Cory Doctorow: Tech Workers Are Now Questioning the Powers Technology Gives (theguardian.com) 41
"Anyone who has ever fallen in love with technology knows the amount of control that it gives you," says Cory Doctorow. But in a new interview about his recently-released scifi novel Attack Surface, he argues that many Silicon Valley employees are now having second thoughts:
If you can express yourself well to a computer it will do exactly what you tell it to do perfectly, as many times as you want. Across the tech sector, there are a bunch of workers who are waking up and going: "How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?"
As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger, which is that if you do some bad things, and then you do some good things, you can talk them up. And if your balance is positive, then you're a good person. And if the balance is negative, you're a bad person. But no amount of goodness cancels out the badness, they coexist — the people you hurt will still be hurt, irrespective of the other things you do to make amends. We're flawed vessels, and we need a better moral discourse. That's one of the things this book is trying to establish...
[F]iction gives you an emotional fly-through. It invites you to consider the lived experience of what is otherwise a very abstract and technical debate. And in the same way that Orwell bequeathed us this incredibly useful adjective Orwellian, as a way to talk about not the technical characteristics of the technology, but who does it and whom it does it to, these stories are a way of intervening in the world.
In the real world, Doctorow believes our moment in time includes the possibility of a growing coalition of anti-monopoly sentiment. But he also believes that fears of technology-induced unemployment may ultimately be offset by climate change.
"We've got 200 to 300 years of full employment for every working pair of hands, to do things like relocate every city on a coast 20km inland. The extended amounts of labour ahead of us are more than any technology could offset."
As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger, which is that if you do some bad things, and then you do some good things, you can talk them up. And if your balance is positive, then you're a good person. And if the balance is negative, you're a bad person. But no amount of goodness cancels out the badness, they coexist — the people you hurt will still be hurt, irrespective of the other things you do to make amends. We're flawed vessels, and we need a better moral discourse. That's one of the things this book is trying to establish...
[F]iction gives you an emotional fly-through. It invites you to consider the lived experience of what is otherwise a very abstract and technical debate. And in the same way that Orwell bequeathed us this incredibly useful adjective Orwellian, as a way to talk about not the technical characteristics of the technology, but who does it and whom it does it to, these stories are a way of intervening in the world.
In the real world, Doctorow believes our moment in time includes the possibility of a growing coalition of anti-monopoly sentiment. But he also believes that fears of technology-induced unemployment may ultimately be offset by climate change.
"We've got 200 to 300 years of full employment for every working pair of hands, to do things like relocate every city on a coast 20km inland. The extended amounts of labour ahead of us are more than any technology could offset."
It was inevitable (Score:2)
If you can express yourself well to a computer it will do exactly what you tell it to do perfectly, as many times as you want. Across the tech sector, there are a bunch of workers who are waking up and going: "How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?"
Technology is a bunch of silicon, which you can use to see how things affect people globally in a matter of hours rather than months or years,
If you rationalized that, it's because a) human societies have always been collections of average-to-horrible people, and b) the combination of high-speed networking, personal high-quality image/video imaging, and inexpensive, small-enough-to-be-accidentally-swallowed storage makes it possible for individuals to communicate, observe, and aggregate conclusions on these
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I think more and more are realizing that life might not have been as comfortable before, but it might have been simpler.
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"you can also start fixing some of the problems that previous generations dumped in the landfill and forgot about"
The hubris never fails to astound. You aren't going to "fix" the result of a couple hundred thousand years of survival in the chaos chamber we evolved in. You are going to fuck it up with a slow leak or similar bug while you deploy drastic essentially untested changes in a generation or two. We may well have already destroyed ourselves by deploying pseudo-science child psychology at scale over j
Technology is morally neutral (Score:2)
Is the new subject what you were trying to say in that FP? Sorry, but I found it pretty incoherent.
What I like about some SF is that it imagines morally positive uses of technology by the protagonists, even though the drama usually requires negative uses of technologies by the antagonists.
Now for the punchline: I've never managed to finish one of his books. Doctorow only does ebooks and I don't do Amazon in any shape or form. I've tried to read at least two of his ebooks via other channels (email and browse
Guardianistas (Score:3)
The Guardian, gazing into its navel wishing only 'good' people were allowed share this planet with them.
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The Guardian, gazing into its navel wishing only 'good' people were allowed share this planet with them.
Doctorow has always been an antimonopoly, seize-technology-for-the-people guy, and this interview seems to indicate that Attack Surface is right in line with this oeuvre. The Grauniad, dominated as it is by old Boomers who blame our troubles on technology itself, is trying to impose its own agenda on the author.
The pen is mightier than the sword... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and yet a lot of people still think that the pen cannot be used to oppress others, only the sword can.
These are the people who think social media brings nothing but greater mutual understanding and democracy. Who think two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch is a good way to run things. Crazy, huh?
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These days, Big Tech can't even see the contents of your private messages to even begin to
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The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. I remember when that saying was true many years ago. It hasn't been true for a number of years though. There are some notable problems with what your arguing:
First you talking about one to one messaging as being allowed. This doesn't scale, which makes your comparison non-sequitur.
