore. I still mildly wanted to read his book, but I haven't been able to. When I see it or read about him, the memory of that moment comes back to me. I wish I could go back to liking his writing and not having met him.
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…
> Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.…
That said, I personally don't judge him too harshly for it. If you spend your whole life working and using your money to save the oceans and meet a representative for BP, I strongly suspect that images from the Gulf oil spill will pop up and the meeting will be very frosty. It comes with the territory, as people rarely do spend their whole life and worldly possessions unless they also have strong views on the issue. Its not uncommon to see such personalities to be founders of movements but at the same time be rather poor diplomats.
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…
> Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.…
Separating the ideas from the personalities who express them is really important, especially nowadays when it's really easy to get glimpses of personalities online. You're not hurting anyone but yourself by allowing a bruised ego to get in the way of acquiring new ideas and knowledge.
Newton was a total jerk to anyone who he thought was dumber than him (everyone), in fact I read that his quote "... standing on the shoulders of giants." was actually a dig at a colleague who was short (in Bryson's Brief History of the World, I think).
I have this same conversation whenever talking about Taleb's work, where his ideas about risk and randomness are somehow conflated with his twitter persona. You can be a total asshole and still have good ideas, or you can have shitty ideas and be the nicest person around. Some of the nicest people you'll meet are in places where they'll shake your hand, look you in the eye, buy you a beer and then proceed to tell you how great a job our president is doing.
I also prefer when good ideas come from good people, but so long as their ideas aren't about how to treat other people (making themselves hypocrites) I say fuck 'em, better to take their ideas and be a better version of their proponent.
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…
I have a dream that augmented reality will one day enable you to visually block virtually every advertisement and billboard in meatspace, by covering them up with an image to your liking such as a forest
A bit odd to open an article about an arms race for my attention and see an ad for a book (A whirlwind out-of-this-galaxy adventure! #1 New York Times best selling author...) in the menu that takes up the top half of the page, and then only the title of the article and no actual text before scrolling (mobile safari)... and then a donate now box also came up over 80% of the screen. Also a nice touch to have all the so…
I'll still give Doctorow credit for emphasizing the right topics, like media accountability and a cooperative browsing experience. But his personal output is hardly consistent with those positions...
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…
> Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.…
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 fo…
This might be a decent summary of where we are now, but I don't think it's inherent to the problem. To stretch a metaphor, antibodies to viruses are reactive, but white blood cells are proactive against new diseases.
I run a stack of privacy and attention defenses on my browser. Sometimes new attacks come out and I lose ground, as with browser fingerprinting. But sometimes new attacks come out and run aground on the protections I already have - the various cryptocurrency mining scripts, for instance, were all stopped because I disabled Javascript for unrelated reasons.
Blocking the intrusion of the day is a Red Queen situation, agreed. But it's possible to make the game asymmetric, to raise the cost of future attacks and so do better with each round of the pattern.
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…
> Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.…
If you are an Animator I get it they treat you well and it's a small industry. However, objectively they cause an immense amount of direct and indirect harm.