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Old 6th March 2015
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Default Tomorrowland: How Silicon Valley Shapes Our Future

A long article from the German weekly "Der Spiegel" about the influence of Silicon Valley Companies on our current and future lives : http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-international

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In the Silicon Valley, a new elite is forming that wants to determine not only what we consume, but also the way we live. They want to change the world, but they don't want to accept any rules. Do they need to be reined in?
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Old 7th March 2015
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Wow, that is a great article. I haven't finished it yet. Meaning I don't know if this is already stated in the article or not. But, the writer labels the digital elite as libertarians. I'm not going to disagree. I'd like to point out that whenever anyone liberates you from doing something on your own, that it often ends in you relying on the duplication of that liberation. Isn't it funny that they would call that libertarianism.
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Old 7th March 2015
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We really need a free communication. I don't mean free as in cost.

I get the feeling that things like secure boot, which haven't been option locked yet, will become more and more standard.

This is bothersome because my intuition tells me that one day secure connection will mean the same thing that secure boot does. Rather then communications being secured from outside parties, you wouldn't even be able to go online unless your device and operating system are certified by some organization.

Computer systems conforming to this kind of standard might be utilized in much the same way as a router, but eventually not without use of some backwards engineering. If the digital communication business went in this direction, any insecure device connected in anyway might be considered a break of contract between you and your service provider. This would be a real good way of making sure that every device connected conformed to some kind of binary blob inclusion. Anyone not wanting their operating system involved in this kinda thing wouldn't be going online without breaking some regulation upheld by law.

I've actually been thinking about this a lot. Maybe I'm being paranoid?
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Old 8th March 2015
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Finished reading it after taking care of a few other things.

One of the things I like about the Unix and Unix like systems, I have used, is that they are almost designed to inspire you to seek greater understanding of the system. Eventually a noob could become a competent developer.

The article describes the digital elite's desired estate of the future as an envisioned Utopia. They intend to reach it via capitalism or "why shouldn't it be possible to conquer the world and at the same time make it a little bit better?".

As long as people are not in unity over what is better, there is no way you can conquer the world and make it better. The only way to make the world better is to help people evolve that realized reality, on their own. Not as a dogma or societal structure, but a reality. It hast to be actually realized, as indoctrination will almost always evolve into ignorant rebellion. Sometimes the rebellion is right and never understands why it was so. A reflex. Once realized in unison all people will desire to contribute or not contribute based on their own nature.

Society could be engineered towards the proper environment for an incubated and nurtured conformity. But, this is really only the furthered division of humanity into two distinct species. The ones that can live in the perceived Utopia, and the ones the have the ability to maintain it in the way they wish.

The enemy of man is any man that wishes to obtain undue wealth and power from his brother, by use of his brother's ignorance. It is far better to elevate your brother's understanding to the point that he can help you make things better for everyone. Your brother's first and foremost goal should be to duplicate what you did for him. This is really the only way to make the world better for everyone. Making ignorant people more comfortable and providing them with longer healthier lives, means that they will have healthy comfort in you conquering them for a longer time.

See H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
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Old 8th March 2015
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Originally Posted by fn8t View Post
The enemy of man is any man that wishes to obtain undue wealth and power from his brother, by use of his brother's ignorance.
I really like this, was trying to explain something like this to some this week and this would have said all!
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Old 11th March 2015
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Thanks for the article. It's an interesting perspective.

However, I wonder if the delusions of his subjects haven't rubbed off on the author rather too much. e.g. it's remarkable how quickly Uber has spread and how much money it made for its founder. But in the grand scheme of things of what significance is a company like Uber, really? It's a kind of sideshow. Living in a city with a somewhat poor transport system (Boston, Massachusetts) that strained considerably from getting more snow than usual, it's hard to see Uber as any kind of "revolution." Does Uber add rail, bus or highway capacity? Does Uber have a fleet? No, it's just this silly app thing. It's a thing, but not an important thing. Maybe it would be revolutionary if the drivers figured out a way to operate without needing some guy in California to skim their fares.

I even question the idea that computers and networks represent a revolution comparable to the industrial revolution. I'd compare them to the introduction of the automobile and highways. A cause of major change, no doubt, but not a revolution in the same sense that the industrial revolution is. Rather the introduction of these technologies are each parts of the industrial revolution.

I'm slogging through Marx's Capital right now. To the degree it's a useful model for capitalism and the industrial revolution it seems to me to remain as useful a model for understanding modern capitalism and my role as programmer within this particular industry in it. Microcircuits and fibre fit as well as "constant capital" invested in increasing proportion over "variable capital" as do cotton gins as far as the theory goes, yes? i.e. who this article describes, I fail to see how they are qualitatively different from the robber barons of the 19th century. The context and technology are different. Maybe the ideology or belief systems are somewhat modified. But not so different from what I can see.

Oh, and I wouldn't count out banking and finance just yet (or governments for that matter).
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Old 12th March 2015
J65nko J65nko is offline
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@thirdm

Re:Uber

If you are a taxi driver, who had to pay a hefty sum for a cab license and/or fees to a central cab organization, it has a big impact. It is a very disruptive use of technology for them.

