I'm not sure if you're reading the same Hacker News that I've been, but mine's mostly been about the confluence of surveillance capitalism, laissez-faire treatment of vulnerabilities in the tech stacks that power it (or even eg absentmindedly putting customer data into an unsecured S3 bucket), and the inability/unwillingness of governments or regulatory bodies to do anything about any of it. In light of these modern realities, I have difficulty believing in a positive final form of this technology. "Mobile pocket telephones" have evolved into "expensive powerful swiftly-obsolescent general-purpose computers mostly used for providing telemetry on the user to unaccountable corporations". Even if the HN crowd end up being able to opt out of the worst aspects of this, like one can with a modern smartphone via GrapheneOS or whatever, we still have to live alongside everyone else who can't.
I can think of lots of nefarious uses for this sort of thing, and I'm just some asshole who's read some science fiction. The real nefarious uses will be architected by people much smarter than me, whose moral difficulties will be dismissed by The Profit Motive, psychopathy, or both.
And here I am thinking about the potential benefits to para- and quadriplegics of circumventing a damaged spinal cord if only we could reliably interpret signal from the brain.
For all the bad you've listed, there's a reason people voluntarily choose to carry those surveillance devices in their pockets: the boons outweigh the ills by an order of magnitude. They're rarely dwelt upon because they're ubiquitous... much like nobody bothers to extol the virtues of fire.
We talk here about what's wrong because there is room for improvement, not because we should halt progress.
"unsubstantive"? This technology will be used against people. I just wanted to point it out in the most unflattering way possible. Like graphic warning and danger signs, it makes people stop and think.
And strange to hear from you for a second time in the last week or so.
Of course it's unsubstantive. It's not just an internet cliché, it's nowhere near the top of the internet cliché barrel. If you have something interesting to say, please say it explicitly, without tedious tropes, and without flamebait.
> And strange to hear from you for a second time in the last week or so.
I had no idea I'd replied to you repeatedly, but if so, the simplest explanation is that you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. It would be helpful if you'd review them and stick to them from now on: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
