Google Is Not What It Seems
wikileaks.org
wikileaks.org
20 years ago, I imagined that access to endless amounts of information would accelerate global enlightenment. Now, new conspiracy theories seem to come out almost daily. And, they quickly get passed around carelessly, especially by my family and friends. It seems too much information just causes a lot of panic and paranoia.
He could very well be right. But, I only wish that there were alternative analyses to consider.
1. Almost anything can be addictive, including information.
2. Behaviors become part of an addiction by being used to numb or avoid emotional/physical pain, which requires us to ignore our own needs (assuming unpleasant emotions are expressions of needs going unmet).
3. Most cultures don't view things from the perspective of fundamental human needs.
4. We largely suck at addiction treatment. 5. We're living in the Information Age.
Therefore, we are living in a world where an addictive thing that's also necessary is so accessible, it's free or negligibly cheap most places in first-world countries, and we're largely clueless about how to deal with it.
I share the prediction you made 20 years ago & think we're on the brink of figuring out how to tackle things. I'm just starting to work on my personal attempt at it: fusing mindfulness with design thinking to create tech that doesn't disconnect us.
"This is how the 'real world' works" Another bs argument. Yes. Those who have been paying attention already know what Assange is talking about. That does not excuse Google in any way.
"Don't be evil" is a pretty low bar to set. And Google is so corrupted at this point they can't even "live up to their founder's original intentions".
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=assange%20google%20seems&type=...
Also highly misleading :).
"Whether it is being just a company or “more than just a company,” Google’s geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy agenda of the world’s largest superpower. As Google’s search and internet service monopoly grows, and as it enlarges its industrial surveillance cone to cover the majority of the world’s population, rapidly dominating the mobile phone market and racing to extend internet access in the global south, Google is steadily becoming the internet for many people. Its influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history."
Google has a foreign affair agenda and close ties with the State Dept.
The IP sections are controversial but also expected. The fact is countries like the US make most of their money on IP. Its workers spend most of their time generating new ideas, designs, media, inventions, new products and services, etc.
Although we often complain that manufacturing and assembly has moved elsewhere, the fact is that the most profitable parts have stayed here. I hate the DMCA and I hate how patents and copyrights impinge on small company innovation. but, at the same time, without IP protections, we'd basically be giving away our hard work for free. How would we get paid?
From a tactical political perspective, if the TPP doesn't happen then most Westerner observers expect China to lead a regional trade pact. That would bind Asian countries more strongly, politically, to China. So from a realpolitik perspective, the answer again would be, "yes, please".
Both of those are reasons why a company like Google and a social progressive/free market politician like Hillary Clinton would instinctively support the TPP.
By contrast to the pros, the cons with the TPP are much more nuanced and specific. With trade pacts, usually you take the good with the bad; that there are negative aspects to the TPP wouldn't normally be a good reason to oppose it. However, given that U.S. state and federal governments have abandoned support for manufacturing specifically, and blue collar jobs more generally, despite decades of economists unanimously making it clear that government MUST make HUGE investments to mitigate the costs of economic dislocation, we've arrived at a point in the U.S. where it's no longer politically viable (and for good reason) to continue to promote free trade at all costs.
So this is why you'd see a politician like Hillary make an about face (sincerely or opportunistically, for w'ever it mattered) while a company like Google would continue to promote it. Hillary has to respond to the political environment, whereas on balance for a company like Google the TPP still makes sense.
You don't need clues. The writing is in huge lettering all over the place. All you have to do is stay current on modern events. Although, to understand the full story here you need to have been staying current since at least the 1990s, when the WTO and NAFTA came into being.
Liberal and conservative thinkers, academics and businessmen, mostly travel in the same circles. People like Hillary Clinton have been part of these circles for decades. Nouveau riche like Schmidt invariably gravitate to the same circles. Anybody can join these circles--either get rich, become a successful politician, or become a widely published academic. But there's no active conspiracy going on between these people anymore than engineers conspire when forming a startup--they merely share the same ideas, which have been roughly the consensus view on liberal politics and economics for some time, and desire to be at the forefront wrt applying those ideas. The TPP is just happening near an inflection point in modern political and economic thinking, and it's catching alot of people off balance.
