January 2020 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

The Two Myths of the Internet | WIRED
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 7, 2020

Jan. 7, 2020

The Two Myths of the Internet The 2010s began with one story about the political power of technology. It ended with another. Both were wrong. https://www.wired.com/story/the-two-myths-of-the-internet/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Escaping the Inequality-Data Dark Ages by Thomas Piketty, et al - Project Syndicate
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 7, 2020

Jan. 7, 2020

lo segnalo in questa sede per l’aspetto dati. jc Escaping the Inequality-Data Dark Ages Dec 23, 2019 THOMAS PIKETTY , LUCAS CHANCEL, FACUNDO ALVAREDO, EMMANUEL SAEZ, GABRIEL ZUCMAN Even as perceptions of rising inequality undermine the foundations of democracy, data on wealth and income trends remain woefully inadequate. It is in the interest of all societies to develop an internationally recognized set of indicators and methods for tracking income, wealth, and effective tax rates accurately and transparently. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/inequality-data-and-denialism-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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China Targets Internet Giants in Antitrust Law Overhaul
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 7, 2020

Jan. 7, 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-07/china-targets-internet-g… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left.
by Giacomo Tesio Jan. 7, 2020

Jan. 7, 2020

https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relati… Google had first entered the Chinese market in 2006. At the time, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin said that Google would only stay if the company’s presence was doing more good than harm — that users were getting more information than before, even if there was censorship of some topics. But over the years, the list of items that the Chinese government demanded we censor grew significantly, and after the Chinese government attempted to hack into the Gmail accounts of human rights advocates in 2009, Larry and Sergey decided it was time to re-assess the 2006 decision. After a series of intense discussions with other executives, they decided that the only way to continue providing Search in China while adhering to the “Don’t be evil” mantra was to cease cooperation with the government’s censorship requirements. We knew this would cause a very public confrontation with the government, although we were never sure how bad it would get. In China, the government not only demands full access to a company’s user data and infrastructure, it also expects the full cooperation of companies to ensure that Chinese users see only content that is in line with government standards. For example, on a Maps product, the government requires that all geographic labels and information be approved by the government in advance, and that any user-generated content be strictly controlled by the company to avoid publication of anything the government deems “problematic,” which can be difficult to define. Our 2010 decision to stop cooperating with Chinese government censorship on Search results was the first time a non-Chinese corporation stood up to the Chinese government. In doing so, Google put everything on the line — its future in the world’s fastest-growing internet market, billions of dollars in profit, even the safety of our Chinese employees. At one point, I began planning for a possible mass evacuation of all our Google employees based in China, as well as their families. Although difficult, I was intensely proud of the principled approach the company took in making this decision. [...] In my new role, my team and I continued to engage with product executives who were increasingly frustrated by the phenomenal growth in the Chinese market and pushed hard for our re-entry into China. I was alarmed when I learned in 2017 that the company had begun moving forward with the development of a new version of a censored Search product for China, codenamed “Dragonfly.” But Dragonfly was only one of several developments that concerned those of us who still believed in the mantra of “Don’t be evil.” I was also concerned that Cloud executives were actively pursuing deals with the Saudi government, given its horrible record of human rights abuses. Cloud executives made no secret of the fact that they wanted to hire their own policy team, which would effectively block any review of their contracts by my team. Finally, in December 2017, Google announced the establishment of the Google Center for Artificial Intelligence in Beijing — something that completely surprised me, and made it clear to me that I no longer had the ability to influence the numerous product developments and deals being pursued by the company. [...] As someone who had consistently advocated for a human rights-based approach, I was being sidelined from the on-going conversations on whether to launch Dragonfly. I then realized that the company had never intended to incorporate human rights principles into its business and product decisions. Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price. It was no different in the workplace culture. Senior colleagues bullied and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks. At an all-hands meeting, my boss said, “Now you Asians come to the microphone too. I know you don’t like to ask questions.” At a different all-hands meeting, the entire policy team was separated into various rooms and told to participate in a “diversity exercise” that placed me in a group labeled “homos” while participants shouted out stereotypes such as “effeminate” and “promiscuous.” Colleagues of color were forced to join groups called “Asians” and “Brown people” in other rooms nearby. In each of these cases, I brought these issues to HR and senior executives and was assured the problems would be handled. Yet in each case, there was no follow up to address the concerns — until the day I was accidentally copied on an email from a senior HR director. In the email, the HR director told a colleague that I seemed to raise concerns like these a lot, and instructed her to “do some digging” on me instead. [...] I think the important question is what does it mean when one of America’s marque’ companies changes so dramatically. Is it the inevitable outcome of a corporate culture that rewards growth and profits over social impact and responsibility? Is it in some way related to the corruption that has gripped our federal government? Is this part of the global trend toward “strong man” leaders who are coming to power around the globe, where questions of “right” and “wrong” are ignored in favor of self-interest and self-dealing? Finally, what are the implications for all of us when that once-great American company controls so much data about billions of users across the globe? ___ Prospettiva veramente interessante. Giacomo

