We are moving into a world where people have more freedom and liberty. Sometimes we take a (big) step backwards, but the trend is towards more.
These new freedoms and liberties are created by technology, increased wealth distribution (globally), and changing social norms towards individual rights and equality.
I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay. I can eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do research and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed decisions about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry anyone that agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the religion of my choosing openly.
I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
Okay... let's see:
>increased wealth distribution (globally)
Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).
>changing social norms towards individual rights and equality
Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).
>I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay.
Irrelevant to the subject at hand.
>I can eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do research and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed decisions about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry anyone that agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the religion of my choosing openly.
All irrelevant to the subject at hand.
>I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
Disagree. It isn't about your basic individual freedom to choose. You can choose, yes. But it is about the field of vision presented to the focus of your mind, or rather the collective mind. It is about the narrowing of that field of view. Narrow the field of view: narrow the choices people believe they have. This, in effect, narrows their choices, regardless of their ability, or freedom, to choose.
Exactly. It’s almost like the internet isn’t the most important thing happening right now. Combining the world’s networks into one is really powerful, but the world is a big place. The internet isn’t going to cause a utopia or a dystopia.
Having freedom and liberty does not automatically result in increased wealth distribution, individual rights or equality.
Just because we have a system that allows people to communicate and collaborate across the globe instantaneously doesn't mean that they will do so constructively towards positive directions. They can also use this power for selfish and/or destructive mean. This is really the lesson that we've been taught in the past 10 years.
> I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
I trust that your information sources are sound, but many other people choose to tune into information sources that are not, but confirms that own bias. There is a part of human psychology which finds this type of behaviour immensely rewarding.
The idea that more information and more connectivity automatically result in more freedom which would then naturally better society is exactly what led us down to the path to the current information dystopia.
I was actually arguing the reverse.
> the current information dystopia
My position is that we are not living in an information dystopia. You simply cannot compare our current problem of echo chambers and fake news to the 1930s problem of nationalist propaganda or pre-renaissance problem of the church controlling which information is heresy. At least now we access to different views we can use critical thinking to evaluate and awareness of echo chambers.
The great firewall is an example of how bad things could be with all information censored by state actors.
Fair enough, but that is also confounding, maybe just as much - technology didn't cause more freedoms or liberties. Individual rights and equality is also the result of the striving towards the ideal of freedom and liberty.
>You simply cannot compare our current problem of echo chambers and fake news to the 1930s problem of nationalist propaganda or pre-renaissance problem of the church controlling which information is heresy.
That's a very premature conclusion. We're in the middle of a shift in the information landscape and we can't really predict which ending this will lead us to. We may very well be on the path to another dark era in the history of humanity rivalling fascism or the inquisition.
That's because, in itself, information and the flow of information (as dictated by contemporary technology) is just a force multiplier. It allows us to organise more effectively removing barriers to action. What we do with it is another matter.
Just because we have more of it or do it better doesn't mean it is a unequivocally positive force. Looking at the current trajectory on the use of data, there is the potential for it be to even more destructive force than your examples.
To be honest, there would be group think anyway. There always is, it's just a human proclivity. I'm not sure why exactly people felt that's something the internet was going to eliminate? The printing press solidified nationalistic thought (and other kinds of group think as well), the internet is solidifying it further.
I guess I just think, group think is kind of, something to be expected considering mankind's history.
Except who people want to date and marry is highly influenced by media/entertainment. So it's possible who you want to marry does not want to marry you because of prejudice instilled by information s/he consumes.
There are only killing machines.
There is no decentralized information technology.
The are only information technologies.
The capabilities are loosely determined by the creator; the result is determined by the user.
Consider Bitcoin: fully decentralized in theory, yet in practice controlled by an oligarchy.
In an oligarchic world with centralized power structures where few have power over the many, we make a system with centralized power structures where few parts have power over many.
The internet won't be democratic and decentralized until the world is.
They were expensive but fast enabling and encouraging raiding of neighbors and riding away before they could rally a defense with far less risk for the reward compared to a band on foot with melee or ranged weaponry who would get beaten or cut down and either enslaved or executed if they attacked a village on their own.
It may have been existing flawed morals to consider raiding then but the power influenced them.
Horses didn't cause cavalry, horses were domesticated and bred with their modern properties because people wanted cavalry. The tool reflects the creator.
Effort is inversely proportional to popularity. If something is effortless and serves a need, it will become popular. Bitcoin was basically effortless to operate in the early days.
I don't think it should be up to users to carefully collect works that they want to "make decentralized". Decentralization should be the norm.
And it shouldn't be up to them to worry about the legal ramifications of doing so. The network itself should ensure anonymity, like Tor.
Currently there is no such technology. IPFS came close, but it fails the anonymity requirement.
The weakness in IPFS is that not enough people use it, and its really as simple as that. Distributed data addressable in a namespace is a great foundation but corporations are actively subsidizing similar, centralized services to preserve their monopoly positions.
As long as Google et al are overflowing in money nothing can really try to displace their domination of the network.
But if there's no traffic allowed between segments, it becomes much harder. Then you're left with workarounds like this: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-s...
Then somehow you need to get buyin from people in large enough numbers for this spy-on-everyone situation we're in to be impractical, and hope it doesn't result in escalation to even more dystopian circumstances.
A: A pre-modern village.
Not sure. But I'd bet if the initial devs of Wikipedia wondered too much about that question we'd be subscribing to Encyclopedia Britannica Online to research it.
Essentially one can always go "indie" and accept the obscurity of being a counterculture.
In the same way you can hire a construction crew to build a library or to build a prison, but modern construction techniques don't have an inherent social ideology.
I have been building it, writing about it and giving it away:
https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
Every time I post this on HN, it gets heavily downvoted. But I don’t ever hear why. I can think of no better way than to show, link to the code, give it away. I spent over half a million dollars of my company’s revenues on this. Take that for what it’s worth. I intend to make this work.
If this inspires you, feel free to email me (qbix.com/about)
Perhaps because it's yet another pre-mined altcoin? Even if your idea happens to be good, the idea of an ICO has been given such a bad name that you need to wash your hands of anything associated with that funding model. But something tells me you won't.
I used to think there was always a chance that "this time would be different" with promising ICO companies that I supported (not even with my money but with my volunteering as a developer), only to get burned again and again. My experiences are not atypical.
However, I've been burned even more badly by mainstream social networking, so I want to believe that your idea will work. Tough dilemma.
Our ETH token was designed to fulfill every requirement of SEC's recent no-action letter to TurnKey Jet, Inc. in order to not be considered a security (https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2019/turnk...)
In the last few years I have been downvoted without even mentioning the Qbix token - something we only documented last month. Just by giving away open source software. The post above already has -2.
What would a tool of actual decentralization look like? It wouldn't be something that helps us communicate or brings us closer together, because those things evolve into instruments of control. It would be something that divides us into separate ecological and memetic niches. The only example I can think of is a multi generational space ship.
We're in a race between diaspora and social lithification. I wish I thought diaspora was the better bet.