The Death of the Gods: Not scared of tech yet? You haven't been paying attention

It has been 14 years since Google IPO'd, and nine since Donald Trump burst onto Twitter. It’s five years since both the Snowden NSA disclosures and the birth of Cambridge Analytica. Over this period we’ve had a series of major data breaches, media organisations disrupted out of existence, and the emergence of hacktivists and the …

[onefang]

"Well, summer’s almost over."

Only on one side of the planet, over here on this side, I'm looking forward to summer starting soon.

[steelpillow]

Yeah, the Singularity will sort it all out for us.

I just know it will haver a special soft spot for me because I am so much better inside than everyone else.

[Pete 2]

Add this book to the pile

Basically, just more doom-mongering

The news media is full of it. It sells. But merely telling us we're doomed, DOOMED I say is meaningless. What are the solutions, what actions should we take to mitigate this. How can we protect ourselves or profit from it (ans: write a book).

So instead of heaping on the anxiety, increasing fear and making everyone a little more depressed, how about some positive, helpful, suggestions, instead?

[Version 1.0]

Re: "how about some positive, helpful, suggestions, instead?"

I think that banning Advertising (and I mean a COMPLETE ban) would improve things immensely - it would strip the financial rewards away from collating all the data. Look around you at all the "new products" ... it's all mostly crap sold by shiny advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "how about some positive, helpful, suggestions, instead?"

"I think that banning Advertising (and I mean a COMPLETE ban) would improve things immensely"

You might hate advertising in whatever form it takes, be it TV or radio ads or promos on twitter, but its often the only way for a new and/or small company to get known. Bad all advertising and the only people who will benefit will be the products and big corporations that the public already know about.

[gregoryg1]

Re: "how about some positive, helpful, suggestions, instead?"

Hell yes! I've been involved on the Internet professionally since it was released to the public. The absolute worst thing that ever happened to it is freaking advertising. If something has value, pay for it up front and openly, instead of backhandedly under the guise of the fallacy of said content or what have you being served up for free. F**king Facebook, Twitter and all the crap that has come along with them would have never happened without advertising. Madison Ave is the devil.

[Chris G]

Re: Add this book to the pile

A positive and helpful suggestion would be nuking everything from space, if there's nothing left there won't be any problems. First on the target list should be all of the slurpers. Including Building 8 where the zuckerborg is developing mindreading tech, how about that fot an app?.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Add this book to the pile

The solution is simple, forced sterilisation of the upper classes. That way we can clean out most of the crap people and leave the earth to the people that actually do the work.

Yes, this is sarcasm and yes I couldn't resist however to be fair something needs to change or we are all doomed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Add this book to the pile

Just go with "A Modest Proposal" already :-)

[JLV]

Re: Add this book to the pile

Here's a suggestion. Privilege electing politicians who have some level of acquaintance, be it slight, with telling the truth. There are gasp, even pols, who occasionally do that. The more they get rewarded for it, the less liars will get to power. Verify, then trust.

Any implied criticism of any serving politicians, or even recently resigned ones, is purely the fiction of your imagination.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks Google et all have power...

.... clearly have no idea of the historical reach and sheer political power of the oil companies and what they used to get up to, and for all I know still do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anyone who thinks Google et all have power...

Don't forget Big-Tobacco (The 7 Dwarfs) / Big-Chemical / Big-Pharma (Bayer-Monsanto)... Plus Banksters. They haven't gone away either. The latter are close pals with evil Big-Tech too!

[Fading]

Re: Anyone who thinks Google et all have power...

and Big Media, Big Sports, Big Government, Big Fashion, Big Automotive, Big Charity, Big Green and Big Utilities...... Almost as if as soon as they are big enough organisations try to shape the world around them for their own benefit and not for humanity as a whole.....

Who'd have thunk it?

[Anonymous South African Coward]

Götterdämmerung.

[Anonymous Coward]

--->Götterdämmerung.

Er, yes, that's where he got the title from.

And Tolkien also pinched the central theme of LotR from the Siegfried cycle.

Meanwhile, the smart money is on breeding Fenris-wolves and designing bigger and better freezers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

"And Tolkien also pinched the central theme of LotR from the Siegfried cycle."

Partly, along with a lot of norse and germanic myths and sagas just like Wagner. And The Hobbit is basically a rewrite of Beowulf.

