Anti-social media

[Alexander Hayes]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether you've signed up for Signal yet or whether you are a tor or Duck-Duck-Go conscriptee or for that matter whether this age-old person-to-person (intercepted by Google spliced and diced) email newsgram works anymore but....

Just pointing out that Facebook has just been again hacked and 80 million passwords leaked for psycho-graphic drilling according to 1Password and Dashlane.

So...I've begun my own personal exodus from what I championed over all those floppy web 2.0 years and documenting the quagmire of retraction through https://www.alexanderhayes.com/journal/

The last five posts are specific to the matter at hand. Will be keen to know how you are going with it all too as I'm sure as a group our collective thoughts would make a fascinating case study.

[rgrozdanic]

I suddenly understand why old people are so grumpy.

Everything sucks eventually.

Have a great day.

r

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[Alexander Hayes]

Well, it seems the exodus was triggered by a generation or two after us. In our old age we have to now atone for the sins we made.

--

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Leigh Blackall]

Here's what TBone Burnett had to say at SXSW recently. https://youtu.be/RnX-MYwk5Qw

[Michael Coghlan]

I could just go  Even email programs allow imbecilic communication these days. Thanks for this Leigh. Feel like joining T Bone's crusade actually. Sort of making a public apology for my lack of foresight about where all this would go......

As for feeling grumpy Rose, it's become clear to me that it is harder to be impressed by things so much as you grow older because your standards inexorably rise. You've seen a lot. And when people half your age are waxing lyrical about something you know ain't that great  - because you've seen better; heard better, etc. - you do feel a bit grumpy. You know it can be done better. It's just a numbers game really. You've been alive for many more days so you've seen more great stuff than most, so it takes more to impress you. 

- Michael.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

[Alexander Hayes]

I agree with tou Michael.

[rgrozdanic]

thanks folks

the thing that's probably bothering me the most is the number of people who are full of shit. i don't think i fully appreciated that before.

good to see some life (however brief) in TALO again

r

[Alexander Hayes]

I've found the very same thing Rose.

I've also learned to return that appreciation with cold, hard, blunt retorts to those who are pissing up against the lamp post of life with no care for what it means for others. I've also discovered that in others we see better of the aspects of ourselves, that we either want to improve or be approved for.

Technologies are inherently neutral some claim but humans are not. They are loaded, some fully cocked and ready to go off. So TALO having led us all astray for all these years might just lead us back to human communications all over again, drawing us up out of the quagmire of anti-social media.

Occasionally I roll out this link to remind myself of how far we have come and gone as a humanity - https://alexander-hayes-3djh.squarespace.com

  

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[minh mcCloy]

What then, are our responsibilities, as elders, in this world which carries the scent and spoor of our youthful enthusiasms?

[Alexander Hayes]

We are responsible (of having fallen foul in some cases in our youthful enthusiasms) for ensuring others are able to escape their social sorting, to break the algorithm that has them scrolling through their wearable computer every 60 - 90 seconds.

On a trajectory of implantable, technologies as a vehicle for Uberveillance, whilst convenient, effective and ensuring national security are taking our humanity away - http://uberveillance.com/themes

Scent is instinct. Spoor poor if we live in a perpetual state of no consent.

 

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Michael Coghlan]

What then, are our responsibilities, as elders, in this world which carries the scent and spoor of our youthful enthusiasms?

I don’t know if this was a serious question Minh but I’m going to assume it was. Because this has been on my mind. Where the Internet and social media has led us has me worried. And when Tim Berners-Lee says much the same I feel my concerns are well founded.

I’m trying to reconcile my own part in all of this. Like many on this list I was an enthusiastic advocate for teaching and learning online (TALO no less!) I don’t know if I was an advocate of the Internet in particular. I was certainly fascinated by its potential, and what it might do to our lives. But I don’t think I was an advocate per se in the way that people like Mark Pesce may have been. I remember Pesce boasting unashamedly that ‘the Internet is coming and I am a pusher!”

I still stand by the Internet’s potential to improve education, in the hands of experienced and wise facilitators. But there are still so few of them. But after 22 years of watching its impact I am worried about what the internet and mobile technologies have done to our lives.

I am feeling a sense of professional embarrassment. How can I/we not have seen this coming? For me it’s connected with the election of Trump. That stunned me. I was one of those who thought it would never happen. Don’t laugh, but I thought humanity was evolving to a point where trogladytes like Trump would be left behind.  It was as if his election snapped me out of a naïve dream.

