
What happened in 2017 - kirillzubovsky
http://avc.com/2017/12/what-happened-in-2017/
======
thisisit
> We are addicted to our phones, fed information by algorithms we don’t
> understand, at risk of losing our jobs to robots. This is likely to be the
> narrative of the next thirty years.

How does someone predict a particular narrative for next 30 years?

If anything I predict people will be disillusioned trying to pump AI/ML in
everything imaginable. And data collection just for the sake of collection
will be looked down upon as spam. Soon we might need adblock like plugins to
stop companies from trying to gain data on us.

~~~
derwiki
> Soon we might need adblock like plugins to stop companies from trying to
> gain data on us.

The popular adblockers I'm aware of also block analytics calls made thru
external JS (ga.js, segment.js come to mind)

------
athinggoingon
"The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male
dominance."

"[Trump] is the epitome of white male dominance. An unapologetic (actually
braggart) groper in chief. I think it took something as horrible as the
election of such an awful human being to shock the US into deciding that we
could not allow this behavior any more. Courageous women such as Susan Fowler,
Ellen Pao, and many others came forward and talked publicly about their
struggles with behavior that we now deem unacceptable."

I thought it was Harvey Weinstein revelations that was the turning point.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Susan Fowler has gone on the record as saying Trump's election played a major
role in coming forward, and all of that happened 7 months before Weinstein.

~~~
mathattack
Yes. Not sure it’s a tech bias, but I think she deserves credit for starting
the movement.

------
derwiki
> Computer literacy for everyone. That means making sure that everyone is able
> to go into GitHub and read the code that increasingly controls our lives and
> understand what it does and how it works.

The last stat I can find on US literacy is 86% (1985). Based on anecdotal
evidence I suspect "math literacy" is much lower than that (couldn't find
statistics). I had other _really smart_ engineer/science friends in undergrad
who struggled writing and reading code. I'm not sure how realistic this is.

~~~
mathattack
I thought the same. Give everyone access to APIs with their private info?

Then again, there was a time when driving must have seemed too complex for the
masses.

~~~
buitreVirtual
Which highlights how important it is to invest in making computing more
approachable for the masses. It's how we democratize tech today.

------
jimmies
The how do we cope with it list is wishful at best with the "understanding
code," "Github" and "open source." I am all for computer education and open
source (more like /g/ Stallmanism FOSS, but that's not relevant), but I can't
imagine any year being the year of Linux on the Desktop. It has been that way
for 30 years now.

The thing I think will be a big deal in the next couple of years to come will
be about __trust __, or more precisely __trustless __. It has been shown that
you can trust a protocol /scheme without trusting anyone in the system. The
rise of Bitcoin is the prime example of that. Or look at how Contactless
discovery happens in Signal. Now imagine that happening in your spam abuse
(imagine spammers can't spam due to effective rate limiting), email service
(you store encrypted emails on the server you don't trust, and _know_ when
someone decrypts your mail), social networks (you _can_ safely store your
information on a social network without _trusting_ it), responsible decryption
(you _can_ store top-secret data in your phone and not having to trust the
software provider - i.e. FBI Apple iPhone case), reproducible software builds.
Technologies are slowly enabling those dreams to come true. I think that trust
in trustless systems is extremely important, because it enables the mass to
have privacy and protection without having to resort on everyone understanding
the code and more importantly, trusting the integrity (whatever that might
require) of the cloud operator or of your peers. Several important papers have
been published in this area. To get a grasp of what's possible, you could read
"Making Decryption Accountable" by Ryan, "Private contact discovery for
Signal" by moxie0.

I'm planning to do something practical with those ideas in 2018 :). Wish me
luck guys.

------
romanovcode
Do you have predictions for 2018? It was funny reading how you got so many
things wrong in your 2017 predictions!

------
fairpx
It’s always interesting to read these and how different technologies go
through a chain of events to rapidly gain mass adoption. Looking forward
seeing what the next 12 months will bring us. Space? Breakthrough in AI?

------
hackcrafter
> The Tech Backlash

If there is a tech backlash, I don't see how more tech is the solution.

I downloaded WeCroak, after reading an Atlantic article about it being an
anti-app to remind you about your impending death, and it works as advertised.
By which I mean, after reading a quote about death, I feel less inclined to
pick up my phone for a couple hours!

------
isaac_is_goat
Stopped reading at "beginning of the end of white male dominance". Identity
politics does _not_ belong on HN.

~~~
tzakrajs
I think it does.

------
Red_Tarsius
> _The big story of 2017 in the US was the beginning of the end of white male
> dominance. This is not a tech story, per se, but the tech sector was
> impacted by it. We saw numerous top VCs and tech CEOs leave their firms and
> companies over behavior that was finally outed and deemed unacceptable._

I don't care about the writer's credentials. This article being on the front
page is an embarrassment to Hacker News. Whiteness is associated with being a
predator, that is, an enemy of women. Divide and conquer.

~~~
akhilcacharya
You're aware that the writer is a white dude right? That's not a credential,
that's a fact.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
Believe it or not, a white man doesn't speak for all white men.

------
devmunchies
I'm sick of hearing about white males. Just because they dominate leadership
roles doesn't mean that all, or even most white males have power. It's gotta
be less than 1% of white males who have a position of influence. It's not a
collective group.

~~~
aioprisan
Yes but as a percentage of population, those while males have a
disproportionate amount of power compared to any other group, all things
equal.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying. Power is often
inherited, and America was historically a predominantly white male-dominated
nation in the near past.

What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-white
racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening. People are
acting like all white males are the issue when they're not. They're applauding
affirmative action while ignoring the fact that white men are now a minority
in universities nowadays. They sneer at men embracing their masculinity while
applauding women embracing their femininity. They push for equality in high
paying fields while ignoring these inequalities in lower-paying ones.

We really should reconsider our methods of facilitating change. It's a double
standard, and will be met with cultural and political backlash.

~~~
aioprisan
> The fact that white men hold power shouldn't be worrying.

We've got a few thousand years of racist history that shows us just how
worried we should be about mostly white men holding power vs representative
populations of those leadership groups.

> What we should worry about is this fact being used as an excuse for anti-
> white racism and anti-male sexism, which is exactly what is happening.

This is where you lost me. Do you have any proof that this is taking place and
at which rate? At which point is the discomfort of white males OK for society
given the vast injustices and imbalances created to make white males more
comfortable at everyone else's expense?

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
> At which point is the discomfort of white males OK for society given the
> vast injustices and imbalances created to make white males more comfortable
> at everyone else's expense?

Fighting racism with racism will earn you no friends. There is nothing that
makes whites better than nonwhites, and there is nothing that makes nonwhites
better than whites. Utilizing this us-vs-them mentality to suppress a group of
people you don't like is exactly the kind of mentality that led to racism in
the first place.

~~~
aioprisan
Having representative populations of leaders that understand and properly
advocate for the interests of their communities is not fighting racism with
racism.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
No, but saying that making white people "uncomfortable" is okay _is_ fighting
racism with racism, and should not be tolerated.

