Open Thread - 05-14-2015
Good Morning, I would like to apologize for my words that showed hostility and bad, negative judgements towards some member's comments of this community two days ago. I reflected on myself and see how much I have done wrong. Let me say that I try to do my best so that it will not happen again. I ask to forgive me for my words and hope you can do so one day in the future.
Now this is a another day and a new start. Let me try this again: How are you today? Please share whatever is on your mind.
I read a book and I just like to quote some things out of it. The book's title is "Terms of Service" by Jacob Silverman caught my interest.
Introduction:
Instant messages between Mark Zuckerberg and a friend after Facebook launched (Feb. 4, 2004):
Zuck: Yeah, if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard...
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
Friend of Zuck: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it
Zuck: I don't know why
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Facebook has today 1.44 billion monthly active users (March 31, 2015). (All dumb fucks?) That's about 22 percent of the world population.
25 years after the World Wide Web was created, communications has become synonymous with surveillance. The only thing not recorded is the chatter of two persons spending a moment together. ...
In recent years surveillance has become an inextricable part of our culture, from tech companies' lofty pronouncements that, by observing their users so closely, they can understand them and anticipate their needs, to the hundred of millions of us engaging in mutual surveillance, crafting permanent online identities that allow us to see and be seen. This is the culture of social media, which has become a catchall term, describing more than just Facebook, Twitter and other big social networks in which millions of people broadcast to one another simultaneously and trade in the currency of attention....
The internet is being thoroughly socialized, which is to say thoroughly monitored, whether by another human being or one of the obiquitous tracking systems that supply data to social networks, advertisers and market researchers. Social media is the number one activity on the Web. ...
Shareability, and the drive to rack up likes and other metrics, guides the agendas of magazine editors and the budgets of marketers....
Sentiment analysis - the mining of social-network data to determine the attitudes of individuals or whole populations - help intelligence analysts learn where potential extremists are becoming radicalized. Advertisers collect social-media data and form consumer profiles with tens of thousands of pieces of information. Large corporations use social-media data to befriend customers, offer personalized customer services and churn out friendly propaganda. Reporters publish breaking information on Twitter before they do in their own papers. Far-flung friends and families stay in touch, share news, fall in love, argue about politics and ponder the trivial items of the day - all in what is essentially public view... The fullness of our lives is confirmed by our place in these networks and by the size of our audience.
I share, therefore I am - more interesting, more socialable, more desirable, more myself.
Social media is also part of an utopian vision that a number of major tech executives share. It is the means by which we will create better, more equitable societies, where problems will be solved by the harnessing of ever more personal data. ...
Google's chairman Eric Schmidt describes it:
"It's a future where we don't forget anything... In this new future you are never lost ... We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time .. you're never lonely ... you're never bored ...you're never get out of ideas".Cell phone sensors, search tools, GPS and the like will provide some of the data that will inform this future. But social media will lead the vanguard, trailed by personal information, thoughts, feelings, reflections, raw data that users provide, whether we like it or not.
It will be made up of the informationalized version of ourselves, as every aspect of human affairs becomes digitized, tracked, circulated, mined for patterns.
The paradigm of social media is one that Silicon Valley would like to extend to society at large: a technocracy of benevolent, but total surveillance. In this kind of society, profits flow to platform owners, not those writing tweet and sharing You Tube videos.
Ok, to be continued next time. Disclosure: I don't use facebook and boycott Zuckerberg as best as I can. I decided to stop twittering, as I only retweet anyhow and it's superfluous. My only interactions on the Web were with dailykos and now for a couple of weeks with you. Otherwise I search with google and read news articles and watch news video clips, interviews and occasionally a documentary. That's it. (And again I like to say sorry that you got my concentrated emotional outbreak yesterday poured on you. I guess I should hang out at other places to dilute my appearance here. I am a kind of no-hang-out person though).
Next Thursday: "The Ideology of Social"
"And who would have suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more, it became less and less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which they were applied?" (Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron "The California Ideology")
So, let's share ... 
PS: Yesterday Joe had in his EB on dailykos two interviews by Chris Hedges of Robert Sheer. They are related to the issue of surveillance through communication online. If you haven't listened to them and have enough time, I recommend them wholeheartedly.
Sheer and Hedges: They know everything about you - 1/7)
Sheer and Hedges: They know everything about you - 2/7)
Comments
Good morning, just a link to another article I just saw
Good Morning, I just read an interesting article on Common Dreams that takes a look at Facebook's Internet.org initiative. Global Internet Activists Give Thumbs Down to Facebook’s Internet.org - by Tim Karr
And therein lies the problem.
I have a doctor's appointment and won't stay right now, but check in later. Have a good day, all.
Joe Shikspack just listed in his EB post here another article
that one should read in the context to that OT.
The Feudalism of Facebook: New Pay-to-Play News Feed as Indy Media Killer - 'The basic problem is that Facebook is trying to become the Internet'
Wow, just read the first couple of sentences, but it brings together what was mentioned in the article above, in much clearer terms.
Morning mimi.
