[HN Gopher] Unlimited Information Is Transforming Society
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Unlimited Information Is Transforming Society
Author : yarapavan
Score : 107 points
Date : 2020-09-06 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| deltron3030 wrote:
| The printing press and education ecosystem it sparked was way
| more important for modernity than people give it credit for.
| Sure, people were motivated to read because they wanted to read
| the bible, but the skills were most useful for general education
| and bettering the quality of life.
|
| Imo, one reason Europe is behind digitally nowadays is related to
| taking the advantage that the printing infrastructure sparked for
| granted. Information technology and the democratisation of
| knowledge didn't start with computers, the're several IT
| milestones that improved the quality of life substantially, from
| fighting nature for survival and having no distributable time to
| asking yourself each morning what you're going to learn today.
|
| You can do anything you want, every niche you can find has inward
| paths that you can follow, and becoming good at something only
| depends on the time you're willing to invest. Having
| distributable time and developing skills in areas that interest
| you is pure luxury.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| Better title: "Where are all the flying cars?" A 3500-word survey
| of what worked (transistor-enabled computing and the internet)
| and what didn't (space travel and nuclear) post-WW2. As an alum
| of the author's employer, I never thought much of that "field of
| concentration" known as HistOfSci. Matt Damon's observation about
| library late charges was spot-on.
| dkobia wrote:
| "There's no such thing as information overload. There's only
| filter failure."
|
| ~ Clay Shirky
| formalsystems wrote:
| > We're just starting to understand the implications.
|
| Thirty years after the invention of the printing press, one of
| the most popular printed books was the _Malleus Maleficarum_ , a
| treatise on witchcraft which triggered a witch-hunting hysteria
| that lasted centuries. The corrosive effect of disinformation has
| been clear for centuries and the medium by which it is
| disseminated is, in my opinion, hardly the concern. My concern is
| that until very recently, the controllers of these mediums (e.g.
| Facebook, Twitter) insisted that all ideas deserve a level
| playing field, rather than accept that some ideas are simply
| better than others.
|
| > Before the 19th century, invention and innovation emerged
| primarily from craft traditions among people who were not
| scientists and who were typically unaware of pertinent scientific
| developments.
|
| I think for every pre-19th century innovation that occurred in an
| "information bubble" there were many more that depended on the
| Renaissance attitudes toward science and discovery that were
| themselves predicated on earlier discoveries. If I had to give a
| realistic estimate as to when innovation truly happened without
| knowledge of pertinent scientific developments, I would look back
| to pre-Galilean times.
| [deleted]
| ethanbond wrote:
| > until very recently, the controllers of these mediums (e.g.
| Facebook, Twitter) insisted that all ideas deserve a level
| playing field
|
| This is absolutely not true. You can go ahead and write a full
| blown, grammatically correct and even narratively interesting
| novel, submit it to a publisher (owner of printing presses),
| and they are under no obligation to print your book. Further,
| that publisher may decline explicitly _because_ they don't like
| your ideas.
|
| There clearly are questions around FB/Twitter/Google/etc., but
| you seriously weaken your point making a claim like that.
| kortilla wrote:
| There wasn't a single printing press. If one turned you down
| you just went to another. Also, "publisher" != "printing
| press".
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yes and FB/Twitter != "the Internet" or even "social
| media."
|
| They happen to just own the largest scale implementation of
| that medium, much like a publishing house.
| rmah wrote:
| Until very recently (as in the last 50 years or so), that's
| exactly what publisher meant. The people who owned the
| printing presses. The transition of publishers into pure
| selection/promotion/distribution businesses is fairly
| recent.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| > For better or worse, we can expect further blurring of many
| conventional boundaries--between work and home, between
| "amateurs" and professionals, and between public and private.
|
| Recently having a child, I'm definitely finding this blurring of
| amateurs and pros to be true. There's so many blogs and sites
| that say different things, it's hard to know what or who to
| believe. I wish there were just one highly-regarded expert source
| so that I could just go with what they say and not have to
| research every little thing.
