-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On 11/24/2013 09:31 AM, "Jörg F. Wittenberger" wrote: > > Hence I dare to send this message out. > *** You're welcome!
> 95% of the users will never understand the difference [with FB]. > *** 99.99% of the world population does not understand half or more of science, technology, and even, I dare to say, economy. If they are drawn to use it, that's half the work done. > I posit that doing yet another social network software - typically > some info sharing - will just inspire the established companies to > copycat the feature. > *** One point with using GNUnet as the framework is that there's no incentive for a "social network" company such as Facebook or Google to copycat, because their business model requires what GNUnet removes: a vector for surveillance, that is: the ability to MITM the users, such as centralization or control of the servers in a federation. Without it, their ability to "monetize" user activity is strongly reduced. One could argue that they still could bridge over insecure protocols, or deflect control over the ontologies used to talk about sociability (which is what FB does with OpenGraph, that does not concern humans but consumers, workers, and producers). > Furthermore: anybody who hopes that by working on "social" > software, they'll be able to eventually sell their work to one of > the big players should stop reading here. > *** I hope everybody on this list got past that. The other readers are the people who want to prevent us from doing it. > > The problem I perceive these days is roughly the desire to do some > _social_ software from a merely technical background. > *** Ack! I heartfully agree with your premises. I don't think there's a technical solution to social issues. I do think technology can help solve some social issues, but I don't believe in a technocratic way to solving planetary issues--hence, I dispute the Zeitgeist Movement's view of a techno-centralized (fascist) dystopia. > > What's often missing (any every so often skipped or "delayed until > we have something to show" is a proper analysis of the *actual* > system structure and requirements. > *** Which system? (I believe in a complexity of interrelated systems.) > Furthermore the idea of "adding security later", which generally does not work. > *** +1 > > FB is great an example here > *** My understanding of this and the following argument (labeled 1) is that you identify an issue where computer scientists in general assume a necessary basic knowledge of the complexity of their field(s), whereas other technologies do not need any such prior knowledge to operate (e.g., there's no need to know how a car operates to drive it), and so we should work on finding such a zero-knowledge (pun intended) situation with computers (and computer-mediated social network services). > > Pardon me: such a system should never be assumed to be legally > binding. Period. > *** +1. As computer security is a trade-off, and never absolute, legally binding a computer user is the door open to abuse, as demonstrated absolutely by the NSA. > 3) [on trust] > *** Indeed, you should see the effervescence of Christian Grothoff when he describes the threat model of GNUnet. To paraphrase him: all the peers are potentially compromised, so there's no trust involved at all. > > 4) Look at bitcoin. What a strange hype right now. The > "value"absolutely is speculative no connected to any economic > reason. > *** I would argue that most economic theories of values are built on sand, as they ignore the basic fact that value is relative to the desire of the buyer to acquire a product, or his necessity. And the price buyers are ready to pay are themselves relative to other desires they hold for other products. All the pricing made by vendors are absolutely independant of the buyers. Now, please find me a so-called "economic science" theory of value that tells you that. I'm curious. > How is this any better than Dollars? > *** It does not depend on a central bank. So it only depends on the desire of people to value it, and that's related to its utility. I see less speculation here than in an infinite money supply. That said, Bitcoin is a market, driven by offer and demand, which are other empty concepts of "Economics". > What we would really need was to have a "pre-money" - basically an > electronic bill of exchange (German: Wechsel). Why? Because that > one creates a link between the money's value and actual real-world > assets backing up this value. > *** Do you mean something like the Gold Standard we had before