The internet is other people, and what we get is what people, on the whole, want. It's like the olympic gold medal in Cool Runnings: if your life is meaningless without it, it's still going to be meaningless with it.
> These are the most boring people on the planet.
Yes, we are. That's the real revolution here: that you don't have to be "wacky" to participate, to set the agenda even. Facebook forces us to accept that most people are boring. Forces us to at least consider the possibility that terrifies the politico-artistic-humanities complex - that maybe it's ok to be boring.
> if our data is the oil of the 21st century, then why aren’t we all sheikhs?
Or maybe our data isn't actually that valuable. Maybe it's worth approximately what we sell it for.
> There’s no sneering, no sarcasm, and no self-deprecation. Everyone is just sort of floating along in an earnest tranquility. As if each anecdote about “that cool loft I found on Airbnb” contained some deep spiritual significance beyond my grasp.
Isn't this a good thing? What do we think the author would have written if everyone were being cynical and snarky?
> magical cloud of squandered human potential
No such thing. Data isn't destroying these things - it's just forcing us to realize that they were myths all along. I think the author kind of acknowledges this with the statement about how "those invisible power structures continue to thrive."
The Internet only amplifies what's already there. It can, and does, help you do what you want with your life. But you have to decide what that is for yourself.
I could reply point-by-point, but it's pointless (pun intended).
Here is one thing I learned over the years.
There are people of type A who believe there actually are meaningful things in life. This belief requires to acknowledge that there are also meaningless things. And yes, sometimes identifying those things can get a bit depressing.
There are other people, type B, who believe there are no meaningful things in life. This same statement can be given a positive spin by negation, but the essence remains the same. This is the type that lectures everyone on how subjective and relative everything is, like it's some kind of revolutionary idea we have not heard before.
But that's not it. What I really learned is that having a conversation relating to meaning or value of anything is entirely pointless if you're speaking with people of type B. Eventually, they will fall back on stating the same core belief (the one I just described above) in a myriad different ways.
And here is a question worth asking. If people of type A can have a productive conversation about things that type B considers non-existent, which belief system makes more sense?
I always find it very weird when people have debates about whether life is "meaningful" or not. "Meaningfulness" is just a feeling inside a human psyche. If it feels meaningful, then it is meaningful to you. Other people may have different feelings about what is meaningful.
How can a person of type A claim any kind of universal or objective meaningfulness of anything? How would you build a meaningfulness detector or write a meaningfulness algorithm to discern what is meaningful and what is not? What evidence is there to suggest that meaningfulness is a concept that exists outside of our own minds and experience?
> What evidence is there to suggest that meaningfulness is a concept that exists outside of our own minds and experience?
Why would you need or want to?
I exist. My mind exists. My consciousness exists. My experience exists.
I mean that in the perfectly ordinary, uncontroversial sense that we use every day. There is no particular mystery or problem when I say, "My cat exists" or "My socks exist". I can provide evidence for them, in the same way I can provide evidence for my own existence and the existence of my experiences. If you can read and understand this post you have evidence for my existence and the existence of my experience.
Furthermore, because we are beings of a particular kind, the things we find meaningful--like the things we find nutritious--fall into a relatively small number of categories. Particulars won't be the same for everyone, but so what? It would be very strange to say that because I like meat and you like fruit there's no objective or universal standard of nutrition, and anyone can eat anything--rocks, trees, nothing--and get along equally well.
Simply because our nature does not determine what we find meaningful or nutritious does not mean it does not constrain it. This is again a perfectly ordinary phenomenon that for some reason people get all confused about when it applies to the contents of our minds rather than the contents of our stomachs.
The question is not whether you experience you exist but what it is that exist.
So it doesn't help your argument that you can point to a sock and say it exist. What you have to show is that there is only one way to interpret what you see before you can prove that what you see is in fact what you see. Only then is it truly "a thing" regardless of perspective.
In other words. The rock exist in your head as a concept, it's not a concept in nature. A pattern perhaps but not an universal object and the pattern that it is is only one perspective.
I think that truth is getting lost in your abstractions. You are comparing the human feeling of something being "meaningful" to the idea of nutrition, which is a general concept of how the food we ingest affects our overall health.
Nutrition is a complex and multi-dimensional idea. If there is a food that makes most people healthy but kills other people because of an allergy, is that food "nutritious", in a universal sense? And it's tied into another complicated abstraction: the idea of health. If a person is addicted to a drug but functional, is it more "healthy" for them to stay on the drug indefinitely or is it more healthy for them to go through a potentially horrible withdrawal period to get off it?
The abstractions of "nutrition" and "health" are complicated and ultimately based in our experience, just like the idea of "meaningfulness." And while you could make an argument that certain statements would be universally agreed by everyone in all circumstances (like "eating an apple is more nutritious than eating a rock"), that is far from being able to say that the general ideas of nutrition or health are universal or absolute.
Not only that, but in fact the kinds of things that are meaningful and valuable to people are often shared with other people, which then provides us with the additional meaning kick of sharing, which, I am told, is caring.
> How can a person of type A claim any kind of universal or objective meaningfulness of anything?
For arguments for objective meaningfulness (or good), I'm partial to natural law theory, which is basically that what is good for a human being is what fulfills the nature of a human being. I don't have time to get into details here, but suffice to say that murder, adultery, lying, and stealing do not fulfill the nature of a human being, whereas justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance are examples of things that do.
I recommend the following for arguments for natural law theory, by philosphers of an Aristotelian/Thomistic bent:
[Book] Aquinas, by Edward Feser. Chapter 5 is on Ethics.
Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.
Suppose an anti-vaxxer says "there are two types of people: type A who believe vaccination is a personal choice and type B who believe that everyone has a duty to vaccinate when they can."
If you make a case for why people should vaccinate, and the anti-vaxxer says "oh look, I spotted a type B person," that isn't an actual response to the argument.
Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.
Classifying your position shows that there is no point in answering it. In other words, the important thing here is not whether you're being classified, but why and how. You analogy is invalid.
