"Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine."

This bit is spot on.

You might enjoy Last Chance to See, from Douglas Adams.

It is a tells how he traveled searching for near extinct species. It is non-technical and non-fiction, but it is a Douglas Adams book, so he explains a lot of things and makes up stories a long the way. That is his style.

Thanks, added to my list on amazon.

Uruguayan here. We have had multiple dictatorships in our short history. We know what the government is capable of, not in theory, but in our bones.

We root for Snowden, because we share his pain.

Indeed, that is very true - though it holds much more so for the generations before mine.

I didn't live the dictatorship, but it's a big part of our lives - we have as prominent figures for political parties both President Mujica who was a guerrilla fighter, and the son of Bordaberry, the president that led to the dictatorship.

Api, please make a post expanding on these ideas. Then post it here and send some copies to international news sites, like the guardian.

We need to wake up, your post would help a lot.

I thought that already existed, as Facebook Likes boondoggles.

True, but my boondoggle doesn't use Facebook ;)

You have three groups, those who care strongly about seeing ${badstuff}, people who don't care enough to change the default, people who care strongly about not seeing the ${badstuff}.

By making it opt-out, you will get only those that feel strongly about seeing it. By making it opt-in, and following your query, you won't be able to separate those that really want to see it, from those that really don't care.

The group that doesn't care is big enough to make a difference.

Could you explain the connection between the first and second sentence?

Maybe we should start using decentralized technologies? Go back to bittorrent, tor, irc. Teach everybody to encrypt, the same way we teach them to wash their hands. And for similar reasons.

PGP has existed for how long? The real problem here is "teaching," others.

While I do agree even the lowest cryptography or 'security through obscurity', would benefit alot of people...the real issue becomes ease of use and the user experience.

>teach them to wash their hands. And for similar reasons

lol, nice

Yes. The bottleneck, as usual, is cultural.

Still, I have hope. Some people refuse to touch or even be near people who aren't clean. That forces others to be clean and propagates hygiene through society.

I wonder if we could do the same with information. Teaching little children that putting private information in public sites is dirty. The same way we teach them not to go around naked.

Yup! This is exactly why I posted this, b/c even I fall in this category. I'm a hacker that got in trouble with Google and was convicted through the Patriot Act[0]...yet I still use their products. Reason: ease of use and I do like google.

My next project after my current one was inspired by the ECPA[1]. Simple concept: employ PGP, a simple UI, and sell users a custom WD My Book Live[2] (I'm sure you can see where this goes).

[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/05/man-allegedly-b&#x2...;

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read-...

[2] http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=280

Weren't you taking a one month break from hacker news?

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/one-month-bre...

I find the comparison suggesting, but otherwise useless. All human endeavors have a political factor, but "political party" evokes something else. Many ads promise to make our lives better, yet they aren't call political.