Es gibt heute keine Sprache – es gibt eine Sprachlosigkeit und eine Ratlosigkeit. Der Sprache wird heute die Sprache genommen. Auf der einen Seite gibt es einen ungeheuren Lärm, einen Kommunikationslärm, auf der anderen Seite eine unheimliche Stummheit. Und diese Stummheit unterscheidet sich vom Schweigen. Schweigen ist sehr beredt. Schweigen hat eine Sprache. Stille ist auch beredt. Stille kann auch Sprache sein. Aber der Lärm und die Stummheit sind ohne Sprache. Es gibt nur sprachlose, lärmende Kommunikation, das ist ein Problem. Heute gibt es nicht einmal Wissen, sondern nur Information. Wissen ist etwas ganz anderes als Information. Wissen und Wahrheit klingen heute sehr veraltet. Wissen hat auch eine ganze andere Zeitstruktur. Es spannt sich zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Und die Zeitlichkeit der Information ist die Gegenwart, das Präsens. Wissen beruht auch auf der Erfahrung. Ein Meister verfügt über Wissen. Heute leben wir mit einem Terror des Dilettantismus.
— Byung-Chul Han im Zeit-Interview
Tag: Internet Finds
Limits to Growth
In 1972 the Club of Rome commissioned a study on growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion which was eventually published as a book called “The Limits to Growth.” They simulated different scenarios predicting what would happen until 2100 depending on whether humanity takes decisive action on environmental and resource issues. 40 years later the world pretty much matches the worst prediction.
Laniakea
In the wake of the newly-released Laniakea paper I was inspired. 😀
Humbled and in awe
Just from the images he sawOf the pearls of light
Making way through the dark and voidA sign, though abstract
Reminding him to not detractThose mindful can tell
الله أعلى و أجل
https://youtu.be/rENyyRwxpHo
Leave the Clean-up to ISIS and Boko
https://twitter.com/kuebra/status/503896716186501120
Radley Balko on the Militarization of America’s Police Force
VICE talks about why people fear/hate the police more and more, how the militarization of police and the increased use of force are signs that feedback loops are set up to make things worse. 🙁
https://youtu.be/uTWy8tjTiTw
Someone Ate This
Someone Ate This is a great collection of bad taste and horrific laziness in food preparation … 😀
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/86554707126/yes-all-things-i-associate-with-a-kraft-single-on
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/87446400439/if-youre-confused-about-whether-to-eat-this-with
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/86339378489/i-appreciate-the-attempt-at-fancy-plating-but-it
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/86317788836/crap-i-forgot-i-invited-30-people-over-for-a
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/86647480714/ugghhhh-kill-it-with-fire
http://someoneatethis.tumblr.com/post/94776189565/i-kinda-feel-like-someone-made-this-just-to-get-on
Monitor Activity in your OS X Dock
Just found a nice trick on TUAW on how to make the OS X Activity Monitor show graphs in place of its app icon.
Less “Social Media,” More Passive Data Collection, Yay!
- remove the social aspect of sharing, just track people silently all the time, it’s easier anyway
- why bother with user-generated content, just feed them follow “experts” and feed them
tipsads
Among the great features of the revamped app are:
- tracking your location all the time
- virtually no privacy controls
- virtually no way to interact
- suggestions almost solely based on
paid advertisementsexpert opinions and tips - promise of more targeted ads outside of Foursquare
ArsTechnica has a nice quote on this:
This is the cleverest portion of the service’s revamp: make customers feel like they are sharing nothing, when in reality they are sharing everything. Passive information sharing and collection without the social friction—why didn’t anyone think of this before? The tragic, realistic answer is most likely “battery life.”
— Casey Johnston, ArsTechnica
Next Future Terrifying Technology Will Blow Your Mind
An awesome talk with Bruce Schneier and Julian Sanchez. Asking just the right questions and giving and eyeopening view into what is possible even with todays technology.
https://youtu.be/JbQeABIoO6A
Individual Mass Manipulation
There is great commentary on how and why Facebook’s infamous “emotion study” is unethical. The main point being that the researchers and Facebook violated the “informed consent” principle of research on humans.
There have been other “individual mass manipulation” studies. e.g. you could tip the outcome of close elections by manipulating search results. But manipulating the mood of people on a massive scale is “new.” Don’t get confused, I don’t mean it like “they try to influence what we’re thinking through TV and ads.” I mean individual manipulation. Different things are manipulated in varying amounts for everyone individually … basically anything that claims “to only show you the X most relevant to you” falls into this category (especially if they don’t offer a way out of the filter bubble).
But what should we do, now that we known we have the tools to enforce emotions? Why not actually press the “button of happiness“?
Imagine if Facebook could have a button which says “make the billion people who use Facebook each a little bit happier”. It’s quite hard to imagine a more effective, more powerful, cheaper way to make the world a little bit better than for that button to exist. I want them to be able to build the button of happiness. And then I want them to press it.
My dystopian senses tell me: it will be used, but not in the way suggested above. We can probably draw some conclusions from the fact that one of the authors’ work is funded by the DoD. Why would the DoD (or any military/government organization for that matter) fund anything useful to the general good of mankind?
I see three use cases manipulating emotions:
- “Protecting” friendly governments from “civil unrest” either by manipulating search results in favor of a friendly faction or by discrediting the opposing faction with false information.
- Trying to “topple” unfriendly governments
- Driving individuals into depression and/or suicide
Or to put it more eloquently:
… large corporations (and governments and political campaigns) now have new tools and stealth methods to quietly model our personality, our vulnerabilities, identify our networks, and effectively nudge and shape our ideas, desires and dreams.
[…]
I identify this model of control as a Gramscian model of social control: one in which we are effectively micro-nudged into “desired behavior” as a means of societal control. Seduction, rather than fear and coercion are the currency, and as such, they are a lot more effective. (Yes, short of deep totalitarianism, legitimacy, consent and acquiescence are stronger models of control than fear and torture—there are things you cannot do well in a society defined by fear, and running a nicely-oiled capitalist market economy is one of them).
I think netzpolitik.org put it best in their conclusion (German):
The problem that these kinds of experiments and the systems that actually enable them pose is not that they are illegal, creatively or intentionally evil. This isn’t the case even if it might feel like it.
Instead [the problem is] that they’re only a tiny step away from legitimate everyday practice. That they look a lot like ordinary ads. That they sit on top of an already-accepted construction of reality by non-transparent providers. That because of their scale and stealth they can be so efficiently and easily hidden. That they don’t devise our loss of control, but only exploit it.
The actual study: “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks” (PDF)