
How a half-educated tech elite delivered us into chaos - jrepinc
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/19/how-tech-leaders-delivered-us-into-evil-john-naughton
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jstewartmobile
From the article:

' _One of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and
the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology
are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook,
Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not
alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest
movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what
have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have
begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well,
antisocial consequences._ '

Perhaps that is true for some of the employees, but for the founders, I'm
calling BS. Zuckerberg, Thiel, Parker, Moskovitz, etc. are sharp, well-read
guys who knew _exactly_ what they were doing from square-one. They did it
anyway. Probably thanks to the fact that in 2017, if you have enough money and
you flush one country down the toilet, there's always another one that will
welcome you with open arms for the right price. India's elite have been making
the same migration to the US for two generations, and Thiel just built a house
for himself in NZ.

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Noos
I wish the elites would stop constantly blaming magical powers that somehow
manipulate the poor, deluded masses and instead possibly consider that people
don't trust the elites because they are divorced from the masses and populate
ideas that will harm them.

Arguments like this really are arguments that we need much more control of the
discourse to choke out ideas that challenge the elite mode of thinking. The
writer is more along the lines of educating the tech barbarians, but it isn't
much of a step to direct control when the barbarians don't particularly want
to be educated.

The idea that maybe the elite should reflect a bit never really occurs.

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retrac98
I expect this will level itself out, it’s just a new engine for propaganda the
population aren’t used to yet.

In time people will begin to realise what Facebook puts in front of them isn’t
necessarily the whole picture the same way posters from WWI and II seem crude
and obvious to us now.

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SamReidHughes
The "chaos" in this case being the electorate receiving political messages
from unapproved sources.

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aalleavitch
And uncritically accepting lies as the truth on a daily basis.

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nine_k
This is, frankly, something that completely did not change since times
immemorial.

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LeoJiWoo
This article seems to forget about PRISM.

I highly doubt the tech elite weren't contacted at one point or another by an
alphabet agency, or they weren't being monitored by the government.

I personally think tech has shown us how deeply divided we have always been.
We just didn't realize it because we didn't start sharing so much of our
personal lives on social media until around 2007.

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fpisfun
The elites have controlled the narrative basically forever and now their
control slipped a bit because new tools have come about that allow less
mainstream ideas to be pushed through to people. Now they're in panic mode so
we get articles like this I guess.

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mcguire
" _The elites have controlled the narrative..._ "

Which elites are these? The leftist elites, the liberal elites, the
conservative elites, the right-wing elites, the military-industrial elites,
the corporate elites, or the religious elites?

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ggg9990
Outside of the religious elites and the "leftist elites" who are virtually
nonexistent, these are all the same group of people. They basically believe in
the primacy of education and intelligence which not everyone agrees with.

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danblick
Lousy, snobbish article. Blames innovators for changing the world. So? What
does the author suggest could have been done differently? Perhaps the author
could draw on his elite liberal arts education to reflect on the history of
_planned_ (as opposed to unplanned) social change? (The record there is not so
hot.)

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jstewartmobile
John Naughton, from Wikipedia:

 _" Starting as an electrical engineer who worked in systems modelling and
analysis, Naughton subsequently developed an interest in the public
understanding of technology and—later—in the social, political and cultural
impact of internet technology."_

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PhilWright
I love how a journalist thinks that anyone without an humanities education is
only half-educated. In that case the reverse must also be true, all
journalists without a science education are also only half-educated. You
cannot have it both ways.

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ggg9990
As someone with a solid but not exceptional education in both, I would agree
with both statements.

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mcguire
" _Now mathematics, engineering and computer science are wonderful disciplines
– intellectually demanding and fulfilling. And they are economically vital for
any advanced society. But mastering them teaches students very little about
society or history – or indeed about human nature._ "

...which is why most university STEM programs have requirements and electives
outside the STEM fields. Of course, it's possible to avoid the harmful
influences of the liberal arts, but then,...

" _The cynical answer is they knew about the potential dark side all along and
didn’t care, because to acknowledge it might have undermined the
aforementioned licences to print money._ "

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bigger_cheese
I don't know about in the US but for my engineering degree at an Australian
university there were mandatory Ethics classes. One of the courses we were
required to take talked about precisely this sort of thing the long term
consequences of technology. I remember debating case studies in tutorial
groups about things like Asbestos, CFC's, GM crops, cloning and the like.
Being considerate of the unintended consequences of technology was very much
something we were encouraged to think about.

Another class we took covered the ethical responsibilities of an engineer,
regulatory compliance, liability, disclosure, whistle-blowing and the like I
still recall vividly hearing during a lecture the story of American Engineer
William LeMessurier who was made aware of critical structural defect in a
building he had designed and then risked his career and professional
reputation to resolve the problem.

I'm a bit saddened to hear other people have these negative opinions about
engineering. A lot of us do take the moral and ethical implications of our
work quite seriously.

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woodandsteel
A lot of why these tech leaders go wrong is due to a techno-utopianist
ideology which assumes that if bad is happening in the world it is always only
because people don't have the technology needed to do good. This in turn rests
on some very mistaken ideas about why humans behave in good or bad ways.

That is in turn due in part to the great influence Ayn Rand's crackpot ideas
have had on technologists.

The books Naughton recommends are much more realistic.

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blakewatters
There is a fundamental disconnect here in the analysis and attribution of
malice and disregard for social duty. Building a product and company is a
messy affair. You have to earn your way into having a perspective and
responsibility to society. Engagement and virality and advertising revenue
built off digital addiction may have a dark side but you have to build the
business before the self reflection. This is the reality of capitalism: make
enough money that you can afford the luxury of guilt.

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curtisblaine
> It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could
> also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political
> messages to voters.

I still don't understand where the problem is, to be honest.

It's not that political parties didn't advertise their messages in a targeted
way before and, as long as both sides are able to target their potential
electors, it's normal political propaganda.

(or maybe the problem is "Trump won and we can't just accept that"?)

