[FRIAM] Subject: Re: Friam Digest, Vol 180, Issue 3

[uǝlƃ ☣]

philpapers.org alerted me, yesterday, to the forthcoming book "Extended Epistemology" by Carter, et al. In trying to find a downloadable copy of one of the already published chapters of that book, I ran across Chalmers TedX talk on the extended mind/self, wherein he called our cognitive investment into devices like the iPhone a "democratization" ... of knowledge ... or information ... or cognition or whatever he said.

This reminded me of my (postmodern) criticism of open source (in spite of any of my advocacy of it), that open source *can* be exploited by an elite set of people who are elite by their capability to know how to read, use, and think about code, or design google queries, or SEO. It's only "democratization" IF the skills and resources to use it are available to everyone.  Otherwise, it's yet another transfer of power from one elite to another elite (perhaps with a large intersection -- e.g. rich people are more likely to have the resources to push their knowledge out to the many $500 devices they can buy ... an iPhone for your pants, an iPad for your Sonos and Nest devices, etc.).

But the more important point is that we have a tendency to artificially discretize.  There are actually multiple *tiers* of elite.  The well-paid Republican, with a 2 story house, a Hummer, and a pellet BBQ, has enough money and crafty dexterity to buy several $500 devices, input his personal information, and keep working his "good" job.  Similarly, the 1st tier college student, privileged enough by their intelligence and/or parents' money to have access to such resources, is crafty enough to push their data out into their extended mind.

But such people are the fodder of a more rarified elite who knows how to harvest the data on those $500 devices.

What did Apple call this sort of "security" ... "differential privacy" or somesuch?

On 06/05/2018 05:35 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> People do this to themselves, like idiots.  Handing over their identity to Facebook or advocating the use of the cloud -- just a nicer name for centralized control.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