Making sens of these turbulent times

Ethan Bauley at his best :

Citing Wired, Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet

“Zuckerberg doesn’t pull any punches, describing Google as “a top-down way” of organizing the Web that results in an impersonal experience that stifles online activity. “You have a bunch of machines and algorithms going out and crawling the Web and bringing information back,” he says. “That only gets stuff that is publicly available to everyone. And it doesn’t give people the control that they need to be really comfortable.” Instead, he says, Internet users will share more data when they are allowed to decide which information they make public and which they keep private. “No one wants to live in a surveillance society,” Zuckerberg adds, “which, if you take that to its extreme, could be where Google is going.”

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Ethan comments:

“This is one of the most ironic thought patterns EVER” .

I couldn’t agree more :-)

Each time i read, hear, watch Mark Zuckerberg I can help but remember this extract of The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky :

Shigalov (Zuckerrov?) went on.

“Dedicating my energies to the study of the social organisation which is in the future to replace the present condition of things, I’ve come to the conviction that all makers of social systems from ancient times up to the present year, 187-, have been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales, fools who contradicted themselves, who understood nothing of natural science and the strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, columns of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is.” He tapped the notebook. “I wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise form possible, but I see that I should need to add a great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters.” (There was the sound of laughter.) “I must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete.” (Laughter again.) “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.”

The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, originally posted as comment on Ethan Bauley’s blog.

Wired, Ethan Bauley, and Dostoyevsky are higly recommended !