And no, I am not going to directly address your original post either. What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway? From what I see, you're defending a rather boring dismissal of the original article. A long, though-out, well-written article with tons of interesting observations.
> What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway?
I was curious whether anyone had compelling reasons for believing in the idea of objective or absolute meaningfulness. What I have learned is that the reasons people have offered are extremely weak, in my opinion.
If you don't know how to count, you learn arithmetic from people who do. Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists". Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence. Such is the nature of abstract concepts.
> Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists".
And I don't owe anybody belief in weak arguments.
> Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence.
Thomas Aquinas also offered "proofs" of God's existence that few people outside the Catholic faith take very seriously. For example you can read what Bertrand Russell wrote about him. Other arguments that purport to have "proved" things about religion (and this argument only barely escapes being religious in nature) rarely stand up to rational scrutiny, IMO.
Nonsense. You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies, counting apples or sticks or so on. You demonstrate that the abstract thing exists because there's something the same about putting two apples and two more apples together or putting two stones and two more stones together, and by observing one you can learn something about the other.
I find they often miss the key fact - human brains are made of the same template; we do have universal values and thought processes. Things that are universal to humans are not arbitrary to us (even though they might be in the grander scale).
> we do have universal values and thought processes
If there was universal agreement about what is meaningful, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I think you would be pretty hard-pressed to find very much that is absolutely universal to the human experience.
But even if there are things which are highly prevalent in the human experience, that is not evidence that these feelings are "truth." We have direct evidence that our brains are pre-programmed with tons of cognitive biases and nonsensical beliefs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
That one thing you learned over the years is a false dichotomy. There are no As and Bs. Most people value something. They just value different things than you.
>If people of type A can have a productive conversation about things that type B considers non-existent, which belief system makes more sense?
Type B. Replace "meaningful things in life" with God, fairies, the aether, Pokemon, or any other fiction, and those in type A can still have "productive conversation" about things that do not exist at all.
I love how well these comments here demonstrate the GP's point. I mean, woa life must be dull for you B people! I love having productive conversation about God, fairies, the aether and Pokemon. Warmly recommended!
There is nothing inherently meaningful about anything, you can choose what is meaningful to you, but that meaning isn't automatically universal to everyone else.
> This is the type that lectures everyone on how subjective and relative everything is, like it's some kind of revolutionary idea we have not heard before.
I thought what romaniv wrote was interesting, but now it's just illustrative. ;)
>There are other people, type B, who believe there are no meaningful things in life.
Which isn't what I am saying. There are many meaningful things in my life. I'm not saying that meaning doesn't exist, I am saying that meaning is personal and that there is no universal meaning.
If you by type B means something akin to Nihilist or Relativist then I think you are missing the point many of them are trying to make. Otherwise there is people of type C.
It's not that everything is the same But that you can't claim something to be objectively better just because you think it's subjectively better. That does not mean type B do not believe there are somethings that are better, just that they are subjective.
Or put another way. You cannot not have values.
Needing to pee means you will prioritize something over others. And so type B people have plenty of meaning in life they can even discuss why they think a is better than b but they don't take whatever claim to be conclusive.
Most conversations fall down to people stating what they believe. Your post reads like it's deliberately obfuscated, to insinuate an insult in a way that won't get you modded down; if you're sincere then please say what you mean more clearly.
There are people of type A who believe that there are some things so meaningless that it is impossible to find any meaning in them. And yes, they also think there are meaningful things out there too.
There are other people, type B, who believe meaning is something personal and different for everyone. Of course, this means that the meaning will not seek you out, but that you have to seek it out yourself. And that can be hard for some.
But that's not it. What I really learned is that /u/romaniv doesn't even want to talk to you if you disagree with him, because he's heard it all before.
> The internet is other people, and what we get is what people, on the whole, want.
This seems a little simplistic because you take manipulation, hacking, externalities and profit motive out of the equation. In the real world, did people want despots and obesity epidemics?
On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?
If asked, people tend to prefer getting everything for free on a silver platter. That doesn't mean it's workable, even assuming we could come up with enough silver to get everyone their own platter.
I'll take my free stuff on a machine-stamped tray of 316 steel. I don't need anything fancy, just so long as it's piled high with the fulfillment of my every desire, provided completely gratis.
Now that you mention it, I think I would like a silver platter. Just put it on the steel one. Actually, make it two, so I can still use one while the other is being polished. And have a silver polisher bring the next tray. And make sure she has read Dune, and has a D.V.M. with a specialty in herpetology.
What's that? My choices are actually between a gaping stab wound and a turd sandwich? I'll take the sandwich, I guess....
It's a little more complicated than that. Many consumers of these services don't realize that they've made the bargain of trading privacy for cat photos. Even the ones that do may not fully understand what they've given up.
I'm reminded of the news story a few years ago where Target effectively broke news of a teen pregnancy to the girl's dad.[0] I doubt the teen realized that by shopping at Target she was agreeing to divulge information about her teen pregnancy, but that was the deal she brokered when she bought lotion and prenatal vitamins using a credit card instead of cash.
That really doesn't sound much different than people not understanding they could have bought an identical panel TV at half price if they just bought a different brand. Information asymmetry makes some people rich.
> On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?
You have to consider it in terms of tradeoffs instead of absolute "wants," but yes. We apparently want banner ads more than subscription services. DRM is apparently a cost we're willing to pay in order to enjoy entertainment, and privacy seems to be less valuable than convenience and connectedness.
Not saying I, or anyone in particular, values things that way, but I do think we've ended up with what "we" want.
We didn't end up with what "we" want, we ended up with what Moloch[0] wants. Its an important distinction. Market economy and other feedback loops we run on produces results that are only partially aligned with human needs. There can be literally solutions that no one on Earth wants or needs, and yet they get created because they're local optimas. People have every right to reject and fight results they didn't want. It's how we keep the system aligned with human goals.
