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.  ;)

--
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|           human <cigar562hfsp952fans@icebubble.org>                  |
|Any sufficiently high intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.|
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