Silicon Valley is erasing individuality

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-silicon-valley-is-erasing-your-individuality/2017/09/08/a100010a-937c-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_print.html

by kawera • 9 years ago

86 50 9 years ago

washingtonpost.com

basicplus22• 9 years ago

I wonder if it would be possible for the whole world and all activities to end up being "owned" by one company?

Arcsech• 9 years ago

I believe this is part of the premise of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

That said, whether it's one company or a few that are well-aligned doesn't really matter for the purposes of that book.

chrisco255• 9 years ago

Probably the most realistic of the dystopian novels I've read and way ahead of it's time.

LeoPanthera• 9 years ago

The world most people think described by "1984" is actually described by Brave New World.

tpeo2• 9 years ago

Why the quotes?

basicplus22• 9 years ago

I can accept a person closely related to and caring for their land to have some notion of ownership,

but a corporation who only uses land without consideration for it or the local animals that depend upon it, and only cares for profit cannot "own" something that is essentially timeless and really belongs to noone but the universe. Its like ants squabbling over owning mount everest.

zo12• 9 years ago

Because they can "own" your website in terms of control, yet not actually own it under that specific concept. E.g. Google threatens taking away ad monetization if you don't remove certain "questionable" content (according to them). They don't own your site, but in that case they're controlling it.

And here it is in action:

https://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2017/08/google-threatens-conse...

fragmede• 9 years ago

A look at South Korea's relationship with Samsung would prove informative if we expect an all-powerful corporation sometime in our future. Samsung (Electronics) is known for making cellphones, under the parent conglomerate, Samsung (Group) makes pretty much, well, everything. From construction cranes and vehicles under Samsung Heavy Industries to providing healthcare under Samsung Medical Center to all sorts of insurance under Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance and Samsung Life Insurance.

mjevans2• 9 years ago

The fictional world in Wall-e explores that premise; sort of. It's kind of strange seeing the CEO of a company as the president of everything...

tpeo2• 9 years ago

This reads more like a bag of complaints against Google and Facebook rather than a case for how the current trends in technology might be actually threatening individuality.

_tulpa• 9 years ago

And Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft - they're in the article too.

Anyway, how would you write this without talking a lot about the trend-setters?

skybrian2• 9 years ago

Using tech mogul's quotes in this way seems rather shallow. Someone saying something one time, particularly when speculating, doesn't make a trend; you need to look for consistent behavior.

Also, it's odd to blame big tech companies for lack of respect for intellectual property, or maybe call it remixing. This is a much larger trend. Consider sampling in rap music, VCR's, Napster, BitTorrent, Scihub.

TheOtherHobbes• 9 years ago

Facebook's no-fake-personality T&Cs seems to confirm Zuckerberg's (slightly mad) views.

Most adults understand that there absolutely needs to be clear water between public and private personas and relationship networks.

Trying to mash them altogether has nothing to do with enforcing integrity (something large corporations are hardly ideally qualified to moralise about) and everything to do with the fact that no one at work needs to know that (e.g.) your best friend's daughter is struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts and your best friend is having a really hard time with this.

skybrian2• 9 years ago

Yes, the "no fake personality" thing seems like a post-hoc justification of a real names policy that was adopted for other reasons entirely.

I would guess that there is not actually any deep philosophical reason. Facebook started out using real names at Harvard just because that's how college face books did it, was very successful, and therefore they believe that people using real names on Facebook (for the most part) is important to their success.

Google certainly thought so when they tried to compete, using Google Plus. They eventually abandoned real names but not without a lot of controversy.

danjayh2• 9 years ago

When it comes to the most central tenet of individualism — free will — the tech companies have a different way. They hope to automate the choices, both large and small, we make as we float through the day. It’s their algorithms that suggest the news we read, the goods we buy, the paths we travel, the friends we invite into our circles.

I recently quit Google News for this. Despite my best efforts at customization using the limited controls that it provided, it insisted on feeding me stories for sources I'd turned off (but were obviously preferred by Google News), and not from sources that I'd prioritized. Sure, it'd put some stuff in from the prioritized sources, but there was an obvious pattern of using Google's preferred cadre of media outlets for certain major stories, even when one of my preferred sources had an article on the same story. I would liken trying to customize Google News to herding cats.

mjevans2• 9 years ago

Same; mostly for it not letting me tell it to ban any news provided that put up paywalls.

SyneRyder• 9 years ago

Did you find a Google News alternative? I'd love to switch, especially if there's something else with the Preferred / Blocked Sources feature, and hopefully also the blocked topics feature. I considered Feedly Pro when they added Mute Filters, but they only offer 25 filters.