It's wrong to say that the outcome we've arrived at is necessarily the one we wanted. Local/initial conditions, availability and options, and a whole mess of other things make it so that's not necessarily true at all.
I would suggest people really just want the effortless nature of banner ad consumption. They don't want to do work. Banner ads (advertiser pays) are opt-out and subscription services (or consumer pays) are opt-in. Further each site has to be opt-ed into manually over and over, and then you get to deal anxiety over the whole can I actually unsubscribe thing etc. So you are just trading being juiced in one way for be milked in another.
Further even if we had consumer-pays-for-content sites as low friction as advertiser-pays-for-content sites they still would likely converge towards having advertisements (ultimately maybe less, maybe not) to maximize earnings.
I think there are solutions to these problems but I think they require us to first rethink the assessment and reward of creativity, talent and effort in scarcity-free systems.
Very accurate and observant comments. Someone (person A) was once explaining to me how boring this other guy was (person B). Person A was bored with person B's conversation. Person A said "this guy was so boring, why didn't he do something exciting or talk about anything interesting? You know, I have a smart phone here and the ENTIRE INTERNET IS IN MY POCKET. But Person B didn't even care! How boring! Scoff guffaw pfah!"
I thought it was pretty sad, firstly because person A was judging person B's worth through his own perception of what was interesting (everything's interesting if you take an interest!), and secondly because having the Internet in your pocket doesn't really mean anything by itself.
It's like walking around with a dictionary in your pocket but never reading it. If you keep reading the blank opening page over and over again whilst proclaiming how wonderful the dictionary is, it is missing the best bits (the rest of the book and word definitions, etymology etc.)
As you state, having lots of people connected together doesn't magically make it a wonderful place if they have nothing in common and the people have meaningless lives in the first place, in the same way that having a library close to you doesn't magically mean that you'll be knowledgeable on everything inside the library if you just hang around outside.
Thanks for the food for thought. Now on to evaluate my use of time and frequently visited sites to see if they are actually enriching my life.
Some people are blessed with some kind of inherent sense of meaning. Maybe you are one of them.
For others, the absurd dominates if all else is stripped. Myths and spirituality were (and still are) helpful things.
Extreme empiricism and knowledge acquisition in pursuit of omniscience, in my view, is not good for a human on a personal level. Perhaps it's good for society.
> if our data is the oil of the 21st century, then why aren’t we all sheikhs?
We are, but we dig up only about 5/100th barrel of oil a year. Making money out of data is a matter of scale and expected average revenue / person / year.
Of course, in part, with high irony, that
horizon ideal point of the C. P. Snow humanities
culture, wrong as in your self contradictory:
> > These are the most boring people on the planet.
> Yes, we are.
Nope! Instead, you wrote a significantly non-boring
post!
The best of the Internet is terrific stuff -- curiously
in a novel sense: For any interest X, if that is
your interest, then there's likely some just
terrific stuff for X on the Internet. So, net,
the net can be terrific for nearly everyone.
Revising a little we get
> magical cloud of human potential
Well, my college sophomore English prof
(I was thinking about math, physics, and
the pretty girls) kept saying things like
that, and I didn't believe him then
or something like the OP now!
For
> These are the most boring people on the planet.
sorry, OP, I long ago concluded that description
applied to the journalism community
with their message tightly
harnessed by the medium as in
the McLuhan "the medium is the message".
Data? Okay, finally, after several years of
refusing to connect a TV to my free
(with phone and Internet, get TV for free)
cable TV service, for the 2015 Superbowl
I did connect and, maybe for the first time
ever, did like the game. Why? Data! What
data? Sure, NBC had how many dozen cameras,
with a lot of zoom lenses and fast
video editing and after a big play could
show what the heck had happened, to the
pass rush, the pass patterns, the pass
defense, the blocking on the runs, etc.
So, finally, with all that extra data,
I began to see what the heck was going
on. Terrific.
So, Brady saw that
the Hawks were good at defending the long
pass so went for very quick, about
3 seconds from the snap, short passes.
And he saw that sometimes a Hawk
lineman became a pass defender and
used that data. So, in the last quarter,
Brady was able to make two long drives,
down by down, bang, bang, bang.
Good
to see -- finally, with the extra data,
begin to see something about
how the game really works!
With more irony, finally, with all the
new data, a big sporting event on TV
is changing to reality from what it
was. And what was it? Sorry, sports
fans, really largely want it was
was drama as in formula fiction.
How? Have characters can identify
with and get interested in and
then follow to the conclusion --
while staying around for the ads.
So, it was taking a sporting event
and turning it into drama. As
in pro wrestling or some fantasy
story, reality didn't matter -- only
the elements of drama mattered.
Why? Because TV was, from producers,
directors, camera operators, video
editors, etc., all from the Hollywood
drama culture. They knew drama
so treated sports as drama.
Well, a good coach and quarterback
who want to win have no such luxury
and, instead, have to understand the
game. And, that's what I want:
To understand the game, the actual
game, the real game, as it actually
is, and to heck with the drama
or identifying with a team.
Identify? Not a chance! Heck
until just a day or so before the
game, I didn't even know what teams
were playing, and I had never even
heard of the Seahawks! So, no way
would I identify. Instead, I just
wanted to see some good football
tactics and strategy, and, thanks
to the extra data, did.
I quite liked this piece to read as art. But there are some pretty simple solutions to the general malaise he is expressing:
1) get out of the myopic SV culture. There are lots of actually interesting problems to solve (even in the very small world of software) and if you are tired of talking about the same old thing, go somewhere that isn't doing that.
2) if you aren't interested by the data you are consuming, don't interact with it. Don't consume facebook, twitter, HN, et. al. Or more realistically only consume the ones that add value to your life. It's harder to opt out of being collected in the massive hoovering of this data, but in nearly all instances out of sight, really is out of mind.
"if you are tired of talking about the same old thing, go somewhere that isn't doing that."
I was getting bored with music a while back, so I did an experiment: I limited the music on my phone to nothing older than five years. To do this I had to remove hundreds of albums.
