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LP97S posted:By responding to criticism of Uber with that response, you're trying to tie together the overpriced taxi hire as a replacement for not only public transportation but also for the existing taxi system in place. If you didn't mean that, then I apologize and will go back to my main point, Uber is a lovely taxi hire service with a slick app for people with smart phones too dumb or lazy to use public transportation. I looked at the Uber page and they offer transit from Philadelphia international to Center City (doesn't say where) for $45 while Septa offers a train from Philadelphia international to several stations and larger hubs for about $8. I use Lyft when I miss the bus, am I lazy, stupid, or both?
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Dec 1, 2013 05:07
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, Uber is about as expensive or more expensive than a taxi. It has nothing to do with public transportation especially most people can't afford a taxi to go to work every day. It's probably more about dodging the municipal laws that prevent venture capitalists from having unrestricted access to markets.
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Dec 1, 2013 05:26
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See, this is why automated driving has always creeped me out. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JAoSknxwd-k
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Dec 1, 2013 05:36
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Dmitri-9 posted:It's probably more about dodging the municipal laws that prevent venture capitalists from having unrestricted access to markets. I assume the next phase is finding a place to securely put those profits. Libertarians, especially tech-fetish libertarians live to hate taxes.
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Dec 1, 2013 05:40
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Radbot posted:I use Lyft when I miss the bus, am I lazy, stupid, or both? I don't know but I bet you're not poor.
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Dec 1, 2013 05:44
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icantfindaname posted:You realize you can call a taxi company with a phone and order a taxi, right? That's if there aren't taxis driving around searching for fares. It's a solution without a problem. What exactly does it offer to justify the cost premium? This is a good microcosm of all this future-ist tech bullshit. First of all, Uber has a cheaper version called UberX. I've used it about ten times in three different cities and in all cases it came out to be either on par with or cheaper than regular taxi and still more convenient. I also got to meet all sorts of interesting people - artists, students, bartenders, and even a newly minted lawyer who had become an UberX driver to help pay his law school debt. As for Uber itself, I've used that several times as well. Yes, it is 15-30% more expensive, but it's also far, far more convenient and comfortable than regular cab:
This one time I was stuck with a date in a part of Seattle where it's notoriously difficult to hail a cab. I texted Uber and within 4 minutes a black towncar pulled over and picked us up. While he deftly navigated through traffic (none of the floor-gas-pedal-then-slam-on-brakes nonsense cabbies are known for) we were able to relax and doze off in the back seat - something I've never done and will never do in a cab. You can bitch and moan about Uber all you want. The fact is that it very clearly fulfills a large demand: that for convenience, comfort, safety and a stellar customer service experience. You pay extra for it, but I suppose that's a problem only for the unwashed masses of D&D goons! 
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Dec 1, 2013 06:13
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It's nice that Uber has nice cars and pleasant drivers and yet I fail to see how it can greatly reduce traffic (it might reduce parking which might have some land use advantages but any taxi cab has to drive to you, then from your location to your destination, then back from wherever the cab is when you want to go back). I also fail to see how not having vomit in the cab is part of a softwarecracy.
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Dec 1, 2013 06:24
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Soviet Space Dog posted:It's nice that Uber has nice cars and pleasant drivers and yet I fail to see how it can greatly reduce traffic. I don't know who is saying what anymore, but I certainly did not say Uber reduces traffic. quote:I also fail to see how not having vomit in the cab is part of a softwarecracy. Because most of the convenience and safety (of payment) is powered by the app. Take the app away and it doesn't have much that is different from a luxury cab service. The app is what makes the experience seamless.
