Mark Zuckerberg's Resolution Is To Talk About Tech's Place In Society (engadget.com) 72
In the past, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to create an AI assistant for his home and committed to learning Mandarin. This year he's planning to hold a number of public discussions about how technology plays a role in the future of society. Engadget reports: "I'm an engineer, and I used to just build out my ideas and hope they'd mostly speak for themselves," he wrote in a Facebook post. "But given the importance of what we do, that doesn't cut it anymore. So I'm going to put myself out there more than I've been comfortable with and engage more in some of these debates about the future, the tradeoffs we face, and where we want to go." Zuckerberg plans to hold talks with "leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields" every few weeks. He'll make the discussions available on his Facebook and Instagram feeds or elsewhere. Engadget suggests Zuckerberg "might be best served to directly focus on restoring trust with Facebook's two billion users and fixing the vast array of problems with which his platform is struggling, including privacy screwups and a tanking stock."
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Also in the news (Score:3, Funny)
I challenged myself to learn more about the Cortex M7 and pick up Russian.
What? Isn't that the thread about stuff people do nobody gives a fuck about?
I think if Facebook had a proper MEPR then... (Score:3)
If Facebook had a proper MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation), then I would look at Zuckerberg's MEPR and adjust my filters so that I would NOT see him anymore. The trolls, too, of course. (Actually, it should be easy to pre-block trolls with a slight adjustment to the default visibility threshold.)
Of course it will never happen. MEPR would require sharing some of the information that Facebook has collected about each of us, and Facebook is going to hoard that information. Only way Facebook would consider sharing the MEPR data would be if there was legislation forcing them to or if there was a credible competitive threat.
Time's up, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Learned Mandarin (Score:2)
Now that he has learned to speak Mandarin I wish he'd keep to it.
It Won't Last (Score:5, Informative)
Now that Mr Zuckerberg has made this fresh commitment to going and meeting with people, I'm sure that his administration staff are already in the process of reaching out to make his appointments on the other side of the Atlantic.
What's that you say? No? Well, this is just more drivel then.
Actions speak louder than words.
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Zuckerberg plans to hold talks with "leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields" every few weeks.
And he will do nothing of substance, and it will be business as usual, just like it has been for the last 10+ years.
One apology after another. Constant promises to change and do better. Followed by . . . . . nothing.
The "leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields" need to start telling Zuckerberg to fuck off. Until he actually does something, he need to STFU.
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Mr Zuckerberg has been repeatedly ask to attend meetings in the UK and Brussels to explain the practices undertaken by his company and the way that those practices impact the citizens of the UK and the broader EU.
Which would have produced nothing of value whatsoever, because politicians don't even know what questions to ask. We learned that when he spoke to congress. Even Democrats were dumbfounded.
Let the Right One In (Score:5, Interesting)
The natural state of technology is to advance by becoming more efficient, effective, and to encompass and sometimes replace more of what we do.
We're near (perhaps already past) the point where we should ask ourselves: how much DO we want technology to take over our lives? Cyberpunk posits a possible future where technology has degraded the value of humanity, but we should ask ourselves what aspects of technology lead to such degradation, and how can we reap the benefits of technology while avoiding those aspects?
For an example, I'm reminded of a virtual reality conference in Las Vegas a few years ago, where a local brothel encouraged conference-goers to have sex in reality rather than in virtual reality. It's easy to snicker at that now, but imagine when the difference becomes blurrier, that might not be such a preposterous plea. If sex in virtual reality becomes more convenient, safe, and pleasurable than real-world sex; what kind of side-effects could that have to society, or to gender relations? Such VR sex (with NPCs) would arguably degrade the value of human sexual relationships.
I'm not saying society can (or should) stop technological development, just that people may want to go through 'technology planning' (a la family planning) at some point in their lives, to decide how much they want it to pervade their personal lives. Banning usage of degrading technology will become increasingly futile over time, as deployment becomes easier; it's more plausible that society will change to accept what they must and avoid what they can and want to.
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Such VR sex (with NPCs) would arguably degrade the value of human sexual relationships.
Well, it should do wonders to empowering women. No longer will they have to second guess the motives of someone asking them out to dinner, since simply fucking would not only be more pleasurable but also cheaper in VR.
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Oh c'mon, it's way easier to reduce men to the important bits than women. I'm fairly sure dildos are older and easier to produce than fake pussies.
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Why are women having to second guess anything around you?
Instead of being Schrodinger's date where juts status as a date is left entirely ambiguous, you need to risk rejection and actually ask her on a date so your intentions for future romantic involvement are abundantly clear.
On the other hand you only seem to be considering the monetary cost of getting your dick wet, not actual dating. Why not just visit a sex worker rather than faff around with dinners if you wanna a purely transactional model of sex?
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Don't ask me, I don't do that dating thing. But I do know that a lot of people do. No, I don't get that either.
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Basic this is what the Amish do isn't it. They as a community make decisions about what technology is "good for them" and what isn't. They allow some technologies like the telephone to have specific use cases and reject its presence elsewhere.
I am not sure its working out well for them. There are definitely healthy thriving Amish communities but there are also ones that have some really deep problems.
