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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      Tired: the last mile Wired: the last yard Wireless: last-yard NFC contact tracing

      2 replies 11 retweets 57 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      When Google and Apple roll out their OS integrated thing and you opt-in, it will be lit. This IS v 0.1 of the participatory panopticon and sousveillance people. Happening as we speak. It’ll make taking quick videos of karens causing scenes and posting to Twitter seem tame.

      2 replies 3 retweets 30 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      Your phone will go “ding ding ding... in the past 14 days you have been with 1 yard of someone who later tested positive 6 times for a total of 8 minutes. The likelihood that you’re infected now is 32%. You are hereby tagged yellow. Your access to green zone is now revoked.”

      4 replies 6 retweets 32 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      “You are currently inside a green zone. The nearest exit is 3 minutes walk away. You have 15 minutes to conclude your business and leave. If you do not do so you may be arrested. Your credit cards will stop working in 1 minute.”

      1 reply 2 retweets 20 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      “Your zonal exclusion incident ticket number is XP7786568. You will have 14 days to get tested and/or contest this automated judgment and file a complaint. Thank you and remember to wash your hands!”

      1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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      I kinda approve of this btw. It’s a more systematic version of being canceled by the mob, but in controlled, reversible, due-process way. There’s going to be algorithmic bias issues of course, to be fixed. But this line of tech was inevitable. A question of when, not if.

      10:14 AM - 12 Apr 2020
      • 10 Likes
      • Christoph Zeidler nth horizon (ovc terminal go zrr) Yanick J. S. nigel Tom James edwardrooster Divia Eden https://preview.tinyurl.com/y8xpfg7p Thomas Lisλnkie 💻🌱
      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          If not covid something else would have driven tech in this direction.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Link if you don’t know what I’m talking about:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/apple-google-bring-covid-19-contact-tracing-to-3-billion-people …

          3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          I mean there’s a lot of obvious ways to try to game these and ways to defend against gaming, but the basic idea is feasible: Eg: Leave phone at home —> require phone for entry/cross-check credit cards or other id artifacts, or machine learn unusual patterns

          3 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Once infrastructure is in place, you can use it in more flexible ways. “Yellow alert! A super-spreader event just happened at Starbucks and you were exposed. This block is now under quarantine. If you leave before test-sweep and all-clear, you will face a fine up to $200”

          2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          This might sound dystopian etc but it’s not actually that different from fare enforcement on public transit. And roads/public spaces ARE public transit. You should expect to have freedoms curtailed a bit if you choose to use them.

          4 replies 2 retweets 12 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          The way to ensure civil liberties is not to try and prevent such opt-in systems but make them locally bounded, and with larger unsurveiled free spaces outside of denser urban areas. You can pass freely back and forth if you accept reentry screening. The city block as a clean room

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          This stuff is not hard to imagine, architect and build in MVP ways. What’s hard is hard-coding the fundamental shared values in auditable ways, giving people meaningful opt-outs/alts, and most importantly, govern and evolve in accountable ways for the long term.

          2 replies 1 retweet 12 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          The funniest thing for all thise panicking about this vision is... you basically already accept far more intrusive surveillance for your online wanderings, and banal versions of this in paper-based mobility governance (passports, tickets, boarding passes, physical fences).

          5 replies 2 retweets 8 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          In practice, mobility politics tends to boil down to a negotiation around “you decide what mobility governance tech to use, I’ll decide where you can put it” Trump’s wall is an example of such a negotiation. He got what... 3 new miles of wall? 93 total, 90 replacing old wall.

          1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Here, the “existing wall” or green zone fences is all area under ticketing or permission control: transit, airports, buildings with metal detectors. I’d guess 10% of “public” built environment in a modern city is restricted mobility policed by fences, walls, and ticketing/passes

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Mark Kornblum

          Good question. Probably local public transit agencies of cities will take this on as expanded scope. In fact a near-future sci-fi thing I’m working on, I imagined a vastly expanded Clipper authority (the Bay Area transit smart card system). https://twitter.com/mkornblum/status/1249398063367467009?s=21 …https://twitter.com/mkornblum/status/1249398063367467009 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Mark Kornblum @mkornblum
          Replying to @vgr
          Who administers this? Government? Is it a new agency or does this become a homeland security thing? 🤔
          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          I’m surprised people are surprised so many of us are so ready to trot out such scenarios and already have some literacy in the ideaspace. Do you people not read/watch any scifi? This stuff is tropey to the point it’s actually hard to write new sci-fi that goes beyond.

          2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          The hard challenge of all this is actually underlying moral foundations. The 4 options that already exist: Basic paternalism (right/left Big Brothers) Libertarian paternalism (nudgeology) Cancel culture (anarchic sousveillance) Cookie culture (surveillance capitalism)

          2 replies 6 retweets 16 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          About 2/3 of your life probably is *already* under surveillance conducted under one or more of these moral models. We’re not talking 0 to 1. We’re talking 0.67 to 0.75, incrementalism, with some apps attached. The only genuinely radical option is blockchain-based versions

          4 replies 4 retweets 9 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 12
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          Cory Doctorow @doctorow proposed a version of the radical blockchain type option in Little Brother but afaik, such literary explorations are as close as we’ve ever gotten to real examples of such schemes. Looking forward with 🍿 for the MVPs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel) …

          0 replies 1 retweet 4 likes
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        17. End of conversation

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