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Dec 1, 2013 06:28
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enraged_camel posted:FilthyImp suggested that Uber users are just too lazy to take public transport. I responded by asking him how the hell public transport can match Uber's convenience. No response so far, because the answer is obvious: it can't. If your takeaway from that thread of discussion was calling me out, it's obvious why you feel that you don't make progress with your discussions/ why you believe the base here is hostile: you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to a conversation. My original post brought some objections I had with the Opinion piece you linked: - the authors thesis gets buried (in technofetishism) - his use of Uber as a model is faulty (in that it's impossible for working class/poor people to utilize the system effectively, and that it's a niche "solution" to a largely phantasmagorical "problem" - his belief that automated Solid State Societies will benefit everyone is myopic (apparently everyone in the world has access to US level-infrastructure and no access/logistic/physical obstacles exist) - he ascribes uneven value to Cloud Communities (just because it has an online component does not make it noteworthy) And most importantly, - there is no attempt to anticipate the problems of inclusion for the disabled Despite all that, the takeaway was something on Uber? Ok, sure. But your response is smartassy. You don't choose to dig for clarification. Instead you posit that I'm speaking from a position of ignorance, that I don't know what the service does, and likely haven't used it. After another exchange, you reply with a pithy one line throwaway about the tendency for a citywide service to suffer an outage due to labor disputes -- to which you receive a similarly pithy reduction of the utility of the service, while conveniently dodging the question of access to poor patrons. Putting aside the issue of you disparaging labor strikes (which you do, make no mistake about that), in what universe is your reply an invitation to discuss the convenience of Uber and it's merits as a transit service? The issue with Uber, Lyft, and other crowdtransport services is that they are glorified taxis. Their implementation is novel, and I believe it's the kind of kick in the pants that standard Taxi services need to up their game and become more convenient and indeed relevant to the increasingly connected world. However, volatile prices and selective service areas are themselves not replacements for a well-managed transit system, just as taxis themselves are not. Taxis and Uber trade accessibility for pricing. They monetize the time you save on the metro for the convenience of getting straight to where you want to go. That Uber does this in a novel way is not cause enough to exalt it as the herald of the Cloud Society. As others have mentioned, it's a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. And again, we can ask ourselves how this service will benefit groups that are poor or disadvantaged. We can't dodge the question just because it's a tech darling. quote:Yes, you're paying for the privilege, but so loving what? Why does that make you so angry? You know, what someone said in the third post in this very thread? What was immediately hand waived away? That might have something to do with it. /edit: ok, all this traces back to a central assumption that the original piece makes in that section about transportation: car ownership. There are a large mass of people who cannot or do not use cars in their daily lives. Often because of issues of poverty. His entire idea for that point is that these technologies will make actual ownership uneconomic, that you can choose not to have a car in your garage. For some, this decision is made for them due to financial constraints... But that isn't even considered here. Final verdict, ZipCars and driverless GoogleBus will achieve the automobonic singularity. FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 06:39
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Radbot posted:I use Lyft when I miss the bus, am I lazy, stupid, or both? As long as you don't think of it as the next great thing and know that almost every cab service has a phone number I don't care. Hell, I probably shouldn't give a gently caress either way, it's not going to change a drat thing in this world, all that's going to happen about stuff in this thread is people are going to lose money someway.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:05
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FilthyImp posted:After another exchange, you reply with a pithy one line throwaway about the tendency for a citywide service to suffer an outage due to labor disputes -- to which you receive a similarly pithy reduction of the utility of the service, while conveniently dodging the question of access to poor patrons. Putting aside the issue of you disparaging labor strikes (which you do, make no mistake about that), in what universe is your reply an invitation to discuss the convenience of Uber and it's merits as a transit service? I have no problem with labor disputes. However, the fact that they cause huge headaches for people - especially poor people in this case, because they use public transport more than middle/upper class - is quite relevant when we're discussing the convenience and *cough* accessibility of the transportation method. quote:And again, we can ask ourselves how this service will benefit groups that are poor or disadvantaged. We can't dodge the question just because it's a tech darling. Not every technology has to immediately (or even ultimately) benefit the poor or disadvantaged. Some things will always be much more accessible to rich people. That's just the reality in this society we have built for ourselves. I've commented before that D&D seems largely incapable of discussing ideas on their own merit, and always has to inject some sort of social justice gently caress-those-CEO-bastards or but-what-about-poor-people trajectory into the threads. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do care about poor people. But not to the extent that I want to discuss them in every loving context.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:13
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enraged_camel posted:I have no problem with labor disputes. However, the fact that they cause huge headaches for people - especially poor people in this case, because they use public transport more than middle/upper class - is quite relevant when we're discussing the convenience and *cough* accessibility of the transportation method. quote:I've commented before that D&D seems largely incapable of discussing ideas on their own merit, and always has to inject some sort of social justice gently caress-those-CEO-bastards or but-what-about-poor-people trajectory into the threads. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do care about poor people. But not to the extent that I want to discuss them in every loving context.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:19
