Including ideas on how to solve our massive, ongoing disinformation crisis. What’s really alarming is that nothing has changed. Mark Zuckerberg is trotted out in front of various Senate subcommittees, but two questions into the grilling, it becomes laughably apparent these poor old dinosaurs have no idea what time it is. They don’t know what questions to ask because they are incapable of understanding technology or the outsized role it plays. Like Trump himself, most of them are probably hard pressed to send an email.
The idea behind Facebook is all well and good, but lacking Google's "Don't be evil" ethos, Zuckerberg moved fast and broke things before he understood where Facebook was headed and what it was breaking. It didn't have to be this way. Facebook could have been a grand uniting force and still made everyone involved a SHIT-TON of money. The problem is that Zuckerberg and his way-smarter-than-thou minions weren't smart enough to outwit evil. In a game of cosmic one-on-one, evil ALWAYS wins.
They ran before they could walk. They swallowed before they could chew. Before they knew it, they'd created a monster and had no way to pull it back into the barn. It's sad, really; such a good idea so thoroughly corrupted by people who weren't nearly as smart as they gave themselves credit for. What should have been a good thing for human kind is now thoroughly and completely gefickt.
"A good idea so thoroughly corrupted by people who weren't nearly as smart as they gave themselves credit for." That gets five stars, Jack. Brilliantly said.
The Wall Street Journal has a whole series (from what I hear) about the Evils of Facebook. If you have a subscription (or a hack), I'd love to get your take on it.
A book you might like (assuming you haven't already read it) is Levitsky & Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die." Part of their argument is about how the unwritten "guardrails" (their term) of democracy are undermined in failed democracies allowing authoritarians to assume power legally and "according to the rules." In that context, Zuck fucked us only because the previous 35 years of assault on those guardrails by the GOP. They cite Newt Gingrich's first election to Congress in 1979 as the watershed event that derailed any pretense of civility &/or bipartisanship between the parties. Trump and Trumpism were simply the most recent little step on the highway to hell. (Which, unlike the road, is definitely NOT paved with good intentions.)
I mention this because I believe it is an error -- possibly even a catastrophic one -- to speak of 2016 as though it was a "comet," or to trace it down to one primary "Big" cause. Like the story of the frogs in the pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil*, the incremental nature of these steps is what makes the danger so desperately immanent.
*By the bye, that story is completely fabricated. It doesn't matter how slowly you bring the pot to a boil, the moment the temp becomes uncomfortable they are OUTTA THERE. Lacking a significant cortex and forebrain, frogs are incapable of denial.
Frogs aren't stupid! I'd leap right the hell out of there, too. You know, I always promised myself that if I ever spotted Callista Gingrich out and about in Rome in her capacity as Ambassador to the Vatican, that I would hock up a loogie and aim it in her direction. Hey, who knows? Maybe I'll still get lucky.
The idea behind Facebook is all well and good, but lacking Google's "Don't be evil" ethos, Zuckerberg moved fast and broke things before he understood where Facebook was headed and what it was breaking. It didn't have to be this way. Facebook could have been a grand uniting force and still made everyone involved a SHIT-TON of money. The problem is that Zuckerberg and his way-smarter-than-thou minions weren't smart enough to outwit evil. In a game of cosmic one-on-one, evil ALWAYS wins.
They ran before they could walk. They swallowed before they could chew. Before they knew it, they'd created a monster and had no way to pull it back into the barn. It's sad, really; such a good idea so thoroughly corrupted by people who weren't nearly as smart as they gave themselves credit for. What should have been a good thing for human kind is now thoroughly and completely gefickt.
"A good idea so thoroughly corrupted by people who weren't nearly as smart as they gave themselves credit for." That gets five stars, Jack. Brilliantly said.
The Wall Street Journal has a whole series (from what I hear) about the Evils of Facebook. If you have a subscription (or a hack), I'd love to get your take on it.
A book you might like (assuming you haven't already read it) is Levitsky & Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die." Part of their argument is about how the unwritten "guardrails" (their term) of democracy are undermined in failed democracies allowing authoritarians to assume power legally and "according to the rules." In that context, Zuck fucked us only because the previous 35 years of assault on those guardrails by the GOP. They cite Newt Gingrich's first election to Congress in 1979 as the watershed event that derailed any pretense of civility &/or bipartisanship between the parties. Trump and Trumpism were simply the most recent little step on the highway to hell. (Which, unlike the road, is definitely NOT paved with good intentions.)
I mention this because I believe it is an error -- possibly even a catastrophic one -- to speak of 2016 as though it was a "comet," or to trace it down to one primary "Big" cause. Like the story of the frogs in the pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil*, the incremental nature of these steps is what makes the danger so desperately immanent.
*By the bye, that story is completely fabricated. It doesn't matter how slowly you bring the pot to a boil, the moment the temp becomes uncomfortable they are OUTTA THERE. Lacking a significant cortex and forebrain, frogs are incapable of denial.
Frogs aren't stupid! I'd leap right the hell out of there, too. You know, I always promised myself that if I ever spotted Callista Gingrich out and about in Rome in her capacity as Ambassador to the Vatican, that I would hock up a loogie and aim it in her direction. Hey, who knows? Maybe I'll still get lucky.