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Reminder | 126° Mercoledì di Nexa | 8 Gennaio 2020
by Nexa Media Jan. 7, 2020

Jan. 7, 2020

Gentilissimi,  vi ricordiamo che mercoledì 8 gennaio, dalle ore 18.00 alle ore 20.00, eccezionalmente nella Sala Principi d'Acaja presso il Palazzo del Rettorato dell'Università degli Studi di Torino, in Via Verdi 8, si svolgerà il 126° Mercoledì di Nexa, con un incontro dal titolo: *Metafisica del Web* Ospite: /Maurizio Ferraris (Professore all'Università degli Studi di Torino).// / Maggiori informazioni sono disponibili all’indirizzo: https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-126 Cordiali saluti, -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino _web:_ https://nexa.polito.it/ _mail:_anita.botta@polito.it <mailto:anita.botta@polito.it> tel: 011 090 7219

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US announces AI software export restrictions - The Verge
by Matteo Flora Jan. 6, 2020

Jan. 6, 2020

US announces AI software export restrictions - The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/5/21050508/us-export-ban-ai-software-china-…

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Spagna: Manuel Castella prossimo Ministro dell'Università?
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 5, 2020

Jan. 5, 2020

*Los comunes proponen al sociólogo Manuel Castells como ministro de Universidades* /Su nombramiento depende de que la investidura de Pedro Sánchez salga adelante/ https://elpais.com/politica/2020/01/05/actualidad/1578211432_345389.html

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CCPA: Facebook non può più sottilizzare sulla questione della vendita di dati
by Antonio Casilli Jan. 5, 2020

Jan. 5, 2020

Se, come me, non ne potete più dei saccenti corporate che pretendono che "Facebook non vende i vostri dati" (di solito basandosi su sottili distinzioni lessicali: "condivisions", "monetizzazione", ecc.), apprezzerete il California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), entrato or ora in vigore. Propone una definizione comprensiva della nozione di "vendita". "Many companies have made changes to their privacy policies to follow this new law, and there's a directory that lists how you can request your data and improve your privacy settings. But a handful of companies aren't complying with the new law, whether by failing to provide, essentially, a "do not sell my data" link or button on their websites -- which the law requires -- or arguing that the rules don't apply to them. Facebook said in a December blog post that it doesn't plan to make any changes to its web tracking, believing that the law's definition of selling data doesn't apply to it. The social networking giant argued that it shares data with third parties, which it doesn't consider selling. But under the new law, sharing is still considered a sale, according to Mary Stone Ross, co-author of the CCPA. "The definition of 'sell' is written in a way to include the sharing of personal information," said Ross, associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. "They are playing fast and loose with the definition of 'sell.'" Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story." https://www.cnet.com/news/californias-new-privacy-law-puts-you-first-too-ba… -- Antonio A. Casilli Professor, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society *We respect your right to disconnect. This email send time is due to my own workflow efficiency. You are in no obligation to take action or reply to it outside your office hours.*

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Technology in 2050: will it save humanity – or destroy us? | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Jan. 5, 2020