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quote:Yes, you're paying for the privilege, but so loving what? Why does that make you so angry? And this attitude, in a nutshell, is the reason most people are so terrified of libertarians, yuppies, and techno-fetishists. The inability to recognize/care that most of society is not going to be able to pay for those privileges, yet you still want those "privileges" to become the norm. Obviously I speak of the society you envision in general and not just taxis.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:21
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:And this attitude, in a nutshell, is the reason most people are so terrified of libertarians, yuppies, and techno-fetishists. The inability to recognize/care that most of society is not going to be able to pay for those privileges, yet you still want those "privileges" to become the norm. Obviously I speak of the society you envision in general and not just taxis. Let's not switch contexts here. I'm speaking purely of taxis. That's the topic. Obviously when it comes to essential things like healthcare, it's a huge problem that some people can afford it and others can't. But I see no problem that some people won't be able to afford a luxury taxi service.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:24
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enraged_camel posted:I have no problem with labor disputes. However, the fact that they cause huge headaches for people - especially poor people in this case, because they use public transport more than middle/upper class - is quite relevant when we're discussing the convenience and *cough* accessibility of the transportation method. You'll notice that despite the strikes ( events, I will note, that have been marginalized through tweaked contracts forbidding black-outs, lockouts, and strikes), the system eventually comes back up and continues to serve its citizenry? You'll also notice they are exceptionally rare events and that the average user is more concerned with a late schedule or packed vessel than a possible strike in 5 years? quote:Not every technology has to immediately (or even ultimately) benefit the poor or disadvantaged. Some things will always be much more accessible to rich people. That's just the reality in this society we have built for ourselves. quote:I've commented before that D&D seems largely incapable of discussing ideas on their own merit, and always has to inject some sort of social justice gently caress-those-CEO-bastards or but-what-about-poor-people trajectory into the threads. The simple fact isn't that I'm injecting a 'b-b-but THE POORS' thread into this topic. I made the sin of explaining how the disadvantaged rely on a system already in place, and that this new model has no utility for them because they're priced out. In doing so, I've apparently exposed a glaring hole in the cloud future and its evangelists. Seriously. Just think about how you're asserting that this shift will be a boon to all life on earth, then turn around and say worry about the underclass later. Uber is such a ridiculously small subset of this whole argument and even then the concept of privilege becomes an insurmountable obstacle. fuckin' poors ruin everything. FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 07:41
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enraged_camel posted:Let's not switch contexts here. I'm speaking purely of taxis. That's the topic. Ah. I thought you were speaking of our techno future and using the taxi service just as an example. My bad. Sarcasm at your strange response aside, the taxi thing is a symptom of the larger problem with your thinking. You're not selling it as a luxury service, you're selling it as the wave of the future, the new normal. You are trying to solve the problems of the teeming masses with solutions that only the upper 10% can afford. WorldsStongestNerd fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 07:41
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Negative Entropy posted:You don't think that the Uber drivers won't have reasons to go on strike against their employers? The OP is stupid for many reasons, but there actually is a social justice aspect to Uber that people are ignoring. Your smartphone doesn't know if you're black, and it doesn't ask you where you're going before the driver accepts you as a fare. I live in DC and have watched more than a few cabs go by a black dude to stop for me. I've also had cabs refuse to take me to certain neighborhoods (and not every neighborhood, especially ones with poor black residents, has great public transit). yeah, it isn't legal, but when I want to get home at the end of the night, I'm less worried about legal than about getting home and I'm not sueing someone over not stopping for me because the return on investment isn't there. So while apps won't solve everything for us and the idea that Silicon Valley should secede is absurd, this is one specific area where technology actually does have a positive social justice effect.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:48
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Kalman posted:Your smartphone doesn't know if you're black, and it doesn't ask you where you're going before the driver accepts you as a fare. I live in DC and have watched more than a few cabs go by a black dude to stop for me. I've also had cabs refuse to take me to certain neighborhoods (and not every neighborhood, especially ones with poor black residents, has great public transit). yeah, it isn't legal, but when I want to get home at the end of the night, I'm less worried about legal than about getting home and I'm not sueing someone over not stopping for me because the return on investment isn't there. It also occurs to me that it's harder to mug an Uber driver because you're not an anonymous agent. The company has your cell and credit information. I haven't heard of Uber drivers being assaulted or getting into trouble, but safety is often a concern for Taxi services.
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Dec 1, 2013 07:58
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FilthyImp posted:Now this is interesting. I assume because the individuals are using their own gas/vehicle, they're concerned with getting a return? Or that they'll receive a negative review and get kicked out of the driver collective? Yeah, the one thing that WILL get you kicked out as a driver (at least, from what I've heard) is not picking up a fare you accept. Since you accept the fare before you start driving to the pick up spot, you won't have any chance to do any sort of racial profiling plus you've already burned the gas getting there. I mean, I've bitched about drivers taking a long time to get to me because they took a stupid route and I've gotten a very apologetic and quick response from Uber. I can't imagine that they aren't going to respond if someone complains that a driver no showed on them. A friend of mine just signed up for Uber (she needed to get to the airport at 5 am, before metro is running, and taxi dispatch service in DC is incredibly unreliable) and she told me they are pushing to have people include pictures of their faces to help drivers make sure the person who gets in is the right person. I'll be interested to see if that affects this in any way - for various (stupid) reasons I've been in the car with an uber driver when they were accepting calls before and they seem to hit the accept button without really looking, so I think it may not matter - hoping it won't, anyway.
