Are we heading for a Grim New World? It looks like it, from two short articles that I have recently read. One, from today, is
Why I am publishing all my texts, emails and messages to the internet in real time. The author, Mark Farid, writes:
In October 2015, in conjunction with my exhibition Data Shadow, I gave a talk at the University of Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas, titled “Anonymity is our only right, and that is why it must be destroyed”. At the end of the talk, I shared all my login details with the audience. This included all my personal and professional email addresses, my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, my Apple ID, and my (closed) online banking details.
My intention was to live without a digital footprint for 6 months, and since I didn’t ever own the accounts, giving away my passwords was the only way I could think of “deleting” them.
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While humans have always been conscious of the judgement of our peers, the amount and the depth of information we now give them is unprecedented in human history
In other words, an attempt to become “invisible” in our increasingly “goldfish bowl” society.
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Yesterday, I read If robots get our jobs, what will they take next?, a review of:
The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century by Ryan Avent. The article author (or a sub-editor) says:
[This] new study of the economic impact of technology, is full of vivid ideas but short on solutions
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You might think education holds the key: the more training for software designers in the Third World, the faster prosperity will flow their way. But Avent’s answer is different – and seems vanishingly unlikely to gain traction with policymakers in the current political mood. He is, in effect, an advocate of mass migration from the poor world to the cities of the rich, “the playgrounds of the one per cent”. Why? Because that’s where the social capital resides . . .
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Two interesting topics. Would any readers here like to peruse one or both of these articles, and share their opinions here?