Jan. 5, 2020

A quanto pare la /artificial general intelligence/ --scusate, il nome corretto come sappiamo è /general SALAMI/-- è il "magic pony" che arriva volando al momento giusto per salvare il mondo. Se noi umani siamo stati così stupidi da rischiare l'estinzione, l'intelligenza delle macchine lo salverà al posto nostro, sollevandoci dalla fastidiosa responsabilità di comprendere e agire. Buon anno! <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/03/technology-2050-save-hum…> Amid the calamitous effects of climate change, artificial intelligence could make the difference between a livable future or a dystopian one Alex Hern Futurism is a mug’s game: if you’re right, it seems banal; if you’re wrong, you look like the founder of IBM, Thomas Watson, when he declared in 1943 that there is room in the world “for maybe five computers”. David Adams knew these risks when he wrote about the future of technology in the Guardian in 2004 – even citing the very same prediction as an example of how they can go awry. And from our vantage point in 2020, Adams certainly did a better job than Watson. When he looked ahead to today, he avoided many of the pitfalls of technology prediction: no promises about flying cars nor sci-fi tech such as teleportation or faster-than-light travel. But in some ways, the predictions were overly pessimistic. Technology really has made great leaps and bounds in the past 16 years, nowhere more clearly than AI. “Artificial intelligence brains simply cannot cope with change and unpredictable events,” wrote Adams, explaining why robots would be unlikely to interact with humans any time soon. “Fundamentally, it’s just very difficult to get a robot to tell the difference between a picture of a tree and a real tree,” Paul Newman, then and now a robotics expert at Oxford University, told Adams. Happily, Newman proved his own pessimism to be unwarranted: in 2014, he co-founded Oxbotica, which has hopefully solved the problem he mentioned, because it makes and sells driverless car technology to vehicle manufacturers around the world. If we move on from worrying over details, there are two key points at which the 2020 predictions fall apart: one about tech, the other about society. “Gadget lovers could use a single keypad to operate their phone, PDA [tablet] and MP3 music player,” Adams wrote, “or combine the output of their watch, pager and radio into a single speaker.” The idea of greater convergence and connectivity between personal electronics was correct. But there was a very specific hole in this prediction: the smartphone. After half a century of single-purpose consumer electronics, it was difficult to perceive how all-encompassing a single device could become, but just three years after Adams pubished his piece, the iPhone launched and changed everything. Forget carrying around a separate MP3 player; in the real 2020, people aren’t even carrying separate cameras, wallets or car keys. Failing to foresee the smartphone is an oversight about the progress of technology. But the other missing point is about how society would respond to the changing forces. The 2004 predictions are, fundamentally, optimistic. Adams writes about biometric healthcare data being beamed to your doctor’s computer; about washing machines that automatically arrange their own servicing based on availability in your “electronic organiser”; and about radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on your clothes that trigger customised adverts or programme your phone based on where you are. And through it all is a sense of trust: these changes will be good, and the companies making them well-intentioned. Robots are here to stay … an automated production line in China. “There is a loss of privacy that is going to be very difficult for people and we haven’t figured out how to deal with that,” one of Adams’s interviewees admitted, when describing technology in 2020. “But if you explain what it does, how much information it provides and where it goes – and that the trade-off is that you don’t have to wait as long in line at the supermarket – then people will take the trade-off.” In fact, over the past decade and a half, the vast majority of people were simply never given the choice to accept the trade-off, and it is increasingly clear that many of them never would have if they had understood what was at risk. If the Guardian missed the advent of the smartphone, despite writing just three years before the launch of the iPhone, how can we possibly do better today, looking 10 times further ahead? The world of 2050 will be unimaginably different in many ways, even if we can safely assume people will still generally have two arms, two legs and an unpleasant smell if they don’t wash for long periods of time. But there are forces working in our favour. The internet is far more entrenched now than it was in 2004, and while its chaotic effect on our lives shows no sign of abating, it is at least predictably unpredictable. Similarly, smartphone penetration in the west is now as high as it looks likely to go. However the world changes over the next 30 years, it won’t be as a result of more Britons or Americans getting phones. Other predictions can be as simple as following trendlines to their logical conclusion. By 2050, the switchover to electric cars will have mostly finished, at least in developed nations – as well as in those developing nations, such as China, that are starting to prioritise air quality over cheap mechanisation. The “next billion” will be online, mostly through low-cost smartphones receiving increasingly ubiquitous cellular connections. But what they do on the internet is harder to guess. In 2020, there are two countervailing trends at work: on the one hand, providers, principally Facebook, have been trying to use subsidised deals to push newly connected nations on to stripped-down versions of the internet. If they succeed at scale, then many of the benefits of the web will be stolen from whole nations, reduced instead to being passive participants in Facebook and a few local media and payment companies. But pushback, from national regulators in places such as India and from competing carriers, could bring the new nations to the real internet instead. Unless, that is, national regulators push in a different direction, copying China, Iran and Russia to keep Facebook out by building a purely nationalistic internet. How better to ensure that the benefits of the web accrue domestically, they reason, than by requiring your citizens to use home-grown services? And if it makes it easier to impose censorship, well, that’s just another benefit. James Bridle, the author of the unsettling book New Dark Age, points out that the discussion can’t lose sight of who the next billion actually are. “I keep thinking about the way the tech industry talks about ‘the next billion users’ without acknowledging that those people are going to be hot, wet and pissed off,” he says, “and we’re only talking about hardening borders, rather than preparing – politically, socially, technologically – for this reality.” Because, if we are guessing the future from simple trend lines, there is another one that we need to acknowledge: the climate. The specifics of what will change are not for this piece, but the human response very much is. One possibility is plan A: humanity, in time, reaches net zero when it comes to emissions. In that scenario, we will live in a world where plant proteins replace meat in everyday consumption, where electrically powered networked mass transit reaches into the suburbs and beyond, a world of video-conferencing and remote attendance steadily chipping away at business flights, and of insulation inside the walls of British homes. (Look, it can’t all be high-tech.) If plan A fails, then there is a chance we turn to plan B. That is a world in which megascale injections of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere turn the heavens a milky-white, and a whole generation never sees a clear blue sky, in order to reflect more of the sun’s rays and pause the greenhouse effect. It is one in which we turn on gigantic processing plants that do nothing but extract carbon dioxide from the air and pump it underground into disused oil wells. It is one in which whole cities are abandoned and populations relocated to avoid the worst effects we can’t prevent. Plan B – geoengineering – is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future of humanity, says Holly Jean Buck, the author of After Geoengineering. “The worst thing would be we fail plan A and plan B. Over the next decade, I think geoengineering will definitely be tried. Right now, it’s toned down, I think because of people not wanting to talk about it. We don’t have the body of knowledge, and would need 20 or 30 years to develop it. Right about midcentury means it will be a crunch point: climate change will be really apparent.” But for Buck, as for Bridle, the distinctions that really matter aren’t necessarily the technology. “The choices around whether we have a livable future or a dystopian one are about social attitudes and social changes. “Right now, we’re in this era of stopgaps. Society used to be able to make a long-term plan: people built long-term infrastructure and thought a bit further out. That’s not something that happens now: we go to quick fixes. We need a cultural change in values, to enable more deliberate decision-making.” There is another possibility: that technology really does save the day, and then some. John Maeda, the chief experience officer at the digital consultancy Publicis Sapient, says that by 2050, “computational machines will have surpassed the processing power of all the living human brains on Earth. The cloud will also have absorbed the thinking of the many dead brains on Earth, too – and we all need to work together to survive. So I predict that we will see a lasting cooperation between the human race and the computational machines of the future.” This sort of thinking has come to be known as the singularity: the idea that there will be a point, perhaps even a singular moment in time, when the ability of thinking machines outstrips those who created them, and progress accelerates with dizzying results. “If you interview AI researchers about when general AI – a machine that can do everything a human can do – will arrive, they think it’s about 50/50 whether it will be before 2050,” says Tom Chivers, the author of The AI Does Not Hate You. “They also think that AGI” – artificial general intelligence – “can be hugely transformative – lots of them signed an open letter in 2015 saying ‘eradication of disease and poverty’ could be possible. But also,” he adds, citing a 2013 survey in the field, “on average they think there is about a 15% to 20% chance of a ‘very bad outcome [existential catastrophe]’, which means everyone dead.” There is, perhaps, little point in dwelling on the 50% chance that AGI does develop. If it does, every other prediction we could make is moot, and this story, and perhaps humanity as we know it, will be forgotten. And if we assume that transcendentally brilliant artificial minds won’t be along to save or destroy us, and live according to that outlook, then what is the worst that could happen – we build a better world for nothing?

