History

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wrote the seminal work on surveillance capitalism), Don Norman, Dystopia vs. Utopia Book List: A Fight to the Finish, surveillance capitalism dictionary

Some takeaways:

  • surveillance won’t be obvious and overt like in Orwell’s classic totalitarian novel 1984 β€” it’ll be covert and subtle (β€œmore like a spider’s web”)
  • social networks use persuasion architecture β€” the same cloying design aesthetic that puts gum at the eye level of children in the grocery aisle

Example:

AI modeling of potential Las Vegas ticket buyers

The machine learning algorithms can classify people into two buckets, β€œlikely to buy tickets to Vegas” and β€œunlikely to” based on exposure to lots and lots of data patterns. Problem being, it’s a black box and no one β€” not even the computer scientists β€” know how it works or what it’s doing exactly.

So the AI may have discovered that bipolar individuals just about to go into mania are more susceptible to buying tickets to Vegas β€” and that is the segment of the population they are targeting: a vulnerable set of people prone to overspending and gambling addictions. The ethical implications of unleashing this on the world β€” and routinely using and optimizing it relentlessly β€” are staggering.

Profiting from extremism

β€œYou’re never hardcore enough for YouTube” β€” YouTube gives you content recommendations that are increasingly polarized and polarizing, because it turns out that preying on your reptilian brain makes you keep clicking around in the YouTube hamster wheel.

The amorality of AI β€” β€œalgorithms don’t care if they’re selling shoes, or politics.” Our social, political, and cultural flows are being organized by these persuasion architectures β€” organized for profit; not for the collective good, not for public interests, not subject to our political will anymore. These powerful surveillance capitalism tools are running mostly unchecked, with little oversight and with few people minding the ethics of the stores of essentially a cadre of Silicon Valley billionaires.

Intent doesn’t matter β€” good intentions aren’t enough; it’s the structure and business models that matter. Facebook isn’t a half trillion dollar con: its value is in its highly effective persuasion power, which is highly troubling and concerning in a supposedly democratic society. Mark Zuckerberg may even ultimately mean well (…debatable), but it doesn’t excuse the railroading over numerous obviously negative externalities resulting from the unchecked power of Facebook in not only the U.S., but in countries around the world including highly volatile domains.

Extremism benefits demagogues β€” Oppressive regimes both come to power by and benefit from political extremism; from whipping up citizens into a frenzy, often against each other as much as against perceived external or internal enemies. Our data and attention are now for sale to the highest bidding authoritarians and demagogues around the world β€” enabling them to use AI against us in election after election and PR campaign after PR campaign. We gave foreign dictators even greater powers to influence and persuade us in ways that benefit them at the expense of our own self-interest.

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Don Norman’s preaching resonated with my choir, and they’ve asked me to sing a summary song of our people in bulleted list format:

  • What seemed like a virtuous thing at the time β€” building the internet with an ethos of trust and openness β€” has led to a travesty via lack of security, because no one took bad actors into account.
  • Google, Facebook, et al didn’t have the advertising business model in mind a priori, but sort of stumbled into it and got carried away giving advertisers what they wanted β€” more information about users β€” without really taking into consideration the boundary violations of appropriating people’s information. (see Shoshana Zuboff’s definitive new book on Surveillance Capitalism for a lot more on this topic)
  • Tech companies have mined the psychological sciences for techniques that β€” especially at scale β€” border on mass manipulation of fundamental human drives to be informed and to belong. Beyond the creepy Orwellian slant of information appropriation and emotional manipulation, the loss of productivity and mental focus from years of constant interruptions takes a toll on society at large.
  • We sign an interminable series of EULAs, ToS’s and other lengthy legalese-ridden agreements just to access the now basic utilities that enable our lives. Experts refer to these as β€œcontracts of adhesion” or β€œclick-wrap,” as a way of connoting the β€œobvious lack of meaningful consent.” (Zuboff)
  • The β€œbubble effect” β€” the internet allows one to surround oneself completely with like-minded opinions and avoid ever being exposed to alternative points of view. This has existential implications for being able to inhabit a shared reality, as well as a deleterious effect on public discourse, civility, and the democratic process itself.
  • The extreme commercialization of almost all of our information sources is problematic, especially in the age of the β€œMilton Friedman-ification” of the economic world and the skewing of values away from communities and individuals, towards a myopic view of shareholder value and all the attendant perverse incentives that accompany this philosophical business shift over the past 50 years. He notes that the original public-spiritedness of new communication technologies has historically been co-opted by corporate lobbyists via regulatory capture β€” a subject Tim Wu explores in-depth in his excellent 2011 book, β€œThe Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.β€œ

Is it all bleak, Don?! His answer is clear: β€œyes, maybe, no.” He demurs on positing a definitive answer to all of these issues, but he doesn’t really mince words about a β€œhunch” that it may in fact involve burning it all down and starting over again.

Pointing to evolution, Norman notes that we cannot eke radical innovation out of incremental changes β€” and that when radical change does happen it is often imposed unexpectedly from the outside in the form of catastrophic events. Perhaps if we can’t manage to Marie Kondo our way to a more joyful internet, we’ll have to pray for Armageddon soon…?! 😱

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo
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Russia’s ongoing intrusion into the U.S. political realm β€” especially its attacks on the heart of democracy: our election system?

