Dear Herb and WeatherCat users who should be afraid of the power of big information managers,
Well Edouard, it's not a loss if it has never been, and you are talking about developing something that has never been, that exists only in the vaguest of terms. I'm not saying that it can't be done. I'm saying that we can't know if it can be done until after someone does it.
My complaint isn't that nobody succeeded, my complaint is that as far as I can tell, nobody even bothered to try. In my mind that is a objection that is much more serious. User-interface design is a very specialized business. We can't shop around for better one if we don't like the ones offered to us. What does the evidence behind iOS and Android suggest to you? Apple came up with a hodgepodge user interface and Google who could have invested the brain power to come up with something far superior instead was content to imitate. This was precisely the moment when the competitive forces behind capitalism are supposed to drive innovation. Well the economics failed to foster the excellence that supposedly the silicon valley is capable. If these forces don't encourage these technology titans to try harder - exactly what is supposed to do it?
And, while the young have a tendency to squander away their misspent youth, they also have a tendency to wander into maturity at some point. I wouldn't worry to much about them.
Unfortunately that tendency to mature isn't simply a matter of biology - it also requires a culture that values maturity. At least since the rise of Hollywood, the west has indulged in a dubious tendency to view the carefree days of young with too much longing. What works out in movie rarely happens in real life and rarely are the errors of youth not get paid for.
The rise of silicon valley has put a troubling spin on this wishful hope that we can be young forever. Hollywood dwells on youth, but the silicon valley is populated with young people who have been very narrowly educated in a discipline that is not even related to the physical world - much less the human one. Steve Jobs was deeply effected by the little time he spent at Reed college. The vast majority of silicon valley engineers are very expert in a very narrow aspect of technology. Most went to a lot of trouble to avoid learning anything that wasn't focused on their passions and/or paychecks. Such people simply haven't been exposed to the broader ranges of human experiences to understand many things about what is rightfully called human wisdom. Worse still, their technical training encourages a black and white view of many things and their success quickly goes to their head. While the typical geek may be terrorized by social situations, they nonetheless think extremely highly of themselves and have an unrealistic conception of their problem solving skills.
So the world now finds itself with a group of individuals who are poorly suited to dealing with the extremely complex and tangled nature of human problems, but through their control of technology have the capacity to exert enormous forces on society. Organizations like Facebook have already admitted to controlling the information that their users have access to. They have no choice, if that information isn't filtered, it becomes overwhelming and will cause people to leave Facebook. The 64-dollar question is -
HOW - Facebook manipulates those filters.
Facebook has been already accused to making access to conservative information more difficult. Even without any intent, Facebook could be causing their users to shift their political views to the left, simply through the process by which friendship networks interact with the very geeks who provide this technology. Facebook is collecting huge amounts of data on their users, if they were aware of a shift toward the left - would they do anything about it?
Even if you are a Democrat, this sort of a scenario should send chills down your spine. Democracies can only function if there is a viable opposition. Without it, there is no way for the voters to object to the current government. The effects can be anything from government gridlock, to voter apathy, to extremism. We are observing all three at the moment. Could companies like Facebook, Google, and even Apple be unwittingly unraveling core foundations of western civilization? If they were, do they have the sort people working for them that could understand the implications of how they package information and find remedies?
The rise of big information companies move their role out of simply economics. They are having an effect on our social and political lives as well and at the moment we are powerless to understand what sort of manipulations such institutions may be causing on the public - even those which are completely unintended and unanticipated.
We are facing a dangerous moment in our world that makes the monopolies around 1900 pale in comparison. Thus far, there isn't massive public outcry demanding transparency in what these information titans are doing with the information they collect. I do hope that there isn't some sort of intentional process of deception. However, I am very worried that these companies don't employ the sort of people with the wisdom and worldliness to realize what are the unintended consequences of this "
brave new world" of information. Thus far, larger society has been too focused on the benefits of information technology to look closely at the potential harm. Worse still, we have gone along with myth that "geeks" are somehow super-genius, rather than demanding that they deliver on what they claim to be capable of - like well thought out user-interfaces. Can we reign in these information titans? Can we afford not to?
Edouard