Thanks for the open thread. Don't sweat the small stuff. I don't know who came up with that first but it's
a good saying to live by.
Like right now, my septic tank is overflowing and the drain fields might be in need of maintenance but
who cares right, it's only money!! And work.
I did facebook for about a year or so after being invited to a group formed from Daily Kos people. It was interesting
and I admit to getting hooked up to my 40 year high school reunion because of Facebook. I wonder if they would have
got a hold of me if I wasn't on Facebook at the time.
Anyway, after reading some of the stuff about Facebook, how the CIA is involved with it, how it uses social engineering,
how it's owned by one of the evil billionaires (I don't differentiate), etc., I decided to quit. Haven't been back since.
Hi Al,
I had a facebook account once, because one of my nephews just could only be reached over facebook, he had not even an email address. I found that so awful, I never contacted him. He didn't either. The strange thing is I observe more and more people not communicating, though it would be extremely easy with cellphone and internet. Kind of the opposite of what you would expect. Then I got mixed up with two accounts. After that, I didn't know how to delete it, then I learned you can't basically delete it, only letting it die out. Constantly they announced something has changed. Many sites force you to log into them only over facebook, which means I think that as soon as you do it, your supposedly deleted facebook account is activated again from the graveyard. Got messed up with all those new google+ and one accounts. I just don't care for all of it. Luckily I have no other family members, who demand my facebook presence and don't use it either for anything of importance.
I watched how people at my job searched extensively in social media when a new guy was hired. I learned from a very nice woman (a kossack) that she regularly "controls" her son's facebook account to make sure he "doesn't ruin his life" with what he says and post there. I never went to see what my son posts on facebook. It feels to me like intruding his privacy. But then that's exactly what it is not, not a private place.
I watched a couple of Zuckerberg interviews when I was still working and can only say, even if all what is described about Facebook were not true, I still don't "like" this young man. That's just the personal view I have aside from all the justifiable critical view points one can have over the technology and platforms he built.
Septic tanks, we had one when I was a child. I remember some services came every year or so and pumped them out. It "stinks". Good luck with getting them to work properly again.
Everybody's falling for the bullshit that Bush create ISIS,
and applauding some college student who stood up and said that to the war criminal's brother. .
It wasn't Bush, it was Obama. ISIS is Obama. Sure, the manufactured sectarian war between the Sunni's
and Shiites was started under Bush, but the metamorphosis into ISIS came under Obama.
Another red herring for the Democrats to help them maintain their fairy tale about war criminal Obama.
Good afternoon
Still getting around to calling my congressperson sometime today. The real fight against the TTP & TTIP is in the House of Representatives. Give yours a call! We can still kill these bad trade deals dead. If they're a Teabagger, all the better. Hell, it might even be easier to get them to oppose it.
Find Your Representative- House.gov
I use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc regularly. As a military veteran and traveler, I've made friends and professional contacts all over the planet. It'd be nice to call my mates, but my long distance bills would be pretty rough (especially int'l calls!). It's a necessary evil in my case.
that's the same for my son,
most of his interactions on facebook are with former military friends and other friends he got to know through work. I guess people can't do without it anymore.
I am still inclined to use twitter to follow certain writers.
I am still too insecure to call my representative
I guess I had to write a text out before I would try to talk freely on the phone. I think I rather read it to them, but that's not what I think I should do either. Sigh.
I used to write out
what I was going to say when I called my 'representatives' Now I just call and tell them Do not vote for this. Don't let them intimidate you as that's really what they want to do. Wyden is my senator and never even bothers with callers he just reroutes your call to a machine that rings and rings into the void. . Merkely my other senator is the opposite. His aides answer and actually talk to you about your concerns. It still makes me kind of nervous at first but it like stage fright goes away once you get a human on the other end.
I'm not counting on the thing being stopped
it's a bit pathetic with how the Senate Dems "stood up to the President!!!" for 2 days. I think the intended effect is we're supposed to thank them for whatever "protections" they're passing. Instead I hate them more than ever. I think back to how they gave away the store in order to secure atemporary unemployment insurance extension.
but I hope you're right that the House will stop it. I'll be shocked though.
Good morning mimi
and everybody. A month or so ago I joined facebook. The reason I joined was because I am doing marketing for our btob company. I resisted for years but it does help me research potential clients and companies that might use our services. . So I guess I'm a stalker or as my son says Mom your a spammer'. I also joined LinkedIn. Whew. They both freak me out as I'm basically an introverted anti-social person. I'm married to a extrovert who is really social. He is a musician with a band that plays clubs locally. So he uses fb for that and it works really well for promoting his and other local musician's following and club dates etc.
I quickly found that my facebook account was no place to be doing business. We are going to develop our business page on facebook as our business is all electronic and on the net. I do enjoy communicating with my family on fb as they are all wired into social medium.. I also have 'friends' there who were kossack's that left or were banned and I like their posts. I also find it useful for local activist events like marches, city meetings to go and environmental/gardening and OWS associations.