the USA stole the world economy? > In general: shortcomings of the implementation feed back into the > legal system AND mind of the general public. > *** That won't change anytime soon, and that's part of the shortcomings we have to live with, don't you think? I like this quote, by William Gibson: "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed." Well, same goes for knowledge and belief: each person has a different understanding of "reality", and the most prestigious usually spreads the most among people. Before the Snowden Apocalypse, most of the people on this side of the Net were considered paranoid lunatics. Now, the perspective is a bit more adjusted, and we might even be considered visionaries by some. And among the paranoid visionaries, most still have reality-adjustment issues. Actually, I don't think any single person, even a genius, actually knows the truth. That's why we need a sane social environment, where ideas are debated, provable things proven, and unprovable things respected as such, and where no single vision is able to dominate absolutely--this is where our current course of civilization is utterly failing, giving all power to the "economic vision" like Romans gave all to the Law, and Byzantium to Religion. We're in a moment of history where complexity revealed itself with full light shed on our misunderstandings. The polarization of powers is such that they all look completely idiotic and unprepared. > > We need social software, which fixes these structural issues. No > single company CAN do that. [snip] That's the chance for free > software. [snip] We need a system, which works *without trusted > parts*. > *** \o/ > > the **social network** software - here without quotes, bold > instead > *** I prefer "social networking software", i.e. software to support social networks. I keep coming back to the issue of language, because the wrong narrative is imposed on us by way of carefully chosen language, and that's something we need to be careful about as well. > If you find something you have to trust, you found something worth > to be improved. > *** Nice quotable :) But... What is the Askemos "constitution" that... We would have to trust into not being flawed... Sounds like a question for which the answer would be... 42. > > Do we really have to go into these exceptions? 1) Weapons are no > problem, shooting may be (but still depends on intention, killing > in accident or self defence is no murder...) > *** Too many weapons are a problem. Look at the military budget expenses around the world, and imagine what those resources could do to solve real issues like ending hunger, eradicating poverty, promoting education, stopping proliferation of weapons and nukes, supporting software freedom, pushing for gender equality, respect for other ways of life, acceptance of complexity... > 2) Death penalty is widely seen justified in US and elsewhere > *** Maybe that's why death penalty is so easily imposed on other populations with a complete lack of discernment and total impunity by the U.S. President? > > Or more technically speaking: if one was to break systems into > cells small enough they are much easier to defend, since their > value to the attacker depends on the possible gain, which is > limited by the size of the cells. > *** The opposite of "Too big to fail". I think both approaches are compatible, and indeed occur in nature. That's probably why we evolved into complex organisms and not just mold soup. == hk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iQJ8BAEBCgBmBQJS5aINXxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25zLm9w ZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXRFQ0IyNkIyRTNDNzEyMTc2OUEzNEM4ODU0 ODA2QzM2M0ZDMTg5ODNEAAoJEEgGw2P8GJg9dRMP/1dFSYcY6NrjKqmZSAwEnbkJ R8xSGvVmeAbCV02lpI/bSDBsZ2b3QCt/3EEN03VDdh66GniIxZoNmo9B71tHGGpj tm7S5OHCxWXsZupAhW+1r7Ob3sBLBnGGX4ucomaCbKxHV9kcOA8NXudbmd9+HtdE CkqAZfxISA2qwq+yhSFhE9NFyfvET+jVUdUzmnfM2f9ByW/B0qh3oMs1UV7otGhC QZ02eGIdKbwd4CI1lwDqxIkHmXjzh1af1oMqmzx1+N/TkGW6+5GvtISl1m6tJtJw 6NuUZYjOfCvNKR4Cm253ZnhCqC7u2vJA5e9iXb8j+uFRL9GveaCG2jqLD9WDV2NH Yx6+v7BwUooy3pbgckSkoGp0RTWdFs+d307JFTf7Ru2L9uswBf20Dws3UixuX7Qi A4Sd5Qa2FWdflAi0A3eba1CFkF3y9cwL91A/GR7eLTvWBjRPabtAZGTXv+llN6pl VXg0Ya2OP19fg3ox4CJQRJCF/D1Kfp2thc0hmvuTy9GtjOCM8aUYJEIGJnkeXMKQ OmJXKUjilU1BOShDPYbH8Gv4mT+47kIa9oo3OEMj3kZwklP8k43vmKxFIm8uVfL6 RbOadKBEDE++xaQ5YR6nLqWAUB81HyssV01iWXKfzB1Jylex1+jTN9PtRSmzo0Bw J9dXzS6h7y7ZX27QnAjO =MjtX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] https://lists.tgbit.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/secu-share
