Most of the modern internet is indistinguishable from what we used to call malware
Most of the modern internet is indistinguishable from what we used to call malware
Every site is trying to pull a Bonzai Buddy now.
"We need all your info for advertising, not you can't opt out unless you make an account and give us your email. Oops, looks like I hid the opt-out under a subheader. Amazon is now profiling you."
WE USED TO CALL THAT SHIT A VIRUS.
ITS EVERY. FUCKING. WEBSITE. NOW
"Hi I'm going to block this entire site until you give me your info, this is very cool and normal."
Capitalism ruined the internet. The whole thing is malware now.
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I personally find that the most tragic thing about the internet is how if you looked at the way it was made you'd almost think it was the product of a socialist state. It is a product of intensive collaboration between different researchers, fully subsidized by the state every step of the way and the end result effectively given away for free to the public. Now it is rendered a wasteland, carved up and privatized, and with LLMs and image generators it can only get worse as everything gets filled up with computer generated slop.
However, let's take a moment to think about how much good such technology could do if it was subservient to the needs of a socialist state, search engines that actually give you what you want, central planning networks with unparalleled efficiency, social media that prevents the reproduction of reactionary thought, a free, fully organized and easy to access centralized digital library of all academic resources. I can't help but be hopeful for whatever society comes out of this capitalist hell.
I think this is a very common pattern. Some new social or technological space opens up that allows people to collaborate and create something actually valuable together, and then hordes of capitalistic parasites come storming in to set up as many fences as possible so they can charge tolls and harness the new kinds of art and tech that was created for advertising, extraction, and rentierism.
Humans create value by organizing and capitalists are privatizing the means by which we organize. This is true of third spaces IRL and it’s true of social media.
You are by far not the only person to think that something like the Internet and the Web specifically would be most useful for a socialist state and even easier to create it.
Only IRL, in that socialist state that had people trying, things went differently, because officials and directors and administrators felt that such a system would threaten their power.
Probably could have happened to a limited extent if its authors wouldn't be idealistic idiots describing their communist dreams right away to those predators behind redwood tables. Should have been more modest.
Only IRL, in that socialist state that had people trying, things went differently, because officials and directors and administrators felt that such a system would threaten their power.
Would you mind providing some evidence for this claim? I assume you're talking here about the Soviet Union, but I have never heard that Soviet scientists tried to build an internet but were stopped by government officials. I'd like to see some evidence of this before I just take your word for it, you know? Thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS
Here you go.
Well that is a tantalizingly sparse wikipedia article. If I had more time, I'd pirate the book it seems to be summarizing, because it seems like it could be an interesting read. Have you read the book? Or did you make do with the extremely sparse wikipedia article?
I don't remember most of things I've read about this, because it's sort of a common knowledge for everybody in ex-USSR interested in history of cybernetics in the latter.
Which makes the fact that a Murrikan tankie hasn't heard of it even funnier.
EDIT: Ah, yes, look at the references in the Russian version.
Show me where this article says it was about the threat to the power of bureaucrats & not the feasibility of cyberneticizing the economy in the first place lmao. If it's so easy why hasn't anyone than China even begun to do it with modern technology? Walmart and Amazon sharing information along their chaotic just-in-time supply chain does NOT count. Rich investors prefer to use information technology to get an advantage over others, rather than cyberneticize economies anywhere.
In the Russian version of the article you will find it, including even ministries most opposed to it and references to other attempts. The English version seemed its translation to me on the first glance, a glitch in my firmware so to say.
For USSR it would in theory (not considering politics inside a bureaucratic system) be easier due to the command system of the economy.
And some local transitions of this kind even happened in USSR, but to preserve balance of power between ministries, service branches etc there would be elements in the chain that wouldn't be converted specifically so to not give away control to a different organization.
That would look as stupid as automated data submission to some analytic center, but some stage of the calculations it would perform (for planning purposes or something else) would be done by human computers. Purely for organizational\political purposes - "no, that other ministry can't do it without us".
Or they wouldn't be global - some plants etc would submit data to some computational center of one ministry, some to another, but those centers wouldn't share data or expertise.
That was also the case with much less ambitious modernization projects in the USSR.
The english language one also references a book about how there was a failure to network the country for various reasons. There are all kinds of valid historical materialist criticisms of the soviet union but I'm not buying this pop history take about how bureaucrats were threatened by a cybernetic system that barely existed conceptually
The English version doesn't reference many things other than that book. The Russian version has a rather long list.
but I’m not buying this pop history take about how bureaucrats were threatened by a cybernetic system that barely existed conceptually
The whole history of USSR's demise consists of various bureaucratic groups perceiving any change as a threat.
Vague historical truisms are not really useful to anybody.
This was over 50 years ago. We're talking about computers about as powerful as graphing calculators. Handing over planning to something like that is a ridiculous prospect. It wouldn't have saved the USSR.
The USSR had an overly hefty tribute going to administration and industry, industry was too focused towards military, this planning structure was inflexible for various reasons including external pressure. USSR applied too much external pressure in turn, it supported an unsustainable development policy where third world countries were supposed to be develop in the context of an imperialist financial system with USSR serving as a counterbalance. It's because the USSR was so successful with parts of its planning that it was able to play this role IMO. Painting pretty broad strokes here.
Maybe better computing devices would have helped them figure out their planning was not materialist, but semiconductors don't appear out of thin air. These days require extreme metallurgy, precision engineered parts like X ray mirrors & the tables which move chips to carve circuits. They recycle hydrogen gas to keep impurities out.
We’re talking about computers about as powerful as graphing calculators. Handing over planning to something like that is a ridiculous prospect. It wouldn’t have saved the USSR.
Let's please not make such statements without some spreadsheets. They didn't have to run DALL-E on those computers.
That aside, those times had plenty of specialized (non-universal) counting machines, analog computers for engineering and planning purposes, and those were practically used, and in USSR too.
It’s because the USSR was so successful with parts of its planning that it was able to play this role IMO. Painting pretty broad strokes here.
N-no. It just had sufficient resources on start and, as you said, administrative inflexibility not to notice and not to react to the fact that it actually couldn't.
Maybe better computing devices would have helped them figure out their planning was not materialist, but semiconductors don’t appear out of thin air.
You are overestimating the technology required to make such a system an improvement over what USSR really had.
Let me give you a classic historical example of relatively good agricultural planning that still squandered its potential: irrigation with slightly salty Nile water destroying soil over time. Just a really broad analogy.
Can't be too good at industrializing the country and also incapable of basic planning to the point a graphing calculator changes everything. They were the reason we had a space race bruh
Mao Zedong thought would have saved the USSR's agricultural base