Second your proposal to set up your own server is effectively meaningless. Your server will have no traffic without big tech. Fail to comply with style guides or link
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You’ve never had the right to use someone else’s transmitter, printing press, or to barge in on a bunch of monks and demand they start copying your book.
Freedom of speech doesn’t obligate others to provide a platform for your message, nor does it grant you access to someone else’s audience. The burden of disseminating a message has always been on the shoulders of the speaker.
The parent post is 100% correct - it has been a fairly recent development in human history where people have
Re: The pen is mightier than the sword... (Score:2)
What disasters?
Both Trump and Brexit were a reaction to being ruled, rather than being served by government.
Telling people they are idiots for voting for either isnâ(TM)t the solution.
FYI, government is supposed to be for the betterment of the people.
Democrats, Republicans, Labour, Tory... just different masks on the faces of rulers, not servants.
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What disasters?
Both Trump and Brexit were a reaction to being ruled, rather than being served by government.
Telling people they are idiots for voting for either isnâ(TM)t the solution.
FYI, government is supposed to be for the betterment of the people.
Democrats, Republicans, Labour, Tory... just different masks on the faces of rulers, not servants.
Trump was a result of decades of gerrymandering and voter naivete/complacence thinking that he could never win. I will grant you that Trump's rise to power in the Conservative party was reactionary. But his election as president says nothing about how the majority of US voters feel.
Re: The pen is mightier than the sword... (Score:2)
"...and yet a lot of people still think that the pen cannot be used to oppress others, only the sword can."
Can you imagine the look on Galileo's face if you told him that in the future, people are allowed to publicly disagree with you, and if your opinion is very disagreeable, people might not publish it if they don't want to! I mean geez, persecution and house arrest is pretty awful, but other people not being forced to publish your writings, geez, people writing in opposition, GEEZ!
Re:The pen is mightier than the sword... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here [wikipedia.org] is the whole quote, emphasis added:
So I think you misinterpreted the quote!
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https://duckduckgo.com/?kl=us-... [duckduckgo.com]"pen+is+mightier" :P
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Social media is great, free media is great, because when this person wrote these things there was a free press to those who could afford it. Heinlein was popular enough so he had the power to manipulate the free press and do what he wanted, but most writers could not. Certainly Doctor
Why so many mentions of Doctorow lately on /.? (Score:2)
"But in a new interview about his recently-released scifi novel Attack Surface, ..."
Oh.
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Doctorow's musings are mostly obvious platitudes and fake profundities. But he does have to make a living like the rest of us. Astroturfing /. is one of the ways he hawks his book.
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Not very probable, after he's already secured a decent year's earnings by crowdfunding that book including e-book and audiobook editions. Just because people have to make a living it doesn't necessarily mean what they're saying was just for profit or otherwise insubstantial.
Introspection, just not enough of it. (Score:1)
I appreciates Cory's take on many things, but this seems just a bit shallow.
On climate change, I think everyone would drive an electric car if they could. The fact is that wages were stagnating and only showed signs of increasing meaningfully right before the pandemnic hit.
The sad fact is that you simply can not embrace the entirety of liberal and socialist policies (or communist for that matter) - and find a way to pay for climate change. Either to mitigate it or to adapt to it. Even communist China now ru
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On climate change, I think everyone would drive an electric car if they could.
Nah. Drivers are on several spectra and one axis has coal rollers at one end and NEV drivers on the other. Some people like to pollute because... well, I presume because someone hurt them. Why else would they willfully damage the biosphere they live in, just to piss other people off? They're enviro-trolls.
The sad fact is that you simply can not embrace the entirety of liberal and socialist policies (or communist for that matter) - and find a way to pay for climate change.
The sad fact is that you can't address climate change without socialism. As long as the corporatocracy is still running the planet, they will hem and haw us right into ecolapse.
The fact is that there can be no meaningful climate change action by adhering to the policies of the past esp. uncontrolled immigration which the very tech companies Cory mentions want for their cheap labor.
The fact is that there can b
Re: Introspection, just not enough of it. (Score:2)
The sad fact is that you can't address climate change without socialism.
That's not a fact at all, and it's plain wrong.
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That's not a fact at all, and it's plain wrong.
Well, you could just outlaw fossil fuels and accept the collapse of the economy that follows. Problem is, in a democracy that would be unpopular and you’d get voted out.
Addressing climate change will cost money, and it has to come from somewhere. Ignoring the problem still costs money, it’s just pushing the cost off onto future generations (or maybe the youngest of this generation).
Re: Introspection, just not enough of it. (Score:1)
And people wonder why there are climate change skeptics. It seems more of a political agenda than science fact. And trying to beat others over the head with it won't change views.
That single sentence feels like it invalidates his entire post.
"As a society, we..." (Score:2)
You can just stop right there. The statement is going to be prescriptive, wildly overgeneralized, and probably completely wrong.