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Dec 1, 2013 08:07
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FilthyImp posted:You typify a public service as flawed because of this. If you have no problems with the sturm und drang of labor v capital, then stop using it as a one-line counterpoint. While I agree that labor strikes disrupt the flow of this particular system (and overwhelmingly affect the poor), the problem behind them is the same problem your data-driven-future seems to want to fix. It's the same problem that drives most of our modern strife. Inequality. I used it as a one-line counter-point when you gave a dismissive one-line explanation of what Uber is, which was: "It's crowdsourced transportation for people that don't like calling Taxis and wouldn't ever consider jumping on a municipal bus."  But of course, I was being facetious. Strikes are a very tiny part of the problems with public transportation. Others include things like infrequent bus/train schedules, poor coverage, safety and health problems and overall unreliability. I didn't mention these because I didn't want to derail the thread too much (we were still on page 2). quote:Right. So the answer is 'sorry poors, you'll get yours when we can get around to it because society'? The same society this new model will usher into utopia? "Answer" implies a question. There are no questions here. There is only reality. Technology will be developed whether you want it or not. More companies like Uber will pop up as it is the natural progress of technology, which is accelerating everyday. quote:The simple fact isn't that I'm injecting a 'b-b-but THE POORS' thread into this topic. I made the sin of explaining how the disadvantaged rely on a system already in place, and that this new model has no utility for them because they're priced out. In doing so, I've apparently exposed a glaring hole in the cloud future and its evangelists.[quote] Err.. I never said this.
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Dec 1, 2013 08:22
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enraged_camel posted:"Answer" implies a question. There are no questions here. There is only reality. Technology will be developed whether you want it or not. More companies like Uber will pop up as it is the natural progress of technology, which is accelerating everyday. The question is why should we entertain the idea of Silicon Valley CEOs creating extraterritorial fiefdoms in the name of "disruption" ?
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Dec 1, 2013 08:53
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enraged_camel posted:I used it as a one-line counter-point when you gave a dismissive one-line explanation of what Uber is quote:"Answer" implies a question. There are no questions here. There is only reality. Technology will be developed whether you want it or not. More companies like Uber will pop up as it is the natural progress of technology, which is accelerating everyday. For a thread that implicitly asks What If, and that tries to guess at the changes that certain technologies will bring, this attitude seems really defeatist. We can't ask if new technologies or implementations (and the companies that serve that purpose) will affect the vulnerable In our society? If this is really the end-of line to your argumentation, there's really no need to carry this forward anymore. Again, the OP glorifies the disruptions and upheavals his vision will bring... But we can't entertain the idea that there's a way to help the disadvantaged because welp, society? quote:Err.. I never said this.
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Dec 1, 2013 09:12
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enraged_camel posted:I don't know who is saying what anymore, but I certainly did not say Uber reduces traffic. So, Uber is a fairly traditional luxury cab/cheap-limo service except they've taken advantage of new technology to streamline certain aspects of the experience, got it. Where's the revolution again? If you want to talk about something that's genuinely a bit more disruptive, "ride-sharing" services like Lyft and Sidecar are more relevant. Of course, they have their own issues; many of the "benefits" come from the way they're designed to sidestep a lot of regulations designed to protect both drivers and riders (like, say, insurance), and they prey on part-time drivers who aren't good at calculating the total cost per mile of operating a vehicle in city traffic. But at least they're doing something new. enraged_camel posted:"Answer" implies a question. There are no questions here. There is only reality. Technology will be developed whether you want it or not. More companies like Uber will pop up as it is the natural progress of technology, which is accelerating everyday. Nonsense. People build technology, and they can choose how they build it. The idea that the current pace and direction of technological progress is "natural" is a fallacy sold to us by people who will continue to profit a great deal as long as technology continues to develop at its current pace and direction. Why, of course we should continue to invest our talent and resources into developing slightly better cab services for the $75-100,000/year set. It's both natural and revolutionary!
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Dec 1, 2013 17:37
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quote:So, Uber is a fairly traditional luxury cab/cheap-limo service except they've taken advantage of new technology to streamline certain aspects of the experience, got it. Where's the revolution again? As for the revolution, it's pretty obvious that autocabs are the long-term future of public transportation. With driverless cars, instead of having to only run huge buses (because the cost of a driver is fixed per vehicle, which means running smaller vehicles is prohibitively expensive), you could run a variety of sizes. Buses for very popular routes, vans for moderately popular ones, sedans for routes that are less popular. Or you could run vans even for popular routes, and they'd leave more frequently. Taxis would also be driverless of course, which would greatly reduce their cost. Likely you'd be able to reduce the cost by being willing to share a ride to a general area with others, basically creating an ad hoc on-demand public transportation system. Once you get to this level (which will take a while, of course), that's when you start seeing the really big effects like reduced traffic overall. Plus, even poor people have cell phones these days, soon those cell phones will be smartphones, so it's not like they'll be left out.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:03
