Hardware & Technical The Technology what is it good for thread of curiosity

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
A slightly odd thread i wanted to start, a place to put all our technology concerns (because we should have some).

I love tech, enjoy it, use it (carefully) and know it's worth, but i also have gathered a few decades worth of experience to ask questions about it, so this thread is for that kind of self-reflection, and i'll kick it off with this interesting story:

'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia':

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster.
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Actionman2222

Actionman2222
Valid concerns.

I don't use FB much, mainly to post photos for family and friends. The amount of people who would sit on the bus endlessly scrolling down the app on their phone.

Not to mention, how many relationships and been ruined by a few messages on FB (much easier to do so than texting as you can search them and add them online) leading to something more.

And the amount of "dirty laundry" aired over Facebook in moments of anger or upset. It's a stalkers & snoopers paradise. It really is dangerous.

How did people every get by in the days before mobile phones? [haha][haha]
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Franklin Foer: 'Big tech has been rattled. The conversation has changed':

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/19/big-tech-franklin-foer-book-world-without-mind

“I started working on this in 2014, and when I did, people looked at me funny,” Foer said of the new book. “It was like I was a hippy howling into the wind, it felt like, because of the prestige that these tech companies held. Then, suddenly, when the book came out last month, I had a radio host accusing me of spouting the conventional wisdom. The tide had turned so quickly.

“The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.”

Official and public outrage is growing at the tech companies with the realization that an army of Russia-linked bots and trolls operating as imposter accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other networks were able to buy ads and target an estimated hundreds of millions of Americans with political messages during the election. The techniques of the imposter accounts, which sought to inflame users over hot-button social issues, have underscored a creeping sense of the country having been virtually invaded – and outsmarted.
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duckofdeath

duckofdeath
I don't agree that our minds are high-jacked. That's technophobia talk.
Our minds adapts to the tools we can make. We've always done that.
Some people gets obsessed with specific things, that's not a technology problem but a human problem, as it applies to anything from stamps to whatever you can imagine.
 

Actionman2222

Actionman2222
duckofdeath said:
I don't agree that our minds are high-jacked. That's technophobia talk.
Our minds adapts to the tools we can make. We've always done that.
Some people gets obsessed with specific things, that's not a technology problem but a human problem, as it applies to anything from stamps to whatever you can imagine.
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Ahh but what about technology that is engineered to be addictive and tap into a persons "reward" centre. Social validation craving and all that. Stamps are just stamps lol.
 

duckofdeath

duckofdeath
Actionman2222 said:
Ahh but what about technology that is engineered to be addictive and tap into a persons "reward" centre. Social validation craving and all that. Stamps are just stamps lol.
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That's still not technology high-jacking your mind. That's still man using technology with that purpose. We've also always done that. Technology isn't an entity in itself, it's something we create with a purpose. Some people obviously use that to create addiction to things like gambling or repetitive use with the intent to exploit that behaviour. This is nothing new with technology.
(added)
Technology does give anyone access to a much larger demographic. That part is often extremely poorly regulated. The US having a "Manchurian Candidate" president and the UK wrecking their long term future by exiting a strong trade community based on lies spread to massive amounts of people with the help of technology are examples of what unregulated tech does. Though, this isn't a new behaviour either. Propaganda is after all not a new word. :)
 
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Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Downright Orwellian': journalists decry Facebook experiment's impact on democracy:

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...lian-journalists-democracy-guatemala-slovakia

Facebook has been criticised for the worrying impact on democracy of its “downright Orwellian” decision to run an experiment seeing professional media removed from the main news feed in six countries.

The experiment, which began 19 October and is still ongoing, involves limiting the core element of Facebook’s social network to only personal posts and paid adverts.

So-called public posts, such as those from media organisation Facebook pages, are being moved to a separate “explore” feed timeline. As a result, media organisations in the six countries containing 1% of the world’s population – Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cambodia, Serbia and Slovakia – have had one of their most important publishing platforms removed overnight.

“The Facebook explore tab killed 66% of our traffic. Just destroyed it … years of really hard work were just swept away,” says Dina Fernandez, a journalist and member of the editorial board at Guatemalan news site Soy502. “It has been catastrophic, and I am very, very worried.”

In Slovakia, data from Facebook-owned analytics site CrowdTangle shows that “interactions” – engagement such as likes, shares and comments – fell by 60% overnight for the Facebook pages of a broad selection of the country’s media Facebook pages. Filip Struhárik, a Slovakian journalist with news site Denník N, says the situation has since worsened, falling by a further 5%.

