Tag: privacy

Episode 52 – The Panopticon & Your Privacy: Juan Galt

by Kurt Robinson on August 10, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

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The Story:

The Panopticon was a well-crafted piece of architecture which allowed just a couple of guards to watch an entire prison. The prisoners never knew exactly when they were being watched, but they always knew that the potential was there. Juan Galt made the case in his article “Anne Frank Had ‘Something to Hide’ and Something to Fear“, that this is a perfect analogy for the modern surveillance state, the many programs which officially exist to keep us safe from terrorism, but in fact are one of the greatest examples of mass government overreach that the world has ever seen, short of genocide.

It’s common that when you present these facts to regular people, they will say “But why does it matter? I really don’t think I’m that important that they’ll want to see my information.” Yet, when one organisation, or one agent of an organisation, has this much power, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re important or not. When someone is that powerful, they can dig up your personal information, and probably destroy your life, for a personal vendetta or even for a joke. So what can we do about this?

I had another chance to interview Juan Galt and talk about security, privacy, a few things you can do to protect yourself, and how technology will be used by regular people in the near future to evade the clutches of domineering governments.

Join us both on this next exhilarating episode of… The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Juan Galt’s articles on Cointelegraph

Ethereum prepares for take-off – on Cointelegraph

The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto

Neuromancer

Facebook is expanding the way it tracks your data

Episode 50 – Ethereum & The Future: Juan Galt

by Kurt Robinson on July 31, 2015 in Podcast • 1 Comment

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Cash:

The Story:

In 2008, an unknown, man, women or team going by the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” released some code to a cryptography mailing list, informing the small group of nerds that he had created something interesting, and say they should use it if they liked it, giving birth to the world of “cryptocurrency”. What has happened since has created a strange kind of chaos and order, and formed a foundation for a new world. People have used Bitcoin for charity, such as the organisation Bitcoin Not Bombs and Sean’s Outpost. Others have used it for profit or (what some might consider) more questionable means, such as gambling, selling drugs, firearms. Other, more nefarious agents have used it as an excuse to prosecute, destroying the lives of people such as Charlie Shrem and Ross Ulbricht.

Yet the march of progress continues. The pace of technological development is increasing so rapidly, we don’t necessarily even know how the technology is going to be used when it arrives. Bitcoin has been compared by some to the combustion engine, in terms of how it will change the way it will permeate our lives, changing the nature of every transaction it touches. And yet, thousands of clever people are scrambling to devise the next iteration, the next generation of blockchain technology that fully exploits the potential of Satoshi Nakamoto’s gift. One of those new iterations is Ethereum.

The other day The Paradise Paradox had a chance to interview Juan Galt, journalist for Cointelegraph, traveller, and all-round cool guy. What kind of developments will Ethereum allow? Can we make lawyers and escrows obsolete using smart contracts? What threats and benefits do autonomous Internet economic actors present to us?

We ask all these questions and more in this exciting development of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Ethereum prepares for take-off – on Cointelegraph

Ethereum price skyrockets as Ethereum confirms launch – on Cointelegraph

Ethereum announces official launch date – on Cointelegraph

Ethereum: the World Computer

The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto

Neuromancer

Facebook is expanding the way it tracks your data

The Internet of Things is Bigger than Anyone Realised – on Wired

Attorney-General struggles to explain metadata

So you think you’re smarter than a CIA agent – analysts vs regular people

League of Legends gambling with Bitcoin

The War on Drugs is a War on People – on The Paradise Paradox

AI “MarI/O” plays Super Mario World

Non-Aggression Principle

Elon Musk & Stephen Hawking warn about autonomous killing machines

Episode 45 – Right In Your Facebook

by Kurt Robinson on July 7, 2015 in Podcast • 0 Comments

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

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The Cash:

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The Story:

The year is 2005. Brad Greenspan, Tom Anderson and their team of dedicated programmers have built an empire using a relatively new method of communication and social interaction – a social media website, a medium allowing people to connect and interact with people all over the world sharing common interests, to make new friends, and to advertise their companies and bands. In July, he sells the company to News Corporation for $580 million. For three years, MySpace was the largest social networking site in the world. After that, in a few short years, the userbase would decline and it would be worth only a fraction. News Corporation would watch their investment dwindle, watching their customer base slowly trickle to the new guy on the block – Facebook.

This is the process of creative destruction that happens so frequently in a free (or relatively free) market. One company creates an idea, another company improves on it, and if the original company can’t innovate quick enough, it gets washed away on the shores of history. The second company goes on to enjoy all the spoils of pandering to an ever-fickle and frequently disloyal consuming public. Then, the cycle begins again.

The question is, how long is Facebook’s cycle going to last? Many contenders have risen and fallen, and many more have risen and stagnated: TSU, Diaspora, Google+. Customers are aware to some extent that Facebook likes to use its users for social experiments, but that does not deter them, with the appeal of convenience and a network effect maintaining their presence. Princeton University predicts that Facebook doesn’t have long left, and by 2017 we may see an exodus.

What will the next wave of social media bring – social media 3.0? How will new platforms such as Synereo and Minds.com entice their potential user base – monetarily, or otherwise? What will it take for you to give up on the Book of Faces? We ask these questions and more in the next exciting chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Synereo
Minds.com
TSU
MySpace
The Paradise Paradox on Facebook
Facebook sorry – almost – for secret psychological experiment on users
Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017, say Princeton researchers
Why Facebook Will Probably Not Die Out By 2017