Tyler Cowen posted a great podcast of an interview with Reid Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman studied philosophy, and at one point in the conversation they discussed the influence of Wittgenstein on LinkedIn:

COWEN: How did your interest in the late Wittgenstein influence the construction and design of LinkedIn? I’m sure they ask you this all the time in interviews.

HOFFMAN: [laughs] All the time. The question I’ve always been expecting. I would say that the notion of thinking about — a central part of later Wittgenstein is to think that we play language games, that the way that we form identity and community, both of ourselves and as individuals, is the way that we discourse and the way that we see each other and the way that we elaborate language.

That pattern of which ways we communicate with each other, what’s the channel we do, and what’s the environment that we’re in comes from insights from — including later Wittgenstein, who I think was one of the best modern philosophers in thinking about how language is core to the people that we are and that we become.

Later, Mr. Hoffman addresses the relationship between large tech companies and society as a whole:

I agree that the technological companies are a very important Archimedean lever. What I disagree with is that, as those levers become more important to society, I think that we can’t actually, in fact, say, “We should not be in discourse with society about what we’re doing.” Because actually, in fact, once you begin to have society-level impact, not just a, “Oh, look, here’s a new social game or something else, here is a new Zynga game that’s fun to play.”

Okay, who cares? I mean, it’s fun. Maybe hundreds of millions of people do it, but that doesn’t actually impact the way that society operates.

The fact is, as we get to the way that society operates, we need to add in interaction with society, accountability on the design principles and the philosophy by which we are affecting society. We have to integrate in ways by which society can give us feedback. That doesn’t necessarily always mean direction. Maybe sometimes there’s regulation or other things, but an ability to be in conversation with them.

If you look at it, my view would be that, as you have more successful tech companies that have an impact on society as a whole, part of what you should start doing is deliberately engaging in discourse with the various institutions of society in a public way, to say, “Here is the kinds of things that not only are we doing now, but what we’re trying to create in the future.”

He doesn’t explicitly connect the two ideas in the interview, but I will: these places made of language increasingly impact the ways societies work. As a result, the organizations that operate them must engage in active dialog with other social institutions, including governments.

(Mr. Cowen’s podcast, Conversations With Tyler, features insightful interviews with people who are shaping our world. It’s worth your attention.)

Reid Hoffman | Conversations With Tyler

Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell writing in The Atlantic:

Madison’s design has proved durable. But what would happen to American democracy if, one day in the early 21st century, a technology appeared that—over the course of a decade—changed several fundamental parameters of social and political life? What if this technology greatly increased the amount of “mutual animosity” and the speed at which outrage spread? Might we witness the political equivalent of buildings collapsing, birds falling from the sky, and the Earth moving closer to the sun?

I find the authors’ argument compelling: social media has changed the nature of discourse in democratic societies. It’s not a content problem, but a structural issue driven by our intrinsic want for attention.

Can we recover? Perhaps — but change will require major structural interventions. The article suggests three that seem worthwhile. (Alas, no mention of the nefarious business model driving the major social networks: selling the attention of their users.)

The Dark Psychology of Social Networks – The Atlantic

A few months ago, The New York Times obtained a dataset of people’s movements gathered from their smartphones. The initial report on their findings aims to make tangible the risks we’re running by permitting the private mass surveillance industry to continue tracking us as they have:

One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.

If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location – anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers – you could be in there, too.

If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.

The report makes the implications obvious by identifying specific individuals. For example, the data revealed a Microsoft engineer visiting Amazon’s campus, where he now works. Another — who remains anonymous in the report — is a senior Defense Department official (and his wife,) shown walking through the Women’s March in Washington. It’s not difficult imagine the implications of such information being available to employers, governments, and other powerful organizations.

When we talk about regulating tech, we usually think of large data-driven companies. But data themselves are neutral. Large data sets can help us identify and cure medical conditions, for example. It’s where we apply data — and to what ends — that can get us in trouble. Surreptitiously gathering data about citizens and residents to better persuade us is about the most pernicious thing we can do to a free society. Yet here we are.

Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy