Techno-Grousing: A New Analytic Method?
July 3, 2020
Two items snagged my attention as my team and I were finishing the pre-recorded lecture about Amazon policeware for the upcoming National Cyber Crime Conference.
The first is a mostly context free item from a Silicon Valley type “real” news outfit. The article’s title is:
Hany Farid Says a Reckoning Is Coming for Toxic Social Media
The item comes from one of the technology emission centers in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley region: A professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
What’s interesting is that Hany Farid is activating a klaxon that hoots:
In five years, I expect us to have long since reached the boiling point that leads to reining in an almost entirely unregulated technology sector to contend with how technology has been weaponized against individuals, society, and democracy.
Insight? Prediction? Anticipatory avoidance?
After decades of supporting, advocating, and cheerleading technology — now, this moment, is the time to be aware that change is coming. Who is responsible? The media is a candidate, people who disseminate misinformation, and bad actors.
Sounds good. What about educators? Well, not mentioned.
The other item comes from the Jakarta Post. You can find the story at this link. I have learned that mentioning the entity the story discusses results in my blog post being skipped by certain indexing systems. Hey, that’s a surprise, right?
The point of the write up is that a certain social media site is now struggling with increased feistiness among otherwise PR influenced users.
What’s interesting is that suddenly, like the insight du jour from the Berkeley professor, nastiness is determined to be undesirable.
The fix for the social media outfit is simple: Get out of line and you will be blocked from the service. There’s nothing so comforting as hitting the big red cancel button.
Turning battleships quickly can have interesting consequences. The question is, “What if the battleship’s turn has unforeseen consequences?”
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2020
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