The high modernism of social media companies

http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/04/11/the-disturbing-high-modernism-of-silicon-valley/

by cperes • 8 years ago

205 97 8 years ago

DataWorker• 8 years ago

Well Zuckerburg didn’t create the thing because he had some deep belief in high modernism or connecting people. People lie to themselves about their motivations. That’s a messy human thing too.

megaman222• 8 years ago

Am I the only one that remembers that back in, oh 2006ish, one of the core features of Facebook was a hot-or-not picture rating game? Or that one of the other big features was "poking" people?

Whatever Facebook has become, it started out as a MySpace clone, without custom CSS, created by some Ivy League young men. Mythologizing it into some world-changing, higher purpose origin story is asinine.

ianai2• 8 years ago

Agreed, I have a similar take on people who actually get so worked up by something they read on the internet as to harm people or themselves. Before 2006, the response to someone ho believed something truly, obviously false from the internet was to laugh “wait, you actually believed something you read on the inteenet?!”

I remember overhearing people laughing at how seriously some people took the relationship status posted on Facebook. People would put all manner of things on FB as one big joke. Like saying they were in a complicated relationship with their clearly platonic best friend.

jmh530• 8 years ago

I was a relatively early adopter to Facebook, though not Harvard- or Ivy League-early. It didn't have a hot-or-not style rating at that time. Poking was a feature, but I'm not sure it was ever that popular.

_bxg12• 8 years ago

People change, though. The human condition is one of constantly justifying and explaining your actions and coming up with a story to arrange everything into. I think the story of Facebook as an "idealist" company is one that Zuckerberg and friends have genuinely taken to heart.

bbddg• 8 years ago

The fact that people are taking this memo at face value is insane. Facebook is obviously much more interested in making money off of people's data through advertising than to connect people. Further, it's dangerous to even rely on such a centralized system for so much of our communication. Especially when it's an organization with an astounding amount of power and money.

triviatise• 8 years ago

I think the author completely misunderstood the Boz quote. I interpret it as him questioning the core belief that connecting people no matter the consequences is right.

babygoat• 8 years ago

It's not really open to that interpretation if you read the memo where the quote comes from.

amsilprotag• 8 years ago

The cited fragment does suggest that interpretation, that the de facto goodness should be scrutinized. But the entire memo frames terrorism and bullying as unfortunate side-effects which must be tolerated for the sake of ever greater connectivity.

--- [Newport quote in brackets] ---

Andrew Bosworth June 18, 2016

The Ugly

We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly.

We connect people.

That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide.

So we connect more people

[That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.

And still we connect people.

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.] It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.

That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.

The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don’t win. The ones everyone use win.

I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn’t be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing.

In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren’t losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That’s our imperative. Because that’s what we do. We connect people.

shimfish• 8 years ago

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

api• 8 years ago

Cells have membranes for a reason. Without a membrane every random chemical contaminant will enter the cell and disrupt its metabolic function.

Your CPU has a case for a reason. It won't work very well if you pop it open and touch its surface. Computers also don't work that well if they are not electrically isolated or grounded from things like electrostatic discharge.

Networks have firewalls and/or authentication mechanisms for a reason. Without them they get compromised by black hat hackers and malware.

It's not that this kind of "high modernism" denies human nature. It's that it denies something fundamental to life itself and to the maintenance of any complex system: boundaries. No form of complex structure can persist without boundaries-- usually multiple nested levels of boundaries. Removing all boundaries just causes things to collapse down to a lower level of complexity/structure.

1auralynn• 8 years ago

Interesting. Going along with the biological metaphor - maybe what is needed is a) redefining the boundaries and cohesion in smaller units of organization (e.g. local communities) and b) a more organized circulatory system vs. a kind of directionless diffusion (i.e. current social media).

vanderZwan2• 8 years ago

Well, that's what the printing press did, no?

Anyway, while I agree with api's comment about losing boundaries (or more accurately: having to find a new way of setting them with the improved ease of communication and tracking), I think that blaming the Babel fish is a bit of a "shooting the messenger, not the message" problem. Removing barriers to communication also reduces the ability to ignore things that have to be addressed.

edit: clarified what I meant a bit

Analemma_• 8 years ago

Well, that's what the printing press did, no?

