Idle Thumbs 271: Cool Blob Future

[Dewar]

People with a lack of common sense will always find reasons to not pay attention and step into traffic, though I can't remember seeing anything quite like the Vaporeon stampede before.

 

 

I can say it's enough to have me shopping for an android phone again. I'm a bit tired of having a Windows Phone at this point.

[sclpls]

My favorite thing about Pokemon GO is that it has intensified the moral panic that's existed around smartphones to the point where it perfectly resembles the moral panic around silent reading, first in late antiquity with the popularization of spacing and punctuation, then in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the invention of the printing press and the emergence of popular fiction. People moving around silently, lost in thought as they carry their own little worlds with them, not reacting to people or things that they encounter, regardless of the danger... People gathering in groups, sharing the empty and useless knowledge that they've obtained from these little devices, encouraging each other to dive deeper into perversion and ruining both public and private spaces for people who'd use them for their proper purposes...

 

In Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading he cites some neuroscientific research that suggests that our ancestors' brains had to evolve to handle silent reading. Reactions to silent reading varied wildly. Saint Augustine famously made quite an impression with his habit of silent reading, and various figures took it as evidence that the man was truly touched by God to possess such a habit and gift. Certainly though this was a fairly disruptive practice from the normal method of reading aloud in groups. The new method was dangerous since it allowed individuals to arrive at their own interpretations of textual meaning instead of forming a group consensus. Technical innovations that made texts easier to read such as punctuation, and spaces between words helped facilitate the silent reading revolution.

 

Whatever parallels might exist with Pokemon Go though, I am taking the safe bet that it won't have a similarly large impact on the course of human history.

[Badfinger]

This feels like a really insincere way of dealing with the situation. They're basically saying "Oh, we looked at the rulebook, and the specific implementation of our API that they're using is actually against the terms of service!" They're not actually admitting that they didn't consider the ethical ramifications of this system or that they ignored all the shitty things going on with it, they've just found an obscure rule about "Using the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users". Now that Valve has transformed from video game developer to Libertarian nightmare factory, they apparently have given up on taking responsibility for any of their services.

 

I don't think that this is an uncommon reaction but the fact that Valve, of all companies, said anything at all while currently in a lawsuit regarding gambling is an incredibly strong statement. I know people want sweeping action but that's not what you'll get from any company, setting aside that it's Valve. Promising to pursue further action on sites that don't cease and desist is a very aggressive position.

 

e: Per Polygon, that note along with the notices to the companies has been effective at shutting down a number of sites.

 

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/14/12190766/csgo-betting-sites-shutdown-valve-cease-and-desist

[sclpls]

On a recent episode of the Crate & Crowbar Tom Francis pointed out just how obsessively data driven Valve are, and don't seem to follow any moral or ethical interests. He gave an example of a talk they gave about how the Steam store didn't use some fake currency thing the way Microsoft used to do that for the Xbox store. But their argument wasn't that it was bad for consumers, it was that there wasn't any evidence that this was effective at making the store more profitable.

 

So I think the current course correction from Valve is the best you're going to get from them.

[Ben X]

My favorite thing about Pokemon GO is that it has intensified the moral panic that's existed around smartphones to the point where it perfectly resembles the moral panic around silent reading, first in late antiquity with the popularization of spacing and punctuation, then in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the invention of the printing press and the emergence of popular fiction. People moving around silently, lost in thought as they carry their own little worlds with them, not reacting to people or things that they encounter, regardless of the danger..

 

 

What can I say, it's my passion. I think that the transition between spoken and silent reading is fascinating because the latter is such a given to us, to the point that we don't even consider that spoken word was how the overwhelming majority of people read in public and in private until the early medieval period, and yet it was a matter of unbearable, nigh-apocalyptic scandal even to a great mind like St. Augustine. Julius Caesar was considered exceptional for being able to read silently without even muttering or moving his lips, and one time, when he read a letter in the Senate without making a sound, he cause the room to erupt in consternation, so perverse it was thought to be.

 

 

In Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading he cites some neuroscientific research that suggests that our ancestors' brains had to evolve to handle silent reading. Reactions to silent reading varied wildly. Saint Augustine famously made quite an impression with his habit of silent reading, and various figures took it as evidence that the man was truly touched by God to possess such a habit and gift. Certainly though this was a fairly disruptive practice from the normal method of reading aloud in groups. The new method was dangerous since it allowed individuals to arrive at their own interpretations of textual meaning instead of forming a group consensus. Technical innovations that made texts easier to read such as punctuation, and spaces between words helped facilitate the silent reading revolution.

 

I'm going to start calling this Melania-Trumping.

[sclpls]

Haha I missed his 2nd post XD. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to talk about stuff I read in A History of Reading because it's a really fun book.

[Gormongous]

Haha I missed his 2nd post XD. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to talk about stuff I read in A History of Reading because it's a really fun book.

 

It is! I hold no grudge at all.

[Problem Machine]

I heard Bob Loblaw's Law Blog is an Azure Cool Blob Blog