At first there wasn't much left, so I went looking... for nothing released more than five years ago.
I found quite a bit of new stuff.
Eventually I re-added old stuff I loved, but my musical repertoire had broadened quite a bit.
Part of the problem today is that the amount of signal around us has increased so much that it's overwhelming, and people haven't yet learned that it's okay to tune out a significantly larger amount of chatter than what they had to tune out in previous eras. It feels like ignorance, or being "out of the loop," but it's essential.
I plan on repeating the music experiment regularly. I should probably purge some of my "feeds" too.
TLDR; I've done what you've done on a massive scale.
Most things end up depressing me if I follow them, knowing people are willingly participating in such an absence of brain activity. I had to stop myself from constantly scrolling down on facebook when I was bored (I realized I don't even actually read what people post most of the time because I'm looking for something interesting, but I still subconsciously notice what people are doing somehow.) I'm not against this by any means, so don't take this as me complaining. I don't know what's popular right now, I don't know what is trending on twitter. What's left is my little bubble where I have what I need to explore what I'm interested in. I can find interesting articles, I can find new music, and I can talk to people who actually are interesting to talk to. I've completely cut off any noise and am completely left with pure signal.
I'm completely out of touch with most everybody, and I've never felt better. I guess this goes hand in hand with being super introverted, I couldn't imagine actually holding a conversation with anybody around me with the information I know that wasn't super technical or completely shallow. I've lived with this obvious gap between me and other people my entire life though so it doesn't even feel lonely anymore when I can just find whatever I need to keep myself occupied when I'm bored.
It means passively absorbing information can make you dumb because you're not demanding brain power (lack of using a muscle atrophies). Compare scrolling on Facebook to watching Television -- completely passive.
It means that they are adapted to a much higher stimulus level and lose interest if they have seen something beforehand. Also that they are a conceited brat who is convinced that they are the center of the universe. Or at least that's how I read their comment.
To the contrary, seems he built an anechoic chamber. The only signals he perceives is what he wants, cleanly. He has decided what he doesn't want, knows that most signals out there are just variants on the same such content, and blocks it all.
I'm approaching half a century old. Comes a point where you realize you have heard it all, and are not interested in anything "new" because it isn't. I'm this -><- close to shutting it all off and going seriously minimalistic. The tipping point would be a news service which presents only actual need-to-know news, and a stream of new music.
Address, enumerate, and centralize your core axioms. Build from there. Stop letting others dump $#!^ in your head.
The purpose of the anechoic chamber is not to keep out sounds from the outside, but to allow you to differentiate the direct sound you're making from the environmental reflections.
Since it is impossible not to live in some variant of "chamber", always has been, and always will be, this is an accusation without teeth. Which is probably a good thing, since it's also hypocritical, but fortunately, it can't bite you back; it's toothless.
The interesting question is whether you have built a good or a bad one, and what exactly "good" and "bad" even mean in this context. But there is no "not in a chamber" option.
The problem is, it's becoming necessary to live in some kind of chamber in order to stay sane. Staring into the infinite void of indiscernible and contradictory truth forever is more than the brain can handle. More than mine anyway.
The challenge is to maintain the right mix of echoes in your chamber.
It's the nature of information at this point in history that you cannot possibly consume it all[1]. Therefore, you have to have some selection criteria, which will obviously be biased. If you want to call that an "echo chamber", well I don't know what to say to that.
Interesting. I'm really deep into music, collect and buy lots of niche stuff from all kinds of genres, I listen to my collection quite a lot and enjoy it, but I find it increasingly difficult to discover actual good music that I wasn't aware of before. Sure, we all know the usual recommendation engines and some more specific year-end lists help too, but generally the recommendations feel all too narrow - "You like The Antlers?" - "Let me suggest this band that fits into the very same sub-genre and probably has been named all over the place before."
That's just not good enough. Whenever your taste isn't bound to certain genres, yet still very specific and hard to put into a score, it gets difficult. Actually I think this is a problem better solved by a small round of enthusiasts, real humans instead of algorithms or crowdsourced data. The latter always seem to fail when your taste ranges from, let's say James Holden (electronic, weird, yet carefully crafted), to Miles Davis, each for very different reasons.
While I buy my music, I enjoy the community over at what.cd which is just as enthusiastic about music as I am. Another community that helps can be found on rdio, which I use for previewing and discovering music - I only follow people with taste I can absolutely agree on there, and I'm really not a social network guy, but the community on rdio is great and knowing what those guys are listening to is very rewarding, and sometimes a good tastemaker.
Yet, I can't say that I'm completely satisfied with those options - there have to be some better places out there.
Every once in a while, spin the metaphorical wheel and just listen to whatever it lands on. Maybe the most recent song/album, maybe a random search on the letter "M" and take the first result, anything that just completely jumps you out of the groove. In the long run, I suspect this is a critical component of any exploratory plan.
On the one hand, the average result is disappointment, but every once in a while you get something you like, and then from there what you get is a new seed for exploration, which from there I get to do a new local hill-climbing exploration of. The rate at which new music is currently coming out exceeds the rate at which I can explore in this manner.
I'm often to picky or not patient enough to put up with random stuff. It's not as if I'm not wandering off beaten paths - I like jazz, ambient, soul, electronic music, post rock, 80s pop - really, genres have absolutely no meaning to me. However getting through all the noise and finding the good stuff isn't getting any easier these days.
I really like good curators in this regard - labels for instance, there are a lot of those that don't fit into the evil, greedy corporation narrative. Numero Group for instance - a fantastic re-issue label that digs out forgotten, rare or unreleased material and puts it into the spotlight, often for the very first time. Their track record is quite impressing.
However I get your general idea, I use it with my own collection - I actually have one of those smart playlists that picks an album for me I haven't listened to for quite a while. Sometimes you re-discover things you almost forgot about.
