Very much off topic is what follows.
Just as a point of information, I think Hitler's election
did not depend on fraud. I think he actually did have
a lot of popular support at one point . Why is a complex
question, but I believe he did, though of course
he was not above fraud if fraud was needed.
As to the privacy issues, I agree. Big trouble
And it is quite true that the search engines, for all their
remarkable power, do not promote in -depth study of things
or issues. Too much piffle comes up too easily--if commercial
interests are invovled
But sometimes things work if there is no commercial component.
Search for my beloved (late) dog
Freja Greene
on google and there she is, right up top!
Even her picture shows up!
I did not do this on purpose, choose an unusual name. I named her Freja
(which is a common Danish name, but is seldom combined
with Greene!) because I got her for my late first wife, who was Danish,
and wanted to name her something Danish and at the same
time something Wagnerian--her sisters were named Sieglinde
and Brunhilde .
The point here is not personal anecdote but that the
corruption of the search engines is attached to the commercial
world. When one gets to something outside the commercial realm
things work quite well. In the same way if you search for
complex domains
, my book with Kim and Krantz on the subject
also pops right up. Because there is NO MONEY attached!
(or only a pittance!). What has happened is not I think
political corruption(yet) but just commercial promotion.
It tends to creep in everywhere and it drowns other things--
when there is a simultaneous occurence of the commercial and
noncommercial.
Robert
On Mon, 8 Oct 2012, Ronald C.F. Antony wrote:
The problem with Google, FB, and to a degree Apple
is not the advertising or lack of utility of the gadgets.
Nobody is forced to buy anything.
The problem is, that on the one hand we have a push to
"the cloud" which only exists because ISPs and "content providers" have essentially
successfully stalled a timely transition to IPv6, which made the disaster called NAT so prevalent, that
nobody can run their own services, the way the internet was designed to work. You shouldn't need "Google
drive" you should be able to access your own drive no matter where on the globe you are.
The second problem is, that the increasing commercialization of search results
makes these results increasingly meaningless. If I e.g. try to find properties
of insulating glass, and all I get are links to replacement window makers, then
that defeats the purpose of my search, because I want to learn about glass, so
I can make an educated decision about what windows to buy, if I want to read
window manufacturer's propaganda, I can just call them.
The third, and biggest problem is, that while people were up in arms over intrusive
government programs that went under the names of Echelon, Top Sail, TIA and other known
and unknown acromyms, we now give private corporation that sort of total access to our
private information that we wouldn't trust the government with. And not only can thanks
to the deceptively named "Patriot Act" the government access all that
information with little to no judicial oversight, the private companies can mine the data
for whatever reason they see fit. The situation is so bad, that one has to wonder if some
of that massive infrastructure these private companies built up wasn't ultimately funded
by the black budget to bypass the government data gathering restrictions by allowing
private companies to succeed where the government wasn't allowed to go.
Whether you know it or not, you're naked already, and that's the scandal nobody
wants to face.
The idea, that "I have nothing to hide" is a stupid one. Everyone has
everything to hide, the moment government goes bad. And government always goes bad, given
enough time and opportunity. So you don't make laws for the government you do have, you
make laws for the bad government you might have at some point in the future, because no
matter how ethical and well-intentioned government may be today, that doesn't mean that
tomorrow it's very different.
German laws didn't exactly have Hitler in mind when they were written, but flaws in election laws,
etc. did allow for something like Hitler to happen. It's the long-term perspective and what happens
with our ability to maintain privacy that's deeply troubling about all these services that syphon
every last bit of information out of you, directly or indirectly, e.g. with such
"harmless" buttons as these ubiquitous "like" buttons, that keep track of what
web sites you visit, not just which ones you like, because each of these buttons calls FB API, and
allows FB cookies to track you wherever you go.
A nice little video on the subject: http://wimp.com/mindreader/
Ronald
On 8 Oct 2012, at 20:24, Robert Greene <gre...@math.ucla.edu> wrote:
This is funny but it is of course wrong,
I like facebook a lot, but I dislike text messages,
and so on. Which general types of things one likes
may develop early, but the details are not
set in stone. This kind of thing is
an excuse for all kinds of bad stuff
that is supposed to be progress but is
really just bad--but not all of it is bad!
Robert
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