| formalsystems wrote:
| If you consider the Bloomberg article on SuperMicro, they
| repeatedly claim expert/insider sources corroborate their
| version of the story, and have issued no retraction after their
| story was thoroughly debunked. While this certainly reflects
| poorly on Bloomberg, it reflects most on the journalistic
| standards of the article's authors. I don't think we will ever
| have a world where authoritative sources exist, since there can
| always be elements within the source of authority willing to
| bend the truth for more clicks.
| salawat wrote:
| This makes sense if you remember that one of Bloomberg's
| reason to exist is to report news that moves markets.
|
| Truth or lies, it gets said all the same.
|
| Funny how prescient The Protomen seem to be.
| jdsully wrote:
| Seems an uncharitable interpretation. I would regard that
| more as a guide to the type of news they want their
| reporters to focus on - and what their audience wants to
| read. As far as corporate goals go its actually pretty
| specific and measurable.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think there is still something to that story. The authors
| involved are pretty good journalists from what I hear. I
| think that the coincidence of the US government's efforts to
| sanction chinese companies is a little suspect.
| Thev00d00 wrote:
| As another recent parent I absolutely agree, add in to the mix
| to Google any possible answer you want to see and it becomes
| pretty useless as a resource. I have given up on the internet
| for parenting information except for healthcare provider
| information.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've seen my share if incompetent healthcare providers.
| Better to do your own research. Instead of Google, use
| PubMed.
| faitswulff wrote:
| As a parent, there are _so_ many things like "my child is
| hunching during breastfeeding, what does that mean?" or
| "why is baby choking during sleep" that you will find
| absolutely nothing on PubMed for.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm just saying to verify what your provider tells you.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Ya, there is so much information on raising kids that is just
| pulled out of thin air. So I started pretty much ignoring
| anything I see online unless it is accompanied with studies
| that are done on largish sample sizes.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Compare this to how it was pre-web: Just in time for the post-
| war baby boom, Dr. Benjamin Spock's "Baby and Child Care" was
| new parents' single go-to source of information for decades;
| selling over 50 million copies, it is one of the most popular
| books ever. His name recognition was exceedingly high; he'd
| regularly be mentioned on news and political shows, as well as
| in jokes on Laugh-In etc.
|
| The point being, you're certainly demonstrating an example of
| the recent trend where "voice of authority" is giving way to
| "the very notion of an expert is an elitist concept." Then
| again, maybe Spock is the explanation of all that ails us
| boomers?
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| > I wish there were just one highly-regarded expert source so
| that I could just go with what they say and not have to
| research every little thing.
|
| I find the same with different subjects matters. Something I
| really needed to dive into, fish farming, in the end resulted
| in me taking a one year vocational course. That was a good
| expert source. Another thing I do, is work with recording
| music, as an amateur. Again a subject with tons of information
| available, most of it is poor IMHO. I know a vocational course
| would help, but most materials for this is not available
| publicly. It frustrates me that a lot of school material, paid
| for by the government, is behind a gatekeeper. Not sure how to
| solve that.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have this view that the previous era of social structure was
| crafted through long trickles of actual know-how. This made the
| authority feels a bit stiff, but with the new open land of
| interwebs we're seeing how a "fluid" variant is mostly good to
| drown in.
|
| ps: side note, I tried to leverage access to direct science
| (pubmed and similar) and I was quite surprised that the
| struggle you describe for mundane topics (no offense to your
| family) is similar in deep research. A gazillions of
| publications all talking about similar things but with various
| conclusions and a lot of maybes. I kinda saw that human society
| is that thin autofocus line between high education doubts and
| high ignorance. We live in the 'field tested' middle ground
| which is not truer, just more agreed upon.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| With rearing a child, as stupid as it may sound, trust your
| gut. If something feels wrong - it probably is. Other than that
| - don't worry: the best parent is a happy parent.
|
| I was surprised to find out how many "child rearing" experts do
| not eat their own dog food or have no children altogether.
| Andrex wrote:
| > With rearing a child, as stupid as it may sound, trust your
| gut. If something feels wrong - it probably is.
|
| This feels like dangerous advice re: vaccinations.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Or just in general. Peoples' "gut feelings" about babies
| have often historically been pretty bizarre.
