Neal Stephenson Says Social Media Is Close To A 'Doomsday Machine' (pcmag.com) 59
PC Magazine interviewed Neal Stephenson about his new upcoming book Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell, as well as "the digital afterlife, and why social media is a doomsday machine." [Possible spoilers ahead]:
The hybrid sci-fi/fantasy novel begins in the present day with Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, an eccentric multibillionaire who made his fortune in the video game industry. When a freak accident during a routine medical procedure leaves him brain-dead, his family is left to contend with his request to have his brain preserved until the technology exists to bring him back to life. The near-future world of Fall is full of familiar buzzwords and concepts. Augmented reality headsets, next-gen wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, facial recognition, quantum computing, blockchain and distributed cryptography all feature prominently. Stephenson also spends a lot of time examining how the internet and social media, which Dodge and other characters often refer to in Fall as the Miasma, is irrevocably changing society and altering the fabric of reality...
Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you.
Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money.
The result is the situation we see today where no one agrees on what factual reality is and everyone is driven in the direction of content that is "more engaging," which almost always means that it's more emotional, it's less factually based, it's less rational, and kind of destructive from a basic civics standpoint... I sort of was patting myself on the back for really being on top of things and predicting the future. And then I discovered that the future was way ahead of me. I've heard remarks in a similar vein from other science-fiction novelists: do we even have a role anymore?
Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's reader in 2004, and since then has "spent years as an advisor for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' private space company Blue Origin," the article points out. He's also currently the "chief futurist" for Magic Leap -- though he tells his interviewer that some ideas go back much further.
Part of his new book builds on "a really old idea" from security researcher Matt Blaze, who in the mid-1990s talked about "Encyclopedia Disinformatica", which Stephenson describes as "a sort of fake Wikipedia containing plausible-sounding but deliberately false information as a way of sending the message to people that they shouldn't just believe everything that they see on the internet."
Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you.
Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money.
The result is the situation we see today where no one agrees on what factual reality is and everyone is driven in the direction of content that is "more engaging," which almost always means that it's more emotional, it's less factually based, it's less rational, and kind of destructive from a basic civics standpoint... I sort of was patting myself on the back for really being on top of things and predicting the future. And then I discovered that the future was way ahead of me. I've heard remarks in a similar vein from other science-fiction novelists: do we even have a role anymore?
Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's reader in 2004, and since then has "spent years as an advisor for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' private space company Blue Origin," the article points out. He's also currently the "chief futurist" for Magic Leap -- though he tells his interviewer that some ideas go back much further.
Part of his new book builds on "a really old idea" from security researcher Matt Blaze, who in the mid-1990s talked about "Encyclopedia Disinformatica", which Stephenson describes as "a sort of fake Wikipedia containing plausible-sounding but deliberately false information as a way of sending the message to people that they shouldn't just believe everything that they see on the internet."
Re:Social media never envisioned for social (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a big part of the reason that I don't use social media or even a lot of the big social sites. The extent to which I use something like Reddit is limited to a tiny set of niche groups and I avoid all of the bigger ones because it feels just like screaming into the void. I think it would be cool to see a site like that build with Dunbar's number in mind that continually and automatically splits existing groups into small and smaller sub-groups until they reach a point where it creates a tight-knit community. I don't know if that's workable or if people would actually prefer something like that, but it would be interesting to try as well as to examine how it affects discourse and user interaction.
Who deserves your time? (Score:3)
Interesting comment (from alvinrod), but I still refuse to look at the AC for the context. If you're introducing Dunbar's number into the discussion, then congratulations to you. If it was the AC, who TF cares? How is it even possible to care about such an amorphous cloud or AC dust?
(Yes, I can see that the AC cut the last word of the Subject. Evidence of bad writing, and I prefer to avoid bad authors. I'm guessing the missing word is in the AC comment, but a good writer (who was willing (or even motivated)
Re: (Score:2)
Typos, typos, who's got the typos? I hate the typos and would therefore be motivated to donate to fix that problem if only Slashdot could fix any of its problems...