Questioning tech companies, not technology (Score:5, Insightful)
How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?" As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger
Maybe it's less about rationalizing taking power from others (whatever that means), and more about changes in technology companies themselves, and in their business models. Not that long ago, tech companies had clear products and services: your company made games, or mobile phones, or ran a social network, and made money by selling products or ads. And many of those companies branded themselves as a force for good. But at some point, you found that your employer doesn't make money selling games, it makes money from in-game transactions and does everything to make the game as addictive as possible to kids. Your employer doesn't just sell mobile phones, but tries to lock in its customers and taxes everyone else who sells services to them through those phones. Your employer doesn't just sell ads on their social network, they harvest personal data and sell it to any interested party.
What changed is that companies that started out as ostensibly well-meaning, began weaving questionable or openly evil practises into their business models. Simply put: the way they made money changed from honest to dishonest or at best sleazy. Tech workers aren't starting to question technology itself, they start questioning the business practises of their employers, and are disappointed at how people are putting technology to such perverted uses.
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Human labor will be obsolete. Good. (Score:2)
If a robot can produce something, why not we make use of that? Why do you need me to do labor? So I can feel valuable? When I am given a job even though something else can produce that same thing for cheaper, it is essentially a more dignified form of welfare. How is my value true if my value is derived from unnecessary labor? At that point my existence is only to be impediment to societal productivity -- if I didn't exist, things would be cheaper. Why should a human be given work if a robot can do that wor
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What will change the most is our approach to education, where it will cease to be
About time. (Score:2)
Technology law has been increasing in word count since the arrival of smartphones.
Still cashing those checks (Score:1)
Tech is less innovative + Facebook shat the bed (Score:3)
What's even exciting about tech today? Processors aren't getting much faster. All I ever read about is AI doing things that someday may matter, but today mostly are hype. Technology has matured on most fronts and is kind of stagnant.
So now that there are no userful and wonderful and life-changing innovations, I have time to think about the other things. I have mental energy to complain about how bloated and slow gmail is. Because there's no cool reason to use it any more, I am ready to switch if a similarly reputable company released a faster version. Because there are no cool features in MacOS to excite me, I can notice how it has a lot more stability/display-crashing issues than I remember Windows having. I notice how ever minor patch with no visible change takes over 1h to patch, yet Linux and Windows were much faster in comparison. I have viewed the YouTube videos and can barely tell the difference between a PS5 and PS4 game. There difference between PS and PS2 was mind-blowing as was PS2 to PS3. Now PS5 looks like PS4 with better lighting science...something most people would never notice if you didn't point out to them. My wife (a non-gamer) could easily see the PS2 to PS3 difference, but would never be able to tell apart the PS4 from PS5 reliably. What device is either Apple or Google rumored to come out with that isn't a trivial evolution of last products?...or an underwhelming 1st party version of something I can buy from a 3rd party now (like the charging mat)
I knew about the risks of Google's data hoarding before and didn't care because they kept releasing cool things and it was worth it. Now that they don't have anything new that excites me and all their services seem like something Apple or Microsoft either already does just as well or could easily catch up to (let's be real, would your life be any worse if you had to use bing?) Now these things bother me and others. Now I care about these secondary concerns.
Also, the elephant in the room is really facebook. Mark Z shat the bed big time. He wants to hold up these free speech ideals whereas no one really wants free speech. We don't want to read posts from militia men or health scams or whatever racist drivel your distant uncle is spouting about how the phrase "white pride" "shouldn't" be offensive. We don't want Facebook weaponized by foreign powers as Russia reportedly tipped the election for less than 1/4 the cost of a single cruise missile...while ordering US political ads from Russia, in Rubles. I can't remember the last time facebook got better, only worse. Young people are leaving in droves and the rest of us are worrying about the impact the mentally ill and early-stage-Alzheimer's patients are having on each other in their nutty echo chambers. Their total freedom to be racist, violent, paranoid, and dishonest is having tangible impacts on the electorate. At this point, most of us think the world would be better off if facebook shut down completely.
So yeah, tech industry...either wow us with cool stuff or face us sobering up and realizing the bad your industry causes.
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the rest of us are worrying about the impact the mentally ill and early-stage-Alzheimer's patients are having on each other in their nutty echo chambers. Their total freedom to be racist, violent, paranoid, and dishonest is having tangible impacts on the electorate.
That, like your comment re Russia tipping the election, is not Facebook's fault. If the electorate wasn't already conditioned to be ignorant, racist, paranoid, and dishonest, Russia buying ads on FB *wouldn't matter in the first place*.
The claim that Russia "interfered with" the 2016 election is both blatantly obvious and, AFAWK, completely untrue. Russia didn't tamper with the voting machines etc (despite how trivial a task that is) or otherwise in any way corrupt the voting process itself. It simply ran a
Dylan redux (Score:2)
The times are a changing
A capitalism at-service to the wealth-y not Society threatens its own existential reality.
Not a zero sum game (Score:2)
Across the tech sector, there are a bunch of workers who are waking up and going: "How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?"
In tech, having "power" as a tech worker doesn't take power away from other people because power in tech work isn't a zero sum game. This is why Doctorow is an idiot.