Lecture Three - 1220hslLecture Three Trimester 2, 2017 Jason Harding (PhD) Department of Tourism, Hotel and Sport Management - Jason Harding (PHD) ... these long-running tendencies,

Department of Tourism, Hotel and Sport Management - Jason Harding (PHD)

Lecture Three

Trimester 2, 2017

Jason Harding (PhD)


Lecturer Jason Harding

Details

Name: Jason Harding (PhD)

Location: G27, 2.16A, Gold Coast Campus

Phone: (07) 555 27941

Email: [email protected]

1220hsl Website: www.1220hsl.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.anarchistathlete.com/

Lecture Three Outline

1. Something Missing From last Week

2. Remember Your Question

3. Reach And Invisibility

4. Trivial Inconveniences

5. Another Question From Last Week

6. The Real Digital Revolution

7. What’s Mos Def Got To Do With Anything?

8. Inbuilt Human SEO

9. Naked On The Internet

10. Virtual Sock-Puppets

11. Introducing Alexander Acquisiti

12. Dark Matter and Dark Wallet

13. Can Technology Save Us

14. Three Final Thoughts And A Question


1

Something Missing

From Last Week


Something Is Missing

Last week we discussed a number of interesting (and important) aspects to Black Milk’s (a

company that produces personalized leggings and sells through an online channel) focus and

recent success:

• Community

• Communication

• Uniqueness

• Personalisation

• Ownership

• Humanity

• ??

We missed something. What is it?

Note: Tori (hopefully I have spelled Tori’s name correctly) from Nathan Campus was the only one to pick up on

this.


Something Is Missing

The produce quality products

… talk to me about the concept of quality in business …


2

Remember Your Question


Remember Your Question

In your opinion …

Is technology is an inherent component of human evolution and therefore, simply “the medium in

which we play this infinite game” (Kelly, 2005), whether technology is currently leading humanity

down a path where “the creative becomes subservient to the structure of giant computers”, “human

expression becomes a peasant activity” (Lanier, 2013), and one that will ultimately “cheat us of

being in touch deeply with those breathing right next to us” (Nin, 1951).


3

Reach And Invisibility


Virtual Communities

“It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, however,

television reached that milestone in 13 years, the iPod in four years,

the Internet in three years, Facebook in one year,

and Twitter in nine months (Durie, 2012)

Whilst the trend is inherently linked to the concept of community, and also to that of an open,

transparent, collaborative, and connected world … for me it also brings the concept of invisibility

and also darkness and risk to light.

Further, it has also rammed BF Skinner’s standpoint (which

is also linked to one of Jaron Lanier’s principle concerns with technology

and the internet) right up in front of your face for consideration …

Source: Social Upheaval. John Durie. The Deal. The Australian Business Magazine. September 2012 Volume 5, Number 8.



4

Trivial Inconveniences

Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sport Management - Jason Harding (PHD)

Trivial Inconveniences

“Technology was developed to prevent exhausting

labor. Now it is dedicated to trivial inconveniences”

B.F. Skinner.


5

Another Question From

Last Week


Another Question From Last Week

… In certain contexts, Evans and Tapscott paint a fairly utopian

way of doing business, just how big are the risks …


6

The Real Digital

Revolution


The Real Digital Revolution

The internet has now transformed our economies, our culture and politics, and our very way of life

to such an extent that we are by many accounts in the midst of a communication revolution on a

par with the invention of writing or the printing press; perhaps speech itself.

But this is just the warm up act.

In the summer of 2015 the CEO of one of the largest industrial corporations in the world gave a

speech at an exclusive private dinner for the wealthy and powerful in Germany.

In the question and answer session the CEO was asked about the use of robots in manufacturing

and whether they were a realistic prospect in the future.

The CEO informed the audience that his company already had one fully automated factory, and

had the technology in hand to immediately convert all of its factories worldwide to being fully

automated.

The reason that deterred them from doing it was not economic – it makes perfect sense to do so –

but political.

