World Without Mind

[Trish]

To many Americans, large technology firms embody much of what’s good about the modern world. Google holds the key to new depths of knowledge. Amazon is the white-knight savior of impulse shopping. Facebook builds the connective tissue to old friends and colleagues.Franklin Foer‎ has a different perspective. In his new book, "World Without Mind,” the veteran journalist lays out a more ominous‎ view of where Big Tech would like to take us — in many ways, already has taken us.

Investigating the practices of these digital gatekeepers, he has crafted an anti-Silicon Valley manifesto that while occasionally slipping into alarmism and get-off-my-lawn-ism makes a cogently scary case against the influence of U.S. tech firms (but not, crucially, technology itself). Silicon Valley, he argues, may say it wants to improve the world. But its true endgame is the advancement of an ideological agenda.‎ And it's a terrifying one.By introducing addictive new features, the book says, these companies have made us hopelessly dependent. Once hooked, consumers are robbed of choice, milked for profit, deprived of privacy and made the subjects of stealth social engineering experiments. “We are,” Foer writes, “the screws and rivets in their grand design.”

http://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-world-without-mind-20170912-story.html

"These firms have a program: to make the world less private, less individual, less creative, less human"

I wasn't certain where to post this article. It's a book (I have not read yet) but it's also a theory about the technology that we have been exposed to.

Anyhow, I caught the author on one of the shows this morning and thought it was a subject both sides could equally find compelling and concerning.

[Standing Wolf]

Technology and consumerism are only refining the work that other societal institutions have been doing from the beginning: shaping us all into compliant, unquestioning drones who treasure trash, view individualism with suspicion, and permit ourselves to be trapped into an endless cycle of debt and labor for things we wouldn't want or need if it hadn't been drummed into our heads from birth that we do.

[Common]

Social Media is a scourge on humanity a festering cesspool that destroys lives and marriages and creates hatred and suicides. Its a deep addiction that will never go away

[Trish]

Technology and consumerism are only refining the work that other societal institutions have been doing from the beginning: shaping us all into compliant, unquestioning drones who treasure trash, view individualism with suspicion, and permit ourselves to be trapped into an endless cycle of debt and labor for things we wouldn't want or need if it hadn't been drummed into our heads from birth that we do.

Agreed but I think it's gone beyond just the points you make. It has seeped into our political process. These platforms and the formulas and techniques they've developed are now being used to promote specific agendas. They are shaping our country at the highest level. You can see their effect here on this site. We argue facts and alternative facts.

[Standing Wolf]

Social Media is a scourge on humanity a festering cesspool that destroys lives and marriages and creates hatred and suicides. Its a deep addiction that will never go away

Agreed. I have always believed that, more than anything, it feeds off of the human tendency of most people to want to talk about themselves. Add to that the modern-day Western obsession with celebrity, and you have people who believe they are (and deserve to be) famous because they have a Facebook page and a hundred Twitter followers.

[Trish]

Social Media is a scourge on humanity a festering cesspool that destroys lives and marriages and creates hatred and suicides. Its a deep addiction that will never go away

Social media has been turned into a weapon, imo.

[Standing Wolf]

Agreed but I think it's gone beyond just the points you make. It has seeped into our political process. These platforms and the formulas and techniques they've developed are now being used to promote specific agendas. They are shaping our country at the highest level. You can see their effect here on this site. We argue facts and alternative facts.

No question. Candidates and issues are reduced down, in terms of complexity and relevance, to the level of which sports team you're going to cheer for. The one who has the most information or best insights into a topic is valued far less than the one who can shout the loudest and in the most entertaining way.

[Common]

Im fortunate to have be the last generation that grew up dealing with others face to face and working all day without a cell phone or a computer to play with, we actually worked all day.

The worst thing to me is the lack of parental control. There is no way to keep your children from being exposed to filth and hearing and seeing things they should not.

Its not like when I could take television and phone privledges from one of my daughters and that was that.

I even remember in the early days of cable, your cable box allowed parents to block channels they didnt want their kids to watch, that has no purpose with cell phones.

[Chris]

Given that I work in technology developing software I have mixed reactions.

Technology greatly increases our ability to communicate in our personal lives (Amazon offers tons of choices), our work lives (my entire company telecommutes), and elsewhere from first responders (just got my aged parents a medical elert system) to politics.

Complaints technology makes it possible for any to express any idea or opinion is a negative?