It sure sucks you in and burns your time. I'm not a dumb fuck but after two months of facebook I can see that it might just eat your brain as it is a constant stream of info and blather. I haven't given them any info other then my name and books I like. They keep telling me to update my profile, They kept asking me if I went to Anitoch College my husband's alma mater so I put that in for a giggle. I was looking at an ex-kossack's profile the other day and he had put 'None of your beeswax' for their prying questions about his 'status' or 'life events'. I had put married for my status but I entered it in the wrong place and fb announced that I had gotten married on the date I entered it. My family all congratulated me for getting married and got a good laugh. Editing your data is almost impossible so I just ignore their prying.
I think social media on the whole does not create real community. It gives the illusion of belonging to a community but keeps people plugged in to the point where they never look up from their devises and aren't interested in the community and life they physically habituate.The format alone makes it hard to really chat or communicate on any real level.
As for Google it's the monkey's paw. Here's a great article written by Julian Assange in 2013, regarding Google. It's a book review of The New Digital Age written by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. It's a really good read and not too long or technical.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles...
The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas......
The authors offer an expertly banalized version of tomorrow’s world: the gadgetry of decades hence is predicted to be much like what we have right now — only cooler. “Progress” is driven by the inexorable spread of American consumer technology over the surface of the earth. Already, every day, another million or so Google-run mobile devices are activated. Google will interpose itself, and hence the United States government, between the communications of every human being not in China (naughty China). Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unaffected or only faintly perturbed.
“What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. '
Yes, I remember the discussions around the
banality of "Don't be Evil". It even made me go to an event at which Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg had a "townhall" (in a church though) discussion over their new book "How Google Works". The discussion was to me not very enlightening, sitting on technological stuff in the dark. But the impression of Mr. Schmidt's "slick humbleness and technological guru down-to-earth demeanor" and his answers to hard questions being "We will decide that from case to case" was enough for me being so banal and evil to not read his book. Though I bought it. I am so undereducated and behind in reading that other stuff is more important to me. My hope is that the proper usage of the google and other platforms becomes so confusing (and dangerous too) that the masses just will leave it behind. What scared me the most that at my former job (TV news production) ALL producers and correspondents said, that a world without using google is impossible in their job. How in the world can we accept such dependency?
I could imagine one would strictly have a facebook page for one's business. If one can keep non-professional and non-business related chatter out of it. As I have never gotten into it, I don't know if it's possible. My niece had a facebook page that was strictly a promotion page for her art projects and more or less a CV sort of thingy. She never posted any other things on there. One thing in the book I was quoting from in the OT I liked was that the author said, most people have a facebook presence as soon as they are born (sometimes before that showing a big belly of their mother being pregnant) and long after their death, as most people leave facebook pages of the deceised online and don't erase them. That just tells me that Zuckerberg had found out how we all achieve immortality.
Can you live with your own immortality? The idea kind of kills me...
All in all, as I have nobody, who knows how to use all that stuff, I am too old to be patient enough to search for all the itty, nitty stuff on those platforms, apps, clouds, drop boxes etc. Well, I pay a price for it too, can't work "online" well together with folks who use it. I simply don't want anymore to learn anything that I don't absolutely need. My kind of passive resistance ... being lazy.
Thank you so much for your great and detailed comment.
I'm putting together
a fb business page and a linked in business page where it is separate from politics and my rowdy friends and teenage members of the family. I'm lucky that way most of the people I know and am friends with in real life are not religious or right wing loonies.
Everything you want to know about why you hate Washington DC?
Everything You Hate About Washington Confirmed by One Simple Job Change - The revolving door is alive and well in the age of Obama. Here’s the latest example from the Department of Energy.— By Douglas Birch and Alexander Cohen for the Center for Public Integrity
Long story full of details. May be too much. But still if one can read it through to the end, one ends up being amazed and enlightened.
On my phone, 4 am, typing with 1 finger
So this will be brief. Just want to say hello to everyone. I haven't been around much anywhere. I am busy, sick with a really bad cold/flu, taking care of life and avoiding politics and spending so much time online. There's a real world out there, and I plan to spend more time in it. Summer is on the way, and I don't to miss it.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I'll be thinking of you, dk
Just starting to get to know you.
Seems to me we are hyper-aware folks, We have a Moral Compass. We are the advanced ones; arrived early with the awful ability to see the truth, while everyone else clings to leaders who feed then lying narratives and denial. Seeing truth is burden? People and politics fall away, and you are alone. But your moral compass won't let you slip easily back into denial.
Ran across some quotes today that you can take and contemplate. They bring me a comfort, because I know that others shared my gifts and insights and saw clearly what it means:
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Thank you for the message and the quotes, Pluto.
I am juggling and trying to reorder some priorities. I won't be totally gone, but I can't stay glued to a screen all summer like I do all winter. Michigan has about 20 minutes of summer, and zap, here comes the cold freaking winds from the north. Between work and blogging, I just have to find a way to get outside and smile. I'll still be around, hopefully just not as much.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
To quote...
from the Forrest Gump movie, "Run, dk, run!" Have fun, the older we get, the faster those damn summers go by!
quotes
Pluto, I see you saved the best one for last. Wow.