This is an interesting documentary, and I'm rather shocked that it has so few comments or ratings on IMDb.
I think you owe it to yourself to see it. I've been using the internet since the 1980s, and yet I was unaware of things such as a soccer team run by a committee of thirty thousand, or a system rapidly spreading worldwide where many individuals invest small amounts in a larger overall loan to someone.
The overall message is clear, which is that a change has happened, and that is that the internet has empowered people to self-organize into groups, and that has encouraged a blurring of the lines between customer and corporation, employer and employee.
Where it gets tricky is with government, and from here it just made me angrier and angrier (as does nanotechnology, sensor networks, Toyota brake pedals, and any other untested system rapidly insinuated into our lives). But I suspect other folks will love it.
The film is too happy to chirp about the wonders of this technology, as all technology worshippers do, but it fails to have any serious critical eye, mentioning only a handful of flaws and brushing them off as "implementation challenges" when in fact some are unavoidable fundamental flaws.
I would have liked to see an additional hour devoted to investigating problems such as:
1. It's usually trivial to commit fraud in online surveys/voting, because they don't have even the most basic checks. Most newspaper and blog polls are like this. After the poll closes, there's no way to tell how the data was generated. You simply take their word for it. I can tell you from personal experience as an employee that companies do falsify online polls, surveys, customer comments, and basically anything they can, on their site and any other site, and the outside world does not notice.
2. It's almost always easy, for those with the skills, to hack a "secure" system and tilt the results. Witness the latest DRM technology, which lasted about one day. This is also why I'm opposed to electronic voting machines, even if they aren't internet-connected.
3. There is no reliable way to connect a computer or online account with a person. You don't know who is using the computer or account, or whether they are even authorized, or even human (could be software). And before you say CAPTCHA, that concept has been broken by outsourced CAPTCHA breaking (you can make a buck doing anything these days, it seems).
4. Societies governed by internet involvement automatically disenfranchise those without computers, without access to other computers, or without the skills needed to use computers successfully.
5. All online participation is track-able, by your new masters, the ISPs and website hosts and owners. They are already using this information against you today. Now you want them to know, in every detail, how you feel politically? Don't be surprised when your internet connection "fails". They only need to meddle a little bit, to tilt things their way often enough to make a difference.
6. The reason we have representation rather than direct democracy is because governing is actually hard work, and most people know surprisingly little about important issues, don't care to put in a real effort to learn, and are easily swayed by BS and pre-existing bias.
7. A lot of people, and I wager a majority of people, harbour deep hatred of certain other groups of people. We've already seen what happens when you unleash people's hatred to vote on basic rights. The rights disappear.
8. "Mistakes" and eccentricity are good. Mob opinion necessarily tends to average out in the middle, and misses the truly good ideas which are frequently at the extremes. Mobs can tell you about what they already know, or about widespread popular biases. By definition, they cannot make brave decisions to lead society forward instead of staying in the same rut.
9. There's a tendency to reverse unpopular decisions before they have had a chance to fully take effect, before the results can legitimately be evaluated. It's always easy to motivate a crowd against something, and this can lead to a see-saw effect where each crowd undoes the previous one's work. We see this already in elections, but fortunately that's only once every few years.
10. Yes, most people ARE thick and are easily misled. We all know this because we either ARE stupid ourselves, or we went to school with stupid people, or to work with them, or they cut us off on the drive to the grocery store. This is why we have experts, to guide decisions, based on reliable information, and not stupidity.
: (wow -- who knew there was a maximum length? I removed comments about Wikipedia and open source software here)
13. If you can have mob legislation, then you can also have mob executive. And if you can have that, you can also have mob judiciary. It will be inevitable because people empowered to govern will demand input and control of everything, and they'll write the constitution that gives them that power. I fail to see how this is any better than dictatorship, for the people who end up on the losing side, because it will never, ever end for them.
So, in summary, I liked the first half or so. Didn't like the second half or so. I felt it should have an additional hour for the contrary opinion. It's too much like propaganda. Nevertheless, there's enough new in here that it should be watched.