> Part of the problem today is that the amount of signal around us has increased so much that it's overwhelming, and people haven't yet learned that it's okay to tune out a significantly larger amount of chatter than what they had to tune out in previous eras. It feels like ignorance, or being "out of the loop," but it's essential.
It's worse than that; people will actively look down upon those who consciously "limit" despite the reasons. Hell, just the other day we had that pithy programming quotes article with one nearly equating preference with stagnation, ignoring nuances such as choosing the best tool for the job.
So sure, it's good to try out new things and "taste test" on a fairly regular basis, but if you don't filter almost all the rest of the time, it's unlikely you'll ever accomplish anything.
This seems to be a recurrent theme throughout the article. All of the sideways conversations he hears and lamenting how we've become slaves to the data, and how all the people around him fit this stereotype or that stereotype.
It's interesting to note my father worked for Control Data in the 70's and 80's during its heyday. He spent a lot of time in SV during those formidable years of the valley. When I got older, I asked him why we never moved out there, and why he never took a job in the Valley if it was the coolest place to be for tech.
He said a lot of the same things mentioned in this article - about the suffocating culture, people "faking it until they make it", the tons of businesses being built on what he called, "bullshit and blue skies". He said it wasn't a place he wanted to raise his family, so we stayed in the Midwest instead. He's always maintained he was fine living as a passive participant in how technology took off and where it is today.
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same huh?
SV reminds me very much of Hollywood, especially post-late-90s-bubble. It's more a center of commercialization than of innovation per se. It's also effectively a banking and finance center, as is Hollywood.
> He said a lot of the same things mentioned in this article - about the suffocating culture, people "faking it until they make it", the tons of businesses being built on what he called, "bullshit and blue skies".
Mixing with entrepreneurs at events around the UK, it's not unique to SV. There's a lot of it about here, and not just in London.
>We are not going to escape this crisis by putting ourselves in a cage. There is no opt-out anymore. You can draw the blinds, deadlock your door, smash your smartphone, and only carry cash, but you’ll still get caught up in their all-seeing algorithmic gaze. They’ve datafied your car, your city and even your snail mail. This is not a conspiracy, it’s the status quo, and we’ve been too busy displacing our anxiety into their tidy little containers to realize what’s going on.
I think that is too fatalistic. You can opt-out of the massive data collection through voluntary oversharing, i.e. Facebook and such.
What remains is limited (and localized) enough that it can be fought through democratic and political means. Regulation and legislation can limit what the main players (public transport, banks, municipal governments, postal service, ISP's) can do.
This battle is still far from lost, at least outside the US. It's not a status quo, and many people, not just digital rights fringe groups, realize what's going on.
This reminded me of moxie's recent post about whether we've put the glasses from They Live on or taken them off[0].
In terms of the internet as a failed utopia, it seems to comes down to the choices we all make in deciding this for ourselves: what we participate in, what we work on, how we choose to spend our time, and especially whether or not we work to build positive alternatives.
It can be a useful exercise to ask oneself whether the work they're doing helps to control others or whether it positively enables people to live in the world they want to live in, and one way to respond to these types of concerns is for people to focus on building that world.
Sometimes that's the harder path, but sometimes the harder path is worth choosing.
> There’s no sneering, no sarcasm, and no self-deprecation. Everyone is just sort of floating along in an earnest tranquility. As if each anecdote about “that cool loft I found on Airbnb” contained some deep spiritual significance beyond my grasp.
This is what I hate the most! Everyone here is so positive. It's like a cult. Any post containing an ounce of negativity is downvoted. Anything that strays from the party line of "technology will solve everything, and we are changing the world" is shunned. And whether this attitude comes from techno-utopians or from eager beaver entrepreneurs, it's toxic to our industry. It makes us ignore the social impact of our inventions. It keeps us narrowly focused on technological solutions when the problem isn't technological. And worst of all, it gives everyone a huge ego. Learn to laugh at yourself, accept that your crappy web app isn't changing the world, and remember that the homeless guy you passed on your way to work is a person like you (who just lacked the opportunities you did).
My biggest annoyance to way-too-much-positivism is at Chicago's Open Gov Hacknight (http://opengovhacknight.org/). The whole point of it is to use data from FOIAs or 'data portals' to either fix, or raise awareness on issues. Very few people seem to have any genuine interest in making the world a better place, with a constant happy-outlook.
The major focus seems to be about making websites with the latest frameworks, using the latest nosql databases, using AWS. That probably accounts for about 60% of the crowd. 30% of the crowd doesn't know how to code, and 10% of the projects will have a genuinely strong impact.
That's not to say that their work doesn't have a net positive effect on the city. However, considering the kinds of minds that go to these events, I feel that their time could be better spent in working on larger projects to make this a better place to live.
You're right--interviewers act fake. And besides, this article generalizes, hyperbolizes. But I'm not using this lone anecdote as evidence. My experience on HN is the evidence. My experience working for tech companies is the evidence. And the smug attitude in the article, even if fictional, captures reality perfectly in the same way that a comedian's impression reveals more about the subject than a faithful depiction.
I thought it was a great piece. Most of the "innovation" we see is total bullshit. Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, all of these things are NOT new ideas, and NOT lifechanging services, but they're valued in the millions and billions of dollars. It feels like we're in the middle of another dot-com bubble, and sooner or later it's going to pop, and we're going to realize how little we've actually contributed to society.
And these apps are a small percentage of the entire tech industry but get 100% of the press on sites like Techcrunch.
Most products and technology are boring. It doesn't mean the 1% fringes aren't doing exciting things.
Such as robotics, automated cars, automated surgery, machine learning/NLP services, VR (ala oculus/Magic Leap), smart AI assistants are improving rapidly (Siri/Cortana). Business intelligence and data mining are new massive industries.
Nor does the fact one niche (social networks/mobile apps) becoming saturated with products means that tech innovation is dead.
IF most of the applications of software are boring and software is to 'eat the world' then there is at least another decade or two of purely boring stuff needing to be transferred to software. For ex: no-one is tweeting about advances in business automation.
