

The New Information Age - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/the-new-information-age/

======
wangwei
On a different note, the second Techcrunch commenter says

"Reads like a high school essay. Too long. Didn't finish. Boring. Lift your
game."

Now this may be true or not. But this is definitely mean and doesn't add any
real value to the conversation.

I thought FB comments are supposed to keep out mean people under the
assumption that mean attacks (true or not) come from people who hide behind an
anonymous name. And they wouldn't do it with real identity.

So the question is what if people will still be mean even with their real
identity attached? Does it hurt more if the attack comes from a real person?

~~~
zheng
At least to me, the attack doesn't hurt any more coming from a facebook
account than from anonymous. Either way I feel like a real person wrote it. In
my experience, true online trolls are also true real life trolls.

------
taken11
where is part 2 of the video?

------
phlux
This post is relevant - but I am inspired to write one based on this article
the meta-data-sets that get created and the services which we build on them
are going to be very interesting. Specifically working out the taste graph
with predictive algorithms based on the data-sets of millions where you can
infer interests just based on the fact that you read this article, that page
and searched for that term...

\---

It started innocently enough. Everyone is on it. Everyone. In the more than 20
years since it was founded - and now - daily life just could not be managed
without it. Sure, it started innocently enough. Connect with your friends,
post your pics, keep up with the fam. Yeah, that was then.

It wasn't too long before they started adding features. Adding value they
called it. Extending your circle. Enabling you they'd say. Yeah, in the same
way a spiders web is beautiful. The pattern and symmetry, glistening like
shiny gossamer art. Its beauty pulls you in - you don't realize at first as
you touch it, that it sticks. No, more than sticks - you become imbued with
it. The more you move it wraps around you, encasing you... entombing you. For
the data-mining black widow to come and suck the marketable value right out of
you, your connections... every aspect of your life is now a product.

Classified, organized, tagged, sorted, tracked, pegged, followed, poked,
monetized, labeled... owned is what you are. A commodity. A small spec among
3.5 billion in the user base of the book.

That's what it was these days... just simply 'the book'.

Everyone knows - everyone is aware. They are all in the book. Not even a page,
or a word either... more like a letter. A single letter. An iconographic
digital hologram of the total sum of your parts - all wrapped up real nice in
a uniform singular profitable little package called your user profile.
Displayed and viewed and consumed and tracked billions of times over. With
more than thirty trillion page views per month, the cancerous blue and white
digital encapsulation of the human soul was now blazoned across innumerable
screens as nearly half the worlds population interacted on the book - more
than 20% of the worlds population on the book at any given moment.

A study, one of the countless to be sure, said that now more than 90% of real
human interactions occurred through the book. What does that even mean
anymore... real? Real human interactions? Through the book? how is that even
possible.

It was no wonder that in the last few years the backlash has switched to
resisting this unexpected strangle-hold on the human condition. Most never saw
it coming... happily going along with every new feature update, privacy
change, "enhancement". MZ was repeating himself a lot these days... except his
frame of reference had gotten bigger... along with his security detail....
Where years ago, the book was likened to that which only came along to change
humans interactions every 100 years... now his statements were 10 fold. MZ
thinks of himself as the embodiment of the singularity... whatever that means.
Some fucking fantasy of a long dead cybervisionary that couldn't recognize the
makings of our current prison I'm sure. Fuck him.

Looking around looks a lot more like binary slavery than any form of
singularity. None of our old problems have been solved - in fact the book has
only made things worse. After it became a "platform for governance and
outreach" we, people like - those who really see, knew. We knew what this
meant. Game fucking over.

This era of hyper connectivity and ultra social awareness was supposed to
usher in some sort of Utopian orgasm -- one in which MZ would be carried on
the shoulders of the masses to stand next to fantastical human saviors like
Jesus. Fictional allusions to stellar bodies be damned!

The only problem is that most of the world is too busy. Feeding their
attention into the black hole of the book to notice... or care I guess.

With ubiquitous access thanks to the assimilation of the largest global fiber
network a few years ago, the book was now able to offer complete and total
"free" access via the acquired goog-net.

Years ago, when Athena rolled out - it was a huge success. Welcomed into every
neighborhood - direct, very high speed fiber access in every home was quickly
made into a "right". The model was seen as our manifest destiny, held in a
62-micron translucent hair that fed us with more 1' and 0's to each person in
a single day than the entire digital output of the globe in 1999.

Such an umbilical cannot be bad right!

The only problem is we misjudged the direction of the flow!

Now, with goog-net reaching everywhere, but the book being the only lens into
the tubes -- our minds are warped. We are a most technically advanced - yet
wholly dependent child-like civilization.

A mutant.

If its not on the platform. Not "in the book" they say -- how can it be
trusted - how could it succeed? How can you expect to be relevant?

HOW CAN IT NOT BE RELEVANT!

Slaves! All of them!

This is why we act! This is what is needed. Who are we? Who the fuck were we?
Not this! Surely not this. It is time....

We take action now. Rewrite this so called book.

We will not forgive. We will not forget!

~~~
sorbus
Previously posted by the same user 12 days ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2381780>

~~~
phlux
Yep, thats why I said the post was relevant, implying I was reposting
something.

