Re: [liberationtech] Shoshanna Zuboff: Dark Google
Oh my god the sky must be falling!. Then I gather if some how we all manage to work togetherwe might mange to hold it up!... As for my credentials.. you ask...well I did study with Chicken Little...clearly one of the greatest minds of his time! _peter On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Michael Allan wrote: > Shoshana Zuboff begins: > > We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its > > radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money > > by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it > > into the tiniest pieces. > > The exaggerated claim of "absolute power" sets a tone of hysteria, > making it hard to take the author seriously. > > > Recall those fabled frogs happy in the magic pond. Playful. > > Distracted. The water temperature slowly rises, but the frogs don’t > > notice. By the time it reaches the boiling point, it’s too late ... > > With this, I lose all confidence in the author. If Google is doing > anything wrong, then (speaking for myself) I'll await a more sober > report of it. > > carlo von lynX defends: > > What does it mean, when a conservative mainstream media newspaper > > sends such a dramatic message? You better should get started > > thinking about it, if you haven't already. FAZ does not play on > > alarmism, it sells newspapers for decades and doesn't need to go > > cheap. > > At best, it means they goofed. Even an invasion from Mars wouldn't > warrant such an hysterical intro. (Sorry to disagree.) > > -- > Michael Allan > > Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 > http://zelea.com/ > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations > of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > compa...@stanford.edu. > -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
Re: [liberationtech] Shoshanna Zuboff: Dark Google
Shoshana Zuboff begins: > We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its > radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money > by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it > into the tiniest pieces. The exaggerated claim of "absolute power" sets a tone of hysteria, making it hard to take the author seriously. > Recall those fabled frogs happy in the magic pond. Playful. > Distracted. The water temperature slowly rises, but the frogs don’t > notice. By the time it reaches the boiling point, it’s too late ... With this, I lose all confidence in the author. If Google is doing anything wrong, then (speaking for myself) I'll await a more sober report of it. carlo von lynX defends: > What does it mean, when a conservative mainstream media newspaper > sends such a dramatic message? You better should get started > thinking about it, if you haven't already. FAZ does not play on > alarmism, it sells newspapers for decades and doesn't need to go > cheap. At best, it means they goofed. Even an invasion from Mars wouldn't warrant such an hysterical intro. (Sorry to disagree.) -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
Re: [liberationtech] Shoshanna Zuboff: Dark Google
I'll answer to the author as if he was reading this. It's his problem if he doesn't. On Thu, May 01, 2014 at 06:14:16PM +0200, hc voigt wrote: > (1) Taking what Eric Schmidt says in Op-Ed's at face value as > representing Google's strategy, or worse as representing Google's > geopolitical and geoeconomic significance, power, or danger. Does she? Or are you just claiming she does? She just puts it in perspective and it fits. > (2) Insisting that the author's self-pronounced confusion as to the > history or mutability of the Internet is proof of its insidiousness, > unaccountability and over-determination by current actors. No. > (3) Using a mish-mash of trigger words like 'colonize' and > 'self-determination' without any need to link these to the presumed > contexts, and one assumes, giving no real thought to how (quote) ???the > whole topography of cyberspace??? does and does not resemble other kinds > of social, political, economic or cultural geography, let alone their > contentious histories. You must be reading the article from your perspective which is biased. > (4) Utter misrepresentation of the relationship between Google and the > USA Federal Gov't, especially the NSA, including taking quotes out of > context to ventriloquize inverted meaning (the McConnell quote here was > about China hacking Google's servers to track dissidents, not PRISM). Which is an absolutely legitimate context to take from. It exactly describes the sort of collusion which is a topic of the article. > Including patently absurd links between disparate events (such as Street > View inadvertent capture of public wi-fi addresses = NSA hacking patrol Inadvertent? This says all about your independence on the issue. > because Google reported Chinese hacking to the NSA in 2010). Or how > about this one: NSA tracked users with some insidious new secret > technique called ???cookies,??? a weird new trick they learned in conspiracy > with Google. HA HA HA very funny. Like EVERYONE KNEW before Snowden how pervasive the Google cookies operate and that it makes sense for the NSA to attach analysis to them. No, NOBODY KNEW. Only the so-called paranoid had a gut feeling about it. Just because a technology such as Google API script includes is well known doesn't mean the general public has understood the privacy implications. Why did all airways in 2010 suddenly introduce Google dependencies into their websites, although they had been happily operating without them for about a decade? Am I seeing pink elephants in the sky? Am I just paranoid? Still? > (5) Blaming the disillusionment and disenchantment of their own earlier > naive and shallow presumptions about some intrinsically liberating > nature of the Internet on Google's data and advertising business model. Which is a totally correct sentiment. > (6) Conflating Google with all other Cloud platforms, especially > Facebook, as one big entity with apparently