streamofdigits

There are so many lessons to learn here, but I don't think we are in the lesson-learning era.

How about people revising their views on the Economist (and its real job)

There is no much point in arguing with a cult. This phenomenon will have to work its way through the susceptible demographic, meaning that the large majority of "speculators" will have transferred their disposable wealth to a minority of shrewd operators. The masses will subsequently be "seasoned", or immunized and will no longer participate, at best disappointed, disgusted and mildly embarrassed, at worst suffering serious financial setbacks.

It happened in all previous bubbles, it will happen again. "crypto" could have been literally anything. Its not pretty, it does not reflect well on society that it can be so abusive of its more gullible members. But I guess we didn't need this particular pathology to figure that out.

Open sourcing models that are used for significant policy decisions (affecting others) is somehow required to protect and maybe enhance democracy in the digital age. Applies obviously to the public sector but also to private sector when it operates at large scale as a de-facto regulator / controller / planner of society.

the real advantage of php seems to me is not in "generic" web projects that start from scratch but the very popular domain specific frameworks that have been build on php (blogs, wikis, etc)

while python is gaining ground on such specialized areas (e.g things build on top of django) it is still very far behind in terms of adoption

Signal has already changed history in a way. The past few years, as trust in a certain type of ethically challenged tech company has come crashing down it was vitally important to have a tangible example of a working, usable alternative.

Important for users, but also important for policy makers and other people in high places that are typically tech-illiterate and may assume that trillion dollar valuation implies TINA (there is no alternative).

Moxie and that tiny group of developers @ signal have been granted a moment of extreme leverage and they made great use of it.

Godspeed

Public entities goading their (captive) audiences into private social media for "updates" is an abomination that has been inexplicably normalized. Activating RSS feeds for direct interaction with their constituencies is the least one would expect from such publicly funded entities.

Still, one can only applaud the brave souls that buck the trend and restore a sense that there is light at the end of this long and dark tunnel we live through.

by all accounts those "other" advanced countries offer a better socioeconomy model for how to organize things. The (recent) US is really an outlier that makes no sense whatsoever.

But there is a weakness in this view, namely the enormous security (and energy) dependency of those "other" countries on the US. It is a coupled system, making it hard to isolate what the standalone merits of the various modelw

fediverse > mastodon. granted the other platforms not yet well populated but if you look e.g. at bookwyrm, its got nothing to do with twitter https://bookwyrm.social/

imho the fediverse will have to come to be much more than social media type exchange of messages via activitypub. federated search is a major additional pillar that is currently largely absent (and is technically very different)

its a maximalist position that is hard to parse. you can run your own instance, keep it very local to a group of friends and family etc. what is feudal about that?

history will be written by the winners

web 3 will come to mean whatever the next phase of the connected digital computing experience comes to be defined by

the money seems to be overwhelmingly on the "web3" cryptopia

money buys you brainpower so I would not underestimate that juggernaut

but at some point all this speculative money will seek an exit out of its zero-interest rate supersized echo chamber and into the "real economy"

Can a single centralized engine / business model ever balance all those conflicts? It feels that the time for decentralized search where entities are both contributing and benefiting from shared search indexes and have the ability to tweak their preferences is, broadly speaking, the space we need to look into?

Please stick to intelligent discussion. I didn't specify an alternative model for a good reason, it doesn't exist yet.

But your attempt to pre-empt that the only possible alternative is Chinese style state-sponsered capitalism illustrates the paucity of your imagination or the malice of your intentions

There may be a case for tactical use of whatever tools are available to achieve a positive result. Who am I to condemn people to sub-par living conditions on the basis of conceptual arguments...

But please take at heart my previous comment. Climate change may sound like an elite concern but it is not. It is actually representative of our deepest global problems.

The reason that the so-called "third world" still has third world problems is that political and economic systems everywhere ignore environmental and social conditions, focus on resource extraction, enriching a few elites etc.

Some form of digital technology would surely help us solve those very difficult problems or at least make them less painful and unsustainable, but cryptocurrencies is nowhere close to do so. It is simplistic, economically more than naive, has the wrong builtin assumptions about society (complete lack of trust) etc.

In any case, good night and good luck

people who defend capitalism on the face of the last century's (and ongoing) environmental disaster should just be considered negationist at this point.

Sure is not all wrong but it's infinitely worse than any economic model that actually secures a sustainable future

I am convinced that the way to change the world (not necessarily towards some altruistic nirvana but at least to avoid a dysfunctional, environmentally and socially disastrous dystopia) is by raising our education / communication game towards more honesty and transparency when discussing socioeconomic challenges and less obfuscation inane, monkey chest beating like conflicts.

Already any discussion that centers around "capitalism" is deeply problematic as it invariably takes enormously complex sets of laws, conventions and behavioral attitudes that varies materially (both historically and regionally) and forces it into a binary yes/no universe. You can't solve complex problems with random hammer blows on each others heads.

All of the constituent components of what we term "market democracy" must be examined not as what they say on the label, but what happens in practice. Just as a simple and single example: when politicians routinely enter revolving-door appointments to serve private interests how can we even pretend this is a feature of "capitalism".

The true underlying behavior is cooperating private gangs marauding the commons. It doesn't matter if it happens in ultra-capitalist US or "communist" China.