Similarly I knew the potential of social media to spread evil, but like all good fairytales I thought good would prevail. And it still might. But with all the good it has done, it has connected all those with a message of hate and division. It fosters unrest based on lies and misinformation in Ukraine, genocide in Myanmar, subverts democratic processes, and provides a platform for murderers, racists and child pornographers to peddle their wares.

And I do think it’s time to call a spade a spade and declare as T-Bone Burnett has done that it is stealing our culture on the basis of some flimsy pretext like ‘all knowledge wants to be free’.

So I do feel like making a public apology quite honestly, where I can admit that I was naive about a lot of things. That may absolve my conscience but do I/we who were at the vanguard of the changes have a responsibility to try now and fix up the mess and redress some of the mistakes?

- Michael.

[Alex P.Real]

Thanks for addressing this and infusing some life back into TALO. I've been feeling like sh** for some years mostly due to this dystopic nightmare. And watching how even my daughter has become infected by social network mediocrity is so painful. Unfortunately, Trump is a symptom, not the disease. We were a minority then, and I still believe our shared goals, values and principles are valid. The problem is our tools have been devoured by the monsters of mass mediocrity and capitalist globalisation. The potential of humanism in technology has been replaced by the dehumanisation of big data. We persons are now split into chunks of data to be sold ruthlessly.

But the wrong use of inventions is as old as humankind. One might argue that social networks just amplify off-line or "real life" stupidity; such noise becoming so loud it seems to be deafening any alternative or resistance. Maybe we're now forced to hear voices we weren't aware of because we didn't relate to such people. I hate kitten pics and memes, am not into selfies, think Coursera is appalling and believe students are more than a grade. I am alive and reclaim my right to be different.

I'm ready to engage with resistance and to plunge in to a reinvented TALO if only to blast this stinking appropriation of the internet into a one size fits all world. I keep this gmail account (in addition to others) in the hope to get something good from a former life as this thread. Count me in for any project/idea of dissent.

Cheers,

Alex P. Real (not Hayes)

[minh mcCloy]

It was serious Michael. Thank you for your considered response.

It's time for a critical analysis of what has been wrought. This needs to be open, transparent and collaborative. It needs to be done at a remove from the academy. It will need to be guarded to avoid co-option by think tanks and their ilk.

What is our toolkit?

And let's avoid guilt. While we might individually acknowledge a surfeit of ill-considered enthusiasm here and there, let's avoid wallowing in a generational mea culpa. If we do that we would deserve to be trolled and anathemised and dismissed as self-obsessed guilt-ridden boomers.

We have to describe what's happening; how we got here; and begin asking some focused 'whys'

[Alexander Hayes]

"....That may absolve my conscience but do I/we who were at the vanguard of the changes have a responsibility to try now and fix up the mess and redress some of the mistakes?"

I think we need to reflect on what we were responsible for and what we are responsible for and given the huge amount of knowledge across this group I believe there is every opportunity to bring about the very same enthusiasm and embrace for HUMAN interaction that we had first imagined an Internet would bring. There is so much to be learned and imparted and we are in the best possible position to do this.

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Alexander Hayes]

"...We have to describe what's happening; how we got here; and begin asking some focused 'whys'"

Totally agree with you there Minh.

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Alexander Hayes]

"...Count me in for any project/idea of dissent."

Alex P. Real (not Hayes)

I'm meeting Leigh tomorrow in melbourne and we will have a long chat about it all. Something always good comes from reflection, listening and leading.

 

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Barbara Dieu]

>Maybe we're now forced to hear voices we weren't aware of because we didn't relate to such people. 

So true. We also lived in a utopian bubble. 

Take the political and social context of my country now - I could not imagine the degree of stupidity and ignorance that existed in the high echelons and how social media could amplify prejudice and spitefulness to the point we are now. Human nature at its worst.

On one hand it disgusts us, on the other, it is important to see this happening and think of ways of how to counteract it. Culture, nature, music and humour may be one way. 

B.