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McDowell posted:Yeah it does have major privacy implications, but with smartphones and license plate readers it isn't like we aren't already 75% of the way there; with none of the environmental/economic benefits. This is mostly true. The infrastructure is in place, what it gets used for is up to the passivity of it's citizens. And for other people to take advantage of the infrastructure or it will be just creep back in. When thinking about ways to to advance the public(ie accessable to everyone) good the first thing that comes to mind is co-opting existing infrastructure before it goes live for other purposes. From a technological standpoint the security apparatus is really expensive to maintain just in bandwidth costs. If even 1% of that capacity was used to provide publicly available free bandwidth, you would be able to provide 3g like speeds to every person within 100 miles of any minor metropolis. Till the barrier of entry is brought to zero you can argue about how tech can unite the world all you want but you'll still have the age old problem of class barriers in your way.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:20
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Space Gopher posted:Where's the revolution again? The fact that services like these are more common and more widely used will have broader impacts on the economy. More renting and sharing through services like these means less ownership and big purchases. Y'all are making fun of how the kids that use uber are rich, but the fact that they are using a service like this instead of buy cars for themselves is a product of a lovely economy, and the fact that 20-30 year olds don't have the kind of free spending cash that they once had. So the increased used of these services is a result of a weak economy; it's an example of pruning in the face of and economic downturn. As such trends become more common, it will have an impact on consumer spending patterns and the wealth of young people over the long term. It is completely reasonable to see these trends as indicators for what the future of the economy (in the next 10 years) will look like. This may seem like an isolated or insignificant example, but the same basic shift in the behavior from traditional ownership models to digital sharing models has been happening all over the place. YouTube is a great example of how television and media viewership has (despite Google's best efforts) been slipping out of the hands of IP owners and into a self-organized sharing community. IP owners are fighting ruthlessly for their precisely because they know the digital models are a threat to their own business models. No one doubts that new media is disruptive, but there is still an open question of how they will best be handled. The proposal that these changes will incite a revolution is largely a proceduralist argument: namely, that the procedures through which economic and political relations are formed and maintained have shifted their center of gravity, and demand new protocols for managing and regulating them. The claim is not that some miracle technology will make government and money obsolete overnight. Rather, the claim is that the tools we have for managing economic and political relations is poorly suited to handle the relations that digital populations are rapidly forming. And insofar as the existing system is hostile towards attempts at developing these new tools, we're forced to look for ways of working outside that system. I agree with the criticism that some historical and political perspective is lacking from BSS and others, who arrive at these arguments largely from faulty libertarian first principles. But that doesn't mean the perspective should be rejected entirely, or that the possibility of some digital alternative is absurd. Instead, the critique BSS is offering should be amended withe proper historical perspectives that will modify it in ways that will help it achieve the right ends.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:31
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BlueBlazer posted:This is mostly true. The infrastructure is in place, what it gets used for is up to the passivity of it's citizens. And for other people to take advantage of the infrastructure or it will be just creep back in. I honestly think that in a world run by software, all the NSA cameras and tracking systems are operated on a publicly accessible, open and transparent website, something like Wikipedia, except for security. I think we'd do a much better job of handling security, and the process would be overall less invasive and arbitrary, and much harder to exploit for petty political purposes.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:36
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RealityApologist, can you define what 'attention' is, and make a case for why it can't be faked, as you've claimed? Can you also explain how a heroin addict would play out in an 'attention economy'? Try something small, like that. Maybe if you can make a case for that, people will actually pay attention to the confused morass of the rest of what you say and sort through it.
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Dec 1, 2013 19:37
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Space Gopher posted:So, Uber is a fairly traditional luxury cab/cheap-limo service excep
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Dec 1, 2013 19:47
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Cicero posted:It's almost like new technology is usually first adopted by the rich, and then as adoption increases it gets cheaper (and better, usually), until it's in widespread use! Why yes, that is a lot like how that is. SO REVOLUTIONARY!
