Although the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Personalized Learning Platform is not part of Facebook, the underlying principles are the same: human work is replaced by technology, as algorithms provide users with content based on an analysis of their past behavior and demonstrated interests. . . . Zuckerberg’s idea of personalized learning has three major flaws.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced he wants to give away $45 billion. I’m sure he needs some advice on how to spend it. Here’s mine: He should use it to undo the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media to democratic debate and civilized discussion all over the world. Weak democracies are the most vulnerable to the curse of Facebook.
“The internet is shit today. It’s broken. It was probably always broken, but it’s worse than ever.” My conversation with, Peter Sunde, one of the founders and spokespersons of The Pirate Bay, did not start out optimistically. There’s good reason for that: In the last couple of months, the contemporary download culture shows heavy signs of defeat in the battle for the internet.
And perhaps this lack of educational benchmarks explains why, overwhelmingly, most of the apps are basically just animated interactive quizzes. The study found that 71% “contained at least one activity that we classified as a puzzle, game, or quiz. These were activities which had right and wrong answers, rather than open-ended designs.” 92% “contained some form of animation.” 45% included “interactive ‘hotspots,’ or sections of the screen that more and/or make noise when touched in ways that are not central to the game or story.”
The answer is: Google is in the business of mass surveillance, and Google Fiber is how NSA takes the next step. Never mind that they will not process more than 1% of what they capture — they will have to power to zero in on anyone.
In my view, we need to accelerate attention toward decentralized blockchain forms of technology as well as increased valuation of face to face human interaction. I have called for the elimination of the NRO, NSA, and NGA and the creation of an Open Source (Technologies) Agency. I still see potential in Amazon, ESRI, Facebook, Google, and Oracle, to name a few large firms, but they lack the commitment to creating public wealth for the good of all that I see as the essence of our role going forward. It's worth noting that AT&T is kicking Google's ass on the fundamentals while Verizon is looking at Yahoo for the wrong reasons.
“From terrorist propaganda distributed by organizations such as ISIS, to political activism, diverse voices now use social media as their major public platform. Organizations deploy bots — virtual, automated posters — as well as enormous paid “armies” of human posters or trolls, and hacking schemes to overwhelmingly infiltrate the public platform with their message. A professor of information science has been awarded a grant to continue his research that will provide an in-depth understanding of the major propagators of viral, insidious content and the methods that make them successful.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s Automated Teaching Idea Is Deeply Flawed
