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Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

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Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#51

Post by desdiv »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #32
ageek123 wrote: post #5

We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. We just need to make sure government doesn't get too much power. This doesn't have anything to do with Google or Apple (they can't put you in jail).

I guess I'm confused. Aren't Google and Apple under the government's power? Couldn't congress make a law mandating big technology companies give the government access to user data?

Arguably they don't even need to pass such a law, since national security letters already enables the same thing.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#52

Post by badsock »

courtf wrote: post #48

"According to him, we have allowed efficiency thinking to optimize our world to such an extent that we have lost the flexibility and slack that is necessary for dealing with failure. This is why we can no longer handle any form of risk." This rings true to me in many ways, particularly in the way we treat our children. I may have to read Anti-fragile.

Do - it's a great book.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#53

Post by crucialfelix »

LiweiZ wrote: post #24
rdtsc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The government in the propaganda domain at least is bound by high ideals and promises -- "We are for freedom. We represent the people. We don't stiffle expression. (Unlike those other countries out there...)". So doing anything too harsh to a public figure, known internationally, is going to create a big hassle. At another level you can argue that he is also a token, and thus implicitly somehow part of th…

Based on my observation of those iconic people in China, I have to say that a sad truth is nearly 100% are performers in media. It took me a long time to accept this. I was looking for some really contemporary thinkers in my nation but failed. Instead, I found a "career path" for some iconic guys. I know it sounds unbelievable, given the context of life in US.

I saw the Ai Weiwei show recently and I was noting that he uses his brief imprisonment for its performance value and I was a bit critical of this. There was one room that was just all the artifacts laid out (police reports, confiscated computers). This didn't seem like much of an artwork compared to his much better and more complex ones like http://www.zodiacheads.com/about_exhibit_gold.html

But after a while I understood that this is his strategy to simply transform all oppression and government intervention into some artistic response. Both he and the government understand that this makes it into a stalemate. Whatever they do, he echos it and gets publicity out of it.

But those pieces are not his major works at all.

http://nprberlin.de/post/ai-weiweis-evidence-exhibit-opens-m... http://www.designboom.com/art/ai-weiwei-straightens-150-tons...

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#54

Post by nitrogen »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #40
zzalpha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagree that living with a flip phone instead of a smart phone is in any way equivalent to living without electricity or running water. You're more than welcome to fight the good fight -- good luck to you -- but I'm not convinced that I'm so right that it should be my mission to change others' minds, and regardless the advice I gave is a good first step for anyone that is interested in changing others' minds.

I don't think the parent comment wants you to get people to downgrade. I think the intent is to get people to demand better protections from abuses of technology.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#55

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #38
kingkawn wrote: post #34

In 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'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.

It's not a generational thing, it's power dynamics. Keeping your secrets while learning the other guy's is to your advantage in everything from military operations to corporate trade secrets to loyalty cards used to engage in price discrimination.

There are new technologies that invade privacy but also new technologies that protect it. It's going to be a long fight.

What is going to become increasingly clear is that people who give up their privacy for nothing are suckers.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#56

Post by thaumaturgy »

desdiv wrote: post #50
thaumaturgy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the studies. That's good news. I'd nitpick though that there's a substantial difference between "government surveillance to stop terrorism" and "volunteer my personal information everywhere because I get cool things for it". For instance, most Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 25 (according to http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-snapchat-and-its-... ).

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

Maybe we're struggling a bit here because privacy can mean so many different things in different contexts.

There's privacy from parents. That's something that I think young people have cared about for a long time, and that's not likely to change soon. So, Snapchat is popular.

There's privacy from the government. This situation is harder to read because there are a lot of nuances. You can be politically opposed to a government spying on its own citizens without necessarily caring about personal privacy; if you distrust your government, then politically you're resistant to giving it more powers, even if you don't see how those powers might be abused.

And then there's personal privacy: control over who owns information about you and what they can do with it, and that doesn't seem to be getting very much traction in younger markets. There certainly hasn't been a revolt against online services (http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2014/01/09/forbes-where-are...), even post-Snowden, even after it's generally accepted that the business model for each of those services is to gather as much personal information about their users as possible.

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#57

Post by rcyn »

"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?

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#58

Post by thaumaturgy »

nitrogen wrote: post #54
thaumaturgy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that living with a flip phone instead of a smart phone is in any way equivalent to living without electricity or running water. You're more than welcome to fight the good fight -- good luck to you -- but I'm not convinced that I'm so right that it should be my mission to change others' minds, and regardless the advice I gave is a good first step for anyone that is interested in changing others' minds.

I don't think the parent comment wants you to get people to downgrade. I think the intent is to get people to demand better protections from abuses of technology.

Maybe I'm not imaginative enough, but I can't figure how that would happen.

Who could be trusted to safeguard privacy? The government? The services that depend on advertising revenue, which these days is most of them?

Downgrading and opting-out has been the only option that has made sense to me. (But I'm probably weird.)

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#59

Post by [deleted] »

desdiv wrote: post #47
thaumaturgy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 disagree. Public opinion polls clearly show that the younger generation is more intolerant of the NSA mass surveillance[0][1], for example. Sometimes the difference can be startling: Once again, there was a significant relationship between age group and support for monitoring everyone’s online activity. Only 15% of Canadians aged 18 to 29 believed that the Canadian government should monitor online activities if off…

[deleted]

Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future

#60

Post by ibz »

courtf wrote: post #48

"According to him, we have allowed efficiency thinking to optimize our world to such an extent that we have lost the flexibility and slack that is necessary for dealing with failure. This is why we can no longer handle any form of risk." This rings true to me in many ways, particularly in the way we treat our children. I may have to read Anti-fragile.

Please do. Not an easy read, but totally worth it.
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