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That's an unrealistic forward standard as society is now. There's more money to be made eroding your ownership of your own thoughts and ideas than there is societal will to defend you. We've graduated from an "information economy" to an "attention economy" after all. Since attention is a resource to be pumped out of our skulls just like oil, what should prevent the rest of us from being farmed?

For now, keeping things in your internal disk will protect them, but I can't imagine that's a permanent status quo.

If we keep advancing brain-computer interfaces, eventually you might not even be able to hide your dreams from your employer! Think about how much money companies will save on loss prevention if they have perfect, autonomous loss prevention built right into your brain stem! It'll be great for the economy.




This is one of the major plot lines in Snow Crash. Trying to control employees pesky minds. Quite a fun book to read.


I read it when I was far too young to have done so, but thoroughly enjoyed it. After seeing it mentioned twice on this thread and Seveneves mentioned on /. yesterday, I'm more than inclined to reread the former or pick up the latter this Summer.


>That's an unrealistic forward standard as society is now.

I agree that it is, and in my opinion that's really terrible.

> There's more money to be made eroding your ownership of your own thoughts...

and what about real value? what happens to our collective hability to create novelty (and new value) if we double down on this path?




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