Re: Internet revolution

You are not the only one doubting the internet revolution is something like a "new" industrial revolution.
According to the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, author of "23 Things they don't telly you about capitalism", the invention of the washing machine has had a larger impact than the internet. It allowed women to participate into society and to go to work outside their homes, instead of spending their time on doing the laundry manually.

Re: Reading Marx's Capital

Are you aware that there are 3 volumes? The first volume was published by Marx himself, the other two volumes, were prepared for publication by Friedrich Engels, several years after Marx died. Most people give up after a few chapters of volume I.

The French Marxist philosopher Althusser has published a guide that tells you skip those first boring chapters, and come back to them later. See How to Read Marx's Capital

BTW I studied sociology in the 1970s, and Marx is regarded as one of the three founding fathers of sociology, the others being Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. So in that field it is impossible not being confronted with his contributions to the social sciences.
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Old 12th March 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J65nko View Post
Re: Internet revolution

You are not the only one doubting the internet revolution is something like a "new" industrial revolution.
According to the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, author of "23 Things they don't telly you about capitalism", the invention of the washing machine has had a larger impact than the internet. It allowed women to participate into society and to go to work outside their homes, instead of spending their time on doing the laundry manually.
I am reluctant to agree with Chang's assessment of the washing machine leading to women's greater participation in society. Ruth Cowan reminds us in "The 'Industrial Revolution' in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century" that more technologies reaching the hands of women did not manifest into a reduction of time spent on household work.

To quote Cowan (1976: 14-5):
"In any event we do have various time studies which demonstrate somewhat surprisingly
that housewives with conveniences were spending just as much time on household duties as were housewives without them-or, to put it another way, housework, like so many other types of work, expands to fill the time available."
http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classe...ehold_tech.pdf

Modern technology might have been a necessary cause (I am granting this to Chang because I don't need it to defeat his assessment but I would not assert it in any serious argument because it's tenuous at best) but it could not have been the proximal cause. As with many economists, his assessment is likely factually vacuous, mired in ethnocentrism, and fails to incorporate any social forces on the ground and elsewhere. You know, those things that actually matter
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Old 12th March 2015
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Originally Posted by J65nko View Post

Re: Reading Marx's Capital

Are you aware that there are 3 volumes? The first volume was published by Marx himself, the other two volumes, were prepared for publication by Friedrich Engels, several years after Marx died. Most people give up after a few chapters of volume I.

The French Marxist philosopher Althusser has published a guide that tells you skip those first boring chapters, and come back to them later. See How to Read Marx's Capital

Yes, my first attempt I stopped around 100 pages, similar to my attempt at reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. But then a co-worker kept mentioning communist blogs and various other Marxist ideas. So I went back and read David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, a nice short book. After that I didn't get tripped up quite so badly with the early parts of Capital. My first go his commodity theory and the labour theory of value, it seemed arbitrary and I kept on mixing up his value, exchange value, use value, and prices with my own intuitive ideas based on the words rather than his definitions. Ricardo helped me with that somehow, so this time I've stuck with it and am nearing the end of the first volume.

It's funny, my Marxist co-worker actually gave similar advice to Althusser, but he credited Howard Zinn. Maybe Zinn got it from Althusser.

I do have the other volumes and had planned to go right to the next one. If I stop for a couple months it's all over: I'll forget too much to keep on with it. My co-worker warns me that I'll need a notepad to following along with the math, though. Not readable on the bus I guess, some of the 2nd (or 3rd?) volume. I almost bought only the first volume thinking I'd probably never get through more than a chapter or two, but the sales clerk in the used bookstore I got it from wouldn't let me separate them. Good bookseller. Of course his store's out of business now. Such is the way of the world, eh?
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Old 12th March 2015
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@thirdm

Re:Uber

If you are a taxi driver, who had to pay a hefty sum for a cab license and/or fees to a central cab organization, it has a big impact. It is a very disruptive use of technology for them.

What a coincidence. Just as I finished my last response I happened on this American Marxist economist's views on Uber: http://www.democracyatwork.info/radi...ng-resistance/
It's the first item in the show, about a minute or so in to get past the intro audio boilerplate, less than ten minutes of commentary. Nothing very surprising. He considers this business as usual and cyclic (eventually if Uber "disrupts" other taxi companies its workers will organize and regulations will have to be applied when its other cost cutting efforts give people problems). His solution, as usual (I happened on this, but am not new to his show), is coops. One interesting fact is that Madison, Wisconsin apparently has such an entity already: http://unioncab.com/AboutUs
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Old 13th March 2015
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Yes, my first attempt I stopped around 100 pages, similar to my attempt at reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
Wealth of Nations is worthwhile reading. People love to quote Smith's thesis statements, but, of course, ignore the reasoning behind them. Knowing what Smith actually wrote puts things in a totally different perspective. I found it very interesting how the people who only quote Smith's ends while not mentioning the means, convince the masses to support an idea they would find heinous if they knew what it is they are actually supporting.
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