Barbara Dieu
http://barbaradieu.com
http://beespace.net

[Alexander Hayes]

As true as ever and my heart goes out to all the pointless persecutions that humans will suffer in your country Bee. Likewise here in this huge continent the catastrophes of genocide and depravities are simply to hard to bear. As for the role ‘social’ media plays out in this all we must somehow strive as we always have to understand how to counteract the worst of ‘the future of learning in a networked world.’ Here are some of the final works we completed before bowing out of Broome, Western Australia which remains one of the most racially divisive communities I have ever experienced anywhere in the world - 

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCaGZwSglSMZO4PkqlMn7qNg/videos

[Barbara Dieu]

>we always have to understand how to counteract the worst of ‘the future of learning in a networked world.’

According to Hannah Arendt : "C'est dans le vide de la pensée que s'inscrit le mal"

I humbly undersign. The future of learning in a networked world is critical thinking, and lots of it so that there is no nothingness, void.

B.

[Alexander Hayes]

Bravo!

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

[Vance Stevens]

American indian tribes, perhaps those in Australia as well, have been found to have very elongated turn-taking norms in conversation. Whereas we of European heritage tend to feel a conversation has died after a certain time has elapsed, after just seconds in normal conversation, the people who populated our lands before our ancestors arrived are known in council meetings to take up a train of conversation long after the previous interlocutant has spoken. I suppose that accommodates reflection on a topic, and in my case, an interval in which I read an interesting book.

I would image that Alex is aware of and has possibly read already The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, published earlier this year.

Before I read this book I had an instinct that something had gone awry in the world of Facebook and Google. Americans are even now just starting to understand how the Russians gamed FB via savvy actors like Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica to 'hijack' their recent election, and many more are still, naively, in disbelief that such a thing is even possible. I have been attuned to every noise I could detect in the rails buzzing at my feet that would allow me to infer what might have happened, but this book opens the rails, dissects their harmonies where we can see them, and lays it all out. Immaculately researched and well written, it drives home cogently and cohesively exactly what has happened and how far off those rails we are.

The premise is in a way obvious. It's the extent to which it is documented that is most riveting. I remember watching Mark Zuckerberg at his congressional hearings gig responding to a congressman who clearly had no clue and had asked how FB made its money. MZ dismissed him with two words, a wry smile on his face, "We advertise."  As if that was the source of FB's revenue. Zukoff quotes a leaked memo from senior FB executive Andrew Bosworth, who spoke about the good and the bad of FB's policies, but also broached "the ugly". “The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned ... That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.” 

Zukoff cites research casinos do to keep their customers in "the zone" where they'll stay longer on task. It's the same model. The odds are stacked so the casino makes more and more the longer the patsy stays glued to the machine. MZ's more honest answer would have been that that's how FB makes its money, but that would take a whole book to get across and a mere congressman wouldn't understand it. But Zukoff explains how they and other surveillance capitalists work in an unregulated environment and use uncontracts to take whatever they want of your personal data, all the voice recordings you supply to Alexa, not really anonymized, all your contacts whom they actually do call and contact, not just triangulate, according to researchers into a wide swath of apps, all the while concealing from us the almost unfathomable scale at which they are working (until exposed) and so on and so on.

Zukoff's book makes much more interesting reading than this email. But you can get the Cliff's notes here, https://www.academia.edu/38403327/The_age_of_surveillance_capitalism_Diggit_Magazine.pdf , and of course you know how to use Google to get reviews of the book.

Incidentally, I'm not sure you can really exit FB if you wanted to. If you think you can, I'd be interested to learn about your experiences.  Zukoff covers that territory as well (the glove that fits more and more closely around your hand the more data it gets and is thus able to subtly yet inexorably guide the hand, for some becoming an addiction, whereas the tightening fit makes escape impossible). We been Zucked, another book you might have read

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/07/zucked-waking-up-to-facebook-catastrophe

^V^ 

Vance Stevens

http://minecraftmooc.org

https://learning2gether.net/

https://vancestevens.com/papers/

https://advanceducation.blogspot.com/

https://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com

Virus-free. www.avast.com

[Alexander Hayes]

In Australia the term 'tribe' is replaced by 'clans' and family groups who all occur in nations of which prior to the British arriving here 224 years ago and causing the carnage which hasn't ceased, there were over 400 nations of Aboriginal people.