It is a small percentage of the tech industry. But it's a good percentage of startups. A good percentage of yCombinator companies. A good percentage of what we discuss on Hacker News.
Have you looked at any portfolios on VCs websites of startups they invested in? The majority of them are all boring companies, and you'd never hear about them even when they sell for a $1 billion.
Many people on HN work at startups building boring software. They just dont site here discussing it because it is boring. And lots of the articles here are a reflection of the tech journalism, not industry.
That being said there are tons of articles on HN discussing robotics, automated cars, magicleap, etc.
I agree, and think the bit about the boss really hits that lack of change home
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, except this one is very
concerned that you see him as a positive force in the universe.
Certain conversations can only be had in an echo chamber, at the expense of other discussions. It's easy to ask what does the Internet give us? but I think the author does a really good job describing what the Internet can take away. (s/Internet/Technology of Choice/g) But who wants to hear anything negative about the Internet? (..on the Internet, of all things) You could speak your mind, ..
But if you did that, you’d upset the prevailing good vibes and
come off like a sickly paranoiac in desperate need of some likes.
They might not be life changing technologically but at least WhatsApp has had a profound impact on the lives of many of my friends and relatives in terms of every day casual conversation.
I wanted to say this too - Whatsapp has made a HUGEimpact on the world. It's completely changed how I interact with my friends and family, massively for the better. Pretty much everywhere other than the US it has completely replaced SMS for most people.
The reason I don't think we're in a bubble is because people are either paying money for these things, or advertisers value their inventory enough to continue buying where the users are.
Wasn't the primary issue with the last bubble that there was often no revenue behind the idea? There is revenue here.
Not bad! I liked it. Kind of weaseled out at the end, though. I get the feeling the author got as close as he could to the truth and then just couldn't cross the chasm.
I was struck by the conscious selling out that the author points out. The folks building the next generation of internet content know what they're doing. It's not like it was back in '95 when we thought that we'd all just turn on machines and share. Back then it was utopia. Now, as he points out, you don't surf the internet. The internet surfs you.
But we know that. Yet to point it out is a terrible faux pas. The "correct" answer is just to sell out, grab the data, flip it, and move on. I guess the conclusion is that it's better to be rich with a slightly guilty conscience than it is to be moral and honest. It's rude to be perspicacious.
If true that people are starting to wake up, interesting. It's showing a shift a shift in the conversation. Far too many techies will rant at length about some kind of social injustice in the world -- while helping to create an authoritarian state the world has never seen before. It's about time some of them looked in the mirror a bit.
Maybe techies are slowly realizing that this whole trendy web industry is 50% schlep, 49% bullshit and 1% of something actually valuable to the world. The schlep jobs are obviously boring, but the trendy 49% of bullshit seems to be actually harmful to humanity.
I realized this long time ago. And yet here I am, working on a schlep. I guess that's a step up from the bullshit work I was doing before. Maybe one day I'll be brave enough and take another step, ditch this whole thing and code something actually beneficial to fellow humans.
People will say (I wonder what's edw519's stance on this) - go with what your clients/employers want, and let the magic of capitalism sort it all out, turn it into real value. But we see that more and more things we do don't actually bring any (nonmonetary) value to the world.
So you say, there's a shift in conversation. I'm afraid, that the shift will is towards apathy. "Sell out, grab the data, flip it, and move on". Because they don't give a shit about the world anymore, it's going down the drain, nothing we can do, so let at least have some expensive parties before the whole thing explodes.
> Maybe techies are slowly realizing that this whole trendy web industry is 50% schlep, 49% bullshit and 1% of something actually valuable to the world.
The author had some awesome analogies and phrases, but one I like that he didn't mention, was the subprime mortgage era.
1. Gather a thousand individually worthless mortgages
2. Massive manipulation and number crunching and fraud and derivatives to the Nth degree, just a pile of self referential promises, not a human centipede analogy but more a snake eating its tail? who cares as long as an endless string of commission earners all get their cut.
3. Get really rich... for a little while. Suddenly the bagholders go bankrupt. Hopefully you took your millions and ran?
We're running the same business model with data and tracking and social and followers and marketing, or in general, the internet, instead of subprime mortgages.
Make your millions fast, you don't have much longer, and make sure you're not the guy left holding the bag when it all goes down.
Insert investing discussion about the difference between the concepts of price and value and how making money off suckers relies on the suckers not understanding those concepts.
Also this: But what many [communes] had common was a cascading systems failure of their foundational hypothesis — that social change could be achieved through self-transformation and the problems of power could be solved simply by ignoring them. There was always a Machiavellian in the transformational mist, though, and a refusal to acknowledge outright how power creates invisible structures that undermine the potential for cooperative action ultimately led to their implosion.
This is an incredibly pertinent point. Why is the collective data, profitable for such a small percentage. Why are those that are contributing the data not being rewarded for their contributions. If we live in the information econonomy then those that are contributing that information should be accounted. How is this not digital feudalism??
Well, there's choice. I use more obscure tools, for example Unison instead of Dropbox or Tox instead of Skype. It would probably be feudalism if there were dependency, but nobody forces you to post on Facebook. I don't use it. I have friends that I see often, I enjoy life just fine without it. heh.
TBH, I'm more worried about cameras that scan faces and license plates.
> Why are those that are contributing the data not being rewarded for their contributions.
Do you claim that the services that you "contribute" data to (Facebook, Google, etc.) do not provide any value to you? If that's the case, why do you keep contributing your data? If they do provide value to you, how is that not a "reward?"
Since the author of this Adbusters piece was also clearly inspired by Ginsberg, it's pretty cool to see two different authors exploring the same ideas when they are both using the same work for inspiration.
It's a long angst-dripping screed lamenting the extreme data connectivity of today, failing to note three critical points: (A) the connectivity is as vital to "life as we know it" as your nervous system is to your body, (B) he lives it by choice, and (C) he can unplug if he wants to.
He fails to notice that "we" is not universal. For high-tech types living in crowded cities, yes, but there are a whole lotta people much less, and even un-, connected to the Web.
