Mastering something and merely learning competence in it are two different things though. I don't think the "Teach yourself X in Y" type books are claiming to be turning people into masters, similarly I'm sure many of the learning piano/sculpting/art type books aren't claiming to be making master artists out of their readers.
I think, with the right resources (people, material), if someone dedicated themselves to learning programming/software development actively for 2 years they could become extremely proficient in it. Not masters across a number of different languages and paradigms, of course, but just very proficient in a few of them to the point where they could churn out good work/projects/ideas with it.
The mindset may not be a millennial thing but its prominence in modern society most certainly is. Where once the hate-fueled rhetoric these kinds spew all day and night would have been written off as the delusions of a bitter lunatic, social media has given them a platform to find those similar to them, to network, to organise, etc. and those people tend to be within the millennial age group.
>I think this movement will let off some steam and people will stop taking it seriously, but I don't think it is unfair to worry that they will take real positions of power in the future.
They're very highly active, and in control of, many student unions throughout say the US and UK. Student union reps often go on to become politicians, so it is indeed something worth worrying about.
Especially since their movement is based on dividing people and making one group the oppressor and the other the victim, even if such perceived oppression has no basis in reality.
Their movement has entirely turned against gay men now and blasts them as being "oppressive". They're almost as bad about FTM transsexuals. There's really no telling where it goes next. Most bizarrely though is the vast majority of the division is being carried out by largely straight, white, middle class or higher women at the helm.
I think the bigger fear is that they'll take small positions of power in not-so-transparent organizations, like in academia. They'll have their own little fiefdoms where they can have witch hunts without a lot of press.
I don't see how someone like that would actually win office. Too insane.
>This can lead to one side dominating the conversation despite being unpersuasive.
There is no conversation. They don't converse with those holding conflicting opinions. In fact, with Twitter, they've built out the BlockBot to automatically censor all and any deemed to have dissented against the narrative.
When you've a movement that is based on very flawed statistics and that places emphasis on hypersensitive feelings over reality, dissent containing reality or fact is a threat. It's far easier to censor the dissent than to engage it.
BlockBot doesn't censor anyone, does it? All it does is prevent the person who uses it from seeing output from the people they are opting to filter - they can continue to talk, rant, abuse, write poems, whatever they do with impunity.
"Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" is a good analogy, I think.
>You can chill out. I'm not trying to recruit you.
Regardless of whether you did this intentionally or whether you just naively spouted this, it's a really shitty tactic to employ when conversing with people.
>I don't feel safe discussing social-justice-related topics on accounts that can connect with my real-world persona
Isn't it amazing that this is a thing, and you're certainly not alone in feeling this way, and yet people can still support the movement that has you feeling this way?
On my few social media accounts, which are linked to me as a person, I'm more than happy to criticize the government(s), I'm more than happy to criticize the NSA, GCHQ, etc, I'm more than happy to criticize politicians and many other things but I'm sure as hell never going to voice my opinion on modern feminism/the social justice movement on these accounts.
This piece belongs on HN as much as any of the pieces that spring up and are flag killed about feminism i.e. it doesn't.
However, the fact that it is on HN and has received quite a bit of support let's me know I'm certainly not alone in my frustration with the modern social justice movement, their antics, and its creep into the "tech media".
It is an incredibly divisive, hate-fueled movement based on flawed, debunked statistics and what amounts to a game of oppression olympics. Where once the type of person to spout their hateful rhetoric would be simply ignored, through social media they have been enabled, given a voice to, and been able to form an echo-chamber with other similarly deluded, hate-fueled people.
Through their network they have wielded an undue amount of power and we have unfortunately witnessed the result of it in real life, as a man who landed a probe on a comet millions of miles away had his team's achievement pushed to the back in favour of the furor over the shirt he wore while doing so, and who then wept on TV as a result of the sheer level of hate he received.
We have seen GitHub shamed for its rug championing unity in meritocracy, who then quickly moved to throw the "problematic" rug into the trash amidst the furor from these online "feminists".
We saw two people lose their jobs and have their names ran into the ground online by these "feminists" over a bad joke at a tech convention.
And the list goes on.
They have become simply too large to ignore. Their presence, and their narrative, drives so many clicks that we now see the "tech media" latch onto it, give their toxic views air and promote their narrative in the name of gaining clicks.
Facts no longer matter when it comes to these people, only the narrative. It doesn't matter that Ellen Pao was proven to have no case against Kleiner Perkins and was exposed as an incredibly shady person while doing so, you wouldn't tell she lost as the media driving this narrative cherry picked that which was convenient to the narrative and brushed over everything which was not.