Anyway, main reason to reply is not the typos, but to comment on a more substantive omission. I forgot to mention how well Neal Stephenson writes. Definitely time to update my list of next books...
Good! (Score:1)
Always wanted to see the end of the Earth!
Re: Good! (Score:2)
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I think he is actually one of the best living writers. Perhaps you would like to give an example of a writer you think is highly skilled or gifted. He is certainly one of the best living scifi writers especially now that Iain Banks is dead.
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Indeed. IMO "Anathem" was the last good one (if you got over the boring start) and that came out in 2008. The "Baroque Cycle" (published before) was basically unreadable and "Reamde" was not any better. Same for "Cryptonomicon". I have mostly given up on his writing.
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I'll admit that I've struggled at times with the Baroque Cycle but Cryptonomicon is pretty damn good and easy to read, what are you talking about. Seveneves is one of his more recent books and is quite accessible and a fun read too.
Re:People were already catasophically stupid (Score:5, Informative)
I kind of miss the days when pretty much everyone you'd find on the Internet was reasonably intelligent. Sure, there were assholes and unpleasant people, but even most of them showed some level of intelligence and rational thought.
Now that the Internet is mainstream, the stupid has gone off the charts.
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Go hang out at /r/math or similar. Slashdot has turned into a political dumpster fire, but there are still corners of intelligence on the net.
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I kind of miss the days when pretty much everyone you'd find on the Internet was reasonably intelligent.
When was this? In the 80s?
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Indeed. Sturgeon's law also applies to people, unfortunately.
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Unfortunately, I cannot say I disagree with most of this. The reason why democracy does not work, for example, is that it requires informed voters. What we have is mostly sheep that are easily spooked and that are completely incapable of doing any fact-checking.
sequel to Dr. Strangelove (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But did you even see the movie? There can be no sequel. The world ends.
There was a bunker full of surviving generals, officials and secretaries; presumably another in Russia and perhaps a few others. Exploring what happened to those people might be interesting in a way. Kind of like a continuation of De Sade's 120 Days, where we see the survivors turn on each other once the food runs out.
Conservapedia (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know, the left has started to just directly lie a while ago as well. Sure, the idea that you have to manipulate the voters and that voters are scum to be betrayed in any fashion possible is a conservative one, but it is catching on. Basically, it is catching on because the voters _are_ stupid and this approach does work, unfortunately.
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We will see. Stephenson has produced both really good books and really tedious, excruciatingly boring ones.
Dumbed Down (Score:2)
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Part of the fix that we are in today is due to very poor education of our people. In an effort to be inclusive we have been requiring less and less of our students. The consequence is a population that is severely under educated.
I considered this a while ago: https://sheramil.livejournal.c... [livejournal.com]
It comes down to, not so much "who benefits from better education", but "who DOESN'T benefit".
Kind of depressing, really.
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Where I work its called the "everybody gets a prize" syndrome.
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There is much wrong here, were do I even start? Sure, you identify part of the problem, but you solution (which basically is "harsher penalties") is about as wrong-headed and authoritarian and non-functional as they come.
And your data? It takes 3 years to train as a chef in Germany (for example), and you can finish after 2.5 years if you perform well. The whole process you describe is a pure fantasy on your part. It does not exist.
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In an effort to be inclusive we have been requiring less and less of our students.
That is the wrong wording. You actually require more and more and more but you teach less and less and less
I'm a martial arts teacher, I know the difference between "require" and "teach".
Quantum computing? (Score:2)
On a cold day in hell...
Apparently, Stephenson is just as incompetent as all the other "futurists". Just taking the current hypes ans extrapolating them does not make for useful predictions.
Truth (Score:2)
"...sending the message to people that they shouldn't just believe everything that they see on the internet."
Everybody knows that all truths can be found on t-shirts.