Well, yes: the printing press ultimately caused Europe to end up in a hundred years of sectarian warfare that killed millions. I'm not eager to repeat that.

makomk4• 8 years ago

One of the other big criticisms of Facebook and other social networks is that they're "filter bubbles" which make sure people don't see any information or viewpoints from outside their own social circles and perspectives. The main unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the "connecting people" criticism seem to have in common is that both involve Facebook taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media, and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace; other than that, they should be contradictory.

organsnyder2• 8 years ago

...taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media, and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace;

Shouldn't we replace "populace" with "social media networks (via the algorithms they create)" in that sentence?

dragonwriter2• 8 years ago

The main unifying aspect that the "filter bubble" criticism and the "connecting people" criticism seem to have in common is that both involve Facebook taking away some control of the culture from the press, the media, and other powerful groups and giving it to the populace

No, it's giving it to a new powerful group, specifically, Facebook. Just as Stalin stated, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how,” so, too, is it true of social media; power doesn't lie with the people who can press “Like” (etc.), it lies with the people who select and continuously tweak based on observed effect the algorithm by which Likes and similar actions are used to shape the flow of information to and between users.

ionised2• 8 years ago

Nothing is being given to the populace in this scenario.

pdkl95• 8 years ago

Kyle Kallgren's incredibly insightful discussion[1] of sci-fi from Frankenstein to Black Mirror explained one of the mechanisms that create wars out of too much interconnection: metaphor shear.

> That feeling all users experience when you realize the metaphor you asre working in is bogus. When the computer fails you and you remember that there are a hundred translations between input and output. Codes and translations we don't have the time or patience to do ourselves. Intellectual labor that we've surrendered to a device.

The map is not the territory; the force-amplification benefits of technology also includes an imperfect model of reality.

the poor Babel fish

From the same video essay:

> The joke at the center of Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is about metaphor shear. The answer to an important question lost on its long journey from input to output. A computer glitch so huge, so strange and so embarrassing that its programmers have to make a computer the size of a planet to file a bug report.
> The most advanced software in the world of Black Mirror is people. So many of Brooker's stories use perfect copies of people rendered as software. Easy to download, and very easy to abuse. Of course, this technology already exists. There are already other people on our devices, rendered as text and avatars. Individual contact abstracted through one hundred layers of metaphor shear. Sometimes, that shear makes it to easy to commit inhuman acts.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr9_DcO6G3A

DanielBMarkham3• 8 years ago

When confronting the utopian side, by contrast, the relevant question becomes sharper: Should these companies even exist at all?

I am coming towards this conclusion as well. As individuals, the easier and more frictionless our communications with others, the greater our opportunities to live, love, learn, and collaborate. As a species, we have evolved to live in small social groups with radically different norms and life patterns. That's a survival and evolution benefit, not a bug. As long as we can remain peaceful and not harm one another, we want the maximum possible diversity in humanity, not some utopian norm for the entire species.

We have a wonderful example of large numbers of people instantly communicating with one another. They're called mobs. Because at some point in scaling, and it happens probably between 75-500 people, powerful emotions are the only thing that can sustain the instant feedback loop we've created.

We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

jxub• 8 years ago

Gustave Le Bon, the prominent French psychologist, has a copious amount of writing on the concept of mobs and their behaviour:

A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first...A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts....Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images.

makomk4• 8 years ago

What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise politically. That it's too dangerous to allow them to do this without the press acting as gatekeepers first. That certainly does seem to be the underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically unacceptable, even a danger to democracy, for ordinary people to actually have power and not just the illusion that they do.

(Edit: to be fair, I should probably add that the press wouldn't be the only powerful institution that has the ability to enable or gatekeep activism and organising, just one of the most important. The more fundamental difference is whether you need to have one of those powerful institutions backing your cause.)

JoeAltmaier• 8 years ago

No, they've always been able to do what you say, even before these apps. The issue is the speed at which it happens, turns ordinary sensible people into members of a mob. That's clearly a problem.

