Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Thank you, Mike! Great to hear from you.
  

    
Yea Mike.

Agree with all of that Mike and I fine tune the heck out of ALL
'silos'.

Actually, we are reacting like every society in the first phase of a
technical revolution....from agriculture, to math, to writing, to RR
and rapid transportation, to Electric, to the Web, to a Digital
World, ... and Beyond....Buzz Lightyear's review of world history
  

    
We reacted that way to comic books and, before that, to dime novels.
  

    
Penny Dreadfuls
  

    
Seriously, though, we can look at Alvin Toffler's writings, Future
Shock and Third Wave, Thomas Kuhn's Paradigm Shift.

These technology revolutions come in two broad waves: The
technological shift itself - a completely new way of communicating
and organizing the chaos in which we live and the ways in which we
do business, politics, education, and how that is reflected in our
cultures, etc.

And, the changes in the ways in which we perceive ourselves and each
other..

Now we are adding VR/AR/MR into that mix as well....so REALITY is
now 'reality'; lower case. It is all up for grabs, shape it any way
you wish, or disappear down a virtual rabbit hole and hide from the
great majority of it.

And, according to Google's latest proclamation the move from
electric to digital, from text to voice and video, to 5G - which we
have not even gotten to the roll out yet - is now being replaced by
the shift to AI....lordy, lordy.

But, you know, that's all just an analytical overlay...my reality,
anyway, is my relationships with my immediate friends, family and
local community involvements...and it is all good in my neck of the
woods. I try and limit my screen time to no more than one hour a
day....ride my bicycle 10 miles or more a day and hang out at the
coffee shops - talk with the high school and college kids...catch up
with my tennis playing buddies and golf buddies..do the NYT Sunday
crossword puzzle, read the comics.

So, upon reflection, I am still doing some things I always did as a
kid, probably for some sense of anchoring of 'self', and then I'm
mixing it up with the new and volunteering at a Senior Living Center
- Tech with Ted.

And I just "down-sized" my life and moved in with friends in a
Senior Mobile Home park. Gives me $600 a month pocket money...not
bad on a fixed income. And I'm retooling my life to adapt to all my
new 'realities'.

At 70 years of age I find myself making all the same choices I did
when I was 17....crazy and fun all at the same time. What do I want
to do for the next 20 years career-wise, where do I want to travel,
where is 'home base' going to be. My grand kids are 12 and 8. I need
to make an appointment to see them now, they are so busy. My son and
daughter are doing great...we have worked thru our "issues" and
still love each other and respect our uniqueness(es).

So, that's my life...really...the tech is just a tool box and the
more I focus on what I want to do with my life the more the tech
makes sense in the ways in which I wish to use it. 

Is the tech changing me? Of course. Is it for the better? Well,
that's the question isn't it. 
  

    
If you even read all of that last post, you are among the 1% of the
literate....studies now show that text is rapidly becoming "dead
media". It's all about voice and video. I apologize for not being
able to load it all up with pictures, music videos, gifs and
emoticons and lol cats.

Not!!
  

    
What was the question again? Oh! Can Facebook be fixed before it
fixes us? We do like to ramble here on the WELL. 

I think the consensus, so far, is that Facebook cannot be fixed, any
more than the whole problem of bad robots, fake news, and the
constant and continual grabbing for our bandwidth and attention.
Hence the reason for voice and video. Now, even the spam ads that
come with all the free apps are using obnoxious voice promos to make
us come back into focus on their screeds...thank Gopod for the Home
button, kills that crap in a second.

Marshall McLuhan keyed us into the Media is the Message long ago and
we quickly turned off our TVs and started tearing out the ads in the
magazines - or at least I did. I'm not sucking for this Voice (I
NEVER use it and turn it off on all my devices) and Video...I prefer
a good mix of text, audio and video...but I am happiest reading a
book and letting my mind create the worlds it portrays....

I will be my own editor, thanks.
  

    
On this general subject:

https://medium.com/@d1gi/untrue-tube-monetizing-misery-and-disinformation-388c
4786cc3d
  

    
Does anyone know the data behind this tweet about FB charging
different rates for different candidates?
https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/967908818133929985
  

    
And then this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/we-studied-thousands-of-anonym
ous-posts-about-the-parkland-attack---and-found-a-conspiracy-in-the-making
  

    
#110 bad link

Here's one that points to the article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/we-studied-thousands-of-anonym
ous-posts-about-the-parkland-attack---and-found-a-conspiracy-in-the-making/201
8/02/27/04a856be-1b20-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.e3e525f78829

  

    
From the WEF no less...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-i
t-means-and-how-to-respond/

"We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will
fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one
another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation
will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not
yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the
response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all
stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private
sectors to academia and civil society."

"the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive"

This, for me, is the global issue for this entire conversation.
Integration. From a personal, core and moral and ethical
perspective, to the answer to "what is my truth?", to a We Space
that comprehensively embraces different points of view and where
real listening takes place, to the integration of plans of action.

Facebook, Snapchat, WeChat, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hangouts, Instagram,
Medium, etc. all are embraced in this and emblematic of the State of
US. These economic models represent the old and the new approaches
to economic trade and barter as we search for systems that integrate
all the new tech. As systems, they are easily gamed; hence, fake
news, mind control, etc.