Douglas Adams, yes, the author of Life, the Universe and Everything, talks of Four Ages of Sand (https://everything2.com/title/Four+Ages+of+Sand):


The Age of Sand concept came about in a speech Douglas Adams gave at the Digital Biota 2, in Cambridge."Is there an artificial god" was a discussion about God and the impact the concept had on humanity (this speech is featured in The Salmon of Doubt).

The Ages of Sand is Adam's description of the technological changes humanity went through and how those changes broadened our understanding.

The first age is that of astronomy, when we looked at the stars and realised our belief that the Earth is the center of the universe was false.

The second age is of the microscopic, when we looked down at the tiny formations that make life and the universe and found something quite startling.

The third age is that of computers- the silicon chip which gave us process. The computer can perform mathematics very fast and this allows us to create models, simulations. This gave us another form of perspective as where can see how life works with these models and simulations.

The fourth age of sand is the one we are entering, is that of the Internet. This runs on fibre-optics and is the fourth form of communication many-to-many (the other three being, one-to-one (telephone for example), one-to-many (broadcasting, journalism, etc) and many-to-one (democracy is a model of this).

This speech can be found here: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/


Of course, major evolutionary transitions are always creative-destructive and difficult before we get a grip on it.

The problem we face is, and here I agree with the OP, is all this technology that brings us together is far too impersonal. I don't have to go to the store and interact with anyone to buy something, I can post on a forum anonymously and pretend to be something I'm not.

[Trish]

Given that I work in technology developing software I have mixed reactions.

Technology greatly increases our ability to communicate in our personal lives (Amazon offers tons of choices), our work lives (my entire company telecommutes), and elsewhere from first responders (just got my aged parents a medical elert system) to politics.

Complaints technology makes it possible for any to express any idea or opinion is a negative?

Douglas Adams, yes, the author of Life, the Universe and Everything, talks of Four Ages of Sand (https://everything2.com/title/Four+Ages+of+Sand):




Of course, major evolutionary transitions are always creative-destructive and difficult before we get a grip on it.

The problem we face is, and here I agree with the OP, is all this technology that brings us together is far too impersonal. I don't have to go to the store and interact with anyone to buy something, I can post on a forum anonymously and pretend to be something I'm not.

Thanks Chris! Your perspective is an important one considering this is the field you work in.

My interpretation wasn't so much that technology is a bad thing but how this technology is being used against society as a whole to manipulate what people believe, purchase and live their lives.

Technology is important and it provides invaluable access to practically everything. The question I have and I think the author is posing is how is the information gathered on the individual being used and for what purpose.

[Chris]

Thanks Chris! Your perspective is an important one considering this is the field you work in.

My interpretation wasn't so much that technology is a bad thing but how this technology is being used against society as a whole to manipulate what people believe, purchase and live their lives.

Technology is important and it provides invaluable access to practically everything. The question I have and I think the author is posing is how is the information gathered on the individual being used and for what purpose.



But manipulating--persuading--others is what we do all the time. Consider, 100 years ago, you heard ideas from neighbors, a local paper, a politician if one stumped by, more so in the city, less so in the country. Now, with modern technology, you get exposed to everything.

Or consider things like swiftboating or LBJ's daisy ad. In the past a few people could broadcast their ideas, now, with many to many communication (see Adams above), all ideas get out there, and all ideas get debated.


That said, mass democracy is not something I consider a good thing because all these ideas get funnels up and filtered by a few central planners.

[Chris]

Something else to consider. Just finished watching the Netflix mockumentary series "American Vandal." Briefly, some dicks are drawn on teachers' vehicles and a kid is blamed, expelled and about to go to trial for felony vandalism. The mockumentary is a couple of highschoolers videotaping investagating the crime and--ok, no spolier.

The investigation is all high-tech, from videotaping interviews to getting access to security camera recordings to cellphone messages and youtube videos and facebook posts, etc. It's fascinating the way the truth is pieced together from electronic fragments.

Except the whole truth is never found--not a spoiler--in the sense that even with all that hard evidence so much uncertainty remains and for most people it's all information overload and in the end, we're still left without biases.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3tkFOtM6go

[Dr. Who]

The intent of much of internet tech is dedicated to creating consumer sheep. Software monitors your internet activities and provides ads to tempt to you consume more products. No big deal for my generation, we were not raised as obedient consumers. We get annoyed with the ads and use ad blockers. Younger people, particularly generation Y and the millennials, not so much. They have been reared on total consumerism. Every attractive ad is like a love note. Delayed gratification is as comprehensible as string theory. Credit cards are just free money. Parents the bank account of last resort. Saving? What for?