Then people like Assange or other critics come along and "expose" this stuff like it's been hidden the whole time. Um, no....
Just keep a regular subscription to the New York Times, Financial Times, or similar paper for several years and you'll eventually see the shared mindset emerge. Stay away from fringe publications (which the Wall Street Journal is increasingly becoming), because they tend to be contrarian and typically serve to confuse. At the end of the day it's not about being wrong or right; you don't read other people's opinions to decide what's right or wrong. (Nor do you need them to be able to critique.) Rather, it's like following the stock market--to keep track of the ideas ruling the world you track the principle market in those ideas. They're all out in the open. The side-shows are distractions. And nobody is going to be able to predict the inflection points; anybody selling that is selling snake oil.
I think the hacker crowd (including Google) should be strongly opposing #2, and maybe also #3 for making it hard to object to #2 without objecting to the whole treaty, but #1 sounds like a thing that many reasonable people are likely to support, yeah.
More importantly, almost nobody outside our community really cares about those IP restrictions, whether or not they matter. And from Google's perspective those restrictions are definitely a net benefit short- and medium-term, whether or not the dire predictions from the EFF pan out. Google makes their money from advertising; the bulk of people going onto the internet the world over do so to consume modern media; and stronger, US-like IP protections in other markets will accelerate the growth of media consumption by making American media companies more comfortable expanding and easing digital distribution overseas. And for better or worse American media companies are so huge and sophisticated they have the capability to induce tremendous amounts of consumption. More eyeballs spending more time on the Internet is more money for Google, period.
Our community also opposes the TPP because it will enforce private mediation of many trade disputes arising from domestic laws. I also dislike this aspect. In addition to being an engineer I also took a mid-career break to go to law school, so I have uncharacteristically informed opinions in this regard. But from a 10,000' perspective, this aspect is also unlikely to be significant short- or medium-term. At worse those mediations would generally favor U.S. companies, although going strictly by historical numbers they're not yet as unfair as domestic arbitration. Theoretically they'll hamper legislative autonomy, but trade agreements by their very nature will do that because the terms can't be rescinded unilaterally without international repercussions. Again, in the short- and medium- term they'll regularize business proceedings in some legally less developed jurisdictions. Long story short, it's all a net benefit for somebody like Google or basically any American corporation.
The reason why TPP is becoming increasingly less viable is because most of the gains will accrue to media and so-called "IP" companies, and almost all the costs will be borne by blue collar labor. Because the U.S. has weak and ineffective mechanisms for mitigating dislocation, the TPP is likely to increase real or at least perceived economic and political inequality. Significant opposition has not arisen because of the technical reasons that concern the hacker community, although enforced mediation is being used rather cynically (but understandably) to rally support from other interest groups.
As for secrecy, all trade agreements are negotiated secretly and always have been. You don't want everybody's finger in the pie, otherwise nothing would ever get done, especially in our modern political atmosphere where we suffer from paralysis because interest groups have forgotten how to compromise. And, yes, companies get to stick their finger in the pie on occasion because whether you like it or not, it's unrealistic to think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate has economic interests equal to you or I. Once upon a time some non-corporate interests had a seat at the table; specifically, trade unions. But American conservatives and businesses have substantially diminished their economic, and thus their political, influence.
As politics has become more polarized, and as the influence of non-corporate interests has waned, so have negotiations become moderately less transparent. But many of those document "leaks" were no accident, and the only revelations were in fine print, which despite all the hand-wringing will only matter at the margins. The broad details were always known publicly, or at least to anybody paying attention. CEOs gossip like anybody else; anything a company knew would have been easily discoverable by a decent journalist. (Yet another reason to pay for a real newspaper subscription, or to otherwise financially support the journalist community, if you can.)
Finally, Google isn't part of the hacker crowd. Even if they were, they're so large that their interests could be such that even if they were trying to "not be evil" they could still reasonably support the TPP. Nonetheless, for better or worse they and similar companies represent the "techies" at the negotiating table, not the EFF. And that's just the reality of the situation, whether we like or not.