"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Why I Quit Facebook

The most recent dissembling and deflecting by Facebook in regards to Russian ad buys expose once again the real-life character who is depicted in The Social Network: a permanently-boyish sociopath who will do anything to gain power, money, and prestige, regardless of the harm and cost to others.

Zuckerberg embodies the most dominant version of Bill Gates 2.0, the second generation of callow, arrogant tech oligarchs who think they know how the world should operate and who it should serve: them.  The vast majority of their generosity is designed to benefit their own business models, and the big-hearted interventions accentuate their own technology platforms and methods.

Following Gates's assault on public schools, Zuckerberg is now staging his own self-serving campaign to further alienate and control children with a kind of dehumanizing "personalization" that benefits Zuckerberg's business model and the insatiable quest for more human data to serve Facebook's artificial soul housed in Building 8.

Zuckerberg writes off any concerns expressed about his project to monetize billions of unsuspecting users, even though Elon Musk leads a contingent that remains unimpressed by Zuck's reassurances:
Elon Musk recently put forth his own doomsday scenario. "I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it," says Musk, speaking to a roomful of governors last month.
"AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not — they were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole," he says.
It is time to join the millions of people who are pulling the plug on Facebook and wave a final farewell to the smarmy weasel who wields way too much power.

1 comment:

  1. Hip hip hoorah ten thousand times!

    Read these leaves
    in the open air every season of
    every year of your life

    Reexamine
    all you have been told
    at school or church
    or in any book

    Dismiss whatever insults
    your own soul
    & your very flesh
    shall become a great poem.


    Hail, Walt, not Mark.

    ReplyDelete