The Coming Butlerian Jihad

[legion]

I strong recommend reading every word of this article, but here are some excerpts. I feel like someone else finally gets what I've been suspicious of these past 20 years...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook

Surveillance capitalism was invented around 2001 as the solution to financial emergency in the teeth of the dotcom bust when the fledgling company faced the loss of investor confidence. As investor pressure mounted, Google’s leaders abandoned their declared antipathy toward advertising. Instead they decided to boost ad revenue by using their exclusive access to user data logs (once known as “data exhaust”) in combination with their already substantial analytical capabilities and computational power, to generate predictions of user click-through rates, taken as a signal of an ad’s relevance.
...
The success of these new mechanisms only became visible when Google went public in 2004. That’s when it finally revealed that between 2001 and its 2004 IPO, revenues increased by 3,590%.
...
Google began by unilaterally declaring that the world wide web was its to take for its search engine. Surveillance capitalism originated in a second declaration that claimed our private experience for its revenues that flow from telling and selling our fortunes to other businesses. In both cases, it took without asking. Page [Larry, Google co-founder] foresaw that surplus operations would move beyond the online milieu to the real world, where data on human experience would be free for the taking. As it turns out his vision perfectly reflected the history of capitalism, marked by taking things that live outside the market sphere and declaring their new life as market commodities.

We were caught off guard by surveillance capitalism because there was no way that we could have imagined its action, any more than the early peoples of the Caribbean could have foreseen the rivers of blood that would flow from their hospitality toward the sailors who appeared out of thin air waving the banner of the Spanish monarchs. Like the Caribbean people, we faced something truly unprecedented.

Once we searched Google, but now Google searches us. Once we thought of digital services as free, but now surveillance capitalists think of us as free.
...
Despite surveillance capitalism’s domination of the digital milieu and its illegitimate power to take private experience and to shape human behaviour, most people find it difficult to withdraw, and many ponder if it is even possible. This does not mean, however, that we are foolish, lazy, or hapless. On the contrary, in my book I explore numerous reasons that explain how surveillance capitalists got away with creating the strategies that keep us paralysed. These include the historical, political and economic conditions that allowed them to succeed. And we’ve already discussed some of the other key reasons, including the nature of the unprecedented, conquest by declaration. Other significant reasons are the need for inclusion, identification with tech leaders and their projects, social persuasion dynamics, and a sense of inevitability, helplessness and resignation.

We are trapped in an involuntary merger of personal necessity and economic extraction, as the same channels that we rely upon for daily logistics, social interaction, work, education, healthcare, access to products and services, and much more, now double as supply chain operations for surveillance capitalism’s surplus flows. The result is that the choice mechanisms we have traditionally associated with the private realm are eroded or vitiated. There can be no exit from processes that are intentionally designed to bypass individual awareness and produce ignorance, especially when these are the very same processes upon which we must depend for effective daily life. So our participation is best explained in terms of necessity, dependency, the foreclosure of alternatives, and enforced ignorance.

[flipper35]

Google's motto: Do no evil.

Who defines that evil?

[Crowbob]

Thing is allot of people won’t be able to understand what she is saying nor get what the implications are.

As long as they can share vacation pictures and brag about their cats to the entire world how can they feel like they’re being manipulated?

Just look at how many youngsters are drowning in school debt, never ever to recover and have no idea they are being sold a bill of goods disguised as a diploma, for example.

[beatnavy]

Remember the 'good old days' when Microsoft was everyone's example of the evil empire? They just wanted to make as much money as possible ramming a mediocre product down your throats. You weren't required to assimilate.

In hindsight, it all seems so quaint now. I'll always trust the organization that says "we're here to sell as much crap as possible" over the one that claims to "do no evil." BS.

[legion]

Originally Posted by flipper35

Google's motto: Do no evil.

Who defines that evil?

The evil-doers.

[legion]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Thing is allot of people won’t be able to understand what she is saying nor get what the implications are.

As long as they can share vacation pictures and brag about their cats to the entire world how can they feel like they’re being manipulated?

Just look at how many youngsters are drowning in school debt, never ever to recover and have no idea they are being sold a bill of goods disguised as a diploma, for example.

Education is another Faustian bargain. You "need" it to get a good job, but getting it will put you in debt for life.

[flipper35]

My wife and I have had no student loans so no debt to pay off for our degrees. We paid as we went. Not all do or can afford to though and I get that, but it can be done.

[Crowbob]

That’s pretty much how I did it.

But I didn’t go to college for a degree or knowledge or nothin like that.