The term 'surveillance capitalism' I consider very limited in scope, no matter what other derivative 'surplus' terminology is invented as a result... given that the domain of Veillance which is often attributed to Steve Mann but has many other informants, encompasses that of 'sousveillance' [ ref: Mann] equally that of dataveillance [ ref: Roger Clarke] and that of surveillance [ref: Foucault] all occurring within the apex of Uberveillance [ ref: M.G.Michael ] which you can read up on at http://uberveillance.com/blog/tag/uberveillance

I consider Zukoff's book as a great 'trigger' for the awareness that we are quickly being sorted into clear groups [ ref: David Lyon] which you can view here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAa-f-1rTg

That it's clearly all on a path of 'social credit' which is clamping down faster than ever across all facets and nook and cranny of society, on a trajectory of the implantable [ ref: Katina Michael] who speaks of the grave consequences of Strava, Social Media, Wearables and Data Trails - http://www.katinamichael.com/media/2018/1/30/the-consequences-of-strava-social-media-wearables-and-data-trails

"...Incidentally, I'm not sure you can really exit FB if you wanted to. If you think you can, I'd be interested to learn about your experiences."

Here is how I have mapped my exit from Facebook to which I've not logged in nor can I as a result of my repeat written submissions through the exit page calling them a bunch of neo-Fascist #@$ts with a spineless CIA backend befitting of the lecherous SnapChat 'exit memory' group intent on selling our childrens 'mistakes' to employment agencies as a social credit score.

Facebook - https://alexander-hayes.squarespace.com/journal/their-product-is-me

Instagram - https://alexander-hayes.squarespace.com/journal/instagram-is-history

LinkedIn - https://alexander-hayes.squarespace.com/journal/linkedout

Yahoo - https://alexander-hayes.squarespace.com/journal/yahoo

PS. thanks for your links Vance and prose which I'm further digesting and reading.

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/teachandlearnonline/CAJyCMETzBE73%3Dc4%2BFf9Lw_kPCvQptZpbcKu65VCWNfZVg4rGmA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Vance Stevens]

Thanks for your links, digesting as we speak

burp,

Vance Stevens

http://minecraftmooc.org

https://learning2gether.net/

https://vancestevens.com/papers/

https://advanceducation.blogspot.com/

https://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com

Virus-free. www.avast.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/teachandlearnonline/CAK7JkW3sQcD5ED7v4e4d_S1cFwtsaXxF%3DzFGYhJ18KeVM9prAw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alexander Hayes]

PS. There maybe something worth reading here Vance amongst all the other soup I've collected  over the years - https://www.diigo.com/user/alexanderhayes

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 3:40 PM Vance Stevens <vanc...@gmail.com> wrote:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/teachandlearnonline/CAJyCMETzBE73%3Dc4%2BFf9Lw_kPCvQptZpbcKu65VCWNfZVg4rGmA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alexander Hayes]

Where did we end up?

I've had some amazingly serene moments here with the distraction of anti-social media...enough to continue to a finish point on my PhD thesis.

Strange, when I met with Leigh in Melbourne, Australia recently, sitting in front of a fireplace and ruminating on what it all means he remarked after my suggestion as to recording something for a TALO podcast he replied , "...why? What would you want to say?"

Needless to say, we recorded nothing and enjoyed the flickering firelight and drank a bottle of 1994 Ironstone Grindings red.

*****TRIGGER WARNING*****

PS. here is a recent addition to my personal journal which describes three years of chasing down a pedophile and following through some dark moments to his conviction and incarceration. 

https://alexander-hayes.squarespace.com/journal/victim-impact-statement

Next Thursday I'll be reading it out aloud in a public court in Sydney, Australia and perhaps you might be reading about in your local news reader as a million dollar case involving hundreds of witnesses, 12 survivors who came forward after I agreed to follow through to the end as the principal complainant. 

I thought I'd add it here because as educators and as professionals, we come in contact with thousands of humans in our lifetime and it is within my knowledge that over a third of them have suffered the violence of aggravated sexual assault, the most neglected subject in the entire curriculum in any institution, a crime escalating in a networked learning world.

Kind regards,

Alexander Hayes

PhD candidate
University of Wollongong, Australia
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

+61427996984

Twitter - @alexanderhayes
Website - http://www.alexanderhayes.com

Partner - Ngikalikarra Media 
Member - UNAA (WA Division), UNAA Academic Network 
Member - Australian Privacy Foundation

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/teachandlearnonline/CAJyCMERxEVsS%2BOZJ36hFnaR2xTtCnu3EWJsOz69hBZquw2T6Cw%40mail.gmail.com.