I could go on about this, but all I will say is that I'm glad to see backlash against this movement increasing. I'm glad to see more speaking out against it. I'm glad to see their hashtags on Twitter being used against them, and I'm extremely glad to see some of their champions like Sarah Noble being held accountable in real life for the hate they spew online.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. I have definitely seen many articles on the web playing "oppression olympics" pitting supposedly privileged and oppressed groups against one another in literally every possible category, but these are usually met with scorn from rational individuals who identify as feminists or social justice warriors who believe that it harms the relevancy of actually oppressed minorities. There are fringe groups on every topic -- just as the Tea Party isn't representative of the visions of Libertarians and Islamic extremism isn't representative of the views of most Muslims, most radical exclusionary feminism isn't representative of the views of the vast majority of feminists.
And as for Pycon 2013, most feminists I know argued that Adria had done enough by complaining to staff and had no right to post the employees' names and pictures on Instagram/Twitter/whatever, and that the individuals involved did not deserve to lose their jobs. But being a jerk isn't a prerequisite for being a voice for a traditionally oppressed group. It's just a result of being impassioned and hopelessly misguided, both traits that are indicative of naïveté rather than malice.
>The armchair historian and anthropologist in me wishes we had something like this for the corporations of the 1800s.
What we do have from this time though are a huge number of private journals written/kept by very powerful and influential people. We also have huge troves of their mail correspondence that, without a doubt, was intended to be kept private.
We have since made these things public, written books about them, published the letters reprinted, etc.
So perhaps the release of such correspondence is merely a function of the time since its authorship, or the time since the author (and recipient?) died. The way things operate today though, the future historians are unlikely to get such content.
I am still absolutely struggling to see a popular use case for these applications. I would be interested to read about how those who financed/invested in these products, Meerkat in particular, came to the conclusion that it was worth a punt.
The only time I heard Meerkat being mentioned was in the context of Periscope stepping into its place at launch time. The only time I've heard about Periscope being used since its launch was in reading about HBO shutting down those streaming GoT on it.
"If you build it, they will come" seems to have been morphed into "If you build it, hopefully they'll find a reason to use it" here.
The use case is narcissism. Narcissism is a huge market, especially in Silicon Valley, which is how Meerkat took off in the first place. (I am not a fan of the "influencer" culture.)
There are arguments that personal live streaming can be used for "empathy," but that's not a typical use case and would not be worth $50M-$100M anyways.
The easiest way to get attention from the media is by creating something that the media is interested in. Internet media types love the idea of citizen journalists submitting live video from breaking events, so it's an appealing angle for them to write about. The story (what Meerkat could do) is a lot more exciting than the current reality (how many people are _actually_ using Meerkat).
Like Twitter, it's a not-especially-good idea that's one major celebrity thinking it's cool or a couple of major livestreamed incidents away from being potentially pretty big. Integration with existing social networks is going to be the key bit for regular users though, as the average person wants to passively showcase the cool thing they're doing to their friends rather than random members of the public.
It's not a hugely novel idea though; a couple of days ago we had an article on the first girl to lifestream her life, in 1996.
Having skipped Instagram, Snapchat and such, I'm surprised to find myself incredibly enthusiastic about Periscope and Meerkat. I really think they're onto something here.
I've watched a number of streams of people showing things they're working on, streams of events people are at, etc. It's incredible - you feel like you're there, participating even. Live streaming has existed for years, but it has never been this easy to create streams and view streams. Just hit a button and you're showing what you're seeing to your Twitter followers. Or, if you're browsing Twitter, tap a link and you're seeing what they're seeing.
I'm especially looking forward to events such as WWDC, Google I/O, CES, etc: will be fascinating to get realtime access.
> I'm especially looking forward to events such as WWDC, Google I/O, CES, etc: will be fascinating to get realtime access
Holding your phone up and recording a livestream of pay-for-access events will not only likely get you kicked out (I believe Coachella cracked down on it), but it is very disrespectful toward the other attendees. That's one of the many reasons why personal livestreaming doesn't work.
There is a reason, but the audience is the one who choices it's popularity and for what reason they personally use it.
Twitch.tv is exactly this BUT they show the screen and a webcam of the person. You can see both the face and screen of a person. Mostly this is used for people streaming games but others use it while they program and talk to people how they are coding. Others use it for podcasting.
These apps can answer a need, but so often we can't tell the future of what sticks with a group of people. That is why the company that is doing Meerkat is planning to create many apps and fail often to find the app that fits a need that they don't know about currently.
I downloaded periscope and the first stream I found was a guy on his lunch break walking through a state park in Fort Lauderdale, FL (My Home Town, live in the Bay Area now) As he was walking down the path he would come to forks in the path and people would tell him to go left or right. It was really interesting on multiple levels, seeing a place you know live from across the country and interacting with the person on the other end you don't know. However, I'm not sure I would continue to use the app every day as the novelty wears off and it's hard to continually find quality content.
It feeds into a growing desire for immediacy, which wanky trend types call 'nowism'. People are becoming less and less interested in what has happened, and increasingly focused on what is happening right this second. It's much more desirable to see what's going on backstage at Glastonbury right this second than a recording of what happened earlier that day.