Whether Facebook can adapt their model to incorporate better
controls for communication and still keep their bottom line is a sea
change. It would put the user first, not ad revenue. I just don't
see that happening. But, either way, the global issue remains the
same.
  

    
https://books.google.com/books?id=sxA1a6YQg7QC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_
ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

This approach walks itself out from individual, to life space, to
local community involvements to State, Federal and Global
universes...

This new book addresses to possibilities of becoming or sustaining
an Emancipatory City....their are also Antagonistic Cities (and they
serve a useful purpose in the symbiotics of things:

https://soundcloud.com/user-283789701/12-antagonistic-cities
  

    
To Ted Newcomb ...

No response from FB to the subscription idea.  This is not a huge
surprise.  One interesting external response: they also have the
ability to monetize two new businesses (Marketplace, which is now
larger than eBay, but free; and Messenger, where people send money
without fee) that do not require brain hacking.

re: employees getting in the way of Zuck's new year's resolution. 
The resolution itself was disingenuous.  We are hearing tales of
employees pushing back and trying to address the systemic issues. 
This is a hopeful sign.
  

    
To David Gans ...

I, too, find FB exceptionally valuable, both for personal and
professional use.  The problem is the advertising business model,
which creates perverse incentives for FB, and makes the platform
dangerous for many users and for democracy.  
  

    
To Betsy Schwartz ...

I agree.  Network television created a filter bubble in the 50s and
60s.  I remember watching the JFK funeral, the Beatles, the moon
landing with EVERYONE.  That was key.  The network TV filter bubble
brought the country together.  There was a shared of facts.  

The problem with FB is that the ad model creates perverse
incentives.  When you layer that model on top of 2.1 billion Truman
Shows delivered by always available smartphones, the incentive is to
polarize.  Every person has his or her own Truman Show, which is
enables a unique set of facts, and a unique community of people who
reinforce pre-exising ideas, making them more rigid, and making it
almost impossible for new data (including facts) to get through.
  

    
I, three, find FB valuable....

15,934 That's Billion dollars last year, up $5 billion from the
previous year....that's a hell of a lot of money for a subscription
model to replace. I just don't see that happening.
  

    
To Ari Davidow and David Gans ... 

Fox created a divisive filter bubble that laid the groundwork for
FB.  

Ari -- I agree that there has always been divisive media.  However,
from 1914 to the creation of Fox, it was mostly at the fringes. 
Cable TV created a delivery platform for division, but it took the
better part of 20 years for Fox to happen.  
  

    
"When you layer that model on top of 2.1 billion Truman
Shows delivered by always available smartphones, the incentive is to
polarize.  Every person has his or her own Truman Show, which is
enables a unique set of facts, and a unique community of people who
reinforce pre-exising ideas, making them more rigid, and making it
almost impossible for new data (including facts) to get through."

The Truman Show metaphor is a gold standard of media and advertising
modeling and marketing...."everybody knows"....

And that would be a fundamental sea change for FB....the marketers
are all agile and would adapt in a nanosecond...so, the model does
not matter...a mantra that CEO's would do well to repeat in the
shower every morning, while rewatching Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
  

    
To Craig Maudlin ...

Another thing that has changed: a prolonged attack on public
education.  Kids have not learned civics since the early 1980s. 
Hardly anyone knows history or understands how the government is
supposed to work.

Outrage is contagious and addictive.  Exploiting outrage turns out
to be a good business and will remain so until we break the cycle.
  

    
To Ted, re: #76

Have you seen that it's now possible to make porn videos with other
people's heads on the bodies?  By 2020, there will be technology to
create completely phony, but totally believable videos about just
about anything.  The only legitimate use case I can imagine is to
keep Princess Leia alive.

You can already create phony audio if you have 20 minutes of real
audio to work from.  None of this technology is flawless yet, but in
the current polarized political environment, it will work well
enough to be a problem.  
  

    
To Craig Maudlin, #78

I strongly agree.  Everyone should read Tim Wu's, The Attention
Merchants.  It explains the evolution of advertising from 1830 the
present.  Tim coined the term "net neutrality."  He is a brilliant
professor at Columbia Law School. 
  

    
To Betsy, #80 ...

Trust is at a low. There is a war on expertise of all kinds. People
do not trust academics or any other kind of domain expert, except
possibly doctors.  

I am do not have an answer on "how to fix it," other than the
obvious: education.  It would really help if people in power stopped
contributing the to the problem. 
  

    
#121 To Ted, re: #76

Have you seen that it's now possible to make porn videos with other
people's heads on the bodies?  By 2020, there will be technology to
create completely phony, but totally believable videos about just
about anything.  The only legitimate use case I can imagine is to
keep Princess Leia alive.

Yup...and wait til you see the VR/AR/MR integrations of this...

Porn, crime (virtually the same thing) and religions get the new
tech before anyone else....they are always the leading edge of
what's coming down the pipe...that and anything DARPA is up to.
  

    
To Ted, re: #88

I think that Facebook is more like a cult or religion than a
government.  It connects people through their emotions, which is
very powerful.  It cuts across borders and languages, reducing the
ability of any constituency to place limits on it.