Every society and every period struggles with the class of behaviors we call "theft" and the big tech era is no different.
The wide-open possibilities of a new technological domain are celebrated and given wide berth to "protect innovation", which openly invites abuse.
Abuse expands with successive waves of breaching trust. There are still some traditional strongholds left, like medical and financial matters, but the crypto "industry" shows how close we are.
The downward spiral continues until society pushes back really hard. Creating legal and moral fences against the new form of theft. This may or may not be a satisfactory solution (institutionalized theft is a thing) but is more stable.
What creates some hope is that despite the latent dehumanizing streak, we mostly derive fulfillment from interactions with other humans.
In a sense the advent of infinite verbatim copying possibilities (the zero marginal cost of reproduction) is now with algorithms expanded to a cloud of infinite near-verbatim copies.
A new balance will be found. To the degree we can help it it should not be a form of institutionalized theft.
The wide-open possibilities of a new technological domain are celebrated and given wide berth to "protect innovation", which openly invites abuse.
Abuse expands with successive waves of breaching trust. There are still some traditional strongholds left, like medical and financial matters, but the crypto "industry" shows how close we are.
The downward spiral continues until society pushes back really hard. Creating legal and moral fences against the new form of theft. This may or may not be a satisfactory solution (institutionalized theft is a thing) but is more stable.
What creates some hope is that despite the latent dehumanizing streak, we mostly derive fulfillment from interactions with other humans.
In a sense the advent of infinite verbatim copying possibilities (the zero marginal cost of reproduction) is now with algorithms expanded to a cloud of infinite near-verbatim copies.
A new balance will be found. To the degree we can help it it should not be a form of institutionalized theft.