|
| Recent example, of a quack medical treatment involving
| giving babies alcohol:
|
| > Prior to alcohol's removal from the recipe, Woodward's
| maximum recommended dose of gripe water contained an
| alcohol content equivalent to five tots of whiskey for an
| 80kg adult. It was only in 1992 that Britain mandated that
| alcohol be removed from Gripe water, and in 1993 the United
| States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered an
| automatic detention of all shipments of Woodward's Gripe
| Water into the U.S.
|
| Giving babies alcohol, in various forms and often in quite
| large amounts, was part of the 'conventional wisdom' for a
| long time (though never really endorsed by medical
| science). If peoples' guts were so wrong then, I wouldn't
| trust them now.
| eric_h wrote:
| I believe the parent is presuming a higher base level of
| rationality in GP's "gut" than that of the population-at-
| large. While I'm not a parent, I'm certain that my "gut"
| would tell me that vaccinating my child is the opposite of
| wrong, however unpleasant for the child it might seem at
| the time.
|
| Of course, having watched friends become parents it's also
| quite clear that becoming a parent changes one's brain in
| some fundamental ways so it's possible you have a point ;)
| Andrex wrote:
| I accept the downvotes but I still feel like "by-the-gut"
| parenting has serious downsides that shouldn't be
| overlooked.
|
| It's possible being homosexual and raised in a
| conservative household has influenced that opinion,
| though.
| pstuart wrote:
| Agreed. One should trust one's gut if it is trustworthy.
| Dunning-Kruger makes this advice moot ;-)
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Could you please elaborate a little bit?
|
| Which of the following do you see being dangerous: (a)
| ignoring achievements of modern science which can cure
| almost anything or (b) injecting a foreign substance into a
| bloodstream of otherwise healthy child in order to prevent
| a non-deadly decease this child will likely never have?
| Andrex wrote:
| I feel like the need to elaborate on my original
| statement proves my point. There are decisions that "by-
| the-gut" parenting could get wrong with disastrous
| consequences.
|
| More over, I don't think there's ever a parenting
| situation which should preclude research, which seems
| like what the parent OP was advocating for.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| When I saw this, the adjacent story on HN was "Attention is your
| scarcest resource". That seems to me to be clearly a consequence
| of unlimited information.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| That headline is nonsense. I have unlimited attention.
| umvi wrote:
| Yes but you can only direct attention at 1 thing at a time,
| and you have limited time. Therefore your attention is
| limited.
| ars wrote:
| This article is not about the title, rather it's a survey of
| societal changes over the last 200 or so years caused by
| Scientific and Engineering advances.
|
| If you read it with that in mind, it's much more interesting. If
| you are looking for an answer to the idea in the title, you won't
| find it.
| neilkakkar wrote:
| Can someone explain how the title fits the article? I was ..
| pretty pissed once I reached the end (almost all of it
| interesting) to find it's not related to the title at all.
| supernova87a wrote:
| This is a bit of a side point, but I don't think the amount of
| information is causing us trouble. It's the speed of it.
|
| Every day we're being asked (or exposed) to so many new topics
| (and movements) that our attention has to get divided for minutes
| at a time amongst so many things.
|
| And what does that lead to? Given so many things to pay attention
| to, we then have to resort to simplification -- symbols -- to
| decide what we want or not, what to vote for or against, when
| there's a world of complication underneath.
|
| We go from symbol to symbol, giving our upvote that causes huge
| amounts of disruption to the people and issues that have to deal
| with the day-to-day reality after we've moved on to the next new
| thing. We gave our vote based on the symbol (which often doesn't
| turn out to be what we thought it was), with little thought to
| the consequences in the details.
|
| I think it's a problem, how the speed of information is making
| life more shallow, yet more complicated and less satisfying.
| notassigned wrote:
| Twitter seems to be the worst offender in this regard.