DanielBMarkham3• 8 years ago

Thanks for your comment because I am not saying that at all.

All I'm saying is that a certain amount of friction is a necessary part of our survival as a species. I'm not making any comments about the press or people organizing or any of that.

Some message boards, including HN, have a delay between the time you read a comment and when you are allowed to form a reply. This cuts way back on flame wars. It's also a nice example of purposely introducing some friction for a larger good.

I don't know how much friction is needed or where it should go. I'm just now reaching the conclusion about Facebook and social media. This utopia they've all been preaching is actually a dystopia, a horrible thing indeed. I'm nowhere near having any thoughts about a solution.

ben_w• 8 years ago

Interesting, I would agree with the conclusion without the intermediary.

I don’t trust the press to do a better job of this than anyone else. The press is made of people and subject to the same flaws and desire for power — both to campaign for the freedom to do certain things, and also to restrict other things (I’m thinking of UK issues like fox hunting and one particular moral panic about the drug MDMA that turned out to be a water overdose).

That said, like the two famous Churchil quotes on democracy, I’ll say both that the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter, yet also that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. I can see democracy’s flaws, but not how to fix them. I wouldn’t even want to be in a benevolent dictatorship if I was running it.

crusty2• 8 years ago

I didn't read that. Organizing a union or a political or social movement occur through deliberate, thoughtful efforts. I took his comment to indicate something along the lines of; Mobs (IRL or digital) are emotion driven and feed off of (or even are dependent upon) instantaneous, omni-directional communication. Maybe adding friction to communication has historically had the benefit of reducing mob tendencies. But friction does not mean prevented or blocked.

I haven't thought any of this over myself, but if I supported this idea, I'd offer that friction, in reducing mob tendencies, might actually make more room for the types of communications that promote rational democratic ideas.

Basically, i think you read way more into his idea of friction than was there.

crdoconnor• 8 years ago

That certainly does seem to be the underlying subtext of a lot of the recent criticism of Facebook. It's also an astounding line of thinking, because it basically says that it's politically unacceptable, even a danger to democracy

I noticed this too. I presumed it's just the media reacting to its declining influence and facebook's increasing power over what we see.

I've also noticed a lot of hand wringing about "facebook fake news" and the importance of "responsible journalism" from the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post as if none of use remember them (among other things) vigorously beating the Iraq war drum with equally fake news in 2003.

On the one hand they've got a point. On the other hand it should be just about anybody else except them making that point.

cirgue• 8 years ago

Facebook is designed to incentivize vitriol and dramatic interactions and actively prevents uniting around common interests. Facebook is a massive obstacle to robust political organization.

canoebuilder• 8 years ago

What you're basically saying, I think, is that there shouldn't be any easy way for ordinary people to communicate directly with each other and organise politically.

This isn't an either/or.

There's a world of possibility you're missing.

Like, people should be able to freely communicate online, but maybe not on platforms that psychologically exploit them for ad revenue (and other, potentially nefarious, aims should the wrong person get hands on the levers.)

forgottenpass2• 8 years ago

We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

I am uncomfortable with this, but I find myself agreeing. All the "problems" with Twitter stem from liking low-friction communication in theory, but hating it in practice.

I think that in some way it is workable, but people approach it in a way that sets everyone up for failure. People want their phone to ding, then make them feel good because their friends are nice to them. Twitter is not that. Twitter can never be that. Twitter is the internet. If you apply the last 3 decades of common knowledge about interacting on the internet, it's fine. But it reduces the utility (and therefore engagement) of Twitter, so the marketed idea has to be that twitter is something more.

dannykahneman• 8 years ago

I understand the discomfort, I feel it myself. However, I believe that friction, and adding delays, makes it more likely that people engage system 2 thinking (slow).

When communication is frictionless, we engage more of our type i system. See: drunk arguments.

kps• 8 years ago

We want friction in communicating. Not only do we want it, we have to have it.

    This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
    civilized world.  Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
    thousands of dollars to send everywhere.  Please be sure you know what
    you are doing.

    Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]

essayist3• 8 years ago

Arguably, mobs have gotten a bad rap.[1] Bond argues that mobs end up being the way we see them on video largely because of how they are treated (ringed by armored cops with shields and bombarded with tear gas, say).

