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May 27, 2019: Justin E. H. Smith, author, "Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason"

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This week: Justin E. H. Smith, author, "Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason"

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Happy Memorial Day, when we're featuring a historian to help explain what's happening today. As tonight's outtro puts it: "If you don't know your past, you don't know your future."

Links:

• Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, by Justin E. H. Smith

• Twitter: @jehsmith

• Jaron Lanier at the DW Global Media Forum in Germany today: “I have friends in Google. They don’t spend time worrying about the media’s concerns, like society or survival. They’re in an AI race to create a giant brain, and the giant brain will then solve all problems.” (Quoted here on Twitter.) This perfectly describes how Google is making the same giant mistake that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made 300 years ago, as explained in tonight's interview with Justin E. H. Smith.

• Past Techtonic guest Vicki Boykis (from episode two!) points out that First American Financial Corp, according to Brian Krebs, has "leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgage deals going back to 2003. The digitized records — including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers license images — were available without authentication to anyone with a Web browser."

• Not to be outdone, Russian data theft: Shady world where all is for sale (BCC, May 27) explores "how easy it is to buy personal data such as passport and bank account details in Russia itself."

• A self-serving NYT op-ed (May 23) about how we should stop worrying about privacy . . . from a cofounder of a company conducting surveillance on "buying behavior using data, artificial intelligence and predictive technologies."

• Also in the NYT (May 22), a data scientist saying that privacy stands in the way of health discoveries - privacy bad! Openness good! Chris Hoofnagle comments.

• Like I said on last week's Techtonic about Google/YouTube airing flat earth videos... here's Kara Swisher writing in the NYT (May 26) about Facebook airing the Pelosi video:



• And Walt Mossberg's take:



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