He fails to notice that the connectivity he laments is critical to maintaining life as he knows it. What he takes for granted, the symbiotic consequence of extreme data proliferation. Take away the interconnectedness that scares him, and he has few options beyond tilling the ground and harvesting his own food.
He fails to notice the choices he has. Going only so far as locking the door & smashing the phone, he laments the data-driven world still exists just feet away. Newsflash: there is life outside the blue/red[1] border.
He fails to notice that disconnection is an option, to whatever degree he is comfortable with. Log out of Facebook. Avoid HN. Stop viewing social media. Most news is irrelevant. Pay in cash. Accept that disconnection means longer waits and fewer options. Realize that most of humanity throughout history, some 40 billion people, got along to what they considered "fine" without the Web.
Quit whining. If you want to get out, you can. There is an off switch, and the disconnected life is wonderful.
[1] - if you look closely at voter precinct maps and their blue/red Democrat/Republican Left/Right Progressive/Conservative boundaries, you'll see stark & consistent delineation right at the urban/rural boundary. Cities are political archipelagos, and he's lamenting the foliage & ground, longing for the oceans he doesn't realize surround him.
"He fails to notice that "we" is not universal. For high-tech types living in crowded cities, yes, but there are a whole lotta people much less, and even un-, connected to the Web."
I live in Michigan and work in Ann Arbor. The stretch of road I drive on to get to work is poorly designed and clogs up easily, and what alternate routes there are aren't very good and also tend to rapidly clog up if the main route clogs. I started using Google Now for its ability to alert me in advance of traffic jams, and yesterday it did one of those textbook cases where it got me off the highway at precisely the correct exit and back on at precisely the correct exit to avoid the accident-based congestion. Saved me 15-30 minutes easily. It isn't always that textbook, but it often saves me substantial amounts of time.
What was interesting about it, and what prompted me to reply to you, is that there are literally thousands of cars stuck on the highway, and yet, within plus or minus thirty seconds of me, there was a sum total of about three other cars that drove in such a way as to suggest they also had Google talking in their ears. At one point there was five of us appearing to dodge around pretty well, but two of them got back on at an entrance that would be tempting to a human but was still a bad choice (the alternative requires driving through a village for about a mile at 25 mph and two out-of-sync traffic lights, which on this day was still a win over the highway, but usually a bad idea even when the highway is "normally" clogged).
To a first approximation, "everybody" is on Facebook, but beyond that, honestly, the penetration of "wiredness" is much more shallow than those of us here can easily assume.
Observation: the up/down vote fluctuation on this post makes me wish HN would implement a Tufte-style "sparkline" next to the points. Sometimes a post gets an exciting amount of vote activity, but ends with a mundane neutral points total.
Well, in fairness Tumbleweed Homes are premium. I'm just giving a starting link as a hint. If you're looking for serious cheap & portable along those lines, I got a used pop-up camper for $2000 (new $10,000) that I'd be OK living in (and do for a few weeks a year, family of 4 + 2 dogs). During a sale, I also got the detailed plans for a Tumbleweed Home for $20, simple enough one could scrounge most of the materials. You can spend as little as you like, so long as you're willing to DIY and have flexible standards.
Speaking of which... Go to the Zillow link and search (largest range allowed is a whole state) for properties at/under $1000. Dig thru the auctions/scams/typos, and you'll find viable - even nice - lots dirt cheap.
Put those together, deal with misc paperwork & other costs, be ready to work, and you can have a home free-and-clear for under $5000. (Yes, it's not a 2400 sq ft ranch in the suburbs; deal with it.)
I've found the tiny-house movement fascinating to watch from the outside. It's got a real appeal to me that's only increased as I've gradually transitioned from my youthful can't-wait-to-be-uploaded outlook to a much more reluctant relationship with tech and the always-on life.
My concerns about trying it myself:
1) The country-living variety defeats any small-ecological-footprint appeal, unless you live like depression-era or earlier farmers (i.e. don't underestimate the ecological sensibility of a studio apartment in the city)
2) The urban/suburban variety is much harder to make work if you don't want to live illegally in someone's backyard, thanks to zoning, HOAs, et c., plus the cost of land very nearly ruins the money-saving angle.
3) Health care is really, really expensive. I doubt I could make enough money to cover that for my family, on top of other unavoidable expenses, while living a disconnected life in the sticks, as much as it might appeal to me otherwise, even with the savings from not having rent or a mortgage. That goes beyond "roughing it" to "irresponsible".
4) I've got a tickle in the back of my mind that a large part of this is a marketing ploy to sell mobile homes at a premium by appealing to "economy" and "eco-consciousness" when both of those would be better (or at least similarly-well) served by buying single-wide in an ordinary mobile home park, which for some reason[1] rarely comes up as an alternative. Incidentally, if you've ever been to poor rural areas along sleepy back-woods highways, you've undoubtably noticed that you can do the trailer thing and the dirt-cheap-land middle-of-nowhere thing, too. Of course, they're ugly and couldn't possibly be mistaken for Thoreau's cabin.
Your pop-up camper approach seems sensible (though I, also with a family of four, can't imagine living quite that small full-time without going insane—a few weeks a year, sure) but it's not the kind of thing you see blog posts gushing about, covered by documentaries, or featured on magazine covers.
[1] Class, almost certainly; trailer park = white trash redneck, "tiny house" = creative class, educated.
There is one thing which is completely unrelated to contents of the article that puzzles me. The article is quite long and if it wasn't for being at the top of HN, I would never dare to read it and I believe, people are as lazy as me when it comes to long posts.
But, the article did came from 1 to 200+ points and the thing which I wish to know is who were the early readers when the article was at 0 - 20 points. I mean even though writing style is pretty interesting but seeing the length of the article, I would be pretty much discouraged to go through the whole of it, if it had less points.
So the interesting thing to know is what makes the early readers to upvote something. Would they indeed go through whole of the text before upvoting or would they impressed just by few ideas in beginning, and may be just bookmark / pocket it.
