Stuart Dredge

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“We Don’t Always Recognize The Future When We See It”

November 3, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Hell is other people–and robots. 

The problem with making machines resemble us is that we’re the worst, and then they’ll be likewise. Hit the mute button instead. Some Silicon Valley stalwarts think eliding what may be deemed unnecessary social interaction from our lives is a growth market. Make machines unobtrusively do things that pesky people now handle. The jobs will be lost (in hotels, restaurants, etc.) but so will the unwanted communication.

In all seriousness, I do think disappearing human (and human-ish) nuisance will probably just make us worse to one another. What we want isn’t necessarily what we need. From Stuart Dredge in the Guardian:

Why does humanity need robots? Sometimes, to spare us the need to talk to other humans, according to Andra Keay, managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics.

Speaking at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, she cited the example of Relay, a robot designed to work in hotels, taking items from staff to guests.

“People do enjoy the social interaction with the robot, but it turns out what they enjoy most is not having to have a social interaction with another person at a time when they’re not feeling sociable,” said Keay. …

“We don’t always recognise the future when we see it. How do we recognise robots? We usually look for humanoids: something with a head, arms, legs. Optional glowing red eyes, super-weapons and evil intent to destroy humanity,” she said.

Keay preferred a more basic description of a robot – “Just a machine that senses things and acts” – suggesting that items from cars to washing machines fall under the category.•

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“If News Is Going To Find You, It’s Going To Find You Because Of An Algorithm”

March 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Personalization is good for a lot of things, but democracy isn’t one of them. Yet, I think we’re better off in America during this time of unfettered distribution. My sense is that in the big picture people are better informed now. Not everyone, but more of us. Yes, some still believe in anti-immunization hokum and there are citizens who desperately need Obamacare who think it’s “bad,” but there are ways to now chip away at such notions. Senator Joseph McCarthy thrived for a long time when few controlled channels of distribution, but today he would be treated like just another derp on Twitter.

So algorithms disseminating news concerns me, but maybe not as much as I thought it would a few years ago. From Stuart Dredge’s Guardian report about a SXSW conference which featured Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute:

“McBride claimed that in the 20th century, the marketplace of ideas was the professional press, complete with gatekeepers to those ideas in the form of journalists. ‘You either had to be an editor, or had to have access to an editor, or once television came along you had to have access to the means of production,’ she said.

‘The modern marketplace of ideas has completely changed in just the last six or seven years. You can be the first one to publish information,’ she said, referring to the famous first photograph of the plane that landed on New York’s Hudson River, as well as to blog posts that have gone viral.

In theory, then, we’re in a time when anyone can have an idea, publish it and theoretically have it float up to be encountered and considered by the wider population without the permission of those 20th-century gatekeepers.

The challenge: the modern marketplace of ideas is ‘a very noisy place: so noisy that you yourself don’t get to just sort through all of the ideas’ said McBride.

‘If you look at the research on how people get their news now: you often hear this phrase: ‘If news is important, news will find me’ – particularly for millennials. But behind that statement is something really important: if news is going to find you, it’s going to find you because of an algorithm.'”

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“The New Model For A Dictator Is To Infiltrate And Try To Manipulate It”

March 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In an article by Stuart Dredge at the Guardian, Google’s Eric Schmidt holds forth on totalitarian regimes trying to control what they cannot stop: the Internet. The opening:

“Dictators are taking a new approach in their responses to use of the internet in popular uprisings, according to Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

‘What’s happened in the last year is the governments have figured out you don’t turn off the internet: you infiltrate it,’ said Schmidt, speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

‘The new model for a dictator is to infiltrate and try to manipulate it. You’re seeing this in China, and in many other countries.’

Schmidt was interviewed on-stage alongside Jared Cohen, director of the company’s Google Ideas think tank. The session, moderated by Wired journalist and author Steven Levy, took the pair’s The New Digital Age book as its starting point.

Levy wondered whether their enthusiasm for technology’s potential role in popular uprisings has been dampened in the last year by events in Egypt, the Ukraine and elsewhere.

‘We’re very enthusiastic about the empowerment of mobile phones and connectivity, especially for people who don’t have it,’ said Schmidt. ‘In the book, we actually say that revolutions are going to be easier to start, but harder to finish.

He suggested that governments have realised that simply trying to block internet access for citizens is unlikely to end well – partly because it shows that they’re ‘scared’ – which may encourage more people onto the streets, not less. Hence the infiltration approach.”

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