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Dec 1, 2013 20:06
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Obdicut: just for the record, writing is loving hard. I've been doing it for a long time, and you see just how bad I am at it. I'm not a good writer, and I'm only barely a passable philosopher. If there's anything I have going for me, its that the subject matter I'm interested in is genuinely interesting, even if I'm loving up the treatment of it. Obdicut posted:RealityApologist, can you define what 'attention' is, and make a case for why it can't be faked, as you've claimed? Attention is, primarily, a memory management system that plays a functional role in cognition. The attention system is the system through which the cognitive system delegates its functional resources to some task. When one "pays attention" to something, one is devoting some combination of cognitive resources to that thing. When I'm watching TV, lots of my functional parts are directed towards the object. When something "catches my attention", it somehow acquires access to lots of those functions. If something is flashing in my peripheral vision, it might make me orient my head and eyes towards it to get a better view. In this sense, the flashing directs my attention. Attention can't be "faked" because you are either occupying those functional resources, or you aren't. The point here is to distinguish attention from something like a rational judgment, which can be in error. Attention is prejudgmental; we make judgments based on the information we receive, but we have to orient our attention first to receive the information. So I might look at the black spot in the distance and judge it to be a cat; my judgement might be in error (it might be a rabbit), but the fact that my cognitive resources were harnessed and directed towards that phenomenon isn't the kind of thing that can be in error. This has implications further up the chain for how attention works in the sense typically associated with the "attention economy". A paraphrase of the claim might be "popularity can't be faked". This seems prima facie absurd; for example, I can pay someone who controls a herd of twitterbots to follow my account, so it looks to all the world like I'm a really popular and important twitter user. Looks like a lot of people paying attention, when in fact there is none. There's an example of faked popularity, easy as pie. These are, presumably, the sort of cases you are worried about, yes? I'm not arguing that one can't present the appearance of attention. But of course, the appearance of attention is not the same as attention itself. There's a difference between real twitter followers and bots, in terms of what they can do and what influence they will have on the network. A real network is certainly more valuable than the bot network. Telling them apart might not be trivial, but there's a difference, and it makes a difference. When I made the claim, I was attempting to defend the role of "popularity" and "influence" as a reliable measure for managing an economy of attention. The idea was that people don't need rank and position in some corporate or social ladder; instead, they just have a role in the various networks they cultivate, because they've done the work to cultivate them. So the popular kids in a network are genuinely popular. That's not the kind of thing that can simply be assigned, it's a feature of the way everyone's attention is oriented around them, just as whether or not I'm paying attention to the black spot is a feature of the way my resources are directed towards it. There might be kids who "appear" popular but aren't, but in terms of their influence on the network they look nothing alike. Similarly, the swarms of twitter bots don't behave anything like a real active crowd of users, and for exactly that reason have nothing like the influence of a real crowd. Since this was the linchpin of your whole tirade against me, I can't help but think you won't be satisfied by this response. quote:Can you also explain how a heroin addict would play out in an 'attention economy'? First of all, an attention economy is any economic system that manages resources through the management of attention. So in some sense, any system composed of cognitive agents is going to partly be an attention economy. My view is not that an attention economy is some radical new method of organization; my claim is rather that the methods we currently have for managing our resources makes poor use of attention dynamics. I think that improving our social and political situation involves taking increasing control over representing and managing the dynamics of attention, and that this will allow for self-organizational structures (sharing and reputation economies, and the like) that will be more adaptively stable over time. So heroin addicts today are in some sense playing out in an attention economy. A really lovely one. But that's not your question; you want to know what happens to heroin addicts in my hypothetical scenario where we have better control over attention dynamics. So here's what I'd like to see: There are a community of active opiate users and enthusiasts who participate in the production, distribution, and cultural activities of those users, and whose activity is directly responsive to the global demand. That demand is strong enough to allow the community quite a lot of influence in the global resources devoted to the cultivation of opiates, where use is relatively stable. These users all have access to world-class education on opiates and their advantages and risks, and of course everyone has easy and reliable health care that uses the best science and research to help advise users on their doses, desired effects, and potential consequences. Of those users, some will become heroin addicts in the sense of "unhealthy use". This, first, might be an issue of access or use of health resources, and its first the responsibility of the friends from those communities to assist that person to find the treatment and recovery needed. Since access to those resources comes through the community, there must be some network there the person has to assist them in finding the appropriate health treatments. But perhaps the use is not unhealthy, but just excessive. Again, it is largely the role of members of that community to self-regulate the use and distribution of its services; someone using abnormal or unhealthy amounts of heroin should quickly come to the attention of other users in the community, and there will be easy methods for communicating these worries within the community and publicly resolving them according to the community standards. But of course, this community isn't walled, and can be observed, monitored, and advised more widely from other, perhaps critical communities. If the opiate community is mistreating or abusing the addict, or otherwise dealing with the case outside of the norms of that community, this can be checked by other communities monitoring that behavior, to alert a wider public and garner more interest and resources in dealing with the case. But presumably, the opiate users are good at handling their own, and the activities of one addict tend not to rise to the level of wider public interest. In other words, issues like the heroin addict (beyond basic medical support) are all about how local issues might get amplified or checked by densely nested and overlapping communities, none of which have any designated authority, but which collectively can marshal resources as it sees fit. No cops or judges or laws, just standards and scope and a protocol. Now, if addiction itself starts to become an unmanageable aspect of the community, this might warrant some broader reconsiderations over the standards by which the community manages itself. And we can talk more generally about resolution procedures in this way too. But there's a first pass at dealing with the addict. Thoughts?
