Destroying a society, addicting people/kids, violating privacy, generating inequality consequences -- interesting large scale problems indeed -- FB is working on CAUSING them. REALLY smart people wouldn't do this.
But then, who cares if you make big money. For allowing this the US deserves everything it gets.
This is the kind of rhetoric that people shut out. It doesn't work.
Facebook is many things, and has many effects on society. Not all of them are good and in some cases cause active harm but not all of them are bad and in some cases do active good. I think most people agree with this assessment if they're being intellectually honest.
And from there, we can try to identify what aspects are extremely problematic and potential solutions to curb the downside risks.
But the point of your rhetoric seems to be because you want to drive a specific agenda or viewpoint. Everything you said could equally apply to Television, Hollywood, or even Radio and those same arguments were made during the advent of those media too. It's just not interesting rhetoric to engage with.
Proper education no longer exists. It has been replaced by vocational training. And FANG dropping college education altogether suggests that even that will go away.
AI will obviate the need for human intellect altogether -- if machines and algorithms will do all the "thinking", why bother?
If you want to know how Trump got elected, why the US is in steep decline, ruled by corporate monopolies and oligarchs and on the verge of tyranny, look no further.
Facebook is only partially to blame. The real responsibility is of the society as a whole: the atomization and loneliness of the society which FB exploited; the public and government that permitted digital corporations to do more or less what they want, and the dismantling of all the protections that existed from concentration of power in monopolies and oligopolies.
It's really disturbing how people complain about what these companies are doing -- what did they expect would happen given the above?
Would you mind expanding on that point? I know a bit about relational databases and more about SQL, but I never knew heard anything about SQL not being a true RDBMS. I'd be interested in hearing where they diverged
The biggest complaint is that SQL allows "bag output", meaning the result table (output) doesn't necessarily have to have or echo a unique key (singular or compound). Dr. Codd's definition of "relational" wouldn't allow such. ("Bag" is a type of data structure.)
I've argued there are times when you want to suppress the key, such as giving data to an outside customer where you don't want them to have the internal key. Query languages such as REL that don't allow "bag output" require silly gyrations to remove the key from the output.
As a compromise I have proposed SQL require a clause "ALLOW BAG" before it allows bag output. This would prevent most inadvertent bags. (I'd like similar for "ALLOW CARTESIAN" to prevent inadvertent Cartesian joins. It's a far bigger actual problem than bags, in my experience.) I believe this comprise is good enough and avoids having to totally throw out SQL and start over. (SQL has other annoyances, but REL doesn't solve most in my opinion.)
I've been round and round on the "pure RDBMS" issue, and I have to conclude purity makes little practical difference. Systems and data already have so much "noise" for other reasons outside of technology that cleaning up that corner won't change anything. Some purity-centric clauses and changes could be made to SQL if it really mattered, but it won't be the silver bullet of productivity and accuracy that purists claim.
We have to agree to disagree. Education is a part of the real-life experience. Schools give you a chance to develop socially, work in teams, learn how to succeed. Education is not only books and library, its real life experience as well. For many people first grown-up experience they get.