I am not sure 'technology planning' will scale up either into our larger freedom valuing society. Withou
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Who is going to be more convincing in the meeting, the guy with brain implant that lets him look up facts etc without pausing or breaking eye contact
that guy is constantly getting visually assaulted with "Firmware update required" and "Hot new deals available near you!" modal dialogs boxes beamed directly into his retina. We had to lock him in a closet once when the vocalization subroutines got hacked he just kept singing rick rolls all day
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I meant that technology planning would be more of a personal choice than a societal choice. The Amish accept or reject technologies based on the question of if it brings them closer together or separates them, thus the automobile and telephone are controversial because they can be argued to do both.
I fully accept that there's no stopping technology in the industrial sector, for competitiveness/productivity reasons, and it's folly to attempt to do so. Thus why I'm talking about personal choices.
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Open that door, and suddenly you'll discover that the wee "we" is a giant Pandora's box.
Lemma: We agree on nothing.
Proof: Well, I'd provide one, but you probably wouldn't even read it, so you might as well make your own.
Purpose of tech ... (Score:4, Interesting)
should be to make everyone's lives better (happier, easier, richer, less hassled, ...), not to make a few richer at the expense of everyone else.
Nice word smithing. (Score:5, Insightful)
"the tradeoffs we face"
This is just a continuing damage control tour where he will very careful phrase things to make government officials believe that he should be allowed to do what he does because it's necessary for his business model. The reality of the situation is there may be trade offs, but it should be a decision left up to the consumer. The consumer should has the easy, straightforward ability to opt in of every type of data collection. Otherwise they are by default opted OUT. The problem right now is that by default, every person on the planet is opted IN and has no way to tell the corporations and governments to stop collecting data on them.
He'll even try making the point that they have to know who you are and what you are doing so that they won't collect the data. This is the famous "send us all your nude pics so we can make sure we don't post them somewhere". Again - the reality to that situation is to enforce a stop on all anoonymous data collection as well that ties back to any single entity. Because even that can easily be distilled back down to the individual through geolocation and other means.
Stop collecting data on us you assholes.
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Mark Zuckerberg's place in society is: (Score:2)
Social media is new now? (Score:2)
Lots of ads.
More bans for people trying to publish their own content online.
How about going back to the American idea of the freedom of speech and freedom after speech?
The freedom to publish and the freedom of the press?
Probably one of the least trusted people in tech.. (Score:2)
His resolution is to talk instead of do? (Score:2)
I misread the summary. (Score:2)
This is what I saw when I was skimming:
Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to create an AI assassin for his home
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Zuckerberg Plans to Launch Propaganda Tour... (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone consider Zuckerburg an authority on anything? The truth is that he got lucky. He used the money from some rich fellow students to clone another social media app at a time when the world was ready for social media apps. It had been quite a while since Citizen Band radio had declined, and most people had forgotten what a pointless clusterfuck of people with nothing to say that was. They were once again ready to parade their narcissism, and Zuck got lucky that they chose his from among several competitors, MySpace being the most well known. There wasn't a technical reason that FB was superior, it was initially because it was seen to be composed of a more exclusive club.
What exactly in that category qualifies this dufus to be an expert on anything other than getting lucky at the right time? I'm just as interested in hearing about the social impact of rehabilitating the buffalo population from lottery winners.
Yeah yeah (Score:2)
Mark Zuckerberg’s resolution is to try to anything he can to resurrect his reputation.
Whenever I see Zuckerberg opining about some generic tech topic, It seems immediately obvious he’s in the same boat as Nathan Myhrvold - he’s gotten filthy rich by screwing over other people, but desperately wants that to not be his legacy.
Intrusive Advertising’s Place in Society (Score:2)
I would much rather see how he would justify [intrusive] advertising and targeted propaganda’s place in modern society.
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hyperbole across the board (Score:4, Interesting)
Zuckerberg is not a saint or a devil, not a megalomaniac, not intent on ruling the world, not all that intent on changing it. He's very intelligent and hard working, but no more so than hundreds of thousands of other people. He's not a genius and has no particularly unique vision. He is neither evil nor especially good.
Zuckerberg is a guy who dropped out of college to develop a web app. There were (at least) thousands of other people doing exactly this in the late 90s and early 2000s. His app wasn't (and isn't) particularly original - lots of people had ideas for social networking apps. Through a bit of savvy business strategy and a lot of pure dumb luck, he wound up as one of the very few people who made it big from that wave of app developers.
Don't lose sight of the fact that ZUCKERBERG IS AN AD MAN. Companies pay him to display ads in places where lots of eyeballs will see them. That's his business. Period. End. Of. Story. His ad medium is an internet-based social networking service. Before that, ad men used cable TV. Before that, broadcast TV. Before that, magazines and newspapers. New medium, same business. One can make arguments that computing and the internet make it fundamentally different, but that's just hubris. "I must be unique from all the generations of human that came before me". Sorry, nope. The internet hasn't transformed us into anything substantially different.
You want to know what facebook is going to do or say in any situation? Ask yourself what would maintain or expand their ability to SELL ADS to other companies. That's what they'll do. That's their business. That's why they exist.
Irrelevant (Score:2)
This strikes me as an effort made by a person who is afraid of becoming irrelevant.
Wrong guy to be doing this (Score:1)
tech's place in society (Score:2)
is certainly not to be a massive spy-machine.