Ciekawa sprawa – twórcy i techno-utipiści wierzący w pozytywny wpływ rozwoju technologicznego na nasze życie zaczynają zmieniać zdanie. To już kolejny zaobserwowany przeze mnie przypadek.

Czyżby po zachłyśnięciu się osobliwością, pozytywnym zaćpaniem się technologią przyszedł czas na zjazdy, walkę z uzależnieniem i smutnymi brakami środków na koncie bankowym?

…the way Google translator works, for instance, is a graphic example of how a giant just takes (or “appropriates without compensation”) and monetizes the work of the crowd. “One of the magic services that’s available in our age is that you can upload a passage in English to your computer from Google and you get back the Spanish translation. And there’s two ways to think about that. The most common way is that there’s some magic artificial intelligence in the sky or in the cloud or something that knows how to translate, and what a wonderful thing that this is available for free.

“But there’s another way to look at it, which is the technically true way: You gather a ton of information from real live translators who have translated phrases, just an enormous body, and then when your example comes in, you search through that to find similar passages and you create a collage of previous translations.”

“So it’s a huge, brute-force operation?” “It’s huge but very much like Facebook, it’s selling people [their advertiser-targetable personal identities, buying habits, etc.] back to themselves. [With translation] you’re producing this result that looks magical but in the meantime, the original translators aren’t paid for their work—their work was just appropriated. So by taking value off the books, you’re actually shrinking the economy.”

za pomocą What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine.