
The Last Free Generation (2018) - lisper
https://austingwalters.com/the-last-free-generation/
======
xvector
> My son Atlas is just over nine months old [...] One thing that’s been
> troubling me, is that he probably wont have [privacy] in his lifetime.

> I write systems that predict the moods in real-time of nearly a million
> people who are communicating on the internet (HNProfile.com &
> RedditProfile.com).

Moral bankruptcy at its finest. No one is forcing you to write systems that do
this. You can easily make top-tier salaries at companies that value the
privacy of their customers.

~~~
zulgan
This. It took me 15 years to realize it, we can be fighting a losing battle,
but we still get to choose the side we fight on.

The systems will be written anyway.

~~~
pdimitar
As a prominent pessimist on this topic, lately I've seen several anecdotal
evidence cases where this is actually not that true anymore.

If enough high-level tech talent starts refusing to write such systems then
trust me, govts and corps are slowed down and inconvenienced for real. 5
junior programmers can't write software as well as 1 senior.

Sure those orgs might win in the end, but we can delay that "end" with years
if not decades. And if they get frustrated by the delays, they'll make a
mistake.

~~~
jstarfish
As a fellow pessimist, I'm not as convinced.

The most horrific products of the Holocaust did not build themselves. Same
with the Chinese and their current endeavors.

Orgs will just continue importing talent from abroad to work around labor
shortages.

Governments can always publicly execute a few pain in the ass engineers to
make the rest fall in line.

~~~
pdimitar
All of that is sadly true. And as citizens we have zero recourse. Not sure
what the future holds for basic human rights and liberty.

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mirimir
Yawn.

OK, I gotta recycle this from John Markoff:[0]

> "True Names" by Vernor Vinge (1981): "The basic premise of that was, you had
> to basically hide your true name at all costs. It was an insight into the
> world we’re living in today … We have to figure it out. I think we have to
> go to pseudonymity or something. You’re gonna participate in this networked
> existence, you have to be connected to meatspace in some way."

Indeed. _At least_ pseudonymity.

We need to compartmentalize. In meatspace, we must be totally unremarkable. We
must make only routine communications, for entirely utilitarian purposes.

Everything even vaguely sensitive -- that is, everything that we want kept
private -- must use secure channels. And if it's truly sensitive, it must be
~anonymous. With the degree of anonymity proportional to the level of
sensitivity.

I see no other option.

0) [http://renaissancechambara.jp/2017/06/14/oprah-time-true-
nam...](http://renaissancechambara.jp/2017/06/14/oprah-time-true-names-by-
vernor-vinge/)

~~~
stakhanov
30 years ago, when anonymity was the default on the internet because of the
low standard of trust that was universally presumed, this worked remarkably
well. I'm thinking about IRC's golden age now. There is a small number of
special-interest communication media (in software development, for example)
where this still works today, like hackernews or freenode.

But for the vast majority of people and types of communication acts, anonymity
is basically no longer an option: The presence of non-anonymous media like
Facebook has displaced innocuous communication from media like IRC that do
allow anonymity. People aren't going to go looking for kiddie porn on Facebook
but IRC still enables that kind of information-seeking behaviour. People doing
foodie-posts are not going to do that on IRC but go on Facebook instead. --
This means that IRC has become a really scary place to be if there's a
possibility you might get deanonymized, and generally not a place where you
will find like-minded individuals unless you are one screwed-up individual. On
the flip-side of the coin, at Facebook etc, you are going to be the victim of
surveillance capitalism.

So: Compartmentalizing doesn't work. Unless anonymity is the default for
everyone and used for both sensitive and non-sensitive communication, it
doesn't actually provide a solution to the problems of surveillance
capitalism. And the majority of people are always going to be too dumb not to
be tricked into deanonymizing themselves most of the time.

~~~
mirimir
> So: Compartmentalizing doesn't work. Unless anonymity is the default for
> everyone and used for both sensitive and non-sensitive communication, it
> doesn't actually provide a solution to the problems of surveillance
> capitalism. And the majority of people are always going to be too dumb not
> to be tricked into deanonymizing themselves most of the time.

Well, it "provide[s] a solution to the problems of surveillance capitalism"
for _me_. And for anyone else who cares. Everyone else will do what they want,
and get what they get. Other than offering helpful suggestions from time to
time, it's just not my problem. I used to think that it was, but I was a fool.

~~~
pdimitar
The more people opt into anonymizing tech the more noise the adversary
organizations have to sift through.

If there are not many of us, we are making it easy for them.

I see your point but IMO your parent commenter has a good point as well.

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IndrekR
Site is down at the moment. Archived copy:
[http://archive.is/ChaL9](http://archive.is/ChaL9)

------
simplecomplex
The author really doesn’t have to move to undeveloped countries to stop
posting online and developing tracking software... It’s not that black and
white. We have a lot more freedom than he’s making it sound.

If you use a computer 24/7 you might feel oppressed by it. Like with anything.

------
js4ever
Error establishing a database connection

~~~
catdog
[http://archive.is/ChaL9](http://archive.is/ChaL9)

------
jaabe
I minored in history, maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to it, but I can’t
think of a period where we’ve been more free than we are now. Not even 10
years ago. We live in a time where you can frankly do anything you want if
you’re born in the western world. If you want to become a blacksmith who
specialises in creating fantasy weapons, you can do that. If you want to
disconnect and go live a self-sustainable life in the Swedish forest, you can
do that and unlike the hippies of the 60ies you won’t even have to starve if
you suck at it. And so on.

I think it’s completely possible to live a full life and never realise you had
the option to be free though, and, I think it’s fair to blame the way we’ve
constructed our society in the wake of new public management. We’ve
essentially build a system where every human being is viewed as a Hunan
resource. It starts in the daycare institution where the social workers have
checklists for normal child development. It picks up in the school system
where academic achievement is measured from the first classes and children
have to know their path from the 6th grade to make sure they take the specific
classes which allow them to advance to the next institution. The once you’re
on the job market you’re evaluated on productivity and finally when you retire
it’s about keeping you in good health so you cost less. All to make sure
people are as efficient to the system as possible.

Social media and the massive surveillance state that we’ve build by sharing
everything plays right into this. We self-censor and pretend, and everything
we share on the “free” tech-platforms is kept and used against us. Which I
completely agree is very worrisome.

The thing is though, 1984 was right. If anything the current level of
surveillance and manufactured information is way worse than Orwell predicted,
and yet, you can still go make fantasy swords in the Swedish forests if you
wanted to.

I just don’t share the authors negative outlook. Maybe I’m naive, but I really
don’t think that we’ll turn the west into China. I think things like the
European GDPR is a show of this. We don’t want companies or governments to
misuse our data, and we’ll punish them if they do. It’s happening slowly, but
that’s how a democracy operates, because you have to compromise. It’s
happening though, and it’s happening because people wanted it.

I also fully expect the younger generation to rebel more than we did. You see
it already on climate issues, with children refusing to go to school if they
won’t have a future anyway. I suspect they won’t want to keep our surveillance
state or our HR centric view on society either.

~~~
djaychela
>I also fully expect the younger generation to rebel more than we did. You see
it already on climate issues, with children refusing to go to school if they
won’t have a future anyway. I suspect they won’t want to keep our surveillance
state or our HR centric view on society either.

I don't see this in my experience. I expected my stepkids' generation to all
be real eco-zealots, totally concerned about everything my generation and
before have done wrong. In practice, all of them that I know are a cross
section - some are quite eco minded, but a lot aren't. They aren't all as PC
as I expected them to be (ditto - a cross section, including some who are
strongly anti). Most of them are just completely absorbed in their own lives,
via whatever social platform is currently most popular.

None of them give a monkeys about their privacy, being tracked or anything
else - they're totally blind to all these issues, and think that I'm a
complete loon for bringing any of them up. I get the 'this is the future old
man' routine fairly often, and none of them think that the consequences I'm
concerned about have any relevance to them. (They range between 12 and 19
years old, FTR).

I appreciate this is anecdotal, but I don't think that the next generation
will be the saviours we were expecting them to be. I expected them all to be
totally tech-savvy and miles ahead of me - most of them don't even understand
the basics of how the Internet works, let alone any of the details. It's the
magic of the Wookie Hole Witch as far as they are concerned.

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rezous
We have a lot more freedom than this guy makes it out to be.Is it shrinking ?
Probably yes. All I can see though is a rather poor attempt to advertise his
startup.

