Sharing is caring!
Care bear stare!
The Circle, Dave Eggers' novel about a society dominated by an omniscient, cult-like Silicon Valley internet company, has been given the big-screen treatment, with the trailer emerging this week. The movie's promo site has a witty parody of the "onboarding" process for a web platform – enjoy the unreadable EULA as it flashes …
Well, certainly that may be how this fictional story characterises it, however that's a rather disingenuous jab at the principle of open access to knowledge, since real world movements that advocate such freedom (e.g. the Free Software Foundation) are quite clearly talking about that which is published, not that which is private.
Anything which is not published has no bearing on The Commons, since it was never public knowledge to begin with, and you can't really claim to be limited by a lack of access to something you don't even know exists (even if such information might actually turn out to be useful).
The true essence of open access to knowledge is (literally) academic. It's about collaboration, scientific progress and education, not freeloading, spying and spamvertising.
Naturally the monopolistic "IP" fraternity may see things differently, since their objective is greed, not progress.
"And I would have said its a cylinder because I live in a 3D world."
Fascinating. I'm in a Barbie world therefore I would have to say its plastic and probably fantastic.
That said I'm not actually a Barbie girl, I just commute here I therefore bring zero credibility to this theory.
So... Apple, then?
Not quite. Here's a little slip of the veil of confidentiality by an application developer.
So far, Apple's the only one who has NOT started to profile its users in the creepiest way possible.
A Google search for "the circle" or "we are the circle" currently doesn't return http://wearethecircle.com/. There are "high quality psychic mediums" in the results, though. Bing is even worse, however - at least Google returns a couple of Wikipedia hits, so I assume the site is just too recent to have been noticed, or highly ranked.
Or even the BBC's 2008 "The Last Enemy" which had Cumberbatch trying to escape the Total Information Awareness database.
But the first one I fondly remember watching was the "IT Thriller" in the eighties, Bird of Prey, with the late great Richard "uncle monty" Griffiths ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/monitor_bird_of_prey_retrospective/
BC's 2008 "The Last Enemy" which had Cumberbatch
That movie resulted in an interesting dialogue in our family.
SWMBO, horrfied: "Just how real is this..."
Me: Much more real than you think. It was prophetic (as it came out before latest revelations), we found out it to be not far from a documentary.
SWMBO: "I take back every single instance of calling you paranoid".
It will be interesting to give her this one to watch...
By visiting the site, you do grant the Circle the right to interfere with the operation or use of your sites through any means or device including, but not limited to, spamming, hacking, uploading computer viruses or time bombs, or any other means.
In applicable states, your family members, including children three (3) years of age and older may be confiscated for failure to comply
Trust us, we're not breaking antitrust laws.
Users may also have their citizenship revoked for failure to comply with the aforementioned community guidelines. If it happens, we'll know.
And Oh, the Irony: <!-- GOOGLE ANALYTICS TAG -->
And Oh, the Irony: <!-- GOOGLE ANALYTICS TAG -->
The Privacy statement has in addition to cookies, Flash Cookies, Web Beacons, and "We may associate your IP address with the PII you provide."
Though for once, the Privacy Policy (4,550 words) and the Terms of Service (7,008 words) are readable and not squashed into a tiny letterbox as seen on Youtube.
I read a good portion of the book, the corp is a mash-up of the big G and the big F … the corp does both search and social. G+ uses circles. It may be a coincidence that the new Apple HQ is toroidal.
Eggers is a superb writer, this isn't your average sci-fi dystopian schlock. Here's a review of it by Margaret Atwood in the New York Review of Books.
There are very few authors that both write decent prose and do sci-fi. Orwell, Atwood, Vonnegut, Gibson, spring to mind immediately. Eggers I'd count among their numbers after The Circle.
Firstly, why no HTTPS Register? [mod note – we're always working on it, it's being tied into internal and external redesigns for mobile we're working through, we've gotta get the ad networks to play ball, PDFs and images are already on HTTPS, etc etc etc etc. We want HTTPS as much as you do]
Yes, social media corporations are becoming more insidiously evil, but this has Marx, Edward Bernays and state origins, and is partly a consequence of the abuse of the corporation model, into permanent and psychopathic 'person' businesses; the state privilege of a corporation should have continued to be for only time limited, specific, larger scale, public projects only, with corporation termination triggers for misbehaviour or non-viability.
Political Correctness, Third Wave Feminism and other insidious Marxist Frankfurt School ('elite' backed) sabotage of culture in legislation, 'education' and mainstream media, and Edward Bernays invented Marketing (aka Propaganda) caused Consumerism has made people more stupid, so that they will foolishly accept abusive commercial contract terms and governments don't do enough to prevent this exploitation, partly because they are stupid and corrupt.
There are also strong suggestions that most of the big 'social' media platforms had/have either indirect US spy agency start-up funding/investment or executive collusion with these state spy agencies, so may be at least partly US state spy agency "Wolves" to attract sucker customers to willingly spy on themselves, rather than state spy agencies having the greater expense of a Stasi-like informer network, monitoring and interrogation!
Company rallies reinforce the ideology through chanting "sharing is caring" and "privacy is theft."
"Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one / Like drops within the Social River; / Oh, make us now together run / As swiftly as thy shining Flivver."
Huxley was all over this sh!t in 1932.
"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."
(Beer, because the stupid Epsilons f-cked up my Soma delivery AGAIN.)
I've attended a couple of Larry Lessig's talks here in the UK, I've listened to his presentations and panel contributions on YouTube and elsewhere and I've read multiple articles by him. I've never heard or read anything that makes me believe he wants to end individual privacy, that he believes our personal lives and experiences somehow rightfully belong on the servers of big tech.
Perhaps the noise of the axe the author is perennially attempting to grind has caused him to confuse Larry Lessig's views with those of Jeff Jarvis?