“Lower reach can be a problem for smaller publishers, citizens’ initiatives, small NGOs,” Struhárik said. “They can’t afford to pay for distribution on Facebook by boosting posts – and they don’t have infrastructure to reach people other ways.”
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Not using the platform i don't really follow the whole topic, but this is not the first time Facebook has been in the spotlight for manipulating a democratic process.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Google and YouTube spread false claims Texas shooting suspect had leftwing ties':

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/06/google-youtube-texas-shooting-fake-news

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'YouTube accused of 'violence' against young children over kids' content':

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...children-kids-content-google-pre-school-abuse

The first link is not surprising these days. We have seen a huge boom in the alt-right (or neo-fascist) over the last 5 years or so, they are organised (at state level) and have a plan, and most of it is about spreading real propaganda to effect change.

The second link is a bit different, but probably part of the same pattern and aims, just over a longer term and i'll link some stuff from that article as it is the more interesting (in a scary way):

YouTube has been accused of “infrastructural violence” against children due to its role in the creation of vast quantities of low-quality, disturbing content aimed at pre-schoolers.

James Bridle, a campaigning technology-focused artist and writer, documented the way the video platform’s algorithmic curation drives enormous amounts of viewers to content made purely to satisfy those algorithms as closely as possible.

Bridle highlights videos with names such as “Peppa Pig Crying at the Dentist Doctor Pull Teeth!” – a pirate Peppa Pig episode in which “she is basically tortured, before turning into a series of Iron Man robots and performing the Learn Colours dance”– and “BURIED ALIVE Outdoor Playground Finger Family Song Nursery Rhymes Animation Education Learning Video”, which is an indescribable mixture of low-quality 3D models of Disney characters, violence, nursery rhymes and surrealism.

He writes: “These videos, wherever they are made, however they come to be made, and whatever their conscious intention (ie to accumulate ad revenue) are feeding upon a system which was consciously intended to show videos to children for profit. The unconsciously-generated, emergent outcomes of that are all over the place.

“What we’re talking about is very young children, effectively from birth, being deliberately targeted with content which will traumatise and disturb them, via networks which are extremely vulnerable to exactly this form of abuse.”
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Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Double Face-palm time!

'To prevent revenge , Facebook will look at user-submitted nude photos':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-poli...book-will-look-at-user-submitted-nude-photos/

Facebook is experimenting with a new way to prevent the posting of so-called revenge that involves a highly questionable requirement. Potential victims must send nude pictures of themselves through the social network's official messenger so the images can be viewed, in full, unedited form, by an employee of the social network.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the employee would be a member of the company's community operations team who has been trained to review such photos. If the employee determines the image violates site policies, it will be digitally fingerprinted to prevent it from being published on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram......

......People started criticizing and questioning the pilot Facebook project as soon as it came to light. The first issue it raises is the unprecedented trust it requires in both Facebook technology and employees. The social network is telling people to provide unedited, intimate images that have yet to be published.

Ensuring those images are viewed only by a limited number of trained employees, are eventually destroyed permanently, and are never inadvertently or intentionally leaked is an extraordinary undertaking, particularly when done in the mass numbers Facebook typically deals with. There's no doubt the problem of revenge is real. But in an age when some of the most careful and security-conscious companies get hacked or suffer insider breaches, it's possible Facebook's remedy may be as bad as the ailment it seeks to treat.
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--More Face Palm.....is there enough facepalm in the universe?
 

Insomnia

Insomnia
More tech to the people!

I'm not afraid of technology or how we end up using it. It's our understanding of technology that separates us from animals.
But it's also important to always question technology. Do we need this? Do we need that? Or are they just products to control our minds and opinions? And where should technology take a step back? Cloning and/or customising people's appearance before they're even born?
Technology always comes with a moral dilemma in one way or another. But in the end, technology made us see new lands, new planets even. And we should never stop.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Insomnia said:
More tech to the people!

I'm not afraid of technology or how we end up using it. It's our understanding of technology that separates us from animals.
But it's also important to always question technology. Do we need this? Do we need that? Or are they just products to control our minds and opinions? And where should technology take a step back? Cloning and/or customising people's appearance before they're even born?
Technology always comes with a moral dilemma in one way or another. But in the end, technology made us see new lands, new planets even. And we should never stop.
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exactly this. I've always had a home computer since the ZX81! But i also know and understand the good use vs bad use that technology presents us with. Most of this thread is highlighting the mistakes we are making with our tech, as a cautionary tale and to better inform.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Zak Gordon said:
I used to notice that pedestrians on my cycle route (on a cycle path!) would seem to wander suicidally into my path, and the number 1 reason seemed to be they were 'lost' in their smartphone ;)
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In the train the morning to go to work, it's the same thing, people do not look the others. They have their heads down
 
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