I saw it early, when it had low two digits score. I almost ignored it (I wasn't in the mood for too much narration), but when skimming something in the middle drew my attention, so I scrolled back and started reading. Upvoted after that, of course.
This essay raises a lot of good points-- mass conformity, data ownership, overstimulated brains. If you work in this field, you're rich, richer than many, many generations before. If we don't ever pause and consider these things, we'll take them for granted.
Reading this makes my skin crawl. I'll admit -- I only got about half way through before I had to stop. The disposition of the author is entirely too sardonic for my tastes. He's locked himself into an endless spiral of hatred and self-victimization, of course none of which is his own fault.
How can this be seen as normal or healthy?
Maybe I'm just one of the "boring" people. I don't have a twitter or an Instagram, and barely maintain my Facebook that follows only people I have known personally.
Take a walk. Go outside. Get some fresh air. Realize that you don't need to allow things to consume your free time if you don't enjoy them.
Like everything else in the world, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, in a certain lens, we are digital serfs bound by companies' TOSs forced by none other than our own listless volition; people don't care where the data is going, they just want the service. Yet in exchange these services allow us to do more, live more. Using Kayak instead of a travel agent saves me precious hours for going on a trip. Next time I want to take a trip, I use the knowledge already gained through Kayak to book it even faster instead of futzing around with another person's schedule. Do you want convenience, or do you want your digital "rights" to be respected?
This is a very well written essay, but I find it rather Valley-centric. There are other worlds out there, non-internet worlds. There are people in west Texas and North Dakota working on oil and gas drilling rigs. There are painters and carpenters, dentists and nurses and oncologists. There are Marines and Navy pilots and infantrymen and -women. Many of these professions are largely the same as they were prior to the advent of the 1970s microcomputer revolution.
Of course, there are plenty of professions that are in trouble if not ceased to exist. Shoe stores, book stores, and clothing stores are all in big trouble these days, as are small hardware stores and small grocery stores and non-chain coffee shops.
Someone who's feeling the level of angst and confusion and directionless of this author should probably consider changing fields, or maybe disconnect more often and wander barefoot in a garden (watch out for deer ticks and yellow jacket wasps, though; nature is not necessarily all fun and games).
The internet is a tool, a means to an end. It's been a way for many of us to reconnect with long lost classmates, stay in touch with distant loved ones like never before. It's enabled severely handicapped people to have jobs and lead more productive lives. It's a miracle, really.
When I was a college student spending a couple of years abroad in Asia in 1980, there was no email, no Skype, and no cell phones. I'd write long letters to the family on international airmail paper, fold it and put an airmail stamp on it, and drop it in the mailbox. A couple of weeks later, it would get to my family in the U.S. If I wanted to make an international call, it was a big and expensive project. I took hundreds of photographs and they had to be developed, and copies made, and physically mailed out to people.
Now, kids doing a junior year abroad are light seconds away from their loved ones. They can text their significant other 50 times a day, send them selfies, post a running travelogue on Facebook or Pinterest, and virtually speaking they are right next door. It's an incredible shift. Take a video of where they are and post it to Youtube the same day. Unbelievable, to those of us who grew up before this was all taken for granted.
And, probably there will be equally vast technological shifts in the future that will have the current 20-something generation, who are so tech-savvy, saying in 25 years -- Wow, we used to have this thing called "email" and we had to use Google to discover interesting facts! We had to carry around these devices called tablets in order to access the world's knowledge -- and even then, we couldn't access all of it all the time! We needed these little devices called cell phones in order to communicate. Etc. Huge paradigm shifts await us.
Perhaps they will not be so benign, e.g. vast AI entities that wrest control of our world away from us. Perhaps we'll be slaves of a future superior race of cyborgs, or wiped out as an inferior competitor.
The future is exciting, and challenging, and even though one can point to the dark corners and seediness of things at any given point, in the long run it's an amazing ride, an endless roller coaster. We have amazing power today to shape our future, if only we can understand and direct this power without destroying ourselves.
What is this? I read the first few paragraphs and couldn't keep track of where it was going and lost interest. Can someone explain to me why this is at the top of HN and why I should read it?
Because it's in interesting article about the human condition in the social technological culture we currently exist in. Though if you're genuinely curious, you could just slog through the article.
The judgmental tone turned me off long before I read enough to even understand the point of the piece. I'll assume it's a load of hyperbole that boils down to "I don't like things that are different"
Oh, the banality of life! Whining about that goes back to at least Socrates.
The new thing is that everyone in even the semi-developed world now has access to more banal entertainment than they can possibly consume. Prior to TV, most people were limited in entertainment consumption by money and location. With broadcast TV, something was on all the time, but choice was limited. Now, there's a wide range of banal content, more than any person can consume, available at all times at low, low cost.
Smartphones and legal pot now keep the serfs quiet and passive.
> These are the most boring people on the planet.
Yes, we are. That's the real revolution here: that you don't have to be "wacky" to participate, to set the agenda even. Facebook forces us to accept that most people are boring. Forces us to at least consider the possibility that terrifies the politico-artistic-humanities complex - that maybe it's ok to be boring.
> if our data is the oil of the 21st century, then why aren’t we all sheikhs?
Or maybe our data isn't actually that valuable. Maybe it's worth approximately what we sell it for.
> There’s no sneering, no sarcasm, and no self-deprecation. Everyone is just sort of floating along in an earnest tranquility. As if each anecdote about “that cool loft I found on Airbnb” contained some deep spiritual significance beyond my grasp.
Isn't this a good thing? What do we think the author would have written if everyone were being cynical and snarky?
> magical cloud of squandered human potential
No such thing. Data isn't destroying these things - it's just forcing us to realize that they were myths all along. I think the author kind of acknowledges this with the statement about how "those invisible power structures continue to thrive."
The Internet only amplifies what's already there. It can, and does, help you do what you want with your life. But you have to decide what that is for yourself.