20 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Today's Wants Become Tomorrow's Needs
"The pie keeps growing because things that look like wants today are needs tomorrow," argued Marc Andreessen, the Netscape cofounder, who lelped to ignite a whole new industry, e-commerce, that now employs mil)ns of specialists around the wodd, specialists whose jobs weren't even lagined when Bill Clinton became president. I like going to coflfee shops occasionally, but now that Starbucks is here, I need my coffee, and that new need has spawned a whole new industry. I always wanted to be able... 1 
notes
notes16 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Argument Against Teacherbots
Computers can do a lot in education. Of course, books and magazines can do a lot in education. Of course, a lot of what computers do well is simply replacing books and magazines. A children's library needs a librarian. It's not a dumpster full of books. Librarians (like teachers) know what children will like and understand at different ages. They can recommend books, and buy books that are popular, so you can look at the spines of books on a bookshelf, pull out a book, and find something inte...Folksonomies: education automation
Folksonomies: education automation
1 notes
notes14 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Implications of a Facebook Bankruptcy
One reason companies like Facebook should be interested in what I am proposing is that planning a regulation regime is better than morphing involuntarily into a dull regulated utility, which is what would probably happen otherwise. Suppose Facebook never gets good enough at snatching the “advertising” business from Google. That’s still a possibility as I write this. In that event, Facebook could go into decline, which would present a global emergency.
It’s not an outlandish scenario....Folksonomies: social media
Folksonomies: social media
1 notes
notesPeople would lose their friends, contacts, and much online history.
07 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Privacy is Impossible on the Internet
The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him;105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.
[...]
Sure, we can take measures to pr...Folksonomies: privacy sousveillance
Folksonomies: privacy sousveillance
1 notes
notesThere are too many companies gathering too much data in too many ways.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Cognitive Prostheses
The sense-represent-plan-act picture is a heroic one, but it is biologically implausible. I don't need to memorize the layout of the physical environment around me — this desk, this room, this city, this country. After all, the desk, room, city are there before me and we are built — through evolution — to have ready sensory access to it.
Shut your eyes. Can you remember the detailed layout around you? It turns out that beyond the broad outlines — the basic schematic organization of... 1 notes
notesGoogle doesn't make us stupider by letting us get by without having to remember things we can retrieve, and the idea that it does comes from a misunderstanding about how humans remember things and how we have always used technology to supplement our memories.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
How Do Artists Make Money in a World of "Free"
Obviously we must balance our desire for free stuff with a concern for work. but the open-source software tradition, our final authority on all social questions these days, has little to say about labor, oppression, compensation or collective bargaining. The supposed liberation heralded by those who promote free culture is winner-takes-all; exploit or be exploited, as long as you share your code. Anderson concedes this point, acknowledging that we "measure success in terms of creation of vast...Folksonomies: creative commons
Folksonomies: creative commons
1 notes
notesIt's easy for Google, buzzword-techno-Utopians, and progressives to estole the virtues of free media online, where copyrights are being broken down and everyone is producing free content because they love to do so, but artists still need to make a living. Media corporations are still getting rich, and software pirates are promoting their goods while trading them for free online. While google makes billions on indexing content, while those producing the content make nothing. What is the solution to this?