I feel the despair in your comment

but you can not fix a broken thing with another, even more broken thing (which is this greedy cryptomania)

it is broken government that is the problem and it causes far more ills than monetary inflation

what needs fixing is government. you cannot have a stable meaningful life, society, economy without a semi-decent government that is accountable, democratic and somewhat competent

if the financial system still needs fixing after you fix government it would probably be a marginal patch and not starting from zero

what level of awareness do you think the "majority of people" have about the implications of online tracking, of detailed behavioral profiling, of biased algorithmic influences on all online information experience etc.

somehow this particular industry can get away with standards and regulations that for any other industry would be the wildest dream of deregulatory heist

the "innovation" shtick has worn thin, its time to clean up the mess

> If you also advocate for the shuttering of high frequency trading firms...

yes, that is what I mean by "metastasis of the old system" but there is much more nuance: the overfinancialization of the economy is a recent phenomenon and while it is not black-and-white to separate from actual underlying intermediation needs I seem to recall somebody claiming that 5% of the current financial sector is actually useful. The rest is parasitic wealth transfer, essentially exploiting governance failures. With crypto there is no real economy so it is 100% parasitic.

I don't have a problem with an entertainement oriented gambling industry provided it is informed, discretionary and it does not become an abused addiction. But ideally in a society that has real problems to solve (health, education, environmental degradation) you want to harness the speculative instincts of both finacial system end-users and intermediaries to really perform "God's work"

> Now anyone can play, at the same time that traditional paths to wealth...

the association of wealth with "playing" is very much a metastasis of the old system masqeurading as some sort of innovation. this is not wealth creation, this is zero sum games robbing orphans and widows. be my guest "playing" and feeling smug about it, but lets not rewritte the meaning of words

actually that strongest hint that crypto as it stands is an ugly distraction is that there is no real wealth creation associated with it. as in: a real economic activity (that is kosher) that has been enabled by it while it was prevented by fiat currency systems

looks like cash has solved (most) of this some time ago:

- V. costs nothing to exchange a bill

- V. link to a real economy so little volatility (except when the real economy implodes)

- V. accepted everywhere within a currency zone

- V. mostly secure (ofcourse theft is as old as humanity)

- V. private (only your counterparty knows about it)

- V. fully integrated into financial accounts / tax systems

- X. fast (local) transactions but remote remittances outside a currency zone a serious problem (expensive, slow)

- V. counterfeit tech very sophisticated

- V. you can print as much as you want

The major flaw of cash is actually linked more to the international system of currencies (which underlies many more socioeconomic problems)

the "market" seems to be betting that these monopolies will persist more or less exactly as they are (see eg the 3 trillion apple valuation that is really an unfathomable number unless you condition that basically the entire US economy will be co-controlled by those entities)

so it seems to me that disastrously bad regulation has created self-sustaining monsters. which market worshiping politician would dare burst that multi trn-bubble?

there is also xapian/recoll https://xapian.org/ which works great for "desktop" search

There are ofcourse both filmmakers and films in the West that explore similar domains. And I generally love them (for the same reason I love Tarkovsky's work).

But when I check what audiences say about said work (and even well known art critics) in 99% of the cases I am left with the impression they live in an another planet. The analogies, metaphors and other symbolism fail to trigger recognition of the "multiple levels" involved and thus also to elicit the emotional response that follows from linking to our current realities.

It is almost as an old story appreciation ability has been lost...

Thats true, but probably something that can be tackled later and in any case it would not be a show-stopper for creating a valuable alternative (There are similar thorny related issues around IP e.g. for news sites)

Eventually search will become a decentralized activity (No, not a web3/crypto/coin type decentralization, I am talking about the useful type).

Is there any particular reason why internet search has to have a distorting gatekeeper to the global commons (that pretends playing Maxwell's demon). For chrissake, the stuff being indexed is public.

I don't think his work travels particularly well in the West. It is steeped in symbolism, deep metaphysics and calm, meditative, photography. All attributes that have been essentially banned from the fast food production/consumption chain that has conditioned audiences.

Its a bit like pop music. If all you've ever heard is (basic) western harmony and suddenly get exposed to some weird oriental stuff it does not even register as music..

Any argument starting with "you are free not to..." invariably misses the point. Yes, freedom and individual responsibility are important. No, you cannot build a sane society exclusively on those.

People don't have infinite time and knowledge to identify all the things, behaviors, products, services that "they are free not to choose". They can't read all the legalistic fine print designed by professionals to deceive and obfuscate while keeping them unaccountable.

This is particularly problematic as the "freedom principle" gets applied differentially in sectoral silos: When you go to the supermarket, you don't have to choose what will not kill you. Ditto when you select a car, a medical procedure or drug. Why should the financial sector (or the tech sector for that matter, as the two increasingly merge) be any different?

When people are increasingly data mined, algorithmically and behaviorally goaded to overconsumption patterns, instant gratification, addiction etc. the argument that they "are free to choose" is more than hollow. Until the US (and imitators) address this moral rot at the core of its socioeconomic system it will be rolling from crisis to crisis. This will only open the door for worse alternatives.

Individual responsibility should only be invoked when the individuals concerned have all the required information and ability and can be reasonably expected to excercise that agency given their context across the entire spectrum of economic interactions.

Somebody call the IT department