2014-06-25

There's a nice transcript of a talk by Charlie Stross here which is well worth a look.

My favourite line was this - which is something I can see only getting stronger over time:

Half the shouting and social upheaval on the internet today comes from entrenched groups who are outraged to learn that their opinions and views are not universally agreed upon; the other half comes from those whose silence was previously mistaken for assent.

We're going to see some reasonably large societal upheavals over the next few decades as various groups that considered themselves outliers realise that actually their views were mainstream (or even the majority), if only they'd been able to hear each other.

And more changes as those people are able to articulate issues to people who had no idea that these societal problems even existed.

I firmly believe that the internet is at the root of the sudden flip-flopping over things like same-sex marriage (which went from "Not even a question" in the last set of elections to "What do you mean you're against it?"), and the surges in both feminism and the racial/cultural backlash that's beeing going on - where the ability to get stories into the public eye has been vastly magnified, along with the ability to support people who have similar experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs.

This isn't comfortable for an awful lot of people. It's frequently not comfortable for me, and I'm lovely and entirely onside with it. But I recognise that it's not comfortable for me because I'm on the side that's not had to deal with most of these issues* and so if I want to carry on being a decent person I'm going to have to get used to certain things being uncomfortable, they're still a lot more comfortable than they are for lots of the people raising the issues.

I feel sure that things will continue to move faster than many people would like, and not nearly as fast as others would like, that some problems will take generations to fix (if ever), and others will suddenly cease to be an issue overnight and we'll wonder why they were ever any other way.

In any case, the next twenty years should be _fascinating_.

*Well, not for a couple of generations, anyway.

2014-06-25

Interesting Links for 25-06-2014

The future will look like the present, only not