It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. I don't think progress will stop when the situation at it's worst. But I do think we'll have to get through that first.
We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them.
With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has changed for the worse
1) Initially, when a new technology is discovered and leads to a paradigm shift, commercial/capitalist ventures are most efficient at digging down and innovating quickest. A depth first search if you will: relentlessly driving down costs, improving the technology and consuming or destroying the competition. Then, once the time is right, the exploitation begins. No longer are the newest models of $TECHNOLOGY strictly better than their predecessors, any progress is incremental and genuine innovation is partially co-opted by marketing.
When this happens the screws start getting tightened. Companies used to rapid growth due to merit try to maintain growth velocity by cutting cost, exploiting regulatory loopholes yet to catch up with the paradigm shift, and any other things not directly related to their new niche that the risk/reward calculators deem worth it (breaking laws, anti-patterns, etc.).
The reaction to this is two fold: 1a) governments want to stick their hand in the newly-added piece of the pie, 1b) people don't like being more and more exploited.
2) People understand when they're being screwed. Our sense of 'justness' is about as evolved as can get, people might not always be able to pinpoint what is screwing them over, but the anger still builds. I believe (really can't justify any of the things I'm claiming here as truth, it's just my opinions) that trust takes longer to build than to destroy. I loved google for 2 years, I've hated them for much longer. I feel intuitively that I'm being exploited when forced to help their machine learning algorithm detect traffic signs that only a few people will profit off. I feel like I've never entered into a fair contract where I'm obtaining search results in exchange for some of my attention; I'm just forced to fill these things out every once in a while to access a site unrelated to google. Can you believe my GP's site has a google captcha page on the contact form? Where I enter medical data? I _HATE_ that.
3) People like me (and you?) spread the word. After the initial rush described in point 1. other ways of working gain speed. Technology, organization, open source, education, they all make it easier and easier to replicate what was an enterprise deployment a decade ago as a small group, or even individual, today. One day a matrix bridge will allow me to message all my friends from a single, polished place, with good UX. One day later a friend will see me using it, and the word will spread.
The inherent nature of information favors the communicators, integrator and middle men. It's impossible for a silo to detect with certainty that you are not actually using a third party app, like a matrix bridge, to talk to your friends. A false positive will lead to more feelings as shown in point 2, a false negative is the natural result of progress in point 3.
4) Governments cannot afford a completely tech illiterate population. Security and military forces around the world have recognized for years already that information technology is another avenue to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the possibilities of information technology is a natural (but certainly not perfect) antidote to some of the ways an opponent might exploit your population. Organizations (in a liberal country) in this sphere will focus on education, partially to increase their own resilience against attack, and create a fertile recruiting ground for new recruits.
We gotta hold on till we get there.
For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now."
When frustrated, I imagine a new-Amish. A secular society, who lives their lives (mostly) off the Internet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, nor do I think I'd actually want to live that way. It's just a fun thought experiment.
I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa
I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject the notion that it's impossible for a a functioning secular society to work.
To be sure, my idea of a new-Amish whose only rule is minimal Internet usage, would not work as a tight-knit community. There would have to be a bigger connection than a common disdain for the Internet.
Bullshit.
Much of Silicon Valley likes to think they would be Ludds but they do so while hailing an Uber from their iPhone and hoping that their DoorDash is devlivered on time so they can eat while they watch a HBO Max show and they hope that nobody stole their Amazon Prime package.
Which would be very interesting because it's the Ludds who are building that tech. But hey, it pays well...
Much of Silicon Valley is just looking for a way to pay their exorbitant rent and/or become million(billion)aires. SV isn't going to take a principled stance on anything. Heck, the big players all know which side their bread is buttered on and the bigger they are, the more entwined in the corruption they are.
No, quite the opposite
They're the ones who buy "smart locks" then get locked out of their place because they dropped their iPhone in a puddle or the lights went out
They're the ones who come with genius ideas like reinventing the bus with Uber or fall for stuff like uBeam because they're too lazy to plug their phone into a charger
1. key
2. iPhone
3. PIN pad.
(You can tell I've been watching too many LockPickingLawyer videos.)
But then they save the PIN on their phone instead of their memory because tiktok burned out their brain and they left the key home because "why do you need it since you have your iPhone!?11" and if this last point looks ridiculous remember this is exactly what happened with some Tesla owners going into areas of low cell service.
[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7826376/