You don't really know what's going on. You only know what you're told, and there's many ways to interpret the source data.
You really can't have a good sense of corporations and governments unless you work specifically for a particular company or government and know the inner workings and side effects of what's happening. And if that's the case, you don't need to read the news to learn about it.
You don't know much about the wars nor the relations between countries. You never get to sit in on leader meetings or see first hand what's happening and not happening.
You think you know something about Michigan because you learned about the Flint water crisis. But do you really know what failures took place or the economic state of all of Michigan? What about all of the other crises in America you didn't hear about, simply because the news chose to make you care about Flint and not another crisis?
Data breaches and environmental disasters are often reported in a way that makes corporations seem negligent when other information is left out. This is why there's so much "debate" and "different opinion" on such matters. There's no right answer, yet the news does a good job of presenting a singular narrative.
The news is definitely endlessly intriguing, just like a drug. The worst part about it is you only ever have a very small fraction of the totality of what's going on. Every time we hear about Trump, we're not hearing about local politicians who arguably have a greater impact on our lives.
You can't really be informed about most topics, and it's less likely to be informed the more we focus on matters outside of our local proximity, depending on journalists to translate events with inevitable inaccuracy.
Here's why I don't think decentralization is a red herring: in a centralized service, if you disagree, you don't have another option. If you didn't like AOL and quit, there was no way for you to maintain contact with AOL users unless both parties used a different platform.
Decentralized systems like phone, e-mail, and mail allow you to maintain contact with people while having control over your provider. I understand that we've lost some of that control, but the basic idea stands.
If you don't have Facebook, you can't reach out to other Facebook users. If you don't have Verizon phone service, you can still call Verizon users with AT&T or <insert your another phone service>. If you don't have Gmail, you can still send e-mails to Gmail users from Yahoo or <insert e-mail service>. If you don't like USPS, you can send mail through UPS or <insert another service>.
That is a somewhat valid point but I think you and me are using decentralized in different senses here. When I said decentralized I meant a decentralized application, something without central servers. You are more talking about standardized protocols that can be implemented by different vendors and which together form a federated network. There is certainly also some overlap there.
But your examples of phone, mail, and email are essentially all centralized systems with a certain number of vendors for each but together forming a larger federated network due to standardized protocols. Email is probably the closest of your examples to what I call distributed because at least in theory everyone could run his own mail server although in practice it is probably not so easy because spam made everyone pretty paranoid when it comes to forwarding emails from random mail servers.
We already have decentralization in three primary forms of communication: phone, mail, and e-mail. They worked great in 1998. Why can't they work great in 2018?
There are now phone plans that are paid for by selling your data and sending you spam SMS. There are e-mail providers that operate similarly, and most e-mail addresses are registered with one of them. Those things don't really work for snail mail, but few people use it anymore, because sending a letter costs more and they have come to expect communication not to cost money.
The formerly decentralized services are no longer so decentralized since "free of charge, paid for by data and ads" has shown itself to be a viable business model that users love. (Until they understand what's happening, at least.)
>The formerly decentralized services are no longer so decentralized
People keep saying this but to my knowledge email still isn't centralized. While there are a lot of gmail users in the US but that's not the case in many other countries, many people also have a .edu email and a few years ago I ran my email server myself (I even handled signing papers when I switched jobs over it.) Google even contributed to and pushed for dkim and spf which solved a huge spam problem that threatened their ability to forward mail from smaller outside domains to their users. A lot of people might use one of the big services but as long as you don't have to in order to interact with them it's not "centralized."
Your point is valid, but we still live in a world where we can call Verizon phones with AT&T phones; send e-mails to Gmail users with Yahoo; and send mail with UPS instead of USPS. With those means of communication, we still have control over our providers.
There is no control within Facebook's ecosystem. Similar with AOL, if you don't use Facebook, you're necessarily out of the loop, and I don't feel comfortable with that.
Not to detract from your point, just thought you might be interested to know that USPS actually has a legally-protected partial monopoly on the right to carry letters (18 U.S. Code § 1696).
An exemption was added in 1979 allowing private carriers to deliver "extremely urgent" mail. This is why UPS and FedEx express mail envelopes bear that text on their front.
