1,282 karma · joined December 4, 2012
However, because of Google's limitations, the language I use is modified. Their "AI" is shaping my use of language, and thus, how I communicate with others. Multiply this by millions (billions?) of people, and this could have a real impact on culture.
What is Google's responsibility, in this regard? Certainly they shouldn't ignore the ways their technology could affect society. They should be making conscious, deliberate decisions. This is dangerous territory; and not an easy one to navigate. I am glad they seem to recognize that.
However, you are stating that ads for massage techniques could "break society."
That just doesn't add up to me.
What is not being stated here? How does this connect? (These are not rhetorical questions!)
You're missing a key ingredient. Facebook placed a third-parties between you and your friends. Those third parties are businesses that run pages
What percentage of posts on your Facebook newsfeed originate from your friends versus pages?
That is what has changed.
The reason? So Facebook can sell ads.
Strangers you never interact with will decide, based on extremely competent propaganda, and their decisions will determine:
-- The outcome of elections
-- Whether to commit genocide
-- ???
https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_14...
> the number of childhood deaths per year has been cut in half since 1990.
> Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the last 25 years.
> In 1988, when the global campaign was launched to end polio, there were 350,000 new cases each year.
> Last year, there were 37.
That's exactly why I find this setup so appealing; it really works with the natural tendencies of our minds, as opposed to constantly presenting us with a situation where we have to choose not to do one of the many distracting options just a twitch of the finger away.
iPhone -> sell apps & subscriptions
Android phone -> sell ads / harvest user information
(Maybe something as simple as physical location, color, a "sticker", or something else altogether.)
The main disadvantage of most computing devices is that they offer too many options; making them mentally unwieldy. A "single purpose device" is created to support just one purpose. The Kindle is perhaps the most famous example; it practically created an industry. Sure, it can do more than just present books, but everything is designed to support reading.
Ideally, there would be a "computer", where every aspect of it was designed to teach computer programming.
I often fantasize about a device designed solely for producing new writing. It would have a nice screen, and a nice keyboard, but only a very very limited web-browser, and would sync with Google Docs, Office, or something similar, so that you can do the more advanced stuff elsewhere.
Such devices are about empowering the user to go down a specific path; one they choose as soon as they start interacting with the device.
Kindle -> Reading
Typewriter -> Writing
Hammer -> Hitting things
"Power to Basic" -> Learning to program
For example, a house worth $500,000, with a 5% ROA, would need to net $25,000 a year. Assuming expenses are 1% of the value, you would need to charge $2,500 monthly rent, to get a 5% ROA.
The question is then, how does that ROA compare to other options? That answer to that question determines whether the house is overvalued.
> the bacterial responses were correlated to the results of previous toxicity studies and bacteria may be used as a toxicity evaluation tool.
One would want to establish that this method is actually useful, no? It seem this study is pointing in that direction.
If it is effective, there may be interesting ways you can use this test, such as:
> The tested bioluminescent bacterial panel can potentially be used for detecting artificial sweeteners in the environment.
You could hook up a raspberry pi to a solar system, weatherproof it, then deploy it in the wild. Add a wireless "router" of some sort, and then you have a mobile broadcasting station.
Imagine a world where such systems are very cheap to build. Also -- imagine that they could be "networked" if they are in range. Finally, imagine hobbyists building out that network for fun. Maybe in neighborhoods, public parks, etc.
Imagine the technology greatly improves and gets even cheaper. These are plastered everywhere, by everyone. They can transmit and receive data very quickly, over reasonably far distances.
Maybe it becomes an off-grid anarchist internet. :)
There are many industries with similar, parallel, practices that are directly at odds with serving the "user." For example, groceries. A typical grocery store presents a selection of products in a grocery aisle. This presentation is not optimized to give the shopper the best experience, lowest prices, or highest quality products.
The products, and product displays, are optimized to extract the most profit from the shopper, often resulting in inferior products. Grocery stores also collect and analyze reams of data about individual shoppers -- again, not for the purpose of providing better value for the shoppers, but for extracting maximum profit from them. Want that data back? Good luck!
No activation fee or any other initial fees.
$34.95 CAD a month. (Around $27 USD).
Who knew fiber could be this cheap?
I think this gets to the core of it.
When we're bombarded headlines from hundreds, if not thousands, of articles in a day, how do you know which ones are worth investing your time in?
This is a question worth answering, because many many people are investing their time mostly in headlines, and skim reading. Which means they never get depth, which has obvious negative consequences.
This is not just a question that we should answer individually, but as a society. There is a real cost to disproportionate amounts of headline surfing and skim reading.
Why do you think everything is recorded and sent to a remote server?
And yet, there are so many instances where their is no ambiguity about the lies. They are simply bald-faced lies, and there is no doubt that they are indeed lies. And Facebook is quite aware that they are lies. And those lies get very widespread distribution on their platform. And those lies have real political consequences.
In the land of the deceived, Facebook is king. (And those who are good at spreading lies on their platform.)
The problem with this is that it assumes the value is proportionate to how much time you spend on something.
The value of good reporting is independent of the amount of time you spend reading the reporting.
That's why subscriptions make sense; you are supporting the company in a predictable fashion, which lets them have predictable amounts of resources, which ultimately supports the reporters doing the job.
I subscribe to the New York Times; and I'm happy to pay the same amount whether I read ten articles a month or one hundred. Why? Because I want to support the work they're doing. It's the same reason I subscribe to the Washington Post. It's also the same reason people should subscribe to their local newspapers. If nobody is reporting on local issues, then who is going to be keeping local government accountable?