Tag: commented

Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? | TechCrunch

History suggests that Jack Welch’s philosophy that “a company should be #1 or #2 in a particular industry or else leave it completely” is even more applicable to the tech industry, where the top player can build a sustainable and ever-growing business but everyone else is practically better off getting out.

Source: Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? | TechCrunch

 

Is this a problem born, or intensified, by turning people and the data about them into the product with profit margins determined by our willingness to be exploited/manipulated combined with the asymmetry of information about how the exploitation/manipulation is happening?

 

From comments:

I think a core issue that is not raised, is that if the data is so valuable, why do more people not insist on reaping the rewards of sharing their data?

— anonymous

Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them | TechCrunch

I think this is the perfect example of why I don’t think that “opt-out” (as opposed to opt-in) is *ever* an acceptable policy except in extreme cases.

Perhaps my ears were too finely-tuned by years of education at a liberal college campus. I may be alone; the majority of opinions formed in the last two days seem to agree that people, especially women, must be educated about the privacy implications of Facebook.

There is a discussion to be had about the default privacy settings of Facebook. But when I hear people proclaim the importance of educating these presumably ignorant young women about the dangers of Facebook, it is just a little too close to comfort to those seeking to educate women about the dangers of hemlines that end above the knee.

“You can always opt-out…” No. Please. No. Wait — I’ve reconsidered. That’s fine. Just tell me when you want me to stop hitting you.

Source: Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them | TechCrunch

 

I think this is how we should feel we have been treated every time some company buys your email address and sends you spam with an option to unsubscribe, every time a service substantially changes its policies and reminds you that if you disapprove then you can always stop using their service (which, given the ubiquity and monopoly of many online services, is near-complete BS and they know it).

That said, if a technology is created, a customer explicitly opts in to using it without bothering to learn about it (even if the information is hard to come by or requires substantial time to learn and education and mental capacity to understand?), and that customer is subsequently harmed by the technology, then is anyone to blame/at fault? If so, who {inventor/developer/manufacturer, retailer/seller, customer, society} is it and how much culpability and responsibility do they bear? Why?

Oh, That “Pull To Refresh” Thing In iOS? Yeah, Twitter Has A Patent App On That | TechCrunch

This is why patents are becoming (or have become) just stupid:

Yep, Twitter is trying to patent “pull to refresh.” But the patent app doesn’t stop there – it goes after anything that issues a command on pulling down a menu.

Source: Oh, That “Pull To Refresh” Thing In iOS? Yeah, Twitter Has A Patent App On That | TechCrunch

 

The part that really aggravates me is how any fool could replicate what they did, and would have in short order with or without an example. That is not a patentable discovery and the people in the patent offices should be ashamed of their ignorance of simple abstraction and their culpability in strangling the innovation they are supposed to be serving by protecting the truly revolutionary which no one would ever have come up with but for the permission of the genius who invented it also explaining its inner workings.

The Right to Be Forgotten – Stanford Law Review

At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the past few years, has finally been codified as part of a broad new proposed data protection regulation.

Source: The Right to Be Forgotten – Stanford Law Review

 

If someone is tired of their photograph showing up online because they want to be a private individual, or whatever, should they be allowed to demand that Google and Facebook (and by extension, their friends and family) prevent anyone from posting pictures of that person, sharing pictures of that person, or tagging pictures of that person? What if they are possibly not the primary subject in the image? Is it okay to let technology permit revisionist photographs wherein people who do not want to be in the image may opt out of being displayed in it?

Technology should, at least in theory, permit either extreme in this case (anything from amazing privacy to complete free speech), so our collective choice (for a “default setting” plus what we are permitted to opt in to and out of) may fall anywhere along a very long/wide spectrum. The issue is complicated enough that some public discourse should take place, since otherwise policy will likely be pulled only by those who have the most lose (celebrities and other people of public interest) or gain (media organizations) rather than by what is on average best for everyone.

Apple’s supply chain flap: It’s really about us | ZDNet

Apple is under fire for its supply chain labor, but every tech item—and thing you own—goes through the same manufacturing paces.

Source: Apple’s supply chain flap: It’s really about us | ZDNet

 

Is this a self-reinforcing problem? Average Americans demand cheap products because their real wages do not rise and their real wages do not rise because corporations move jobs overseas in search of lower costs in order to provide the cheap products demanded by the American consumer?