The Social Dilemma

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The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run This documentary from Jeff Orlowski explores how addiction and privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of social media platforms. ......... That social media can be addictive and creepy isn’t a revelation to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But in Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” conscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug. .......... the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists. ........ men and (a few) women who helped build social media and now fear the effects of their creations on users’ mental health and the foundations of democracy. They deliver their cautionary testimonies with the force of a start-up pitch, employing crisp aphorisms and pithy analogies. ......... Russia didn’t hack Facebook; it simply used the platform. ........ fictional scenes of a suburban family suffering the consequences of social-media addiction. There are silent dinners, a pubescent daughter (Sophia Hammons) with self-image issues and a teenage son (Skyler Gisondo) who’s radicalized by YouTube recommendations promoting a vague ideology. ............ the movie’s interlocutors pin an increase in mental illness on social media usage yet don’t acknowledge factors like a rise in economic insecurity. .......... many suggest that with the right changes, we can salvage the good of social media without the bad ......... two distinct targets of critique: the technology that causes destructive behaviors and the culture of unchecked capitalism that produces it. ......... the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology ....... The movie is streaming on Netflix, where it’ll become another node in the service’s data-based algorithm.

I think there is a solution. And the solution is to treat all data gathered around an individual to be the property of that individual. Companies may monetize that data, but the individual keeps the big chunk of the earning. The establishment of proper property rights might also be the antidote to the culture mindless data collecting. The data can fund the UBI, or Universal Basic Income, I think. 

One step could be the formation of a T100, the top 100 tech companies in the world by market cap. That T100 would voluntarily establish the data rights. It might be a 70-30 split in favor of the individual. 

‘The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run https://t.co/DC20L0xfvx via @_JMontgomery @AndrewYang

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) October 1, 2020

Join us for an all-star panel on data privacy hosted by @AndrewYang himself! Sign up here: https://t.co/d5viesmFui pic.twitter.com/93DjOkvEBs

— Jess 🧢🦄 (@_JMontgomery) September 28, 2020

Join us to talk about the movie on Fri Oct. 2! Then check out an all-star privacy panel on Oct. 4, and a day of action on Oct. 6. Sign up here: https://t.co/MnUCfWP2fR pic.twitter.com/Slk1CnSmMF

— Jess 🧢🦄 (@_JMontgomery) September 28, 2020

 ‘The Social Dilemma’ Will Freak You Out—But There’s More to the Story    Dramatic political polarization. Rising anxiety and depression. An uptick in teen suicide rates. Misinformation that spreads like wildfire. The common denominator of all these phenomena is that they’re fueled in part by our seemingly innocuous participation in digital social networking. But how can simple acts like sharing photos and articles, reading the news, and connecting with friends have such destructive consequences? ............... the way social media gets people “hooked” by exploiting the brain’s dopamine response and using machine learning algorithms to serve up the customized content most likely to keep each person scrolling/watching/clicking. ........  “Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Siebert, a former exec at Twitter. The intelligence gleaned from those actions is then used in conjunction with our own psychological weaknesses to get us to watch more videos, share more content, see more ads, and continue driving Big Tech’s money-making engine. .............  For the first few years of social media’s existence, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Now it’s on a nosedive to the other end of the spectrum—we’re condemning it and focusing on its ills and unintended consequences. The next phase is to find some kind of balance, most likely through adjustments in design and, possibly, regulation. .......... The issue with social media is that it’s going to be a lot trickier to fix than, say, adding seatbelts and air bags to cars. The sheer size and reach of these tools, and the way in which they overlap with issues of freedom of speech and privacy—not to mention how they’ve changed the way humans interact—means it will likely take a lot of trial and error to come out with tools that feel good for us to use without being addicting, give us only true, unbiased information in a way that’s engaging without preying on our emotions, and allow us to share content and experiences while preventing misinformation and hate speech. ................ “While we’ve all been looking out for the moment when AI would overwhelm human strengths—when would we get the Singularity, when would AI take our jobs, when would it be smarter than humans—we missed this much much earlier point when technology didn’t overwhelm human strengths, but it undermined human weaknesses.”

Dodd And Frank

There is a guy named Dodd and there is a guy named Frank, and that is as much as I know about Dodd and Frank. As for the banks, Dodd and Frank were supposed to ring in some discipline. The question naturally arises, did it happen? Is there discipline? Or is there indiscipline? What about indigestion? Hiccups?

Bihar: Beyond Agriculture

Nitish has been magic. He has done the unthinkable. He has proven democracy is a superior form of government to whatever they have out there in China. For a landlocked, poor, agricultural, flood-prone state like Bihar to achieve a 15% growth rate is remarkable. But there is always the question of what next.

Bihar has been the poorest state of India this entire time. It might have achieved the fastest growth rate in India. But it still is the poorest state in India and the gulf with the second poorest state is still wide.

How do you catch up? More important, how do you go past them? Can you hope to become number one?

I think the answer lies in thinking the next big thing after agriculture is not industrialization. Bihar should keep focused on agriculture, now and later, but it should also think the focus has to be also put on what is considered the next big thing after industrialization. And that is the service sector. And the next big thing after that, and that is the knowledge economy. And one of the next big things: clean energy.

If you can get to Patna from any part of Bihar within six hours, and if Patna has been made a crime-free city through use of Big Data, and if Patna now has the longest stretch of free WiFi anywhere in the world at 20 kilometers, then I feel Nitish is already doing it. He just has not articulated it yet.

Focusing on the knowledge sector is about education, health and fee WiFi. Nitish is already making major strides in education and health. The part that is missing is to think you take that effort to a whole new level once you realize that is also your next big thing after agriculture. It is not industry. Temporary teachers agitating across the state because they want to be made permanent is not mosquito noise but rather music to the ears.

All of Patna has to be turned into a free WiFi zone. And inside the city boundaries a top notch IT college has to be established. The concept can not be 12 years of education for all children, but rather lifelong education for all Biharis.

Nitish claims food from Bihar goes to the kitchen tables across India. The next goal should be that teachers and doctors and nurses from Bihar go to all continents of the world, to all countries. The human brain is where the future resides.

WiFi is the next road, it is the next bridge. It is not enough for Bihar to try to catch up with the rest of India. This is a global era, and Bihar has to attempt to catch up with the rest of the world. In a knowledge economy being landlocked is no big deal and having a dense population like Bihar is a major boon. The mines with minerals have not ended up in Jharkhand, rather the mines reside in the brains of Biharis.

Rigorous lifelong education, easy access to health care - and there Bihar's local food would play a key role because if you get the nutrition part right, the rest of health care is easy - free WiFi across Patna, launch of IT colleges - although the best programmers are self taught, and as long as you can come online, you can teach yourself programming - and a major push for service sector jobs and knowledge economy jobs and a major emphasis on producing workers for the education and health sectors for the global market would go a long way to turning Bihar into the top economy in India.

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