Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention
locusmag.com
locusmag.com
http://www.zdnet.com/article/cory-doctorow-says-fight-agains...
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/cory-doctorow-rejoins-eff...
Also watch the various youtube videos of his talks, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
I used to be, then I met him in person. I loved reading his stuff on BoingBoing. I caught him at a book signing at Siggraph in Vancouver one year. I bought his book, and waited in line, excited to talk to him. I asked him what I thought was an interesting question about the difference between print and digital copyrights, and how the laws should change for digital.
He was an absolute and utter jerk to me. He took one look at my badge that said "Disney" and started hurling sarcastic insults at me about my employer and suggesting my character was tarnished for working for them. I managed to ask my question and he blew it off completely as a non issue and acted like it was a stupid question. I said "thanks" and started walking away, and he called after me saying "tell those thieves at Disney I said hi." I don't care if he's interesting or right anymore. I still mildly wanted to read his book, but I haven't been able to. When I see it or read about him, the memory of that moment comes back to me. I wish I could go back to liking his writing and not having met him.
I literally can't imagine having said these things (at that particular Siggraph I spent several hours chatting with the WDI R&D people who were on the committee and had booked me in, and who were kind enough to give me a bunch of laser-cut HM merch they made just for me) and I have never to my recollection been deliberately rude to someone from Disney (likewise I try to take real pains to be kind to people who do me the honor of coming up for a book signing).
But if anything I said came across as anything like this, I apologize unreservedly. I can only imagine that some kind of horribly botched joke came out very wrong indeed and I am dismayed to learn I made such a poor impression. I hope to run into you at some future event and make a better one.
Thanks,
Cory
Thank you. I am happy to accept your apology and move on. I'm also happy to acknowledge that I could have mis-interpreted your comments, that you might have been joking or hungry or just in a bad mood then, who knows.
Separating the ideas from the personalities who express them is really important, especially nowadays when it's really easy to get glimpses of personalities online. You're not hurting anyone but yourself by allowing a bruised ego to get in the way of acquiring new ideas and knowledge.
Newton was a total jerk to anyone who he thought was dumber than him (everyone), in fact I read that his quote "... standing on the shoulders of giants." was actually a dig at a colleague who was short (in Bryson's Brief History of the World, I think).
I have this same conversation whenever talking about Taleb's work, where his ideas about risk and randomness are somehow conflated with his twitter persona. You can be a total asshole and still have good ideas, or you can have shitty ideas and be the nicest person around. Some of the nicest people you'll meet are in places where they'll shake your hand, look you in the eye, buy you a beer and then proceed to tell you how great a job our president is doing.
I also prefer when good ideas come from good people, but so long as their ideas aren't about how to treat other people (making themselves hypocrites) I say fuck 'em, better to take their ideas and be a better version of their proponent.
That said, I personally don't judge him too harshly for it. If you spend your whole life working and using your money to save the oceans and meet a representative for BP, I strongly suspect that images from the Gulf oil spill will pop up and the meeting will be very frosty. It comes with the territory, as people rarely do spend their whole life and worldly possessions unless they also have strong views on the issue. Its not uncommon to see such personalities to be founders of movements but at the same time be rather poor diplomats.
If Doctorow doesn't have the mental "executive control" we expect of adults, we need to be aware of it. This includes being ready to defend people he insults and to give him less opportunity for it.
The grandparent poster might actually be doing the hard labor of doing good within Disney, as are thousands of others. I contrast that with how easy it is to stand outside the castle (almost literally in Disney's sense) and throw stones at the walls. If GP is someone working for good within a bad organization (aren't a lot of us?) then I have respect for them. That is really hard, wearing work.
Anyway, on the sliding scale of judgement and forgiveness, just stating that I judge Doctorow more harshly than you and am less forgiving of his attacking a person for the behavior of one group they happen to be a member of.
If you are an Animator I get it they treat you well and it's a small industry. However, objectively they cause an immense amount of direct and indirect harm.
He is selling his writing. I do wonder how hard he'd stick to his copyright guns if nobody ever paid him for his ideas, and everybody copied them instead.
I have all my own reasons to not trust Disney, BTW, above and beyond their historical copyright violations or whatever. They shut down our research group on a whim during a management turnover because they couldn't see in Excel whether it was profitable. They closed the game studio I was working at on very little notice after making a billion dollars on the product we created, after years of overtime. I had left already and was unaffected, but a couple hundred people were suddenly trying to figure out how to feed their families.
