Why Are We Relying So Heavily On Companies That Censor Us? The Peril of the Cloud
Jordan B Peterson recently spoke about how he was shut out of his Google account for violations of their "Terms of Service." Strangely, even though his videos remained on-line, he lost his personal access to them. More alarmingly, he lost access to his email and calendar - the whole suite of Google services. And when he initially asked for an explanation of why his account had been suspended, no explanation was provided. (Nine minute video below.)
I've been watching Professor Peterson's lectures for a couple of months. I've never found anyone who has spoken so clearly, thoughtfully, and passionately about the humanities. He lectures on psychology, Western culture, personal responsibility, and the Bible. He's putting together an on-line university to teach the great books. He's also courageous on speaking his mind when his views don't align with the predominant political ethos of his campus, or of the times in general. He's an educator in the classic sense, and an inspiring one.
I'm not going to try to characterize his political thought because it's not the most interesting or important thing about his work, although he describes himself in another video as a "Classic British Liberal." I watch him because he's the sort of fascinating professor and scintillating speaker that would have kept me in college, if I'd had the good fortune to land in one of his classes.
Unfortunately, there are people who disagree with him that have mis-characterized him as a spokesperson of the alt-right. This is a position he has spent decades lecturing against, teaching the dangers of extreme political ideology on both sides of the spectrum, and providing an example of individual conscience and thought.
Because of this mis-characterization, or because of some other unexplained event behind the opaque curtain of Google's administration (they won't tell him), he's fallen afoul of Google's algorithms and had his access to Google services cut off. He's extremely calm and polite about his experience in the video above, approaching it with an attitude of curiosity and concern. I don't think I could be so circumspect.
What's especially alarming is that, even if he had posted something that was so dangerous, hateful, or wrong that it should legitimately be censored (I don't want to live in a country where an argument could be made for silencing any voice, but speaking hypothetically), this means that a private company billions rely on to conduct their business and their lives has the power and the willingness to suspend their services if they disagree with your views. The fact that this could happen is not hypothetical. It's already happened.
I for one will be looking for alternatives to cloud storage from this point on, especially for all the old email that I've got sitting on Google's servers. It's clear that anything we can't access and control on our own machines is no longer safe. It can be taken from us in an instant, without explanation or recourse.
sounds like a business opportunity for the BlockChain
Uuuuuuuuuuuugh!! This gets my blood boiling so bad, thank you so much Winston for bringing this to our attention.
The censorship of dissent arises from the technocrats' perspective that all things in life must align with their algorithms. The modern mind, trained in the ways of technocratic digital map, perceived life as digital, rather than the actual analogue. It is somewhat of a perverted version of Platonic dualism, where the material has definitive answer, while the ideal is variable (in the lunatic minds of Google drones, the physical chair has singular definition of shape, while the ideal chair is variable in shape and size)
The technocrats perceive as threat any definitive principles, or ideals, because such perspective is singularly antithetical to their world perception. While we were busy attempting to build a machine to imitate human thinking, it seems that our youths have been raised to imitate machine thinking.
I don't know how I missed this thoughtful comment last week. Apologies!
It seems we often project our current technologies out onto the world with mental modeling, doesn't it? Descartes with his clocks. The relativism of quantum uncertainty starting in the 90s. And now the desire to run all of society like a computer program.
Public education is built to do this! March to the bell. Play the game. Take the test. Get the high score.
I think it is the obverse can be true as well. The scientific theories follow the social trend of the era. Einstein's Relativity was popularized in the 1920, during the height of European existential crisis following the Great War. The Heisenberg's Uncertainty, during the moral decay of 1930s Weimar Republic and European pre-war destabilization. Ideas are mere culmination of socio-political-cultural thoughts in the general society.
I think the Western governments are an 18th century mechanical clock. The concept of "checks and balances" seem like fine tuning of a complex machine. In a society that promotes, and idealizes, the individual, it is ironic that the governing system is so monotonous to be mechanical.