My patience has ended.
I'm just about to pull the pin on Google+ so that I can take some time and think about my reliance on other Google services. The entire debate tells me that for whatever reason, google as a corporation has jumped the shark and I do not feel comfortable investing my social capital in it.
And if that social capital were not valuable, they would not be locked in a death match with Facebook over data-mining futures, and governments would not be petitioning them for their databases.
Oddly, my decision is not based on whether I have anything to hide. I have always made the point of never putting anything on the Internet that could put me at risk, and I make a point of distancing myself from those who do.
"Content is King, and King is Content." The reality of the Internet is there is always someplace else - and moreover, wherever you are will cease to be anyplace sometime in the future. One SURE way of ensuring that the interesting people will leave is to send out invitations to the "bridge and tunnel set," the sort of people who think that the Luxor casino is even better than the actual pyramids of Egypt.
This is about investment, and where my time is best spent and to what ends. Google, at the moment, seems like a very poor investment for my social capital and I shall be investigating other social investment vehicles.
You see, I'm a fucking punk; I understand the difference between civility and civilization. "Civility" is being careful about the words used to boast about raping a peasant wench.
"Civilization" is a condition in which it's considered wrong to rape peasants, and a right and proper outcome is to bring rapists to justice, regardless of their station in life.
If that distinction is unclear to you - and it seems to me that it is - a discussion about "civility" as being a way to make things "better" will create no better thing that I care to participate in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
LinkWithin
Popular Posts
-
Don't Hate Me Because I'm White by webcarve Make a Customized TShirt online at Zazzle.com See other Issues T-Shirts It has long p...
-
You've seen the video, asking "is it so wrong to pray for rain?" Focus on the Family guy Stuart Shepard is asking people, in ...
-
Glenn Greenwald is suffering the effects of a very severe moral wedgie. Like many, and I include myself, he suffers from deep, impotent o...
-
The bit below was a response to this election post/thread on Echidne of the Snakes. Antijen speaks for a great many people; myself among th...
-
I've been having a grand obsess, perseverating like hell on something that at first blush seems utterly unrelated to art, blogging, or G...
5 comments:
Oh I was glad to get linked to here from a Twitter post!
I am a punk too... or at least a former one (1977-1983) and I know the difference too.
I was less afraid in my neighborhoods (East LA; edge of S Central; Koreatown; edge of Compton; downtown LA at 3am) than I am of smiling suits, who pretend to polished civility but show less humanity than some of the local street gangs.
When you live with outlaws, there is a code. These Men In Yellow make pretense of laws to cover their vicious gangsterism.
*cough* ahem.
I had a thought - it is very strange that Google would persist in such a course when they are destroying many years of carefully-built-up trust. I took note of two things said by Google CEO Eric Schmidt the other day:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"
this is the one that has everyone flipping out; a complete parroting of the "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" party line. Ok... but then he says,
"The reality is... we are all in the US subject to the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act; it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
This one caused me to sit up and run a scenario in my head:
What if Google is doing this because the Spooks are insisting on it, under the threats of the beginning anti-trust subpoenas against it? What if this is the way the Feds (and E8) are pressuring Google; with breaking up their business?
What if Google is persisting in this hard-line, very-negative-press stance as a covert message: "the spooks are on us and we're trying to let you know"?
It was interesting to consider it. The way things are now, I don't think it's very tin-foil-hat to examine the possibility; if a guy in my old 'hood was doing something really weird, against all his previous behaviour, incurring the wrath of many of the people who supported him and made some strange statement like that... I'd think someone had a gun to his head or his wife and he was trying to telegraph extreme danger.
Just my thoughts.
You know, I was going to respond with a bitter high five - and then I was reminded of a classic parallel, when Jeremiah Denton spelled out the word "TORTURE" by blinking during a North Vietnamese propaganda "confession."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Denton
Perhaps "Don't Be Evil" is a policy that is difficult to live up to - and live.
Well, come to think of it, it always has been.
...not that the above should change how you act; whether it's an overt threat or a covert warning.
I can see the difference. But do you consider a successful exhortation to rape the peasant against civility or against civilisation?
Against Civilization. Rape for sure, and the concept of a privileged to rape, well, that's rather worse, even if the actual event is rare.
Boob jokes, well, that's merely uncivil. Boob jokes intended to inflict psychological harm... see above.
Post a Comment