zlacker

>>syness+(OP)
I think the tech crowd is in denial about their role in surveillance.

We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically.

Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethics, constraints or consequences.

What we have instead are anachronistic discussions on things like privacy that seem oddly disconnected from 300 years of accumulated wisdom on surveillance, privacy, free speech and liberty to pretend the obvious is not obvious, and delay the need for ethical behavior and introspection. And this from a group of people who have routinely postured extreme zeal for freedom and liberty since the early 90's and produced one Snowden.

That's a pretty bad record by any standards, and indicates the urgent need for self reflection, industry bodies, standards, whistle blower protection and for a wider discussion to insert context, ethics and history into the debate.

The point about privacy is not you, no one cares what you are doing so an individual perspective here has zero value, but building the infrastructure and ability to track what everyone in a society is doing, and preempt any threat to entrenched interests and status quo. An individual may not need or value privacy but a healthy society definitely needs it.

>>tobbyb+Bl
Large parts of the tech crowd are making big money from advertising and tracking people. Unsurprisingly, it seems these developers and entrepreneurs have a hard time understanding why their source of income has negative effects on society.

>>blub+Fn
I can't help but be reminded of a sentence by Theodor Adorno:

    Keineswegs weiß man bestimmt, wie die Fetischisierung
    der Technik in der individuellen Psychologie der 
    einzelnen Menschen sich durchsetzt, wo die Schwelle ist
    zwischen einem rationalen Verhältnis zu ihr und jener
    Überwertung, die schließlich dazu führt, daß einer, der
    ein Zugsystem ausklügelt, das die Opfer möglichst
    schnell und reibungslos nach Auschwitz bringt, darüber
    vergißt, was in Auschwitz mit ihnen geschieht.[0]
    

In short: the fetishization of technology makes its creators forget for which purposes their wonderfully efficient tools will finally be put to use.

[0] Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, S. 91

>>nsns+Wo
I think you missed an important bit in your translation.

"We do not know how to determine how the technology fetish in individual people leads to the point at which a rational relationship changes into one of over-valuing, which eventually leads to someone designing a train system to get the victims as fast and smooth as possible to their destination in Auschwitz, but who forgets what it is that happens to them once they arrive there"

>>jacque+3A
This is a good time to remind readers of this Upton Sinclair quote, too: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".

>>tombro+KB
Well, I actually feel it concerns much more than simply money. The avant-garde - be it technological, artistic or intellectual - has always shown a tendency to join forces with the darkest of regimes during the early stages.

>>nsns+TU
I wonder if it isn't because the darkest regimes, when they're just starting, show the most promise for progress and positive changes. Didn't Nazis offer the Germans their wealth and their honor back, in the times they were most desperately in need of both?

EDIT:

But then again, fascination with "the other guys" is also a thing. See: the intellectual world of the West being in love with Soviet Union well into the Cold War.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...

>>TeMPOr+G71
Populists will claim to give you anything you want as long as you vote for them.

>>jacque+dd1
True, but from what I remember from my history lessons, NSDAP was actually doing good on those promises. Which is something that rarely happens in politics.