Appendable Data discussion

That’s the optomistic view, and maybe it will come to pass. Hopefully so. On the other hand the powerful may find a way through sleight of hand, media manupulation or distraction to further increase their advantage by obfuscating their own history while focusing public attention on the wrongdoings of the less powerful - kind of like they do now in other words. I can see how permanent data could actually make that worse rather than better.

My real point though is that discussions about eg U64 vs U128 rumble on for ages with every edge case explored, whereas those about the impact of our efforts on society generally boil down to, “yeah, it’ll probably be fine”.

6 Likes

I am not sure, but I do hope it evolves :wink:

I agree wholeheartedly here. It’s like the story of single use plastics. Companies created them for many reasons aligned with the profit motive and when plastics were inevitably littering the streets and beyond they made public campaigns to shame us for mishandling something that can’t properly be dealt with. We still have single use plastics, smh. Anyways, I would be worried but that’s where the anonymity comes in. Sure we might all suffer from schizophrenia in the end but people will be able to speak more freely with anonymous ID’s. The downside I see there is hate speech etc. obviously I believe in freedom of speech but the internet has some interesting side effects. When we have too many degrees of separation we tend to lack understanding and empathy. I hope someday we have a positive way to deal with trolling that doesn’t limit freedom of speech.

4 Likes

Education is our only weapon here. Now how do we get that unbiased and changed from this current industrial society stick them in at 5 and produce workers at 16 mentality? True education is hard, but we do need it.

5 Likes

I just hope the whole permanent/perpetual web thing is designed properly. Perhaps, we launch with a certain version 1 but it should be architected properly for phase II, III flexibility. Imagine some video gets leaked by some students to bully another student. They regret it, are punished and want to delete it. There should be some recourse for the affected child to get his/her video removed. He should not have to live with that video online for the rest of his life.

There’s a lot of examples like this that I’ve been thinking about with regards to the implications of a perpetual web. Not just ‘regrets’, but also true mistakes or technical bugs. What if you upload the wrong picture? Or realize the picture includes some private detail you didn’t know about.

To be honest, I find @bochaco’s comments a little hard to swallow:

I think it’s good advice for people to be honest and admit mistakes, but a perpetual web goes beyond that. Knowing the material is still available and admitting are two different things. I know you have to assume the worst: that people copied the material anyway. But, does that mean you shouldn’t even try to remove the material? Especially if it’s a mistake you realize within a few minutes or hours.

5 Likes