[Kristian Walsh]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

Sorry for pedantry, but "Götterdämmerung" is not the death of the gods, but rather their twilight. The difference is important, because the words "twilight" and "Dämmerung" mean both the dim light after sunset and the dim light before sunrise. That double-meaning produces what is an unusually subtle title for Wagner.

Tolkien was often asked about Wagner's operas in his lifetime, and despite his famous answer that "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases", the idea of the ring itself being the instrument of power, and of it corrupting the soul of its wearer are both points that are hard to find evidence for in the mythology until after Wagner's operas. Maybe this reluctance to acknowledge the influence could be because, by the time LoTR was published, the use of Wagner's work by the Nazis would have been fresh in the memory of potential readers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

"Sorry for pedantry, but "Götterdämmerung" is not the death of the gods, but rather their twilight. The difference is important, because the words "twilight" and "Dämmerung" mean both the dim light after sunset and the dim light before sunrise."

No need to be sorry at all, that was an interesting and illuminating post and I am pleased that you amplified my point about LotR, which I didn't spell out.

I think Tolkien is an unreliable witness about his own work. But I would mention that while the symbol of a ring is new in Wagner, the idea that technology destroys the soul of the user is very ancient. In Genesis, the tree was originally simply the Tree of Knowledge; many of the ancient scholars seemed to have believed that the search for secular knowledge led to perdition and we were all much better off when we were wandering around nude as hunter gatherers before all this agriculture and building pyramids got started. [I oversimplify].

Personally my wife and I are only alive because of secular knowledge and I am rather unconvinced by their argument. The history of technology is one of overreach followed by retrenchment (such as learning structural engineering by building bigger cathedrals till they started to collapse). As the guy who taught me to ride motorbikes put it, if you haven't ever fallen off you haven't ever been going fast enough.

[nijam]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

> ... many of the ancient scholars seemed to have believed that the search for secular knowledge led to perdition...

Well, they would, wouldn't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung. - Well, they would, wouldn't they?

Why exactly? Roger Bacon was dead keen on secular knowledge (as a good Franciscan he thought it would benefit the poor) and the Middle Eastern city states had considerable technical accomplishments. It was largely the authors of Genesis who thought progress was bad. And their descendants have a remarkable number of Nobels in science and medicine, suggesting a serious level of disagreement.

[Water Cooler]

Re: --->Götterdämmerung.

"Tolkien also pinched the central theme of LotR from the Siegfried cycle"

I thought it was from Edgbaston Waterworks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dare I say it...

Want to avoid many (not all) of these problems well the answer is obvious: Open Source Software.

Build all from source first with a quick source code static analysis then check to see there is no obvious "bad stuff" then build-time static analyzers. Once you've done your tine-foil-hat stuff you can build normally and then install it. Oh and yeah you run all your own services like email, web, chat, ....

Now we all know this won't happen but I do think there is something in between what we have now and what is mentioned above that is suitable for most. Consider that with just a configuration change you web app can go from reasonably secure to a metadata fire hydrant. Another issue I see is many people today live in bubbles and are unwilling to empathize with any other situation, this all too often includes developers and management. The sad part is that we have in the past been critical of ideological movements for good reason since they insight division, hatred and violence but we seem to think it is a good thing these days.

Interesting observation from a 40ish year old, when I grew up what was considered left leaning thought was anti-establishment, criticizing corporations for their overreach and criticizing government especially the security agencies for their secrecy. The right leaning thought was more about grow of the establishment, security agencies increased power and corporate lobbying. Interesting how times have changed.

[FozzyBear]

techno doom and gloom cant go past david suarez's Daemon and Freedom. His solution to spammers, hackers and big corporations, well let's just say you would want to light a cigarette and bask in the afterglow of your daydreams.

[sprograms]

Banning all advertising is a pleasant thought. However, the actual result in today's world would simply mean that the companies and individuals with vast wealth and a wish to shape all conversations...would rule. They'd buy the space on blogs, sites, and the sites would yield because....no revenue.

The only other model that might work is "everybody pays for the access they seek, site by site. At present even that path does not lead to zero adverts. Such sights inevitable yield to paid editorializing.

Ignore the ads. Ban pop-up ads. Go to the good parts of the site, the core. Then leave the site. Go for a walk,Realize that we had nothing, thirty years ago, but magazines and newspapers that were 50%+ advertising, with content often warped by ad clients.

[Twanky]

Dooomed

Johannes Gutenberg: It's all downhill from here.