McChesney, R. (2015, February-April). Here comes the real digital revolution. New Philosopher, Issue 11, 85-88.




… converting to fully automated factories would throw at least 40 percent of their total workforce,

much of it still based in Germany, into the unemployment lines.

“If we did that,” he said, “the middle class in Germany would burn”

The audience was astounded, because the implication was that this was coming soon – very soon

– and even one of the world’s most powerful CEO’s could not hold this back much longer.




An audience of computer scientists would not have been surprised.

The science of robotics has exploded with revolutionary developments in the past few years and

many more previously unimaginable breakthroughs are now on the horizon.

Gill A. Pratt, up until 2015, was the Program Director at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced

Research Project’s Agency (DARPA) where he oversaw work on robotics.

Pratt argues that humanity may be on the verge of experiencing something comparable in effect to

the Cambrian Explosion, referring to the relatively brief period 540 million years ago when life

underwent an astonishingly rapid diversification, including, arguably, the evolution of vision.

This was crucial for the subsequent development of complex and intelligent life.




Pratt outlines a series of related and complementary breakthroughs in robotics and computing that

will make it possible for machines …

“to replicate the performance of many of the perceptual parts of the human brain”

… including, fittingly enough, vision itself. Pratt observes, at the very least …

“the effects on economic output and human workers are certain to be profound”

However he refuses to predict when this will occur …

“as the timing of tipping points is hard to predict”

But it is on its way. And note: Others have made a prediction (next week guys) …

McChesney, R. (2015, February-April). Here comes the real digital revolution. New Philosopher, Issue 11, 85-88. er 8.



The transformation of employment wrought by robots and digital communities is not restricted to

manufacturing.

Those who study the matter believe that something in the order of one-half of existing jobs will be

eliminated in the coming one to two decades, and that no sector will be immune to automation.

In 2014 another CEO announced at Davos that most traditional white collar jobs were also on the

digital chopping block.

And no one foresees any new employment sectors opening up that are sufficient to swallow the

displaced workers or the hundreds of millions of people entering the work-force across the planet.

Not even close.




Even the prospect of ever-lower wages cannot compete with the giganitc promise of the new

technologies.

Based in China, the world’s largest manufacturing firm – employing over one million workers – is

among the largest purchasers of industrial robots.

It is planning for a day in the not-too-distant future when it, too, will have fully automated factories.

These developments are going to pose direct and mortal challenges to both capitalism and

democracy.

Think about it guys ...

It is not like US capitalism is well positioned to receive a wave of automation.




For those under the age of thirty, the labour market is hardly superior to that of the Great

Depression.

And to this we are going to pile on a revolutionary wave of automation that will aggravate all of

these long-running tendencies, perhaps exponentially.

Baring reforms not yet visible or known, the system would appear to evolving more into a decaying

feudal order than providing the basis for an affluent society with social mobility.

If no one has sufficient income to buy new products, then there is no incentive to invest for profit.

Under stagnation, the revolutionary advances in technology are hardly a solution, they only seem

to promote ever-greater talk about the need to slash living standards and cut back on social

services.

And there is a supreme irony here …




… at the exact moment far less human labour is necessary to produce more than enough to satisfy

human wants and needs …

… the system that fostered abundance is incapable of adapting to it.




John Stuart Mill once wrote elegantly about a “stationary society” …

… where economic growth was unnecessary, commercialism would be reduced, human nature

would evolve, and all people could develop their talents and faculties as only the wealthy few could

do in the impoverished past.

The immediate place these tensions will play out is in the political realm, as citizens will demand

political solutions to the great problems of stagnation, unemployment, underemployment, and

poverty.

Those who greatly benefit from the status quo will likely battle against progressive change as if

their lives depend on it.

And it could just as easily degenerate into propaganda, militarism, and tyranny.

Everything rides on the outcome.

McChesney, R. (2015, February-April). Here comes the real digital revolution. New Philosopher, Issue 11, 85-88. er 8.


7

What’s Mos Def Got To

Do With Anything?