I realize I'm creating a filter bubble for myself, but I'm okay with a bubble that doesn't include 'news' from TMZ or who Katie Holmes is dating now.

dmitrij• 9 years ago

I switched to Newstral, https://newstral.com/en. I like the simplistic beauty of the "algorithm": The first three stories on the front page. And you can order and select the sources.

danjayh2• 9 years ago

Honestly, I just go to Reuters now. It's better than most major news outlets, and certainly better than Google's aggregator.

zo12• 9 years ago

Same goes in Youtube. It is next to impossible to actively "block" a specific channel on Youtube. I recently tried to do it after noticing #ElsaGate videos popping up in my son's recommended videos, and I just couldn't find anything. It's done by about a dozen channels, and I figured it'd be trivial to just identify them all because Google conveniently marks them all as "related" on each other's channels. But no luck.

The secondary sneaky part is sure they let you "block" a channel, but all that means is that that "Channel" can't comment on your videos. WTF? A gigantic site, with arguably thousands of developers and employees, and a simple function such as "block channel's videos" can't be implemented? Oh, and thanks to HTTPS, you can't even write a proxy to fix the incoming HTTP responses to filter stuff out (unless you install CA certs on all your clients), which is impossible for locked-in devices such as ChromeCasts, Rokus, and all other "Smart" viewing devices.

The conspiracy-theorist in me thinks that the whole "HTTPS the whole web" was just a sneaky way of gaining control over how your clients view your content, and not really privacy.

tauchunfall• 9 years ago

It is next to impossible to actively "block" a specific channel on Youtube. I recently tried to do it after noticing #ElsaGate videos popping up in my son's recommended videos, and I just couldn't find anything.

I never heard about #ElsaGate before. There is obviously a pedagogic message in the videos. The main problem seems that leaving the kids unattended watching these videos doesn't work here. Similar to Grimms' Fairy Tales or children stories from Shockheaded Peter. Parents need to read these books to their children in order to give them feedback. I've read some texts by Prof. Dr. Stefan Aufenanger from University of Mainz about this topic.

EDIT: Of course, in order to explain things to kids they need to be in a certain age. The videos seem to be targeted to children in pre-school age.

hollygg• 9 years ago

I think most leaders in these companies have a greater degree of self awareness of the unintended consequences their corps can have. This degree of self awareness did not exist in the mega corps of the 60s thro 90s. The levels of information asymmetry and mastery over scale that exist today has never existed at any prior time in history. What to do with these powers is basically unchartered territory. People who have serious experience in ecology, history and sociology will have much more constructive uses for these powers than any business, tech or political leader. But this hand off of power from traditional "growth" based leadership to "sustainable/equilibrium" based leadership is asking quite a lot from our existing leaders. But I see signs off hope in Zuckerbergs speech on providing ppl "purpose and financial stability". This is a much harder goal than providing information to everyone or a better phone or better blockbuster entertainment. But it is a goal I actually respect him for putting on the table. He didn't have too. And that's leadership.

nichochar• 9 years ago

Leadership is one of my passions. I observe it, study it, marvel at what different shapes it can take and how it can miserably fail, sometimes not straight away.

My opinion is that Mark Zuckerberg absolutely does not have leadership. He has influence, but those are very different. When rank and leadership don't correlate, very bad things happen at some point.

I believe that Facebook the company does have some great leadership, but if anything it is coming from Sheryl Sandberg. Have you ever seen what she can do to a room? It's similar to Obama, or Jobs.

Mark Zuckerberg actually worries me a lot. To know quite a few leaders in tech, I don't think he meets the calibre on the people level, not even a little bit. Bezos, Musk, Sandberg display insane levels of vision and truth in their mission. Zuckerberg always feels to me like someone who is very smart but pushed into a role he was never made to fit, because of context.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think something bad will come out of this situation.

bambax• 9 years ago

To take another grand theory, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has exclaimed his desire to liberate humanity from phoniness, to end the dishonesty of secrets. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly,” he has said. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Wow, did he really say that? It would be a pretty dumb thing to say. Society rests on secrets.

If you want do have just one personality what is going to happen is not less phoniness, but more: people will extend their "work" personality to the rest of their life, not the other way around. They will have personal relationships that ressemble the ones they have with their coworkers, and that will be quite horrible.

gras• 9 years ago

It's what a psychopath looking for a competitive advantage would say.

chuckdries• 9 years ago

I don't disagree with the sentiment (who is he to dictate how I present myself) but do you really feel that society rests on secrets?