I went to college so I wouldn’t have to bowl.

[legion]

How long ago did you go to college? It was possible to graduate with no/little debt when I went to school (graduated in 2000), but it is no longer possible for most now. When I went to college, four years, everything included, ran about $32k. Today, at the same school, for the same degree, it would cost $128k. And that's for a moderately-low-priced state school. Tuition growth has generally been a multiple of inflation the past 20 years.

And what has that increase tuition gotten you? My school has a fancy new football stadium, has torn down dorms and forced students into expensive predatory college apartments, and has a fancy new recreation center. (I paid $4k a year for a dorm room and $2.5k for an apartment when I was there. Now the same apartment is $12k per year, per student.) But the single biggest change is that it has over 100 new, well-paid administrators to create and enforce policies on gender equality, environmental justice, and cultural sensitivity (all real positions).

[Crowbob]

My mid to late 1900’s college experience involved washing pots and pans in a dorm after scraping out and eating leftovers, literally living in a closet and enjoying the extravagance of a $5./wk stipend.

The rich kids lived in apartments and ate at McDonalds.

Right after college within walking distance of the room I rented was a grocery store wherein I worked nights cleaning the meat department with the same perks as the dorm job except I had to cook some of it.

It’s funny but at the time I didn’t feel poor. I looked it, though. Probably still do.

[fred cook]

My son received his undergrad degree from Georgia Tech in 2008. His 5 years at Tech cost us (him and me) about $100k. Fortunately, between his co-op work and my contributions, he got out without any student loan debt.

[Yorkie]

I was fortunate enough to be paid to go to college and graduated in 1991 (not an invitation to flame on the UK's State Sponsored Education) and this year I will finish up paying about $130K for my daughter's business degree so its eye watering for me especially as I have two more kids to put through college. Happy that I started saving for them at birth but I do wonder if its all worth it.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Thing is allot of people won’t be able to understand what she is saying nor get what the implications are.

The world's butlers are going to rise up against their oppressors in a holy war to serve tea to the homeless.

[legion]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

The world's butlers are going to rise up against their oppressors in a holy war to serve tea to the homeless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

The Butlerian Jihad is an event in the back-story of Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. Occurring over 10,000 years before the events chronicled in his 1965 novel Dune, this jihad leads to the outlawing of certain technologies, primarily "thinking machines," a collective term for computers and artificial intelligence of any kind. This prohibition is a key influence on the nature of Herbert's fictional setting.

[GH85Carrera]

The couple across the street from us saved for their kid's college for all her life. When she grew to 6 foot tall at age 14 she got into volleyball. She ended up with a full ride scholarship and a nice degree. Got married, had two kids and now is a full time mom. The parents had a big wad of cash and no kid to educate, so they took several nice vacations in Hawaii, and Europe, and a nice nest egg.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by legion

How long ago did you go to college? It was possible to graduate with no/little debt when I went to school (graduated in 2000), but it is no longer possible for most now. When I went to college, four years, everything included, ran about $32k. Today, at the same school, for the same degree, it would cost $128k. And that's for a moderately-low-priced state school. Tuition growth has generally been a multiple of inflation the past 20 years.

And what has that increase tuition gotten you? My school has a fancy new football stadium, has torn down dorms and forced students into expensive predatory college apartments, and has a fancy new recreation center. (I paid $4k a year for a dorm room and $2.5k for an apartment when I was there. Now the same apartment is $12k per year, per student.) But the single biggest change is that it has over 100 new, well-paid administrators to create and enforce policies on gender equality, environmental justice, and cultural sensitivity (all real positions).

Actually she just went back and got her masters and finished a couple years ago. It depends a lot on the school as well. She got her BA at San Diego State many years ago.

[sammyg2]

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

You mean, like this forum?

[greglepore]

Originally Posted by legion

And what has that increase tuition gotten you? My school has a fancy new football stadium, has torn down dorms and forced students into expensive predatory college apartments, and has a fancy new recreation center. (I paid $4k a year for a dorm room and $2.5k for an apartment when I was there. Now the same apartment is $12k per year, per student.) But the single biggest change is that it has over 100 new, well-paid administrators to create and enforce policies on gender equality, environmental justice, and cultural sensitivity (all real positions).

How DID these "predatory student apartments" become the norm? This is shear insanity-and its the norm practically everywhere now. Yeah, they have mini kitchens and lounges with hottubs, but they literally have a captive audience that is forced to pay full on apartment rent.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by red-beard

You mean, like this forum?

Yep. Just like.

i hope that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone here.