Mos Def


… And we are alive in amazing times. Delicate hearts, diabolical minds …

Mos Def (2009). Life in Marvelous Times [J Dilla, Mr. Flash, Madlib, Mos Def, Oh No, Preservation, and The Neptunes]. On

The Ecstatic. Downtown Records.

8

Inbuilt Human SEO


Inbuilt Human SEO


“The unpleasant truth is that every child after the late 80s was born with human SEO, along

with a duty to maintain it. We willingly pose and download and blindly click through terms

and conditions, feeding the surveillance society we live in. We’re used to being sold out and

repeatedly failed by our technology. Why not just admit defeat and give our bodies to the

internet? Our past selves are already littered all over it. By the time the Snapchat

generation comes of age, all of us will be naked on the internet. We might as well get used

to it now. By accepting the inevitable we can begin to regain some control. (Kiberd, 2014)

Source: Kiberd, R. (2014). ‘The Fappening Has Revealed A New Type of Pervert’. Wired. September 3.

9

Naked on the Internet




“Having the child’s full name and suburb

of residence is madness” (Radoll, in Koelma, 2014).

Source: Koelma, G. (2014). Six-year old boy given a school science project with instructions to ‘make his photo go viral’. News.com. July

17.



“From the moment the video was posted

Matthew was mercilessly bullied, harassed,

and teased by students who had seen it” (Claim against San Diego Unified School District, 2014).

Source: Morrow, M. (2014). Matthew Burdette took his own life after being bullied over viral ‘sex act’ video. News.com. July 16.

10

Virtual Sock-Puppets




Is sock-puppetry (the creation of personas designed, on some level - conscious or

subconscious – to shape others’ ideas about who we really are) new or somehow novel to

the Internet? (Seife, 2014)

Source: Seife, C. (2014). ‘The ‘The weird reasons why people make up false identities on the Internet’. Wired. July 29.



“… it is only a short step from there to manipulating others’ perceptions of us to give

ourselves an unfair advantage of some sort, to deceive. To become puppet masters” (Seife,

2014)




“In Type 1 sock-puppetry, the puppet master fabricates a phony persona who has a

specific attribute or experience that the puppet master himself lacks - an attribute or

experience that gives the puppet master extra authority in a conversation or extra ability to

generate a reaction from others. In all cases, the point seems to be to seek either authority,

attention, or profit (Seife, 2014).




Example: “Amina Arraf. A 35-year-old Syrian American had become a prominent blogger.

Her blog, Gay Girl in Damascus, described life in Syria during the beginning of the uprising

against Bashar al-Assad. Liberal and lesbian, she was in a precarious position as a

protester in a conservative and unstable society. She kept writing, and in May, The

Guardian dubbed her “an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country”.

But in the early evening of Monday, June 6, 2011, she was walking to meet a friend in

downtown Damascus when three young men wrestled her into a red minivan, which

screeched off into the dusk. Arraf’s cousin posted details to Amina’s blog. The outcry was

immediate. The Guardian reported the kidnapping, and so did the New York Times, Fox

News, Gawker, CNN, and several other news organizations. The International Business

Times asked how the United States should respond to the abduction, and “Free Amina”

websites and posters began to spring up.

Within a few hours, though, Andy Carvin, an NPR journalist, noted on Twitter that none of

the people who had ever interviewed Arraf had met her or even spoken to her over the

phone. Once someone began to question Arraf’s identity, the illusion shattered”. (Seife, 2014)




Why the anguish when Kaycee Nicole’s (aka Debbie Swenson’s) identity was questioned?




“More common than Type 1 sock-puppetry is Type 2 sock-puppetry, in which the only one

thing that matters is that the fictional personality must be someone other than the puppet

master. Type 2 sockpuppets are often deployed as reinforcements in an online feud.

Because these sock-puppets are meant to seem independent of the puppet master, these

false personae give the impression of a group of online people who agree with and bolster

the puppet master’s position - or attack his enemies”. (Seife, 2014).




Does Type 2 sock-puppetry sound familiar?

