The hacking of culture and the creation of socio-technical debt | Hacker News Reader

The hacking of culture and the creation of socio-technical debt

schneier.com

163 pointsBorgHunter30 comments

I disagree with most of the examples. When newspapers are struggling, for example - it is just that, a struggle. It is not "socio-technical debt". Newspapers in 1830 sold maybe 148 million copies annually, 0.4 million per day. Comparing that to the Census number of 12,860,702, we see that only 3% of people read the newspaper. In contrast daily newspaper readership today (print+digital) is 20.9 million, compared to 333.3 million population, 6.3% of people. Whatever social function newspapers serve, it is clear that they are still serving it. Actually, technical debt is when you don't replace old, crunky stuff - arguably, if traditional news stories make up only 3 percent of social media content, then the social media companies should be figuring out how to refactor their platforms so as to be able to completely replace these old, legacy businesses.

In 1830, I believe most papers were weekly. So your percentage is missing a multiplier that could be fairly substantial.

And by 1850 the number of newspapers (still mostly weeklies) nearly tripled with an annual circulation of 500 million.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/06/01/circulati... says it is at around the 1940's level in absolute terms. If you do per capita it works out to 30% for 1940 vs. 12% in 2015. I think it's safe to assume that per-capita or not, the circulation curve is ∩-shaped. But naturally, the historical timeframe that today's level of news readership is most comparable to is a matter of debate and speculation - all that matters is that it has not yet regressed to the point where it is nonexistent, and the decline/stagnation started before the internet.

“The history of the tech industry and culture is full of this tension between the internet as an engineering plaything and as a surveillance commodity.”

Great article, wish it talked about how we might address the issue.

I think the hints are in there, and I have my opinion.

1) Chinese Tiktok scaring the US government: Sure OUR corps can mentally rape our citizenry, but someone else? Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real debate on pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.

2) Are we really out of "think of the children" political movements? With the polarity of Democratic and Republican parties changing, we may be ripe for protections for children (I mean, the tactics that childrens games use in the app store are utterly depraved: gambling games, social payouts, a litany of PTW strategies for fleecing adults applied to children) that may bleed into general society and adult welfare

3) fear of AI: AI is a boogeyman, and will continue to be. AI is just an algorithm, the next mass corporation/state algorithmic weapon to be deployed.

4) democratic institutions. maintain a functioning government and the core aspects of western "free" society such that they maintain a massive competitive advantage over totalitarian states in the long run.

One thing I will say is that people are smarter from the first (pre-social-network/mobiles) internet, and the initial stages of mobile/social network internet. I think people are educated at a rapid rate to deal with advertising and manipulation, and from an early age. I think it is making saavier people, even if in the short run your kids will get swept up in some manipulation/scam at some point. Better they get manipulated and conned early on by the Nigerian prince before they have real money to lose.

We shall see with AI.

What is abundantly apparent with the later stages of social/mobile internet is the massive distrust users of social networks now have of the platforms, even if they continue to consume it. This is what is underlying the very very correct distrust people have of corporate AI: if the social network corps have gone to such depraved degrees with the last round of algorithms, what will they do with new AI weapons? We already know: nothing remotely good.

The larger social network companies are firmly in their ossification phases: the biggest hallmark, publicly and openly having contempt for their customers. They are all ripe for collapse.

In a perverse gradiose manner, consider Conway's Law applied to the entire internet: the current internet mirrors the open trade period provided and maintained by post-WWII US hegemony.

Many many many people predict that globalization and trade is coming to an end, and the internet will change to reflect a less global and guarded real world.

We are also in a world of first-world demographic decline. Despite the rise of AI, people are about to get MORE important, because there will be less of them in the peak/prime years. If regard for human rights tracks the economic value of a productive human, it may increase substantially in the coming decades.

> Chinese Tiktok scaring the US government: Sure OUR corps can mentally rape our citizenry, but someone else? Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real debate on pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.

Also that western politicians and journalists are chronic purveyors of untruths/lies, mis/disinformation, etc.

> 1) Chinese Tiktok scaring the US government: Sure OUR corps can mentally rape our citizenry, but someone else? Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real debate on pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.