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Dec 1, 2013 20:49
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RealityApologist posted:
Nothing here shows attention can't be faked. I can look at something without considering it in the least. I can be looking intently at something, but actually thinking about something else. In addition, you say that attention is a 'memory management' system, but it clearly isn't in the way you describe it (or in common sense). It isn't a 'memory management' system, it doesn't have to do with memory except for the trivial fact you can't remember things you didn't perceive. quote:This has implications further up the chain for how attention works in the sense typically associated with the "attention economy". A paraphrase of the claim might be "popularity can't be faked". This seems prima facie absurd; for example, I can pay someone who controls a herd of twitterbots to follow my account, so it looks to all the world like I'm a really popular and important twitter user. Looks like a lot of people paying attention, when in fact there is none. There's an example of faked popularity, easy as pie. These are, presumably, the sort of cases you are worried about, yes? No, I'm more worried about actual people faking attention. quote:I'm not arguing that one can't present the appearance of attention. But of course, the appearance of attention is not the same as attention itself. There's a difference between real twitter followers and bots, in terms of what they can do and what influence they will have on the network. A real network is certainly more valuable than the bot network. Telling them apart might not be trivial, but there's a difference, and it makes a difference. I'm talking about actual people faking their attention, as is done all the time. quote:When I made the claim, I was attempting to defend the role of "popularity" and "influence" as a reliable measure for managing an economy of attention. The idea was that people don't need rank and position in some corporate or social ladder; instead, they just have a role in the various networks they cultivate, because they've done the work to cultivate them. So the popular kids in a network are genuinely popular. That's not the kind of thing that can simply be assigned, it's a feature of the way everyone's attention is oriented around them, just as whether or not I'm paying attention to the black spot is a feature of the way my resources are directed towards it. There might be kids who "appear" popular but aren't, but in terms of their influence on the network they look nothing alike. Similarly, the swarms of twitter bots don't behave anything like a real active crowd of users, and for exactly that reason have nothing like the influence of a real crowd. And none of this matters, because I'm talking about actual people faking their attention. quote:Since this was the linchpin of your whole tirade against me, I can't help but think you won't be satisfied by this response. Since you haven't answered my question in any sort of way, and since you randomly declared it a memory management system before forgetting about it, you're right to think that. quote:So heroin addicts today are in some sense playing out in an attention economy. A really lovely one. But that's not your question; you want to know what happens to heroin addicts in my hypothetical scenario where we have better control over attention dynamics. So here's what I'd like to see: How do all users have access to world-class education? Some people aren't even world-class educable. This is just you waving hands and conjuring up perfect access to information to solve the problem, right? quote:Of those users, some will become heroin addicts in the sense of "unhealthy use". This, first, might be an issue of access or use of health resources, and its first the responsibility of the friends from those communities to assist that person to find the treatment and recovery needed. Since access to those resources comes through the community, there must be some network there the person has to assist them in finding the appropriate health treatments. But perhaps the use is not unhealthy, but just excessive. Again, it is largely the role of members of that community to self-regulate the use and distribution of its services; someone using abnormal or unhealthy amounts of heroin should quickly come to the attention of other users in the community, and there will be easy methods for communicating these worries within the community and publicly resolving them according to the community standards. So the attention economy wouldn't do anything, you rely on community members to solve the problem. quote:But of course, this community isn't walled, and can be observed, monitored, and advised more widely from other, perhaps critical communities. If the opiate community is mistreating or abusing the addict, or otherwise dealing with the case outside of the norms of that community, this can be checked by other communities monitoring that behavior, to alert a wider public and garner more interest and resources in dealing with the case. But presumably, the opiate users are good at handling their own, and the activities of one addict tend not to rise to the level of wider public interest. In other words, issues like the heroin addict (beyond basic medical support) are all about how local issues might get amplified or checked by densely nested and overlapping communities, none of which have any designated authority, but which collectively can marshal resources as it sees fit. No cops or judges or laws, just standards and scope and a protocol. There is no reason to presume that opiate users are good at handling their own. And I asked you how the resources would be marshaled, and you're just waving your hands and saying they would be. quote:Now, if addiction itself starts to become an unmanageable aspect of the community, this might warrant some broader reconsiderations over the standards by which the community manages itself. And we can talk more generally about resolution procedures in this way too. Yeah, this is you not actually answering the question. Your entire answer is basically that the community will somehow take care of it. I'm asking you how, and you're failing to answer, you're just stringing a bunch of language together asserting that it will happen. I'm asking how. You're failing to answer. quote:But there's a first pass at dealing with the addict. Thoughts? Tons of bullshit, magic handwaving of perfect information, and no actual solution at all, nor any real connection to the 'attention economy'. I'd fail you.
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Dec 1, 2013 22:27
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RealityApologist posted:Attention is, primarily, a memory management system that plays a functional role in cognition. The attention system is the system through which the cognitive system delegates its functional resources to some task. When one "pays attention" to something, one is devoting some combination of cognitive resources to that thing. When I'm watching TV, lots of my functional parts are directed towards the object. When something "catches my attention", it somehow acquires access to lots of those functions. If something is flashing in my peripheral vision, it might make me orient my head and eyes towards it to get a better view. In this sense, the flashing directs my attention. So basically the only way to prevent the faking of attention is to install neural scanners into every consumer to discern their inner 'memory' rather than viewing their outward behavior? Because anyone who attended an American public school knows that you can appear to be paying attention while thinking about any number of other things.