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Re: [nexa] CCPA: Facebook non può più sottilizzare sulla questione della vendita di dati
by Antonio Casilli Jan. 4, 2020

Jan. 4, 2020

Certo che sì ----- Mail original ----- De: "cristina" <cristina(a)cossuavv.191.it> À: "Antonio Casilli" <antonio.casilli(a)telecom-paris.fr>, "nexa" <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Envoyé: Samedi 4 Janvier 2020 18:05:51 Objet: Re: [nexa] CCPA: Facebook non può più sottilizzare sulla questione della vendita di dati Grazie infinite! Molto importante.. Posso "diffondere" ? M. Cristina Cossu Inviato da smartphone Samsung Galaxy. -------- Messaggio originale -------- Da: Antonio Casilli <antonio.casilli(a)telecom-paris.fr> Data: 04/01/20 16:38 (GMT+01:00) A: nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> Oggetto: [nexa] CCPA: Facebook non può più sottilizzare sulla questione della vendita di dati Se, come me, non ne potete più dei saccenti corporate che pretendono che "Facebook non vende i vostri dati" (di solito basandosi su sottili distinzioni lessicali: "condivisions", "monetizzazione", ecc.), apprezzerete il California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), entrato or ora in vigore. Propone una definizione comprensiva della nozione di "vendita". "Many companies have made changes to their privacy policies to follow this new law, and there's a directory that lists how you can request your data and improve your privacy settings. But a handful of companies aren't complying with the new law, whether by failing to provide, essentially, a "do not sell my data" link or button on their websites -- which the law requires -- or arguing that the rules don't apply to them. Facebook said in a December blog post that it doesn't plan to make any changes to its web tracking, believing that the law's definition of selling data doesn't apply to it. The social networking giant argued that it shares data with third parties, which it doesn't consider selling. But under the new law, sharing is still considered a sale, according to Mary Stone Ross, co-author of the CCPA. "The definition of 'sell' is written in a way to include the sharing of personal information," said Ross, associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. "They are playing fast and loose with the definition of 'sell.'" Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story." https://www.cnet.com/news/californias-new-privacy-law-puts-you-first-too-ba… -- Antonio A. Casilli Professor, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society *We respect your right to disconnect. This email send time is due to my own workflow efficiency. You are in no obligation to take action or reply to it outside your office hours.* _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa

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