It wont: It will be 'okay' for the US govt. and corps to do it, but it wont be 'okay' for others to do even a fraction of it. This kind of double standard and exceptionalism has been the lynchpin of the public discourse in the US throughout history. The people treat international things as if they were sports matches: They think that they are 'on a side', which is "their country's side", and they create group cohesion by uniting against the purported external enemy regardless of what happens at home. The problems at home are 'okay' to ignore until the external enemy is 'dealt with' because the country is 'more democratic'.

But the external enemies never stop coming up as they are manufactured by the establishment itself, based on real threats or, if none exist, made-up threats (at one point in mid to late 2000s they even went to the extent of talking about an extraterrestrial threat, which nobody bought so they had to drop it), and the fake democracy at home never allows the public to change anything. So things stay as they are at home, with the US govt. raping its citizens directly or by outsourcing it to private corporations and everyone just gets on with their lives in this horrible pandemonium - but at least feeling good about themselves because they live in 'the best country in the world', 'most advanced democracy', 'the shining beacon of freedom and prosperity'.

I think a prerequisite is Micropayments being ubiquitously available by using your existing preferred payment instrument. Content business models can’t really develop until this happens since the ad-supported business model has lowered the price consumers are willing to pay for it.

Although the unit price of content has decreased so much, I think the total value of content created has gone up significantly. It’s just that the new price people are willing to pay for is below the price floor companies can charge people using existing solutions such as debit/credit cards. With those solutions you can’t profitable go below a dollar.

The unavailability of the infrastructure prevents entrepreneurs from developing the business and related revenue models.

It’s less of a tech industry problem and more of a banking/payments/finance industry problem.

Really enjoyed the piece.

A passing thought: the ethe of individuals in the 70s and 80s is important because of the people it informed in subsequent years. While many people still like to hack, code, etc., the relative proportion of people doing this and working in tech continues to diminish as the popularity and importance of the sector grows. I wonder if debt without values / a more cohered zeitgeist is better or worse?

I find Schneier to be one of the most cogent observers and commentators on the influence of technology and corporate organization on our society. His writing is compelling.

Agree with others that I’m left wanting for solutions to the challenges he so clearly articulates.

The trends he is discussing are so macroscopic that it’s hard to even identify a single thing that can fix the system. For example privacy, yes it would be nice to have some basic privacy laws but there are entire industries dependent on the status quo, and government/police as customers. So as a politician doing “the right thing” immediately makes entrenched national security interests into enemies.

We need to find opportunities for more and better means of civic engagement. Democracy can’t just be a thing that happens every 4 years. One small example: maybe something like a “customer service hotline” at a local level. Local government could also send out “UX” people to better understand local pain points. Hyperlocal representation at the subdivision or even block level would also be interesting.

>Agree with others that I’m left wanting for solutions to the challenges he so clearly articulates.

The solutions have always been the same, and that makes them boring.

Organize, vote, act, lobby, educate, learn.

It is an interesting thought, what would the world look like if these global trends continue, if the role of the state continued to dissolve under the influence of multinational corporations. Perhaps Liberalism (individual rights/political equality) will turn out to be only a passing fad in 1000 years’ time. Corporatism allows transnational groups of people to coordinate in ways and at fidelities that have only recently been possible.

See also The Space Merchants (1952)

And Snow Crash (1992)

Wikipedia summary:

> In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some of the products contain addictive substances designed to make consumers dependent on them.

Hmmm…

> emotionally binding citizens to a self-understood identity

In the vocabulary of Kurt Vonnegut, creating a "granfalloon".

https://granfalloon.indiana.edu/what-the-heck/index.html

The following SignSystem analysis may help understand the intricacies of influence in such systems we live amongst.