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Dec 1, 2013 22:39
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Attention seems like a horrible way to allocate resources, as it would prioritize celebrities and flashy pursuits over more mundane, but much more necessary ones. Most of the people are not really interested with agriculture unless there is a major food shortage, so it will likely stay underfunded until there is too late to act. Meanwhile, pop singers or faith healers are getting a shitload of money, because they are good at grabbing other people's attention. The system breaks even more hilariously when you consider marketing and advertising industry, which becomes even more powerful in such economy. If you gather enough attention, you are able to divert more and more resources into promoting whatever you do, which - of course - gives you even more people that are interested in what you do. It's capitalism 2.0, except that you don't even need to actually sell your product, just advertising it is enough. It doesn't matter if you are just an idea guy who never did anything tangible, you are able to become rich just because you made a really convincing description of your future masterpiece.
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Dec 1, 2013 22:55
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Gantolandon posted:It doesn't matter if you are just an idea guy who never did anything tangible, you are able to become rich just because you made a really convincing description of your future masterpiece. A whole economy run via Kickstarter.
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Dec 1, 2013 22:56
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That was actually a sensible and lucid response. An attention economy already exists in our brains (as someone with ADHD, I am well acquainted with this idea). This economy is regulated by neurotransmitters, especially dopamine and acetylcholine (edit: also norepinephrine). Useful analogies can be drawn between neutral networks and online social networks. Society might be improved by reorganizing around networks of mutual interest, and current online social networks already show some promising movement in this direction. One potential problem is people attempting to fake an influential role in the network through bots or astroturf organizations designed to inflate their apparent popularity. Did I miss anything? Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 1, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 22:59
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Popular Thug Drink posted:A whole economy run via Kickstarter. It's hard to think up a way our current economic system could be crueler and more hosed, but 'attention economy' sounds like it. Even in the most absolutely charitable view: people pay a lot of 'attention' to car accidents as they drive past them. So what? What does this indicate? That we need more car accidents? Obviously, there has to be an interpretation level. People pay attention for all sorts of reasons, and sorting out those reasons would be as large a challenge as anything else in the first place. Figuring out what people pay attention to might be interesting, but it would bring us no closer to any solutoin to any problem. Hodgepodge posted:That was actually a sensible and lucid response. An attention economy already exists in our brains (as someone with ADHD, I am well acquainted with this idea). This economy is regulated by neurotransmitters, especially dopamine and acetylcholine. Useful analogies can be drawn between neutral networks and online social networks. Society might be improved by reorganizing around networks of mutual interest, and current online social networks already show some promising movement in this direction. One potential problem is people attempting to fake an influential role in the network through bots or astroturf organizations designed to inflate their apparent popularity. Yeah, that networks of mutual interest aren't in any way a useful thing to organize around, and that people fake attention all the time, not through bots or anything, but just as themselves. Furthermore, the 'attention economy' provided no solution at all to the problem of a heroin addict.
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Dec 1, 2013 23:03
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Obdicut posted:Yeah, that networks of mutual interest aren't in any way a useful thing to organize around, and that people fake attention all the time, not through bots or anything, but just as themselves. Furthermore, the 'attention economy' provided no solution at all to the problem of a heroin addict. We already substantially organize around networks of mutual interest. gently caress, heroin addicts already do that. The primary problem for heroin addicts in that their addiction is forced underground into conditions that maximize the possibility of harm. People mostly fake attention, in a relevant sense, by pretending to like things that are considered popular. I think that's what you mean, right? So enough promotion is a self-fulfilling prophecy of success?
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Dec 1, 2013 23:11
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Hodgepodge posted:We already substantially organize around networks of mutual interest. gently caress, heroin addicts already do that. The primary problem for heroin addicts in that their addiction is forced underground into conditions that maximize the possibility of harm. The primary problem for heroin addicts is that they're addicted to heroin. I'm asking how the attention economy can fix that problem. Or any problem. I have received no answer. What you are now saying is that we basically already have an attention economy. Great. quote:People mostly fake attention, in a relevant sense, by pretending to like things that are considered popular. I think that's what you mean, right? So enough promotion is a self-fulfilling prophecy of success? Or they fake attention at their job because they're required to in order to get paid. Or they fake attention so that they're not caught paying attention to the thing they're actually interested in. Or a lot of other reasons people would fake attention. Additionally, as I said above, even if you perfectly calculated everyone's attention with no fakery, so what? You'd have a mound of data, and that'd be nifty, but to actually do anything with it you'd have to interpret it. Attention doesn't mean anything, it could mean "People are paying attention to this because it's designed to garner attention", or "People are paying attention to this because it's awesome and they love it" or "People are paying attention to this because it's horrible".
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Dec 1, 2013 23:15
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It's economics by ignoring all that pesky scarcity and conflict stuff, and instead is based on the fact that if people like looking at ducks the community will breed ducks or kill ducks or make everybody were duck themed clothing or who knows? They'll figure it out and it will be great.
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Dec 1, 2013 23:18
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