Phil Agre saw the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago

I was impressed by his methodical way of dissecting the design of information systems and how they interacted with the social context. The didactic brilliance was consistent with his (and David Chapman's) famous AAAI paper about the "Pengi" system https://aaai.org/Library/AAAI/1987/aaai87-048.php -- although I didn't realize at first that he was the Agre in "Agre and Chapman".

Yet, somehow, I missed the importance of whatever he said about privacy. Like others I was more interested in what new things we could build if we were all as sharp as him.

(The "Surveillance and Capture" paper mentioned by the Post seems to capture an important distinction between two modes of privacy invasion; even 20 years later I see attempts to discuss privacy concerns founder on a failure to reckon with this distinction. I will now read.)

How to help someone use a computer: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/how-to-help.html

Rationalizations for bad design, a posting to RISKS digest: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.09.html#subj1

Layering, from a course on Information Systems and Design: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/240/week5.html

Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html

Notes and Recommendations (from RRE Digest): https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/notes.html

Red Rock Eater Digest, 1994 -- 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20040602193512/commons.somewhere....

The Network Observer, 1994 -- 1996: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/tno.html

He wrote a book, Computation and Human Experience, here are some extracts and a chapter summary:

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/che-intro.html

I miss him.

https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/

Previous HN posts on Agre:

Phil Agre Missing (Nov 26, 2009) http://chronicle.com/article/FriendsColleagues-Search/49222/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=962065

Missing Internet Pioneer Phil Agre Is Found Alive (Feb 1 2010) http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/01/missing_i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093773

He's mentioned in several HN comments as well, though suprisingly few:

Recommended writings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21818796

As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1968 (!)

> From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today.

> As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth.

-- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times"

[1] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6975

[2] https://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/1987/AAAI87-048.pdf

+1. He had (has?) an rare combination of intellectual humility with didactic ability and drive.

I remember getting to chat with him after he presented at Webzine. It was in an SF warehouse, exploring the sociotechnical phenomena we’d come to call blogs. It was 1999 IIRC because there was wine but I wasn’t old enough to drink it. He was happy to sit down with this kid, teach and listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tCC9yxUIdw

And, assuming you accept that there really is a “problem” here, what exactly is the solution? To encumber it? Encumber it how, exactly?

Hmmm in the article that mentions this it chooses one singular point about the capital riot for disinformation when there are probably 1000 better examples.

Lets start with vaccines are bad.

How about ads masquerading as news.

How about scientist discover headlines that have no relation to the article.

How about basically everything on twitter.

How about disaster news where the people are photographing tiny areas to make it look worse.

All off the top of my head. Yeah no agenda here.

Many of the tech gigants have employees that must have trouble justifying their work, unless they distance themself from the reality of it.

About 1995 or so, I was driving in Seattle, and at a light, the car in front of me had a similarly-styled "KILL YOUR MODEM" sticker.

Perhaps it was an Agre reader.

(edit: correction of egregious grammar)