Overview: Biological Sign Systems: 5.56% Genetic Sign Systems: 1.00% Cellular Sign Systems: 0.00% Ecological Sign Systems: 0.00% Evolutionary Sign Systems: 0.00% Human Sign Systems: 66.67% Linguistic Sign Systems: 0.00% Nonverbal Sign Systems: 0.00% Cultural Sign Systems: 2.00% Technological Sign Systems: 0.00% Animal Sign Systems: 0.00% Vocalizations: 0.00% Chemical Communication: 0.00% Visual Signals: 0.00% Tactile Signals: 0.00% Artificial Sign Systems: 23.15% Formal Languages: 0.00% Road Signs: 0.00% Maritime Signals: 0.00% Aviation Signals: 0.00% Semiotic Theories: 4.63% Structural Semiotics: 0.00% Peircean Semiotics: 0.00% Saussurean Semiotics: 0.00% Biosemiotics: 0.00% Cognitive Semiotics: 0.00% Cultural Semiotics: 0.00% Semiotic Anthropology: 0.00% Comics Semiotics: 0.00% Computational Semiotics: 0.00% Cultural and Literary Semiotics: 0.00% Cybersemiotics: 0.00% Design Semiotics: 0.00% Ethnosemiotics: 0.00% Film Semiotics: 0.00% Finite Semiotics: 0.00% Gregorian Chant Semiology: 0.00% Hylosemiotics: 0.00% Law and Semiotics: 0.00% Marketing Semiotics: 0.00% Music Semiotics: 0.00% Organizational Semiotics: 0.00% Pictorial Semiotics: 0.00% Semiotics of Music Videos: 0.00% Social Semiotics: 0.00% Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: 0.00% Theatre Semiotics: 0.00% Urban Semiotics: 0.00% Visual Semiotics: 0.00% Semiotics of Photography: 0.00% Artificial Intelligence Semiotics: 0.00% Semiotics of Mathematics: 0.00%

Detailed Descriptions:

Biological Sign Systems: 5.56% Genetic Sign Systems: The concept of "Genetic Sign Systems" from "Biological Sign Systems" can be related to this article in a variety of ways.

Firstly, Genetic Sign Systems refer to the information passed through genes in a biological system. This information is encoded and decoded through various biological processes, and this system of communication is vital for the survival and development of the organism. Similarly, the article discusses the information systems that exist within our modern digital society, and how these systems are manipulated and exploited by large tech companies for profit.

Secondly, just as genetic sign systems are critical for the survival of a species, the information systems discussed in the article are integral to the functioning of modern societies. However, just as genetic information can be manipulated (through genetic engineering, for instance), our digital information systems are being manipulated by tech companies, with profound impact on our societies and cultures.

Lastly, the concept of evolution in biological systems can also be related to this article. In biological systems, genetic sign systems evolve over time through natural selection, leading to the survival of the fittest. Similarly, our digital information systems are constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements and changes in societal norms. However, this evolution is often controlled and directed by powerful tech companies, leading to a variety of socio-cultural and ethical issues.

In conclusion, the concept of Genetic Sign Systems from Biological Sign Systems offers a useful lens through which to examine and understand the issues discussed in this article.

Human Sign Systems: 66.67% Cultural Sign Systems: The concept of 'Cultural Sign Systems' within 'Human Sign Systems' relates to the given blog post in numerous ways. Cultural sign systems refer to the ways in which societies create and interpret symbols and meanings within their shared cultural contexts. They are the sets of signs and symbols (including language, art, behaviors, rituals, norms, etc.) that a particular cultural group uses to create meaning and communicate with each other.

In the blog post, the writer discusses the hacking of culture by tech companies for data collection and the creation of socio-technical debt. This essentially represents a manipulation of cultural sign systems. The platforms these companies have created, such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, have become cultural in nature. They dictate the circulation of customs, symbols, stories, values, and norms - all elements of a cultural sign system - that bind people together in shared identity.

The post also touches on how culture is now increasingly mediated through algorithms. These algorithms, which are determining what content a user would find most engaging, are in essence controlling the cultural signs and symbols that are being circulated and consumed. This is leading to a fragmentation of shared cultural identity, as instead of binding people through shared narratives (a key aspect of a cultural sign system), digital platforms are creating self-reinforcing filter bubbles.

Moreover, the text discusses how tech companies have effectively 'hacked' cultural sign systems to gather data. By rerouting the way information and value circulate, they are exploiting these sign systems for

Artificial Sign Systems: 23.15%

Semiotic Theories: 4.63%

Disclaimer: this is not an authoritative analysis. It’s generated using an experimental script (see former submission).

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