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The End of the Internet Dream

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Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#81

Post by Eupolemos »

necessity wrote: post #43
zipwitch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent future for humanity is not compatible with a profit-driven world. The solution is to end the profit driven world in a way that will lead to a better future, because like it or not, the profit driven world IS ending.

Yeah, socialism has worked so well throughout history and capitalism so bad.

Socialism works pretty well in Scandinavia (understatements may be present).

Lot's of dictatorships have called themselves "socialist", maybe you are confusing the term?

Capitalism and socialism works exceptionally well hand-in-hand.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

escherize wrote: post #80
TeMPOraL wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the consumer and the supplier do not form a closed system (regardless of what some ideologies would want one to believe). You have to account for the effects supplying a customer with something has on the third parties. Those are the externalities I've mentioned, and even Wikipedia has a lot of examples. Secondly, you have to take a look at the aggregate effects. So for instance I may need a new, shitti…

And in doing so, you create a larger market for anti newer-shittier-spam ads, with the potential to erase ads for anyone who cares enough.

Which is strictly worse than not creating that market at all. It's just resources going to waste over the pointless zero-sum games, and that's exactly another reason where "satisfying user needs" doesn't cut it as a justification.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#83

Post by spython »

mdpopescu wrote: post #66
spython wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is great fun, when any previous authority is replaced by the logic of the market. What thrives, they say, deserves to thrive, what fails, deserves to fail. Their argument is, if people really wanted a better world, they would have it already. Which is of course foolish, the market doesn't care about good or evil.

"The market" is people. You just said that people don't care about good or evil. I submit that this is an exaggeration.

The market is not people, nor was it ever about people. It is about money and capital, and capital is not governed by moral principles.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

mdpopescu wrote: post #68
TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> corporations and business models. They're just driven by demand. It's not some shady nebulous force at work trying to screw everything and everyone. Oh it's not shady in the sense that it has agency and decides to screw everything up. But it's very powerful and increasingly misaligned with the interest of humans. Being driven by demand does not map well to the shared wishes and morals of humanity, only if because o…

I generally upvote your comments but I think this one is far too pessimistic. You're worrying about coordination problems on the internet ? That's like, I don't know, worrying about dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean. Oh wait... :P On a more serious note, though, I think this is just another problem to be solved. Long-term, I am an absolute optimist: everything will get better, everywhere. Short-term, I admit…

> On a more serious note, though, I think this is just another problem to be solved. Long-term, I am an absolute optimist: everything will get better, everywhere. Short-term, I admit there are some speed bumps :)

Yeah, that's why I keep my pessimist locked up in a cage underground, and only let it out to get some air every now and then. :). I still want to believe we'll get the United Federation of Planets :).

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#85

Post by oska »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

The Internet Dream is sadly not compatibile with profit-driven world. We had some good times back when it all begun, because then nobody besides techies cared. Now that the Internet is a money making machine, there are tons of incentives to make it worse and little to make it better. In order to keep the corruption away, or maybe even limit it, all of us and our coworkers would have to start risking their livelihoods…

This comment is an example of corrosive cynicism and I'm sorry to see it (currently) at the top of the thread.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#86

Post by Eupolemos »

darkr wrote: post #64
wcummings wrote: post #4

I think Snowden's disclosures were a loss of innocence for many technologists, and this reflects that. I can't imagine this would have been written in his absence.

I disagree. Given the track record of the various 3 letter agencies over the past 50 years; any hacker who didn't think, prior to the Snowden leaks, that the NSA had cast a far-reaching net was naive in the extreme.

To some extent true, but the thing is that you couldn't say it out loud in public without being labelled a conspiracy theorist by the masses.

The masses are pretty important in discussions about what kind of society we ultimately want.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#87

Post by escherize »

mhurron wrote: post #12
wcummings wrote: post #4

I think Snowden's disclosures were a loss of innocence for many technologists, and this reflects that. I can't imagine this would have been written in his absence.

For the government surveillance parts of the article perhaps, though lets be honest, people were saying TLA's had been watching everything you've been doing for a while before that. Another large part of the article is corporate control of the internet and that was a problem long before Snowden. That corporations would control the world and use the internet to create a Shadowrun type world was again something people…

The point about many people's knowledge of the surveillance is not a good one. It's a different situation when the details are known. The battle ground in the war of ideas shifts from "that doesn't really exist" to "here's why it's nessicary."

Again, these evil corporations can only exist when they serve a need. If normal people actually cared about an open internet, they could (usually)* switch service providers to one that is more amenable to open standards.

* One example where people can't switch is in the US, Comcast bribes the government to enforce its monopoly.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#88

Post by escherize »

mhurron wrote: post #12
wcummings wrote: post #4

I think Snowden's disclosures were a loss of innocence for many technologists, and this reflects that. I can't imagine this would have been written in his absence.

For the government surveillance parts of the article perhaps, though lets be honest, people were saying TLA's had been watching everything you've been doing for a while before that. Another large part of the article is corporate control of the internet and that was a problem long before Snowden. That corporations would control the world and use the internet to create a Shadowrun type world was again something people…

The point about many people's knowledge of the surveillance is not a good one. It's a different situation when the details are known. The battle ground in the war of ideas shifts from "that doesn't really exist" to "here's why it's nessicary."

Again, these evil corporations can only exist when they serve a need. If normal people actually cared about an open internet, they could (usually)* switch service providers to one that is more amenable to open standards.

* One example where people can't switch is in the US, Comcast bribes the government to enforce its monopoly.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#89

Post by tracker1 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

The Internet Dream is sadly not compatibile with profit-driven world. We had some good times back when it all begun, because then nobody besides techies cared. Now that the Internet is a money making machine, there are tons of incentives to make it worse and little to make it better. In order to keep the corruption away, or maybe even limit it, all of us and our coworkers would have to start risking their livelihoods…

I don't think it's nearly as grim as you make it out to be... it's just as easy to deploy a personal not-profit driven application/bulletin-board or whatever on Amazon, Linode, DigitalOcean, Azure and many others as it has EVER been to start a project and deploy it online.

People are choosing to use Facebook, Twitter and other sites... that doesn't stop anyone from doing other things. That said, I think some government actions from spying to DMCA takedown shams and the like are pretty bad.

More people today have enough knowledge to put up a web application than did in 1996... I've been working developing web applications since that year. I also remember a lot of the nay-sayers back then... guess what, it's still better today for the most part. I really miss BBSing, that said I'd rather have today's tools and connectivity.

There's efforts to open up communications via WebRTC based application networks, and I think that may well be the future for some classes of applications. When you shut one thing down, other ideas present themselves.

Re: The End of the Internet Dream

#90

Post by tracker1 »

beatpanda wrote: post #74
adventured wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism optimizes people into the loop in fact. It pulls more people into higher standards of living, and produces more jobs for people. We have four billion more people than 50 years ago, and more people have jobs today globally than at any other time in history, and less people are in poverty, and there's more food available for everyone, and famines are almost non-existent, and the infant mortality rate has bee…

"More people have jobs" is a completely meaningless sentence. There is an amount of work that all humans have to do to ensure the survival of themselves and all other humans. If we were doing it right, we would all he doing less work, not more, and we would have some kind of equality of access to the total product of society. Instead, and increasingly, the people doing the hardest work are disconnected from access to…

As long as anyone has greed and/or desire, your idealistic scenario cannot work.
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