“The Internet has become a battleground for virtual personalities – all attempting to gather

information to help their causes and hurt their enemies. A war without bystanders, for we

are all caught up in it, whether we are aware of it or not (Seife, 2014).




“The ease of creating a large number of sock-puppets for the express purpose of infiltrating

social media sites is making civil libertarians nervous (Seife, 2014).


11

Introducing

Alessandro Acquisti


Introducing Alessandro Acquisti


Alessandro Acquisti: Why Privacy Matters.

The line between public and private has blurred in the past decade. In this thought-provoking,

slightly chilling talk, he shares details of a project that shows how easy it is to match a photograph

of a stranger with their sensitive personal information (www.ted.com).

Click To Watch

http://www.ted.com/talks/alessandro_acquisti_why_privacy_matters?language=en

12

Dark Matter and Dar

Wallet


Dark Matter and Dark Wallet


“Cody Wilson and Amir Taaki have dedicated their careers to building some of the most

controversial software ever offered to the public (Greenberg, 2014)

“Wilson gained notoriety last year as the creator of the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun, a

set of CAD files known as the Liberator that anyone can download and print in the privacy

of their home to create a working, lethal firearm (Greenberg, 2014)

“Together they recently unveiled a prototype for a decentralized online marketplace, known

as DarkMarket, that’s designed to be impervious to shutdown by the feds (sic) (Greenberg, 2014)

“The programming provocation they released a few hours [occurred May 1] ago is called

Dark Wallet, a piece of software designed to allow untraceable, anonymous [and therefore

uncontrollable] online payments using the cryptocurrency bitcoin (designed specifically to

completely hide the activities of its’ users (Greenberg, 2014).

Source: Greenberg, A. (2014). Waiting for Dark: Inside Two Anarchists’ Quest for Untraceable Money. Wired. July 11.



“They envision a digital payment network that circumvents every authority’s attempts to tax

it, seize it, censor it, track it, or imprison those who would use it (Greenberg, 2014)




“I believe in the hacker ethic. Empower the small guy, privacy and anonymity, mistrust

authority, promote decentralized alternatives, freedom of information (Amir Taaki in Greenberg, 2014)

“But it’s important to be clear that it may not be good on

balance either. The world is not perfect.

Good and evil rise together (Amir Taaki in Greenberg, 2014)

“We’ll step out into a new world, and we can explore it

in any direction we choose (Greenberg, 2014)

Amir Taaki. Image: Julia Robinson




“If bitcoin means anything it means a thousand

Silk Roads … it means fuck you law

(Cody Wilson in Greenberg, 2014).

Cody Wilson. Image: Julia Robinson




“Their goal, with both the 3-D-printed gun and untraceable currency, isn’t simply to help

people violate the law. In fact, it’s to give people tools that make illegal behavior so

commonplace and technically trivial that the law ceases to be relevant

In [their] version of the future, technology, not law, makes the rules.

In that future, math and consensus, not violence, might govern the control of

resources. “We’re declaring ourselves sovereign, we’re making the government

obsolete”(Amir Taaki in Greenberg, 2014)

“Bitcoin will enable humans to organize in ways that weren’t before possible. It will allow

people to assemble together and build structures that we’ve never imagined (Amir Taaki in

Greenberg, 2014)




“To quote the old civil libertarians, liberty is a dangerous thing. Yes, bad things are going to

happen on these marketplaces (Cody Wilson in Greenberg, 2014).

Dark Wallet isn’t about financing bloodshed. “Humanity doesn’t need tools for funding

violence, and that’s not what this is about. This is about empowering those that want to be

empowered (Amir Taaki in Greenberg, 2014)

Yes there will be a cruelty to it. No, the world won’t be a wonderful place with bunny rabbits

and a beautiful utopia where everyone has equal amounts of money (Amir Taaki in Greenberg, 2014)


13

Can Technology

Save Us


Can Technology Save Us


The internet was going to democratise the world.

It was going to enable the free flow of information and goods. Everyone was an author, with all the

power this suggested. It was going to allow users to play with their identities, resisting older, fixed

notions of selfhood.