FedEx, firefighting teams, the Hurricane Harvey response[2], and soldiers in battle offer other examples of people instantly communicating with one another.

I don't have a brief for Facebook, and it does seem that what we (perhaps falsely) think of as "mob rule" is more prevalent in social media than face-to-face.

[1] https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/21/3093/

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/social-media-becom...

mark_l_watson• 8 years ago

After reading his books Deep Work and Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You, I feel like Cal Newport has become sort-of a guru for me, not pure computer science, but the larger view of how to live a good life.

I am sharing this article with friends and family to maybe help them understand why I don’t want to use social media, rather, I want to talk on the phone, email directly, and travel to see people.

I manage a machine learning/AI team so I am not against technology, but technology truly needs to serve human needs.

SCdF• 8 years ago

Wasn't that memo a rhetorical device by the author to raise that kind of opinion (one he does not agree with) as a conversation point inside Facebook?

I don't like Facebook as much as the next person, but being willing to write things in that style and get discussions going sounds really healthy to me.

avree• 8 years ago

Somewhat unrelated, but it's quite aggravating to see the memo-writer (and the author of this article, by extension), using "de facto" good instead of "ipso facto" good.

If you choose to use flowery expressions, particularly Latin ones, you should at least be accurate.

cubano• 8 years ago

From this perspective, the user is merely a pawn in the game of revenue projections and market expectations.

I've been in the IT/software game since the mid 80's, where fresh out of engineering college I started my first software company, writing add-ons to BBS's in C using btreive as our database and I'm not sure if a "user" has ever been anything but...

rout39574• 8 years ago

I respect your profit orientation, but it's disingenuous to suggest it's the only path.

Next door to you, the folks in what we're currently calling the FLOSS community were trying to arm and empower those same users, instead of constraining them.

oflannabhra• 8 years ago

The quote from the memo that really irritates me is

The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products.

This is such a load of crap. The natural state of the world is actually very connected (whether we consciously assent to it or not), and specifically, humans are one of the most social species. Humans have deep societal and psychological needs for interpersonal interaction.

What Facebook does through "engagement" is replace richly rewarding and deeply needed face-to-face interaction with a veneer of connection. Actually, Facebook's effects are even more insidious--it addicts us to a "feeling" of connectedness with dopamine hits, which prevents us from even realizing we aren't getting what we need.

Facebook is not a community, it is software. Software can enhance what is in the real world (ie, real community), but it cannot replace it. Zuckerberg's new world order of community is a mirage, and cults have been built on lesser falsehoods. The article's link between that mirage and the modernism that gave rise to communism is not theater.

nickysielicki• 8 years ago

This is not so different from the arguments behind what motivated the Unabomber. One key difference is that Ted Kaczynski saw it as necessarily political.

People should read Kaczynski's manifesto. It's rough at parts, but it's really an interesting perspective.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo...

clarkevans• 8 years ago

It's a fundamentally pessimistic essay, offering no workable solution to the articulated challenges other than a complete rejection of technology.

buvanshak2• 8 years ago

It's a fundamentally pessimistic essay...

Why is future optimistic by default? By the way humanity is progressing, do you see any reason for hope? Do you disagree that we are in a technological runaway?

131012• 8 years ago

An ideology that requires killing random people always seems flawed to me.

Andre_Wanglin• 8 years ago

This is a nonsensical comment. He used bombs to gain the notoriety to get published in the New York Times.

manjushri3• 8 years ago

Is there a prominent ideology that hasn't lead to murders?

3pt14159• 8 years ago

I read it long ago and came to the conclusion that he was essentially right with how he framed the problem but the solution he picked out of the two alternatives was the wrong one. Running away from technological progress into the wilderness somewhere might be good for you but the only long term solution that is good for everyone is to alter humanity to be better adapted to its new environment.

Though there are probably a multitude of ways of doing it, the two that stick out as most likely / agreeable to all are Gattaca and AI + Cyborg. Though I could also see strong AI either just replacing humanity[0] or simulating / uploading the minds of the good humans and merging with them.

