Well they are interested in it. But they are not part of that system and don't know much about it, and even if they were how can anybody change it? That's pretty much a universal experience in the modern world: feeling disenfranchised because everything is way too complicated and overwhelming the engage constructively with.
I would like to see the mindset around here's shift from 'hacking' solutions to what problems can be hacked, to actually trying to 'solve' problems by doing the long work to figure out how to do it. It's much harder, but that's why it would be good for lots of people to be working on them.
Enacting large change involves things like journalism, activism, starting social movements, starting political clubs and parties...things that we think of anachronistic now. Certainly they're not normal. But... Probably they need to come back.
I got involved with patent issues at a previous job. It turns out that most of the patent issues that technologists deal with aren't that complex. Most people reading this could learn the basics with a little effort.
Unfortunately, most of the comments on HN about patent issues are simply wrong or irrelevant. There are a lot of myths that people believe about patents without any real evidence. Once you get clear on the basics you'll be better equipped to positively engage on patent reform.
Interesting. This aligns with my experience in ad tech and trading. People very much like to use a "source" to learn things but for some reason they don't trust the primary source.
I've observed people argue against a stated law based on a news summary of that law. I was young in the pre-Wikipedia days so I don't know if this is cultural spread of WP:NOR or if it is an independent rediscovery.
> Enacting large change involves things like journalism, activism, starting social movements, starting political clubs and parties...things that we think of anachronistic now.
I think it's more accurate to say that these are things that people in power are actively hostile to, and spend an enormous amount of time, effort, and cash to disrupt. The only way to do these things is to be financed and protected by wealthy people who see you as a tool to upset their competitors.
This is not new and is the natural order of things, but in the age of consolidation and massive wealth inequality, there's no hope. You can't attract people to your organization without using a medium operated by people who are hostile to you, if you find a platform that isn't hostile to you, they'll be attacked by a government that is hostile to you, and if you meet face to face, they'll track your cellphone or use facial recognition to flag you and associate you permanently with the people you're meeting with. Even if you try to educate yourself by reading the works of people who were in this situation in the past, the fact that you have purchased or downloaded a questionable book or visited a particular webpage will be recorded. And now AI is going to make it cheap to monitor all of this stuff simultaneously and intelligently. Self-driving spies.
I agree with everything you say, but it's not so simple right now. East Germans and Romanians had it easier. I'm starting to think that the only hope is in cult-like groups who live/work together and share data (in the same way corporations do.) Laws and practices haven't been updated to penetrate them, because laws that would allow that would also allow penetration into corporations, and they have the power to fight. Even, this chance is disappearing with the expansion of thoughtcrime and "hate" laws, where even anonymously accusing people of having an opinion becomes justification for escalating official action.
I saw a guy in a documentary explaining how an environmentally abusive or labor abusive business moves into an area and survives. They first identify all of the effective activists. They then offer them extremely well-paying jobs, either internal (head of environmental stewardship or something), or external by financing an e.g. people for sustainable development of the Bingbong Valley. Any effective activists left are destroyed by any means necessary; dig through their entire history, especially any divorces, criminal records, or possible tax difficulties. If you find anything that can get them caught up in a legal battle, tip the government off. Even if you can't, sue them for slander and libel in eight different ways. Subvert the local media by spending a ton on advertising, and make sure that they print nothing from the activist point of view and give them a press release every day to print from you. If people at the papers are defiant, consider them activists and launch the same process against them. Send them anonymous letters encouraging them to kill themselves. Attack their children, spouses and parents in the same ways. Offer them a huge payoff.
This is what always could be done. Now, there's not even a local media. Intelligence agencies will jump in and help with the slightest excuse. You can accuse them of being Nazis. Hire a transwoman of color as your spokesperson, and accuse anyone who asks your company a hard question as being a transphobic racist. You can create a thousand online sockpuppets. You can get them banned from every medium. Pretty sure that if you're Boeing, you can just shoot them, but we'll never know for certain what happened there, because the media is now owned by a dozen people and hires people to be completely incurious.
> They first identify all of the effective activists. They then offer them extremely well-paying jobs, either internal (head of environmental stewardship or something), or external by financing an e.g. people for sustainable development of the Bingbong Valley.
From my gut feeling, I have difficulties believing that this will work: any serious/effective/annoying activist will stay a thorn in the flesh of the company, even in this new position. He will likely use the new money and influence to make make the resistance even more effective (just not by doing a frontal attack onto the financial source). In other words: to me, this rather sounds like a way the company drinking the poison on its own, so that activists don't put the poison in their drinks.
you would think, but the data have one widely know case of this happening (and his life became hell). everyone else just find a way to justify the new position and think they can "do enough from the inside".
it's the same as open source and MIT licenses btw, when you're not profiting directly from it yourself.
I would like to see the mindset around here's shift from 'hacking' solutions to what problems can be hacked, to actually trying to 'solve' problems by doing the long work to figure out how to do it. It's much harder, but that's why it would be good for lots of people to be working on them.
Enacting large change involves things like journalism, activism, starting social movements, starting political clubs and parties...things that we think of anachronistic now. Certainly they're not normal. But... Probably they need to come back.