Posted on 11/19/2017 9:37:09 PM PST by poinq
ne of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well, antisocial consequences.
It never seems to have occurred to them that their engines could be used to deliver ideological and political messages
It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters. Hence the obvious question: how could such smart people be so stupid? The cynical answer is they knew about the potential dark side all along and didn’t care, because to acknowledge it might have undermined the aforementioned licences to print money. Which is another way of saying that most tech leaders are sociopaths. Personally I think that’s unlikely, although among their number are some very peculiar characters: one thinks, for example, of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel – Trump’s favourite techie; and Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.
So what else could explain the astonishing naivety of the tech crowd? My hunch is it has something to do with their educational backgrounds. Take the Google co-founders. Sergey Brin studied mathematics and computer science. His partner, Larry Page, studied engineering an...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
They can only become more Insane At Hahvud. Dumbest school in the country with the best Faux Pedigree
They may be have IT smarts but they’re dumb as rocks in common sense. As is the liberal half of the country.
His premise is stupid. It doesn’t matter what kind of education or not the Silicon Valley elitists have; they still think they deserve to manage the whole world. A humanities degree would not help.
I heard a direct quote from a higher-up that is telling of their mindset: “We’re the only ones who can make the world better.”
If Bezos or The Zuck run for office, this is what they are stoked on in their echo chamber.
“It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters.”
Yeah, unlike all the daily rags and Slime magazine, Newsweak, and all the alphabet networks.
How dare anyone infringes on their propaganda monopoly!
Even though I’m no elitist, and I think most college degrees are very overrated, I do think that they are half-educated. Dropping out off college is hardly a badge of honor or success.
The article makes some valid points, but it also reads like a lamentation that techie elites have replaced journalist elites as the leaders of the sheeple. Amazon acquiring the Washington ComPost for pocket change simply drove this new reality home.
As Allan Bloom would say in his Closing of the American Mind, these university-trained dolts are trained for careers, which falls far short of a true education.
> Like these people would be any smarter staying in college.
Not staying in college wasn’t their main educational problem, but was consistent with it.
They had a very poor foundation laid in primary school, or they would not have become such unbalanced people to begin with.
They don’t have a proper appreciation for Christendom and what I’ll call the American way for short.
And their success went to their heads.
Gates is flaky leftist but he’s the most sane of the bunch.
As a consequence, the new masters of our universe are people who are essentially only half-educated. They have had no exposure to the humanities or the social sciences, the academic disciplines that aim to provide some understanding of how society works, of history and of the roles that beliefs, philosophies, laws, norms, religion and customs play in the evolution of human culture.
He is correct that many tech giants focused on technology, and where he says without proper study of humanities, he should say: "character and spiritual formation."
“He should know that college is half a waste of time and half, a four year drink fest.”
You obviously weren’t in my classes.
bmp later
“He is correct that many tech giants focused on technology, and where he says without proper study of humanities, he should say: “character and spiritual formation.”
Education in history, economics, philosophy, and the other subjects in the humanities can play a large role in that.
Every now and again a scientist realizes that his education is incomplete and dives into philosophy (e.g., The Dancing Wu Li Masters). When they do, they waste a lot of time tangled up with every error you learn about in a semester of Philosophy 101. They always seem to assume they’re going to be as smart in philosophy as they are in science, and they never are.
Gates might not be such a mewling leftard if he had been required to study the history of the 20th century, if his education had turned him into a person who would read The Bell Curve, the Black Book of Communism, the works of Thomas Sowell, Barzun’s Dawn to Decadence, etc.
I’m not even sure that he has the candlepower to really comprehend that sort of thing.
They have no problem with isis, al queda and child pornograpbers using their tech.
They just didn't expect those Conservative populist rubes to be so clever.
If they had gone to college 200 years ago, they WOULD have something like an education.
These billionaire geeks think they have the wisdom to rule the world, because the EU totalitarians, the Pope, etc., flatter them.
Bingo! You hit it. They’re all angry that no one is listening to them anymore.
If this is the logic you get after fours years of college, no wonder college has a bad rap. You logic is flawed and you spelling sucks. Look at the contradictions in just two short sentences.
Well, Doctor Frankenstein lived to regret his efforts too.
“It never seems to have occurred to them that their advertising engines could also be used to deliver precisely targeted ideological and political messages to voters.”
Yeah, unlike all the daily rags and Slime magazine, Newsweak, and all the alphabet networks.
How dare anyone infringes on their propaganda monopoly!
The government liked the way that software and especially the internet and cell phone apps, listens and records everything we do. They have always wanted to do that. The concept that its for our own good so that we could benefit with targeted advertising is a garbage reason to spy on your customers and sell your information to the highest bidder. In most times that would be illegal on the face of it. But the government liked the idea for themselves. So they won’t call it a crime or pass laws to stop it. The government wants in on it. And by the way, so does every other government around the world.
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