>>54
This, combined with "Think of me as Evil" [ http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf ] makes me despair for the state of the world.

You can't close Pandora's box, we're stuck with this. There are huge economic incentives to keep it going and most of the general public don't want to stop it. The power to change the world lies in the hands of marketers and companies encouraging people to buy buy buy. This of course creates perverse incentives to destroy privacy. The more they know about you, the more accurately they can sell to you. With no public outcry ("I don't care that Google knows what porn I watch") no regulation will ever be put in place, doubly so when any country to do so would come under fire thanks to the interconnected nature of modern economies.

I feel like an old Bolshevik awaiting his show-trial. The utopian dreams of what a global computer network could do for human understanding and relationships hijacked by marketers to encourage you to mass upload worthless photographs so that friends you've not spoken to in years who live in your own city can ignore them. It's as though the entire point of social interaction has been missed.

Combine this with all the terrible UI decisions in that article [endemic in modern UI design, even for desktop operating systems.] leaving this nightmare inescapable even if I don't use social media sites (In a fun case of misfortune turned fortune, my often bleak worldview tends to make most attempts at faux-niceness/obligated reciprocation fall flat because I'm already subconsciously seeking excuses to reject validation.) and the future becomes very upsetting indeed.

The worst thing is, one can no longer retreat into real life. One cannot "grow out of the internet" anymore - it's no longer an option. Even old people are on Facebook. If I stick to the computer, I use 4-ch all day and miss what everyone else is talking about: If I stick to real life, I sit in a corner while everyone else uses their phones. There is no winning option. As time moves on and these limited choices and market-driven intrusion into our lives become more common - Glass style headwear putting everyone in front of a viewfinder whenever they're in public, Automated cars logging your every journey, Google Loon style projects ensuring that even if you flee to the ends of the earth you'll still be within range of the internet's tentacles.

All this from what should have been a simple computer network. We've lost control of the revolution and now it's going awry. Hurry up with that ice pick.