Re:Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona priso...
by frompdx on Monday February 22, 2021 @02:41PM
(#26229479)
Both news and social media have a strong bias toward articles that spark anger or outrage.
Absolutely, and I agree that disconnecting can have positive benefits. On the other hand, at least for me personally, covid has disrupted the mechanisms that normally prevent in depth observation. It has given me time to read books I normally would not have read because that time went to things like waiting for my car to warm up so I can get to work on time, commuting, going out to lunch with co-workers, and going out for drinks with co-workers, friends, and family.
What is described in the article is outrageous. My concerns about bureaucracy and software's role in enabling it, on the other hand, have developed separately because I have the time to consider it.
This is why penalties are such an important part of the feedback loop. Obviously we can't go back in time and restore someone's phone privileges, but we can award monetary damages for the mistake.
Monetary damages alone won't discourage this behavior, though, as ultimately taxpayers foot the bill. There also must be some degree of accountability for those in charge of the system. Software can't become a tool for dodging accountability. Those in charge of implementing the software, providing the inputs, and managing the outputs must be held accountable for related mistakes.
> There was an Ask HN question the other day where the poster asked if the software we are building is making the world a better place. There were hardly any replies at all.
Few Ask HN questions get many responses. This is also a loaded question, as HN is notorious for nit-picking every response and putting too much emphasis on the downsides. For example, I know farmers who have increased their farm productivity massively using modern hardware and software. However, if I posted that it would inevitably draw concerns about replacing human jobs, right-to-repair issues, and other issues surrounding the space. The world is definitely better off for having more efficient and productive farming techniques, freeing most of us up to do things other than farm.
However, all new advances bring a different set of problems. Instead of trying to force everything into broad categories of better or worse I think it's important to acknowledge that technology makes the world different. Different is a combination of better and worse. The modern world has different problems than we did 100 years ago, but given the choice I wouldn't choose to roll back to the pre-computer era.
> It certainly seems that way reading articles like this.
Both news and social media have a strong bias toward articles that spark anger or outrage. For me, the whole world stops feeling like a dumpster fire when I disconnect from news and social media for a while. I'm looking forward to the post-COVID era where we can get back to interacting with each other in person rather than gathering around a constant stream of negative stories on social media.