Thanks very much for this. Just bought your book on AI and look forward to getting it.
Some years ago I decided I wanted to observe the surveillance going on with my iPhone. So I set up a man-in-the-middle attack in my home network to allow me to decrypt all the traffic going between my phone and the internet. I found that roughly 37% of all data transferred by my phone was either surveillance or ad related. 70% of the total number of servers my phone connected to were surveillance or ad network servers. 58% of all http(s) requests were surveillance or ad related.
We have a non-trivial problem with encryption. Encryption is sold to us as vital for the safety of our data, but that sales pitch presupposes that the companies we are encrypting traffic with are themselves ethical and above board. "Ethical" and "above board" are not words I would incline toward using to describe, say, social media behemoths.
Encryption may very well protect our credit card data as it traverses the network, but it also blinds us to the extent to which our devices, which we pay for by the way, are being used to manipulate and exploit us. In essence, encryption has been turned into a tool with which tech companies can hide their dubious activities from end-users.
A brief comment on "progress": In his introduction to "Meaning in History" (1949), Lowith says: "In the Western world the problem of suffering has been approached in two different ways: by the myth of Prometheus and by faith in Christ-the one a rebel, the other a servant. Neither antiquity nor Christianity indulged in the modern illusion that history can be conceived as a progressive evolution that solves the problem of evil by eliminating it." So progress as an ideological concept is strictly modern and part of the new Gnostic religion of scientism - which is about salvation through science. To be "progressive" these days is to be a crusader against anyone who opposes scientism. The religious tone and rhetoric is now evident in everything that has to do with "progress". (Probably needless to say that scientism is not science, but let's do so for clarity.) But more importantly, if science and technology started out promising individual salvation, now the focus is more and more on "collective salvation". All sorts of critical global threats (most of them artificially amplified or fabricated) justify this shift (starting with Covid), but surveillance and the surrender of privacy are also "sold" as means to a better collective good and ultimate salvation. The lack of public outrage at this only proves that most of us have bought it.
Thanks very much for this. Just bought your book on AI and look forward to getting it.
Some years ago I decided I wanted to observe the surveillance going on with my iPhone. So I set up a man-in-the-middle attack in my home network to allow me to decrypt all the traffic going between my phone and the internet. I found that roughly 37% of all data transferred by my phone was either surveillance or ad related. 70% of the total number of servers my phone connected to were surveillance or ad network servers. 58% of all http(s) requests were surveillance or ad related.
We have a non-trivial problem with encryption. Encryption is sold to us as vital for the safety of our data, but that sales pitch presupposes that the companies we are encrypting traffic with are themselves ethical and above board. "Ethical" and "above board" are not words I would incline toward using to describe, say, social media behemoths.
Encryption may very well protect our credit card data as it traverses the network, but it also blinds us to the extent to which our devices, which we pay for by the way, are being used to manipulate and exploit us. In essence, encryption has been turned into a tool with which tech companies can hide their dubious activities from end-users.
Florin,
I think you're spot on! Thanks for sharing this, particularly your point on scientism.
A brief comment on "progress": In his introduction to "Meaning in History" (1949), Lowith says: "In the Western world the problem of suffering has been approached in two different ways: by the myth of Prometheus and by faith in Christ-the one a rebel, the other a servant. Neither antiquity nor Christianity indulged in the modern illusion that history can be conceived as a progressive evolution that solves the problem of evil by eliminating it." So progress as an ideological concept is strictly modern and part of the new Gnostic religion of scientism - which is about salvation through science. To be "progressive" these days is to be a crusader against anyone who opposes scientism. The religious tone and rhetoric is now evident in everything that has to do with "progress". (Probably needless to say that scientism is not science, but let's do so for clarity.) But more importantly, if science and technology started out promising individual salvation, now the focus is more and more on "collective salvation". All sorts of critical global threats (most of them artificially amplified or fabricated) justify this shift (starting with Covid), but surveillance and the surrender of privacy are also "sold" as means to a better collective good and ultimate salvation. The lack of public outrage at this only proves that most of us have bought it.