The internet’s liberating vigour was greatly overrated.

Politically and economically, capital remains in the hands of the few – only their investments have

changed.

As Kentaro put it in ‘The Alantic’, the “internet is not nor will it ever be, the primary systematic

cause of real political change any more than lanterns – ‘one if by land, two if by sea’ – were the

primary cause of the American revolution”.

Young, D. (2016, February-April). Can Technology Save Us?. New Philosopher, Issue 11, 61-63.



And a more profound mistake is at work here …

It concerns not just the internet, but technology in general.

It is the expectation that technology can and will solve problems; that the future will be better

because technology will have made it so; that many of us can wait for machines and code to fix

things.

This is not surprising. Technology is about problems-solving.

Technology realises possibilities which would not otherwise be, and it does so reliably – or is

supposed to. It is a specific means to a specific ends.

However …




However, in the context of politics, there will never be a time without discord, regardless of how

swiftly technology develops. Humans are a divided and fractious species.

It would also be naïve to believe that technological innovation always embodies the ends we

desire, or will achieve only those ends. Not all widgets exist because they are helpful. And the

waste and pollution associated with technological progression has generated international

environmental problems too wicked to solve.

Further there are some problems that technology cannot solve. Not because it is too sluggish,

fragile, or clumsy, but because not all problems are instrumental. Machines can no more do ethics

than they can have existential crises. They can help to change circumstances, but they cannot

reflect on their value or morality.




This highlights the intimate but asymmetric relationship between humanity and instruments.

We are a tool making species, but we are not ourselves tools.

We have our own ends – in fact we are ends. Technology can nudge, encourage, invite; it can

amplify or diminish, accelerate or slow down. It is no neutral bystander.

But its agency is limited, and its consciousness non-existent.

We have to decide what vision of the good life compels us, and commit to it.

Humanity is an ongoing question, and technology cannot answer on our behalf.


14

Three Final Thoughts

And A Question


Three Final Thoughts – And A Question

whilst it is young - embryonic - it is ubiquitous - and its growth will be exponential. That's why

sunflowers, names, faces, eye contact, and touch are crucial. That's why individuality, 'creativity,

and imagination are the most important things you own' (Cameron). They are the things that will

thwart technology leading us down a path where we are subservient to the structure of giant

computers' - a path that will 'reduce us as humans' (Lanier), and 'cheat us of being in touch deeply

with those breathing right next to us' (Nin).

Image: 1220HSL Lecture. Gold Coast Campus 02 | 03 | 16.


… Vans. Black jeans. Truth is a

paradox. Technology is an inherent

component of our evolution - the

'medium in which we play this infinite

game' (Kelly). Which we tend to

assign ourselves exclusive influence

over. However, technology, as a

whole system, has begun to want. It

has begun to express an urge - an

evolutionary urge. Technology has

actually 'begun to whisper to itself'

(Kelly). It wants to be more. And


Our contemporary culture, primed by population growth and driven by technology, has created

problems of environmental degradation that directly affect all of our senses: noise, odours, and

toxins which will bring physical pain and suffering, and ugliness, barrenness, and homogeneity of

experience which will bring emotional and psychological suffering and emptiness.

In short, we are jeopardizing our human qualities by pursuing technology as an end rather than a

means. Too often we have failed to ask ourselves two necessary questions:

First, what human purpose will a given technology or development serve. Second, what human

and environmental effects will it have?

US SENATE PUBLIC RELATIONS WORKS COMMITTEE,

Report on water polution bill, 7th August 1969.




“The greatest task before civilisation at present is to make machines

what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

(Havelock Elis)


Next week guys I want to know if you think we still have a

chance at what Havelock Ellis was pleading for or if we

have perhaps already lost ourselves to technology …

Thanks for your time

Will be in touch


Documents

Lecture Three - 1220hslLecture Three Trimester 2, 2017 Jason Harding (PhD) Department of Tourism, Hotel and Sport Management - Jason Harding (PHD) ... these long-running tendencies,