deliberate ignorance of or > disinterest in significant distinctions. That is not of primary relevance to the article. In fact the cloud architecture as such is the problem, but to mobilize the crowds that isn't exactly easy thinking to promote. > (7) Insisting that things we do know about Google and PRISM (such as > their continuing pushback and resistance to court orders, their > subsidized development of user tools to directly circumvent government > surveillance, such as uproxy and google dns) are meaningless, but > indicating the opacity of all things we don???t know about any possible > dirty dealings is demonstrable proof of their abyssal darkness. The good actions and good beliefs of Google employees are irrelevant to the final result. It just shows how the deus ex machina is further out of control than you like to admit. > (8) Conflating user feedback and pushback regarding strange and > disturbing new forms of data transparency with some deliberate and > explicitly criminal mischief on Google???s part. Including > misrepresentation of what practices were and are secret and which are > merely unusual and controversial. The use of a terminology such as "data transparency" demonstrates your clear lobbyist interests. There can be no socially acceptable such thing beyond "open data" of Governments and companies. > (9) Demanding that the author???s confusion about the ambiguous social Your insisting use of the word "confusion" which the article only mentions as a description of the agressor's tactics, while you are trying to convey the idea of the author being confused.. that alone is a naked exposition of your special interests on the matter. > logics of secrecy and privacy in a network society is proof of an > innocence not merely disenchanted but one deliberately stolen by bad > actors. Demanding that the author???s inability to articulate a coherent a > political description of Cloud-based social systems is demonstrable > proof, not just of a general confusion, but once again of Google???s > willful viole
Re: [liberationtech] Shoshanna Zuboff: Dark Google
Benjamin Bratton has posted a reply that hardly says anything concrete and does not question any of the facts. Let's look at this intelligent article again, knowing that Germany-based news has the privilege of freedom to tell the truth when necesary and still pay their authors for it. From a hacker's point of view this all makes sense, while Mr Brattons blabber doesn't. But for anyone who doesn't like to hear, Mr Bratton just perfectly doesn't even challenge the facts provided here. It's a classic example of a straw-man argumentation strategy. Something very normal to do in PR and lobbyism.. or when you honestly do not understand what the counterpart is saying. On Thu, May 01, 2014 at 08:40:50AM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote: > 30.04.2014 > > Dark Google > > We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its > radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money by > knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into the > tiniest pieces. What does it mean, when a conservative mainstream media newspaper sends such a dramatic message? You better should get started thinking about it, if you haven't already. FAZ does not play on alarmism, it sells newspapers for decades and doesn't need to go cheap. > Von SHOSHANA ZUBOFF > > Recall those fabled frogs happy in the magic pond. Playful. > Distracted. The water temperature slowly rises, but the frogs don???t > notice. By the time it reaches the boiling point, it???s too late to > leap to safety. We are as frogs in the digital waters, and Springer > CEO Mathias Dopfner has just become our frog town crier. Mr. > Dopfner???s "Why We Fear Google" http://www.faz.net/-gsf-7oid8 (a > response to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt???s open letter, "A > Chance for Growth" http://www.faz.net/-gsf-7o8dh) warns of danger on > the move: "The temperatures are rising fast.??? If his cry of alarm > scares you, that???s good. Why? > > First, because there is a dawning awareness that Google is forging a > new kingdom on the strength of a different kind of power ?? > ubiquitous, hidden, and unaccountable. If successful, the dominion of > this kingdom will exceed anything the world has known. The water is > close to boiling, because Google understands this statement more > profoundly than we do. >From a hacker's perspective, ubiquitous isn't just that everybody is currently using Google Search, but that there hardly are any relevant web sites out that that do not make use of any embedded Google features. Scripts, fonts, analytics, you name it. The Internet is soaked in Google and gladly conveys all its usage patterns to the network's central intelligence agency. Interestingly, this aspect hasn't been discussed much anywhere. Even political websites frequently contain Google wiretaps. No surprise, the NSA's search engines make intense use of the pervasive presence of Google cookies to connect the dots between websurfing activities, even when using Tor. > Second, because accessing the Web and the wider Internet have become > essential for effective social participation across much of the world. > A BBC poll conducted in 2010 found that 79% of people in 26 countries > considered access to the Internet to be a fundamental human right. We > rely on Google???s tools as we search, learn, connect, communicate, and > transact. The chilling irony is that we???ve become dependent on the > Internet to enhance our lives, but the very tools we use there > threaten to remake society in ways that we do not understand and have > not chosen. By moving on from paper to electronic they gave up the fundamental right for Secrecy of Correspondence, just there.. by mistake. In the beginning at least it wasn't all going to a single monitoring entity. But that is over twenty years ago. > Something new and dangerous > > If there is a single word to describe Google, it is "absolute." The > Britannica defines