Also this quote makes mark sound like holden caulfield

fulafel• 9 years ago

Society does rest on secrets, but also on another more nuanced thing, discretion: In areas of life where privacy is eroded and everything you do can be posted to instagram or largish whatsapp groups, people can become more reserved and start acting more conventionally and blandly. Before this kind of social media behaviour, there was gossip, but it was a noisy channel and people forwarding gossip would also stake something when forwarding gossip.

tenpies• 9 years ago

do you really feel that society rests on secrets?

Even on a first pass, you have to answer yes. The legal and medical fields exist on a foundation of secrecy. A lawyer that cannot keep secrets is a terrible lawyer and cannot defend his/her client. A doctor that cannot keep secrets is a terrible doctor and will never have patients approach him/her for anything even remotely embarrassing.

Broken_Hippo• 9 years ago

Sometimes folks have no choice if they want to be part of society. My very survival in a social setting was to not let folks catch on that I'm bisexual just to not be treated differently. I found this out early: some girls in 8th grade decided I was lesbian and people quit talking to me. This was in the early 90's. It followed me around until I switched schools again, and I had very few friends. I'm more open about myself now, but at 13/14 through... later in life... I wasn't equipped to handle such things. I'm also atheist, which doesn't fare well in Indiana.

In societies that are more accepting of others and focus on inclusion, there isn't as much need for secrets. I never found this in American society for the most part.

tim3332• 9 years ago

He seems to have said it a while back - that was a quote in a 2010 book http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191804...

Funnily enough one of my non executed ideas to make a better Facebook was to allow multiple personas so you could select work/family/party and have different content appear. Dunno if that would have got anywhere - never figured how to overcome people posting on the existing networks because that's where their friends are.

jokoon• 9 years ago

Didn't google+ do just that with circles?

folksinger• 9 years ago

He doesn't actually believe this. The reason why Facebook only allows people to have a single identity tied to their real name is that is what advertisers would prefer.

Zuckerberg doesn't believe in anything other than money and power.

nine_k• 9 years ago

Certain religious groups in the past (and maybe present) did hold very similar views. E.g. remember not having curtains on windows, etc.

davidmr• 9 years ago

Wildly off-tooic, but I recently visited Amsterdam for the first time and was absolutely astonished at the lack of curtains. The jury seems to be out on whether it's a vestige of Dutch Calvinism or if it's just somehow cultural, but it was fascinating.

tehlike4• 9 years ago

Sometimes having secrets about who you are saves lives.

Being a gay in uae, being a jew in ww2 germany were probably secrets that would save lives. To less extreme, hiding ones political views in a population with opposite political view could make lives easier and fairer.

erikpukinskis• 9 years ago

You're absolutely correct, but this is a disingenuous response to Zuckerberg's intention.

He's not trying to create a world where such people are forcibly outed. He's trying to create a world where such people can out themselves safely.

The basic idea is that if you share enough stories, people will stop being able to convince populations that minority groups are bogeymen.

synicalx• 9 years ago

It's funny coming from a guy who has a bit of paper stuck over his laptop's web cam.

genesis_11_6• 9 years ago

Genesis 11:6-7 New International Version (NIV)

The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

albertTJames• 9 years ago

The alarmist screams of a deluded nostalgic who is too lazy to ground his intuition in data. The author also makes a stand against capitalism and globalism rather than tech monopoly. Do you think the media was so much better when the Nazi could rise to power or the necessity of war, or moral be imposed on society through those restricted medium the elite controlled?

Not to speak about all the injustices internet helps bring to light, the diffusion of important knowledge (side effect of bad consumerist habits being on of them), the convergence of the poor and the middle class allowing for a large part of the population to access the same products, education, and social advantages. The path to the disparition of labor work and rise of the nomad lifestyle is also a beautiful evolution of society.

jsemrau• 9 years ago

After having worked more than a decade in Data Mining, individuality is highly overrated.

ionised2• 9 years ago

In what sense?

andrewjl• 9 years ago

At some point the idea that we don't own our own data and have to give it up in exchange for use of these products and services will have to be revisited.

We already have models that preserve privacy out there, TouchID in Apple products doesn't transmit your fingerprints to the cloud but is kept securely on device. They remain on the device (I take Apple at their word when they state this). The next logical step is for Apple to use their knowledge of differential privacy to obscure our data, they already do this to an extent with things like autocomplete, like they explained at a previous WWDC.

I'm optimistic that Apple and Microsoft would be motivated to do this in a way that's compatible with their business models as non-tech savvy users learn the value of privacy. Google and Facebook can be persuaded to make this work as well if the alternative is heavy-handed regulation.

Silicon Valley is erasing individuality

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