That said, they also paid me relatively well, and I fed my family and worked on some fun projects. My family and extended family and friends all enjoyed free trips to Disneyland. As a parent, I do appreciate being able to trust Disney content around my kids.
Given that they are a global economic engine that supports millions of people, I can have my beefs, but it's hard to say that it's all bad. "Evil" is a black and white narrative that, ironically, is the kind of thinking that Disney has encouraged. These companies are made of people, almost all of whom are good and just trying to get by.
All large corporations are doing things that are not in the public interest. Calling out specific ones and claiming they're much worse than others is to misunderstand our economic system. Capitalism is the root cause of the immense amount of direct and indrect harm, at the same time it's the cause of an immense amount of wealth and economic stability.
In any case, even if some companies are bad, it's lame to be rude to strangers face to face.
Ehh, I really don't trust their content and consider it actively harmful see my other comment.
> fix anything from the inside
I have wondered about this, there are some really dark themes around cannibalism in the lion king just under the surface. Most animals talk, we still eat them. But, I think the whitewashing is still rather pervasive relative to the source material.
> "Evil" is a black and white narrative
'evil scale' is a useful shorthand for harm outside of simply outcomes aka an earthquake is harmful but not evil. However, simply referring to it as a continuum means it's not simply a black and white scale.
Disney promotes a harmful world view and perpetuates unreasonable expectations. It hooks into the same sort of cognitive dissonance that religions do, but by targeting young people it can propagate views without the need to be consistent with the real world. Now personally I elevate that harm because they are specificity targeting children.
Try reading the original Peter pan / Alice in wonderland etc etc and consider what about these stories are changed and for what reasons.
PS: It's also rather insidious, look at what older generations thought of childhood and compare it to today. If you dig into things like divorce rates it's not really specifically their fault, but myth really does inform people about human nature and prepare them for dealing with other people.
What worldview is that?
That's the worldview I am talking about. I am not going to try and simplify it to fit into a single comment.
But I'm pretty sure I wasn't running away -- more likely just moving on to the next thing (it's often the case that people who book me in for talks schedule things immediately after, like faculty meet-and-greets to justify the expense of paying my way there, etc, and I try not to leave people standing around).
So, you waved a red flag in front of a bull and got gored. Um ...
I'm sorry he was a jerk to you, but, by the same token, waving "Disney" in front of him is kind of asking for it. A fan would know this.
I mean, if you were a fan of Morrissey and were eating a hamburger or similar in front of him in a fan line, you're going to have a similar bad time.
Many of these people have strong opinions and they aren't particularly quiet about them. If you trip one, you're going to get flamed.
Maybe it's not right or fair, but it's who they are and they are not exactly secretive about their hot buttons.
> So, you waved a red flag in front of a bull and got gored.
I did nothing of the sort, I hadn't even given my employer a thought at all before approaching Cory. I happened to be wearing a conference badge, which I didn't show him, he went out of his way to stop and read it. I also happened to be a fan of Cory's at the time. I was aware of how he felt about Disney, and even shared some of his beliefs (about Disney) at the time. I was holding a copy of his book that he watched me pay for. So no, I did not goad him, nor expect him to treat me poorly.
> Maybe it's not right or fair, but it's who they are and they are not exactly secretive about their hot buttons.
You seem to be suggesting that it's expected and maybe even okay to be mean to people in social situations face to face, based on one's dogmatic beliefs. As long as you're right, or just believe you're right, it's okay to slam other people who you suspect have different beliefs than you, even if your evidence is only by association and you haven't checked directly with them?
Expected? Absolutely. These people are not exactly secret about their hangups. If you hit their button they're going to squawk at you.
Is this a productive way of convincing people to join his views? Interesting question, but probably not.
Am I ok or right with this?
Prior to the election of Trump, I would have said "No, it is not right to zap people like this."
Now? I'm more of the opinion "Your affiliation reflects who you really are and if you present that affiliation in public you should bear consequences in public for those choices."
If you wave something I consider distasteful in front of me, I'm gonna zap you. In fact, I would go further in that it's actually IMPERATIVE for me to zap you so that the people around don't assume that I condone what you represent.
