21
votes
Box CEO Aaron Levie says mistrust of Google and Facebook is a ‘contagion’ that could spread to every tech company
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Eric Johnson
- Published
- Jul 8 2018
- Word count
- 610 words
I feel like this ship sailed five years ago.
Coincidentally, Edward Snowden.
It sailed long before Snowden but many didn't understand the scope. Even after Snowden's revelations the majority of the citizenry doesn't grasp the concept "if the product is free, you are the product". The recent outrage over the ability of developers to potentially read emails stored in your gmail account show there is still much to teach the public. For example:
How is it possible for someone to not understand the literal description of the service requires the ability of the application to read your emails??
People really don't understand how tech works. It really is magic to a substantial portion of the population, it doesn't surprise me that someone thought a scheme like that could compare your receipts without reading your email.
And it's not just online. There's a lot of tech that people don't understand. I remember watching a video of a Japanese tech company demo new headphones that allow the users to change the songs, increase volume, basically control simple electronics with their eyes. It got so many "people are so lazy" comments, and if anyone actually read the follow up article, this was designed for the disabled. The layperson just doesn't or can't understand what is beyond the marketing blurbs.
I remember my parents told me that my generation would be really good with computers since we grew up with them, and that we would be the ones to fully integrate technology in our lives. I'm in college now, and it astounds me how many people don't know how to type. I can kinda understand those who don't use "proper" hand placement since they were entirely self-taught (so long as they don't have to look down to type), but I've met people in my CS classes who still hunt and peck. I've also had to teach people how to use PowerPoint. Also, tenure track faculty who open Firefox, go to Yahoo, type in "Google", click on Google, then search "Google Chrome" (then realizes that's not how you open it, and searches for it in the start menu, even though it's pinned to the taskbar). I witnessed this multiple times from the same lecturer last spring, and he got his PhD sometime in the past 3 years! Granted, most of the tech-illiterate people I dealt with dropped CS (or dropped out) after freshman year, but the fact that you can go that far in life without knowing how to type or use Office is astounding. (I feel bad for their classmates in the classes they changed majors into.)
This is probably the tech industry's biggest threat, and most people don't seem to realize it. Technologically illiterate people are in charge of our government today, and they don't want to admit (or just don't realize) how little they understand. Mark Zuckerburg's congressional questioning felt like a PR stunt with all the questions that could have just as easily been answered with a simple Google search (these officials have plenty of staff they could ask to research these things for them, it's literally their job). One of them asked how Facebook stayed in business since users don't pay them (ads...you know, the same thing that keeps radio stations on air). I think Lindsay Graham even asked if they (edit: "they" being Facebook, not the ads) were the same as Twitter or something along those lines. And let's not forget Trump's comments about "the cyber". It's an idiocracy from the top down.
People thought that the millennials and gen-Z would magically figure out computers, and yet here we are. People need to learn to RTFM and put some critical thought into the nice, plain-English permissions prompts they get when they connect their Google account to a service, and learn to actually ask questions when they don't understand things rather than just nod along. "If it's free, you are the product" is like "correlation does not imply causation" in that people have heard the phrase a fair amount and claim to know what you're talking about, but they don't understand how it applies to the topic at hand.
A bit ranty, but it's really annoying how inept leaders can easily set technological progress back because they only listen to their lobbyists. I remember writing to my senator about net neutrality, and I got back a canned response about free speech and government overregulation. Yeah, keep spouting the party line, it makes no difference until ISPs start charging extra to access Fox News and the NRA, then there will be 15 congressional "investigations". (That's not to say only Republicans are tech-illiterate, but the most vocal tech-illiterate representatives tend to be Republican.)
Edit: Clarified comparison between Facebook and Twitter.
Edit 2: Senators -> representatives, tech-illiteracy is not just limited to the Senate.
Edit 3: Added anecdote about one of my tech-illiterate professors.
Edit 4: I guess my point is that our society is too tech-illiterate. Reactionary legislators will probably end up setting back progress, or lobbyists will push in bills absolving corporations of any real responsibility. And it's no longer if we have to deal with widespread legislation in technology but when, with self-driving cars and highly-intelligent AI that can fool humans online and over the phone just around the corner. People just don't care enough to learn about technology because that's seen as the job of all the CS majors to figure out so the general population doesn't need to think about it. Why learn the nuances of a situation when you can just listen to a 30 second soundbyte on the nightly news or an autoplaying Facebook video? Or, if you want to fuel a victim complex, find some YouTube video about how <technology/idea/person/opinion> is going to <destroy/ruin/stiffle/ban> <activity/group/idea/thing you enjoy/are a member of/identify with>!
My rage comes from their refusal to even consult an SME so they can make an informed decision in the matter. Not some paid stooge who will tell them what they want to hear, tell them the reality of how these things work. I am thinking a liaison like a technical writer, who can translate things into terminology the politicians can understand, and so there can be no excuses made when it comes time to create/vote/pass legislation. If it was a war they would ask for intelligence before deciding to drop a bomb, why not do the same with technology? The same standard should be applied. I don't have a pilot's license so I can't fly a plane, I did not attend medical school so I cannot write prescriptions, they don't understand how a computer works outside of button mashing so they shouldn't be allowed to pass legislation on those sorts of things!
Comprehension of indirect, causal, or consequential effects of things is poor, particularly at public scale.
Apathy to self-ignorance.
I feel like there's nothing wrong with Silicon Valley that can't be fixed by confiscating the area under eminent domain and using it for above-ground nuclear testing.
Nuclear tests are bad, I'd be up for turning the valley into a nature preserve though. Heck, there's probably some interesting research to be done in how nature reclaims abandoned cities.
For real, it's gorgeous. Turn it into a nature preserve and force all of the VC's into stewardship of it. Hell, they already love their commercialized version of Buddhism.