| agumonkey wrote:
| yes information needs integration which depends on the
| integration speed of the recipient. let's wait 40 years, future
| generations will become capable of handling parallel streams of
| wiki updates without breaking a sweat
| mindcrime wrote:
| Interestingly enough, this idea (or at least a variation of it)
| has been around for quite some time. Alvin Toffler[0] wrote
| about similar ideas in the late 1960's / early 1970's, and a
| lot of his thoughts are expressed in his book titled _Future
| Shock_ [1] - which is also the term he coined for the
| phenomenon he was describing.
|
| Toffler and his work have been discussed here on HN a few
| times, but I'd particularly call out this discussion, from the
| article announcing his death.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12004470
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
| banmeagaindan2 wrote:
| Also infoglut.
| psychanarch wrote:
| Speed is a central tenet of Paul Virilio's work, which might be
| of interest to you: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/speed-and-
| politics-new-editio...
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| The speed and amount are tightly coupled - it's not possible to
| process large amounts of data at a slow speed.
| gnud wrote:
| When a lot of the information is correcting or contradicting
| the information that came before, you could have reduced the
| amount of data by slowing down.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| The diffusion of technical expertise is an unalloyed good, but
| the article does not spend enough time exploring the interaction
| between dispersed expertise and concentrated market power.
|
| There are two very problematic phenomena: (1) plagiarism, and (2)
| quasi-legal corporate espionage.
|
| In (1) large companies just rip off FOSS code and call it a trade
| secret, as Goldman seems to have done. [1]
|
| In (2) companies that operate information infrastructure use it
| to surveill and preempt dispersed talent (as Amazon is alleged to
| have done with its market data, and Facebook is alleged to have
| done with its VPN app) [2].
|
| The net effect of all this is suboptimal investment in new tools,
| techniques, procedures, and business models. You can't invest if
| you can't profit. A clear market failure demanding public
| intervention.
|
| [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-
| goldma...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47281906
| eternalban wrote:
| Interesting point. Capital (still) trumps knowledge. There is a
| pop meme that tries to sell "information as the new oil", but
| your post reminds us that the 'value' of information is akin to
| 'weight' of a 'mass'. The gravitational field in question is
| centralized power, market or otherwise.
|
| [personal meta-aside: Did you know that JFK gave that speech to
| persuade American press to self-censor? That pull quote has
| been misused rather egregiously.]
| rmrfstar wrote:
| Thomas Jefferson drafted the US Declaration of Independence,
| and was a particularly violent "slave owner" [1]. While
| context is important, it doesn't mean that a document with an
| unsavory origin story should be ignored for that reason
| alone.
|
| [1] scare quotes indicate that I reject the assertion that
| anyone was ever "owned" by anyone else. Some people were
| violently imprisoned against their will, but never owned.
| eternalban wrote:
| No issue with the content, just a meta fyi/?.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Don't they usually mean data when they say information? And
| data is hardly freely available.
| eternalban wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| Frankly it's a bit of semantic muddle in my own head. For
| example, is my browsing history "data" or "information"? So
| for my own personal dictionary, "data" means basically
| 'measure', and "information" is 'processed data'.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| eZ2see99 wrote:
| It's generational transfer of control of social discourse.
|
| Retirees and over 45s are losing their grip on social
| narratives as the youthful population outnumbers their once
| solidly coupled cohorts.
|
| We're tired of being treated like the aliens in Enders Game.
| Our logistics are better and we outnumber them. It's riling the
| rubes, but on the flip side deference to a generation we can't
| really understand is stifling everyone else.
|
| They don't have an information advantage. Just a financial
| capital advantage. They need to manage political debate to keep
| that advantage.
|
| It seems like such an easy fix is right there: look away from
| the platforms and build 1:1, networking our way together across
| cloud hosts. Otherwise stop using the usual portals.
|
| Step 1: dump shareable data into an S3 bucket and provide
| secured access.
|
| Step 2: iterate on this general habit.
|
| Wanna go on prem? Kubernetes + Kilo can be setup in any OS in
| an hour of googling.
|
| Why do I need Dropbox anymore?
|
| Why do I need an app? Why not just store my data and develop a
| 1:1 or 1:N as needed (with doctors) by owning where it put it?
|
| Oh right; jobs wrapping AWS in the 9 millionth form of a todo
| list.
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