I think James Madison β€” the Father of the Constitution β€” would have had many choice words about this development. Since we cannot alas ask him his opinion any longer, perhaps his parting words to the beloved country he was instrumental in creating can suffice:

The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.”

β€” β€œAdvice to My Country,” James Madison, 1834
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2016 U.S. election… and beyond. The Russia scandal has continued to unspool throughout the Trump presidency, including the real estate magnate’s first impeachment over his extortion of Ukraine, and his second impeachment over the armed insurrection he incited following his failed re-election bid. It continues to this day.

Plus, don’t miss the RussiaGate Lexicon β€” and please note these are both works in progress and being updated as new details emerge about the Russia scandal, the Trump family criminal organization, and Putin’s revanchist influence in American politics.

Bestiary

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the New Deal (thanks, FDR!). In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting legal limits on the maximum number of hours worked and the minimum wages allowed. Child labor was outlawed, and union laws allowed collective bargaining β€” resulting in much-needed wage growth and improved conditions for workers.

Republicans fought it then, claiming it was an essentially socialist program, and an economic enemy to business and growth. However, it was the very opposite of that β€” the war and post-war years were ones of productivity and prosperity, widely and broadly. A strong middle class was formed, changing the life and culture of America forever. The very image of the 1950s Average Family with a white picket fence (emphasis on the white) and 2.5 children the right-wing seems to have nostalgia for was made possible by massive government investments into the US economy and labor force β€” investments which paid off handsomely and broadly for all, with the notable exception (once again… sort of a theme around here…) of Black Americans, who were largely carved out of the GI bill and given the meagre leavings of the superior education and housing benefits doled out to white veterans.

In the mid-1970s this growth engine finally began to falter, and since the 80s, we’ve instead had the Raw Deal. An ever-escalating version of a Libertarian’s wet dream: deregulation of numerous industries including finance (leading to the housing crash of 2007-8) and energy (leading to the Enron scandal, where traders joked about frying grandmas in CA for fat bonuses), a steadily less progressive tax system (down from a whopping 94% in 1944 down to 28% under Reagan), and endless waves of cuts to social programs that had been designed to level the opportunity playing field after centuries of explicit discrimination.

The thing is, when people feel hopeful, they work harder.

When there is hopelessness, there is less urgency to work hard to maintain the conditions and systems that make one feel so hopeless. If you know the game is rigged, how futile does it seem to keep playing?

Libertarians lament about the size of the pie, which is as good a modern version of β€œlet them eat cake” while the plebes swill McD’s and pay through the nose for health care as any.

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zero-sum power games instead of recognizing the context they are in β€” we are all in β€” as an infinite game in which the enlargement of the participant group to include and, not just reluctantly tolerate, but to avidly welcome women in to the club will massively benefit all the players. 

Then there are the white wizards who create pseudoscientific rationalizations for wasting time obsessing over 18th century racial animus as a massive distraction from having to do the work of creating anything useful or contributing any value to the world. They’ve taken their centuries of evolutionary advantage and painstakingly developed economic pie to split hairs over who ought to be denied a few of the crumbs, as a cheap method of papering over the deep well of collective insecurity and ego fragility precipitated by a lack of meaningful individuation and their failure to create anything useful or contribute any value to the world.

We could be playing this game together. Instead, we furtively dart about in Plato’s Cave imagining we are still living in a world of scarcity, rather than leveling ourselves up to behold the vision of the new world of abundance we have the capacity to create.

Not Ready Player One.

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cognitive dissonance.
The bitter taste on one's tongue.
The gnawing fear.
Capriciousness.
Corruption.
Hypocrisy.
Paranoia.
Bombastic grasping.
A slap in the face.
An endless arms race.
A shallow grave.
A cold stare.
A trap.
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scapegoats and easy answers. A made up story to channel one’s anger into. Deflection away from one’s own faults and flaws. Denial of responsibility. Worldview myopia. Reductionism at its worst. Shallow; vapid. Unseemly.

The stuff of weak minds.

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Condorcet jury theorem provides not just a mathematical basis for democracy and the justice system, but a model predictor of one’s political persuasion as well?

If you’re an optimist, you have no trouble believing that p > 1/2. You give people the benefit of the doubt that they will try their best and most often, succeed in tipping over the average even if just by a hair. That’s all it takes for the theorem to prove true: that the larger the number of voters, the closer the group gets to making the β€œcorrect” decision 100% of the time.

On the other hand, if you’re a pessimist, you might quibble with that β€” saying that people are low-information voters who you don’t think very highly of, and don’t find very capable. You might say that people will mostly get it wrong, in which case p < 1/2 and the theory feedback loops all the way in the other direction, to where the optimal number of voters is 1: the autocrat.

A political sorting hat of sorts

Optimists will tend to believe in the power of people to self-govern and to act out of compassion a fair amount of the time, thus leaning to the left: to the Democrats, social democrats, socialists, and the alt-Left. Pessimists will tend to favor a smaller, tighter cadre of wealthy elite rulers β€” often, such as themselves. They might be found in the GOP, Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, Libertarian, paleoconservative, John Birch Society, Kochtopus, anarcho-capitalist, alt-Right, and other right-wing groups including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white militia groups around the country.

Granted the model is crude, but so was the original theorem β€” what is the β€œcorrect” choice in a political contest? Or does the Condorcet jury theorem imply that, like becoming Neo, whatever the majority chooses will by definition be The Right One for the job? πŸ€”

…if so, we definitively have the wrong President.

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