I think you owe it to yourself to see it. I've been using the internet since the 1980s, and yet I was unaware of things such as a soccer team run by a committee of thirty thousand, or a system rapidly spreading worldwide where many individuals invest small amounts in a larger overall loan to someone.
The overall message is clear, which is that a change has happened, and that is that the internet has empowered people to self-organize into groups, and that has encouraged a blurring of the lines between customer and corporation, employer and employee.
Where it gets tricky is with government, and from here it just made me angrier and angrier (as does nanotechnology, sensor networks, Toyota brake pedals, and any other untested system rapidly insinuated into our lives). But I suspect other folks will love it.
The film is too happy to chirp about the wonders of this technology, as all technology worshippers do, but it fails to have any serious critical eye, mentioning only a handful of flaws and brushing them off as "implementation challenges" when in fact some are unavoidable fundamental flaws.
I would have liked to see an additional hour devoted to investigating problems such as:
1. It's usually trivial to commit fraud in online surveys/voting, because they don't have even the most basic checks. Most newspaper and blog polls are like this. After the poll closes, there's no way to tell how the data was generated. You simply take their word for it. I can tell you from personal experience as an employee that companies do falsify online polls, surveys, customer comments, and basically anything they can, on their site and any other site, and the outside world does not notice.
2. It's almost always easy, for those with the skills, to hack a "secure" system and tilt the results. Witness the latest DRM technology, which lasted about one day. This is also why I'm opposed to electronic voting machines, even if they aren't internet-connected.
3. There is no reliable way to connect a computer or online account with a person. You don't know who is using the computer or account, or whether they are even authorized, or even human (could be software). And before you say CAPTCHA, that concept has been broken by outsourced CAPTCHA breaking (you can make a buck doing anything these days, it seems).
4. Societies governed by internet involvement automatically disenfranchise those without computers, without access to other computers, or without the skills needed to use computers successfully.
5. All online participation is track-able, by your new masters, the ISPs and website hosts and owners. They are already using this information against you today. Now you want them to know, in every detail, how you feel politically? Don't be surprised when your internet connection "fails". They only need to meddle a little bit, to tilt things their way often enough to make a difference.
6. The reason we have representation rather than direct democracy is because governing is actually hard work, and most people know surprisingly little about important issues, don't care to put in a real effort to learn, and are easily swayed by BS and pre-existing bias.
7. A lot of people, and I wager a majority of people, harbour deep hatred of certain other groups of people. We've already seen what happens when you unleash people's hatred to vote on basic rights. The rights disappear.
8. "Mistakes" and eccentricity are good. Mob opinion necessarily tends to average out in the middle, and misses the truly good ideas which are frequently at the extremes. Mobs can tell you about what they already know, or about widespread popular biases. By definition, they cannot make brave decisions to lead society forward instead of staying in the same rut.
9. There's a tendency to reverse unpopular decisions before they have had a chance to fully take effect, before the results can legitimately be evaluated. It's always easy to motivate a crowd against something, and this can lead to a see-saw effect where each crowd undoes the previous one's work. We see this already in elections, but fortunately that's only once every few years.
10. Yes, most people ARE thick and are easily misled. We all know this because we either ARE stupid ourselves, or we went to school with stupid people, or to work with them, or they cut us off on the drive to the grocery store. This is why we have experts, to guide decisions, based on reliable information, and not stupidity.
: (wow -- who knew there was a maximum length? I removed comments about Wikipedia and open source software here)
13. If you can have mob legislation, then you can also have mob executive. And if you can have that, you can also have mob judiciary. It will be inevitable because people empowered to govern will demand input and control of everything, and they'll write the constitution that gives them that power. I fail to see how this is any better than dictatorship, for the people who end up on the losing side, because it will never, ever end for them.
So, in summary, I liked the first half or so. Didn't like the second half or so. I felt it should have an additional hour for the contrary opinion. It's too much like propaganda. Nevertheless, there's enough new in here that it should be watched.
