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From: Winston Kodogo <kodogo@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: Re: The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook
Date: Mon,  4 Apr 2016 09:28:42 +1200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAFiGbxgZhcwRj6HHoVc6_dmO_+1iXJ9R+cvW2qpc=taR6bmgMQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <86mvpb5sqq.fsf_-_@cmarib.ramside>

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Were it not for the spelling mistakes, I would swear that the cigarmeister
was the Blessed Mark V Shaney in drag. Although, I'm fairly sure that even
on an off day Mark  knew the difference between "less" and "fewer". "Less
than 1% of people
who qualify for Mensa"  indeed.

On 3 April 2016 at 14:30, <cigar562hfsp952fans@icebubble.org> wrote:

> Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it> writes:
>
> > physical tool. Now, we "know that a programmable computer is no more and
> no
> > less than an extremely handy device for realizing any conceivable
> mechanism
> > without changing a single wire", but are we sure we really want to remove
> > the awareness of the wires?
>
> I don't think people are necessarily aware of the "wires", anymore.
> Many millenials think of the Internet as a resource that just sort of
> floats around in the air, kind of like oxygen.  (I once built a little,
> "mini-Internet" for a cryptography demonstration I did for a group of
> millenials.  One of them expressed to me his confusion that the network
> actually contained a wired hub!)  When people use the Web, send a text,
> or make a call, they assume that their information is private because
> they can't see the radio waves.  They have little, if any, concern with
> how the technology actually works, just that it somehow "magically" does
> something useful.
>
> > Google glasses scare me even more: we are going to look the world through
> > some one else eyes. In the long run, our brain will start to accept the
>
> That's one of the reasons why it's so important to maintain control and
> ownership of OUR OWN data.  My data + my programs = my image of reality.
>
> > some one else eyes. In the long run, our brain will start to accept the
> > virtual baloons like the other physical entities that really exists.
>
> I think we already have one foot planted firmly in that mine field.
> People already mistake what they see on social media for reality.  A
> little over a year ago, I attended a Mensa* meeting in Portsmouth, NH
> (the same city that the treaty was signed in).  Our discussion focused
> on how to get more people to join Mensa, and how to encourage existing
> members to participate in chapter activities.  (Less than 1% of people
> who qualify for Mensa are actually members, and the overwhelming
> majority of those don't participate in any of our calendered events.)
> As is wont to happen when discussing promotion of ANYTHING, these days,
> someone offered the perennial suggestion of using social media.  I posed
> this group the question, (paraphrasing) "If someone was invited to an
> event by someone who they knew in real life, as opposed to someone they
> only knew from Facebook, would they be more likely to attend?"  Another
> member there answered my question by saying that she saw her friends on
> Facebook as BEING real friends.  I was just blown away by that answer.
> On social media, you have no idea who you're talking to, if what they
> say is true, or if they're even a real person.  Not long ago, it was
> revealed that the U.S. government has actually paid contractors to
> create hundreds of fake social media profiles.  It had never before even
> OCCURRED to me that people might acutally mistake what they see on
> social media for reality.
>
> I could probably list half a dozen other annecdotes that illustrate how
> social media have distorted people's perceptions of reality.  But this
> one is perhaps the most compelling, because it is so unexpected and so
> foreboding.  If a member of Mensa (whose IQ must be at or above the 98th
> percentile) can mistake social media for reaility, then that same
> mistake can be (and most certainly is) made by the other 98% of the
> population.  That's terrifying.
>
> > We are already trained to be suspicious about the truth even when it's
> > clearly evident, now we can even start to ignore the information from the
> > physical world, while accepting the virtual information that someone else
> > feed us.
>
> Maintaining a strong sense of skepticism might be a healthy way to
> engage with the dubious world of social media.  Whenever you listen to a
> politician speak, for instance, you do so with a healthy dose of
> skepticism.  Perhaps we could treat everything we see on social media
> like we treat politicians.  If we were to adopt a popular predisposition
> to consider anything on social media as "quite likely false", then the
> damage to reality might be limited.  Earlier in this thread, ...
>
> lucio@proxima.alt.za writes:
>
> > to publish.  Stupidly, we still demand that people be consistent, but
> > that will drift away over time, of that I'm pretty certain.
>
> There is some creative merit in doing that.  Then again, an inability to
> tell what's true at all could be an emerging trajedy of these commons.
>
> *Mensa is a trade name, and Mensa does not necessarily agree with or
> endorse any of my kooky views.  They should, though.  ;)
>
> --
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> |           human <cigar562hfsp952fans@icebubble.org>                  |
> |Any sufficiently high intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.|
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
>

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2016-04-03 21:28 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-03-30 23:40 [9fans] " cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  0:12 ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-01 17:44   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  0:23 ` Kurt H Maier
2016-03-31  0:58   ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-01 17:30   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  1:53 ` Bakul Shah
2016-03-31  2:09   ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2016-03-31  2:59     ` Bakul Shah
2016-03-31 19:41     ` Steve Simon
2016-04-01 15:00       ` michaelian ennis
2016-03-31  2:17 ` Staven
2016-04-02  3:02   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-03-31  5:24 ` lucio
2016-03-31  9:03   ` hiro
2016-03-31 10:17     ` David Pick
2016-03-31 11:16       ` Iain Watson Smith
2016-03-31 12:44       ` Kurt H Maier
2016-04-01 20:00   ` cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-04-01 20:40     ` Wes Kussmaul
2016-04-01 20:53     ` Giacomo Tesio
2016-04-02  9:32       ` hiro
2016-04-02  9:58         ` Richard Miller
2016-04-02 10:08           ` hiro
2016-04-03  2:30       ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: " cigar562hfsp952fans
2016-04-03  8:13         ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, Richard Miller
2016-04-08  3:25           ` erik quanstrom
2016-04-03 20:04         ` [9fans] OT: Ubiquitous data vs. Reality, WAS: Re: The Plan 9/"right" way to do Facebook Wes Kussmaul
2016-04-03 21:28         ` Winston Kodogo [this message]
2016-04-04 11:37           ` hiro
2016-04-04 23:53             ` Winston Kodogo
2016-04-03  4:42       ` [9fans] " lucio
2016-04-03 11:24         ` Giacomo Tesio
2016-04-03 11:44           ` lucio
2016-04-03  4:22     ` lucio
2016-04-03  4:32     ` lucio

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