Are economics the next scourge?

PSometimes I wonder if mankind has created, through economics and finance, its own golem.

For centuries, companies have become legal bodies. As such, they have interests and rights, which often conflict to those of natural persons, i.e. citizens. Moreover, they have unrestricted lifespan, which is an immeasurable advantage over any natural person.

The larger a company is, the more independent it becomes from the people who are supposed to run it, and the more it acts in its own interest. However, the interests of a company can be summed up in a single word: profit. Everything else is just a means. And for lack of morality, since morality is a human value, all means are fine.

April 15, 2018

Food for AI

PeerStorage was created to give users control over their personal data. In addition to the issues discussed in the website pages, there is another one: Artificial Intelligence.

An AI operates (takes decisions, or issues recommendations) in the interest of its owner (at this stage it is interesting to note that one can talk about the owner for an AI, but this is another debate). If the AI belongs to the user, it will act in the user’s interest. If it belongs to a company or community, it will act for these.

March 30, 2018

We are all neurons

Information theory refers to signal-to-noise ratio. In a “noisy” environment, selecting information is as valuable if not more so than creating it. This is the pattern of “followers”, “friends” or “circles” of social networks: each network user becomes a curator of the information he receives, he produces a news feed to which any other user can subscribe.

This process is similar to the one occurring biologically between neurons in the brain. They interconnect with each other through synapses. And some neurons will have a stronger influence than others.

March 29, 2018

Of censorship by distraction

In dictatorships, they say “shut up”. In democracies, they say “whatever”. It is a famous joke, to which the digital context gives a whole new perspective.

Information has no effect if there is no attention in front of it. When information is scarce and attention is abundant, it is easier to control the dissemination of information. When, instead, the information is overabundant, trying to delete it attracts attention. It is therefore far more effective to make “noise” in order to distract attention from embarrassing information.

March 28, 2018

Of the disadvantages of truth

Truth suffers from two major disadvantages:

it is often complex and requires effort to be understood, yet few have the intellectual willingness to take an interest in it,
it is often not overly spectacular in the end, and accessing it does not offer any particular “pleasure”.

Attention is more easily captured by spectacular information that does not need to be significant, not even true. In fact, in an audience-based ecosystem, everything tends to become show, staging, story telling. The average user becomes a lazy observer waiting to be entertained, and less and less a citizen who seeks to be informed.

March 27, 2018

Of information viruses

As long as anyone can write anything, there are obviously a lot of overflows. We often talk about “fake news” and “hate speech”. While these phenomena are not new, the Internet has brought a new dimension to them: a much broader scope, and an illusion of anonymity that disinhibits speech.

In response, the public authorities generally prefer the legislative response: prohibit certain statements, punish the guilty parties. This type of response poses two democratic problems:

April 11, 2017

Personnalisation, danger and opportunity

Algorithms sort the information presented to each user. But because there are “type 3” services, it is possible to personalize the advertising and non-advertising information that is presented to everyone.

As a result, each user is exposed to different information. And it is a vicious circle: the more we look at information, the more the same type of information will be put forward by algorithms, and the more we will look at this same type of information, thus locking ourselves in very comfortable “bubbles”, far from information that could call into question our own ideas. In some cases, recommendation algorithms lead to radicalization.

April 10, 2017

Of the influence of algorithms

Have you ever wondered why one result comes ahead of another in a search? Or why your social network information feed was arranged in that order?

At work are algorithms. To make the service work, they evaluate, according to more or less clear criteria, what needs to be highlighted. And this power to sort information is crucial: what happens on or after the second page is often ignored due to time constraints. Of course it’s not deleted, of course whoever wants to find it will find it. But at the societal level, it is statistics that matter. And statistics show that it is the first information that counts.

April 9, 2017

Of the eternity of the data

Is it important, is it reasonable, that all the data produced be kept for all eternity?

This is what most users expect from a service where they deposit their data, but the question deserves to be asked in a sustainable development context. Because this conservation has a cost over time that must be well covered in one way or another. To rely on infinite resources, or worse, to rely on future generations, is to make the same mistake as the pioneers of coal and oil.