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Technology: Friend or Foe? (answer: yes)

YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE

No, not at Fair Shake.  We don’t track you!  But you are under surveillance on your gizmo (aka ‘phone’), on your computer, if you have internet connected devices in your home (aka ‘smart’….but we all know better) and on cameras and microphones nearly every where you go.

At Fair Shake you can search, question and explore anonymously.  Look wherever you like; you will not be nudged to check out other pages, no pop up box will ask you if you want to ‘chat’ and we will never tell you what you need.  Very few websites allow you this level of freedom today so enjoy! 

 

Technology That Controls You:

Surveillance Capitalism, E-carceration, Managerial Feudalism and more ways to control you.

 

Technology Made For “Them”:

Risk Assessments to “Reduce Recidivism”, “Evidence”-based Activism, Dehumanizing Public Institutions

 

“Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.”
                                    –  Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

 

COGNITIVE BIAS:  The ELIZA Effect and Social Engineer

Do you say “she” when you talk about Siri?

 

Deep human discomfort from speaking to and about computers as if they are people.

Joseph Weizenbaum’s computer program created to look for the keyword in a user’s statement and then reflect it back in the form of a simple phrase or question. It also used common prompts such as “please go on” or “tell me more” to give the illusion of empathy. People who used the program would have long, typed-out conversations with a “Rogerian* psychotherapist” bot in DOS (block type with no formatting or pictures).

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-eliza-effect/

What happens to our self-concept when we anthropomorphize computers?

We have plenty of evidence for what happens to humans when we anthropomorphize animals…

“Turing test” in which a person has a conversation with both a human and a robot located in different rooms, and has to figure out which is which. If the robot is convincing, it passes the test. Turing predicted this would eventually happen so consistently that we would speak of machines as being intelligent “without expecting to be contradicted.”

 

* Person-centered psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers.

ChatGPT is a bullshit generator.

Here’s the link to ChatGPT; https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

You will not be able to be fully anonymous; you must ‘create an account” to use the software.

 

Here’s a link to the original ‘Bullshit Generator”:  https://www.bullshitgenerator.com/

Do you need random, tech-sounding meaningless phrases like “envision upstream convergence” and “incentivize vertical portals”?  You can “mesh visionary networks” to your hearts content on this site.

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Surveillance Capitalism:

https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/

What it is, and what it does, and why you need to defend yourself from it, as much as possible: “They” are stealing YOUR data and selling it…and then using it to CONTROL YOU!

Shoshana Zuboff on Democracy Now  (search her name and stay up-to-date on her research!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyQyZgqiokE

 

“We are engineered into ignorance.” – Shoshana Zuboff

 

“The most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Steve Biko