[0] I'm not convinced that this would be a bad thing, a hypothetical AI that comes with all of the benefits of humanity with none of the rape or war might just be better ethically in a global sense.

ionised2• 8 years ago

Got to the bit about 'leftists' and then had to roll my eyes and close the page.

It's stereotypical generalising of entire segments of the population into a straw-man caricature he can rage and rant against.

Honestly, I believe anyone who still thinks in traditional terms of left/right politically, isn't adding anything worthwhile to the discussion.

ponderatul• 8 years ago

Again, reminds me of http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html.

It's funny, even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal started I made a presentation at a local meetup, comparing Zuckerberg to Escobar. The title is more attention-bait than anything, but I found it especially relevant in current times.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mrR4tE7KSjpy7U4NnBqH...

common_• 8 years ago

Facebook and Zuckerberg will tell you that they disagree with Boz's comments.

He wasn't fired.

He wasn't demoted.

He was promoted.

His responsibilities were expanded.

If that's not a silent endorsement, a message to the rank and file about where the company's values stand, I don't know what is.

sjg007• 8 years ago

I agree. They claim that the Boz memo was effectively a straw man argument. However, after reading the memo in total and the fact that they subsequently deleted it does not give the appearance of impropriety to that claim. As an organization I don't believe Facebook had any corporate values outlining their position either.

sigi45• 8 years ago

Have the same thought quite often when google io is happening.

It was and is still typical to be shown something cool and useless which works perfect in San Francisco and thats it.

I think only 1 or 3 years ago, they talked about google services which have a light version so countries like india or areas with low bandwith can use them properly.

Not shit sherlock.

Android got bigger and fatter than after ages they announce go.

Nexus Q? 'this device has high end cpu etc. and for only 300$' and it should be in every room? Srsly?

The mindset of an silicon valley developer who has everything on hand, trusts his/her environment etc. is a very unique experience. I would compare it to an university. You working and living with your pals. After all lots of conflict potential things are gone: No one has to clean up, no one has to make meals, there is probably no theft and everyone earns more than enough money.

Than there is google io and protesters outside.

While google has an huge impact, facebook only does data handling. And it has such a huge responsibility which shouldn't be even allowed on our earth. But who are those pepoloe who build it? Those are anyone and noone. You don't need to pass any ethical moral test to become part of it.

spacenick88• 8 years ago

disturbingly

JasonFruit2• 8 years ago

Again with blaming Facebook and Google. Why not blame ourselves?

We aren't acting as adults: we can't look at something shiny and say, "I want it, but it would be bad for me, so I'll leave it alone." At least some of the dangers of these things are obvious: unnatural levels and kinds of sharing, contrived, manipulative reactions, vast potential for privacy violation and misuse of data, and tons of time lost without compensation of any kind. Why don't we all refuse?

I didn't, and I should have. I've recently dropped Facebook entirely and am paring back my reliance on Google. Looking through my Facebook data download, I'm shocked at my foolishness, especially in the first couple years: I was old enough to know better! I hope I've learned my lesson, and that others do too, before we seriously mess up our society --- if we haven't already.

ahel• 8 years ago

Adults aren't infallible nor manipulation resistant just because they are adults. It's true that we can do better but criminalising semi-aware victims doesn't help. Bias and gamification and manipulation and curiosity and herd mentality are a thing.

JasonFruit2• 8 years ago

Note that I wrote, "acting as adults;" there's a difference between being an adult and acting as one.

nyxxie• 8 years ago

Disturbing High Modernism? More like disturbing high mindedness. The author here is making claims that can be summarized to "I don't like Facebook and it's different from how we've usually done things, therefore we need to get rid of Facebook-like services."

The author, in other words, is trying to argue that, because they think that other people can't handle Facebook's "frictionless communication", no one should be able to use it because it'll do something bad to society. What that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only claims that "tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and hyperbolic outrage" has increased on these platforms, and implies that they think this outweighs the positives these platforms have also provided or that this is a change relative to how a world without Facebook would operate.

The author makes no concrete or quantifiable argument in this piece, only parrots the opinions of others they consider authorities. This text is the same sort of technopanic rhetoric that was used by luddites to oppose things like the printing press and electricity. We can argue about the ethics behind Facebook's method of funding itself, but the author here is conflating that with an argument against free communication.