I hope you change your mind back someday. It's not Trump's fault if you choose to be judgmental or uncivil to strangers, that's your own choice, and you should own it. His bad example doesn't give us permission, nor does this political climate, nor do the consequences of the election.
> In fact, I would go further in that it's actually IMPERATIVE for me to zap you
I'm more of the opinion that we should all treat each other with more respect, give each other the benefit of the doubt when we don't know, and support each other since we all are, in fact, on the same team.
Trump's behavior is all the more reason to bring as much reason and civility and understanding as we can to our lives and interactions with others.
> so that the people around don't assume that I condone what you represent.
What exactly would happen if someone around you assumed something about you that was wrong?
There's a double irony in what you said. You just encouraged making bad assumptions about people. And this endorses precisely the one action that makes it more likely that you will have to face the situation you're afraid of. If everybody is prejudicial, then we all get meaner and we all lose. If instead we assume that an individual does not represent the exact interests of one of the many organizations they're associated with, then we can avoid unnecessary fights, and maybe even have a meaningful conversation and learn from each other.
It was like finding out one of your friends only kept you around to make jokes about you behind your back.
Unfortunately they have now retrospectively tarnished everything I used to look up to them about. It still leaves me feeling bitter but I deal with that by recognising their contributions to science without recognising them as a person.
Like you, I think we all need to do better maintaining the civility in 'civilisation'. It wasn't easy to get where we are and it won't be easy to get where we are going.
edit: grammar
You sound like an awesome person to me :-)
Does he argue convincingly in favour of DRM? Otherwise, I don't see how he would change my mind about DRM.
So, no, he won't change your mind about DRM because he is not in favour of it.
And then I have to wonder: Am I living in a cleanroom? Am I letting my defenses rot? Am I setting myself up for a fall if some day I end up face to face with all the unfiltered gunk out there, presented in some new, insidious manner that I believe myself far too sophisticated to succumb to? Have I - or we - perhaps already succumbed, but do not know it?
I suppose it raises the bar, but how soon until I whitelist a site that attacks me?
I did notice the banner asking that I subscribe.
I'll still give Doctorow credit for emphasizing the right topics, like media accountability and a cooperative browsing experience. But his personal output is hardly consistent with those positions...
Every time a new one of these mental attacks gets invented, a new five-sigma cohort falls off the "normal life" wagon. How many times can this happen before expansive hordes of people who have had their priorities destroyed start a new social crisis?
One assumes evolution will work its way before that happens.
If you had children, they might be more aware of the dangers of these attentional assaults, and actually more resistant to it.
However, overall I disagree that we are adapting fast enough. Not only is the escalation so rapid that most cannot adapt, the cultural shift in what is an acceptable level of intrusion is like boiling us frogs alive.
On the Web, it is absolutely acceptable nowadays to have a fullpage interstitial or a whole-page darkening nag box on a news article. And to block adblockers. Wat. A newspaper or the web of just 5 years ago would never have considered this acceptable.
This makes me worry about the future, especially augmented reality. Don't you want ads right ON YOUR FACE!? It's OK. You'll adapt!
I have a dream that augmented reality will one day enable you to visually block virtually every advertisement and billboard in meatspace, by covering them up with an image to your liking such as a forest
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at allI recently saw research that links social network usage with depression, e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/04/30/study-l...
(https://www.bookdepository.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Matthe...)
Basically, the defense can't outpace offense, and we're doomed to forever be pwnd by manipulative people.
This might be a decent summary of where we are now, but I don't think it's inherent to the problem. To stretch a metaphor, antibodies to viruses are reactive, but white blood cells are proactive against new diseases.
I run a stack of privacy and attention defenses on my browser. Sometimes new attacks come out and I lose ground, as with browser fingerprinting. But sometimes new attacks come out and run aground on the protections I already have - the various cryptocurrency mining scripts, for instance, were all stopped because I disabled Javascript for unrelated reasons.
Blocking the intrusion of the day is a Red Queen situation, agreed. But it's possible to make the game asymmetric, to raise the cost of future attacks and so do better with each round of the pattern.
Actually it goes both ways. Evolution doesn't have an arrow, and a because their evolved immune systems allow them to harbor pathogen that the 10.000B.C people had evolved to defend against might be lethal in the 22nd century.
Having just read "Do Androids Dream Of Electrical Sheep", I see what you did there Cory.