Apart from this exemption, USPS, FedEx and the like are only allowed to deliver 'parcels', not 'letters', though I'm not sure where the distinction is legally defined.
While true, I think it is important to emphasize the difference between 4 platforms and 4 carriers. With both postal mail and email, its not just that there are alternative systems, but rather that you as the sender can choose any of the offerings to reach anyone, even if they use a different carrier for their own needs, so there is a lot more competitive pressure on those 4 carriers than with 4 platforms where network effects keep people locked in.
E-mail is largely centralized now. There's a handful of major companies who are able to run an e-mail service and communicate with the hordes of GMail's users who are living behind GMail's spam filters. (Spam filters, it should be noted, that make the service usable for most people.) So what happened is that decentralization worked for a moment in time, but as the Internet grew it worked less well, and we reinvented the pre-Internet solutions (BBSes/Prodigy/AOL/Compuserve) on top of the open Internet.
It is unfortunately true that e-mail is mostly centralized (as in even if I don't want to use GMail & Co., I will mostly communicate with people on those bign centralized platforms, thus giving them again my data).
But it is absolutely federated - I have the choice of running my own server and can communicate with every other e-mail address on this planet.
Unfortunately, it isn't easy to setup - average Joe has no chance to get his own server. On the other hand, for IT people it isn't extremely hard either. Once setup, it is nearly maintenance free...
I'm running my (and a company) e-mail server since 2001 and I don't want to miss it. I only once had a problem with being blocked by big sites, after moving to a new server where the IP range has gotten on some blacklists, because of the previous owner. Also never a problem with spam filters.
I hope e-mail will never be replaced - or at least there's some new way of communicating federated where every internet user is reachable.
They can work but people have largely moved from them because mobile/Internet based platforms are more convenient. Just as people can travel by horse and carriage but most prefer the convenience of car.
This is what happens as technology progresses. I don't think the solution here is to abandon imperfect technology in favor of old, but to improve upon it.
I hear what you're saying, but the analogy doesn't hold because we no longer need horses. In order to use Facebook, you have to sign up with an e-mail and typically a phone number (and in many cases, a photo ID, birth certificate, etc.)
If we need e-mails and phone numbers to sign up for social media, then we don't actually need the social media. We can go back to simply using the numbers and e-mails.
Of course we don't need it, but the fact that millions use it is the proof that people prefer it....for some reason or another. Added value of some kind.
Better to extract the value of Facebook and move forward by eliminating the negative, than revert to something many people find less convenient.
> We already have decentralization in three primary forms of communication: phone, mail, and e-mail.
I disagree that we currently do. And only agree for email in 1998 when its decentralized nature costed more to the users than the benefit of being decentralized, hence the transition.
The world was better when people paid for communications. It's why the internet was better in 1995. Most of the people who had access needed to afford a landline and likely had to own a home or rent an apartment. The only way kids got online is if a guardian had access.
Nowadays, any kid can get online. The range of intelligence and character has expanded dramatically.
Do you really want to live your days feeling dependent on this sort of "service"? Do you really want to say, "but I need Facebook!".
In today's age, you need a phone number and e-mail. It's ok - they are decentralized. Don't let a centralized platform of Facebook's evil nature become necessary for you to live your life.
Delete and forget it existed. Ignore and move on. Give up the benefits and pay the cost.
Do you really want to live your days feeling dependent on this sort of "service"? Do you really want to say, "but I need Facebook!".
In today's age, you need a phone number and e-mail. It's ok - they are decentralized. Don't let a centralized platform of Facebook's evil nature become necessary for you to live your life.
Delete and forget it existed. Ignore and move on. Give up the benefits and pay the cost.
Delete and forget it existed. Ignore and move on. Give up the benefits and pay the cost. Do you really want to live your days feeling dependent on this sort of "service"? Do you really want to say, "but I need Facebook!".
In today's age, you need a phone number and e-mail. It's ok - they are decentralized. Don't let a centralized platform of Facebook's evil nature become necessary for you to live your life.
http://knn.press looks better, and that’s saying something.