_bxg12• 8 years ago

What that bad thing is isn't clearly specified, instead the author only claims that "tribalism, authoritarianism, extremism, disinformation, and hyperbolic outrage" has increased on these platforms

[gestures broadly to the western world in 2018]

DanAndersen• 8 years ago

Anyone curious about the "High Modernism" referred to in this article should definitely read Scott Alexander's review of "Seeing Like a State" [0]. It sums up some of the attitudes of the High Modernists involved in things like architecture and urban planning in the 20th century:

First, there can be no compromise with the existing infrastructure. It was designed by superstitious people who didn’t have architecture degrees, or at the very least got their architecture degrees in the past and so were insufficiently Modern. The more completely it is bulldozed to make way for the Glorious Future, the better.
Second, human needs can be abstracted and calculated. A human needs X amount of food. A human needs X amount of water. A human needs X amount of light, and prefers to travel at X speed, and wants to live within X miles of the workplace. These needs are easily calculable by experiment, and a good city is the one built to satisfy these needs and ignore any competing frivolities.
Third, the solution is the solution. It is universal. The rational design for Moscow is the same as the rational design for Paris is the same as the rational design for Chandigarh, India. As a corollary, all of these cities ought to look exactly the same. It is maybe permissible to adjust for obstacles like mountains or lakes. But only if you are on too short a budget to follow the rationally correct solution of leveling the mountain and draining the lake to make your city truly optimal.
Fourth, all of the relevant rules should be explicitly determined by technocrats, then followed to the letter by their subordinates. Following these rules is better than trying to use your intuition, in the same way that using the laws of physics to calculate the heat from burning something is better than just trying to guess, or following an evidence-based clinical algorithm is better than just prescribing whatever you feel like.
Fifth, there is nothing whatsoever to be gained or learned from the people involved (eg the city’s future citizens). You are a rational modern scientist with an architecture degree who has already calculated out the precise value for all relevant urban parameters. They are yokels who probably cannot even spell the word architecture, let alone usefully contribute to it. They probably make all of their decisions based on superstition or tradition or something, and their input should be ignored For Their Own Good.

The result being, of course, the creation of hideous planned cities that no one wanted to live in.

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like...

bobthechef• 8 years ago

What does it mean to "connect everyone"? It seems like a meaningless statement. Not only is it not feasible in the literal sense, but wholly undesirable.

gringoDan• 8 years ago

This reminds me of the religion of "dataism" found in Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus. We're moving towards a world where the free flow of information is valued above all else.

This religion was foisted upon us...I think we need to consider more whether or not we choose to accept it.

Bill Gates's notes on Homo Deus: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Homo-Deus

arikr• 8 years ago

What's your name / anywhere I can read more from you? Your HN comments seem pretty interesting. Feel free to send me an email arikrockefeller@gmail.com

ssivark• 8 years ago

Carlos Bueno expresses the general problem brilliantly: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/05/09/priest-guru-nerd-king/

(Excerpts below)

Corporations do not want to legislate, let alone enforce, more of humanity’s behavior than they need to. They have better things to do. The universe isn’t going to dent itself. But because they are outpacing traditional governments in their ability to predict & shape human behavior, they walk right into stupidly impossible situations over and over again. Software isn’t eating the world so much as larping it.

The governance problem is not about dealing with governments as such, but about accidentally adopting or creating arenas of human behavior that you then have to govern, with “externalities” that don’t remain external. Starting a ride-sharing service? Congratulations, you’re now an urban planner. Want to disrupt shipping logistics? Get ready to do your part to curb terrorism and slavery.

The problem of governance arises wherever “move fast and break things” runs right into an older saying: “you broke it, you bought it”.

Sometimes things blow up squarely on your turf. Think about what it takes to enforce a social network “real names” policy across hundreds of cultures. One account per person, one person per account, authentic names as used in real life. Zuck’s buddy Calvin can post pictures of himself holding pounds of weed but he can’t use the name he’s known by, Snoop Dogg.

The high modernism of social media companies

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