absolutism as a system in which "the ruling power > is not subject to regularized challenge or check by any other agency." > In ordinary affairs, absolutism is a moral attitude in which values > and principles are regarded as unchallengeable and universal. There is > no relativism, context-dependence, or openness to change. > > Six years ago I asked Eric Schmidt what corporate innovations Google > was putting in place to ensure that its interests were aligned with > its end users. Would it betray their trust? Back then his answer Which is funny to even try, since CEOs usually only have as much political power as they are able to drive the dividends up. All politically correct action they can take is counter-balanced by the damage they make by driving in revenue. So the possible political correctness is always inferior to the needs of making a business, which is never for free. Society always pays for it in one way or another. It's in the architecture, so no-one is to blame for this. > stunned me. He and Google???s founders control the
Re: [liberationtech] Shoshanna Zuboff: Dark Google
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 there's a 'reply' by Benjamin Bratton making the rounds on fb: (https://www.facebook.com/benjaminbratton/posts/10152082644097966?stream_ref=10) This piece by Shoshanna Zubof is just bad in multiple dimensions at once. For that it neatly summarizes the warble of several of the weakest and sickest old dogs within Google Studies. There are literally a million reasons that the geopolitics of Google needs to be front-and-center debate, bloody and relentless. Articles like this do nothing but cheapen that debate with ignorance, sloppy and fearful analogies, and tired conventional platitudes calling themselves courage. A Top 12 of useless tropes, in rough order of their appearance in Zubof’s article. (1) Taking what Eric Schmidt says in Op-Ed's at face value as representing Google's strategy, or worse as representing Google's geopolitical and geoeconomic significance, power, or danger. (2) Insisting that the author's self-pronounced confusion as to the history or mutability of the Internet is proof of its insidiousness, unaccountability and over-determination by current actors. (3) Using a mish-mash of trigger words like 'colonize' and 'self-determination' without any need to link these to the presumed contexts, and one assumes, giving no real thought to how (quote) “the whole topography of cyberspace” does and does not resemble other kinds of social, political, economic or cultural geography, let alone their contentious histories. (4) Utter misrepresentation of the relationship between Google and the USA Federal Gov't, especially the NSA, including taking quotes out of context to ventriloquize inverted meaning (the McConnell quote here was about China hacking Google's servers to track dissidents, not PRISM). Including patently absurd links between disparate events (such as Street View inadvertent capture of public wi-fi addresses = NSA hacking patrol because Google reported Chinese hacking to the NSA in 2010). Or how about this one: NSA tracked users with some insidious new secret technique called “cookies,” a weird new trick they learned in conspiracy with Google. (5) Blaming the disillusionment and disenchantment of their own earlier naive and shallow presumptions about some intrinsically liberating nature of the Internet on Google's data and advertising business model. (6) Conflating Google with all other Cloud platforms, especially Facebook, as one big entity with apparently deliberate ignorance of or disinterest in significant distinctions. (7) Insisting that things we do know about Google and PRISM (such as their continuing pushback and resistance to court orders, their subsidized development of user tools to directly circumvent government surveillance, such as uproxy and google dns) are meaningless, but indicating the opacity of all things we don’t know about any possible dirty dealings is demonstrable proof of their abyssal darkness. (8) Conflating user feedback and pushback regarding strange and disturbing new forms of data transparency with some deliberate and explicitly criminal mischief on Google’s part. Including misrepresentation of what practices were and are secret and which are merely unusual and controversial. (9) Demanding that the author’s confusion about the ambiguous social logics of secrecy and privacy in a network society is proof of an innocence not merely disenchanted but one deliberately stolen by bad actors. Demanding that the author’s inability to articulate a coherent a political description of Cloud-based social systems is demonstrable proof, not just of a general confusion, but once again of Google’s willful violence. (10) Offering laughably obvious predictions about Google’s future intensions, including “data mining” (whoa, no way) and linking “online” services with “offline” physical systems (like cars, robotics, and houses) …(um, no shit). Demanding that because the exact terms of the future are not known, then it must prove “secrecy” (in this case ‘bad secrecy’) darkness and danger. (11) Conflating Google with all of neoliberalism. (12) Demanding that the only way to adjudicate these new Googly conundrums is with new language and analytical tools. Next 5 sentences then repeat the oldest and most conventional calls for general well-being through measured oversight. - -- hc voigt kellerabteil.org :: twitter.com/kellerabteil :: +43 699 19586738 :: kellerabt...@jabber.org :: kellerabteil.org/0D31AC6E.asc :: 13EA 7E87 C4DB 04CF 50C2 8BAF CC8A 6F31 0D31 AC6E :: sozialebewegungen.org :: alternative-medien-akademie.at :: Yosem Companys schrieb: > 30.04.2014 > > Dark Google > > We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its > radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money > by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into > the tiniest pieces. > > Von SHOSHANA ZUBOFF > > Recall those fabled frogs happy in the magic pond. Playful. > Distracted. The wa
