Google brain implants. What do people think?
I have seen things suggesting google chips in brains before (in the daily mail; for people who live in the US, the Daily mail is a rubbish newspaper). It was within an article about what tech could be like by the time Prince George is king.
Surely only an idiot would allow a google brain implant. That person is putting their life into google's hands. Google could, with a backdoor in the implant, make them want to commit suicide, for example (or a cracker could do that)
Anyway, Google, to most people, seems too good to be true: Free email, video, search, 5gb cloud, et cetera. Surely it must be doing something bad with all that data everyone is giving it? For some people, google know every single thing they do: They have google diary; they go somewhere; google knows where it is if they use maps, et cetera.
It sounds really stupid.
Edit: Upon actually reading the article, I discovered that the Google Brain Implant is pure speculation, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Surely only an idiot would allow a google brain implant.
You might think "surely only an idiot would give all the details of their lives to an American corporation, that evades tax, censors search results and has alleged connections to the CIA", but people do just that every day and go on to praise the results.
So, the next generation will embrace this stuff without thinking.
And we will be mocked and laughed at for being crusty old paranoid fools who "just don't get it".
Does google pay their tax in the US? In which countries do they not pay their tax?
I'm sure I will be mocked for refusing brain implants.
It wouldn't surprise me that much if schools get replaced by brain implants later - brain implants congaing all the knowledge anyone could want to know.
The article in the Daily Mail said that "All babies have google chip inplanted." That is firstly a bit crazy to say that, because saying that assumes no competition - Microsoft? (hopefully they will go out of business).
It's not especially easy to get away from google. You firstly have to make sure that your browser is set to ddg.gg for search. You need to use a real map, and a real diary (not a problem for me), or alternativly a free software one. DDG does not support image search, which I often need for schoolwork. I often use wikimedia commons for images. I read an article about it in a newspaper, not long ago, someone who had been challenged to not use google. Also, all the best videos are on YouTube. There is minitube, fortunatly
Does google pay their tax in the US? In which countries do they not pay their tax?
They pay no tax in the UK as far as I know. Certainly, the stories of them walking away without paying hundreds of millions have been around for at least the past 5 years or so.
Nor in Europe, as they route all business through Southern Ireland. Ditto Microsoft. Ditto Apple and probably all the rest too. This was true a year or two ago, not sure if it still is, Almost certainly yes.
This is one of the principle reasons that the European economies are collapsing. High unemployment, caused first by automation and then by computerisation and now by immigration added to massive tax evasion. Here in the UK we have HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) making "sweetheart deals" with big names for them to avoid tax.
I am a member!
A year or so ago (before I bailed for good) when Google changed the way they collect payment for Google Apps, it took 3 tech people 55 minutes to help me find out how they could accept my credit card.
Brain implants? Not yet.
I am thoroughly convinced that Google is evil.
I'm not convinced that people would be receptive to embedding anything into themselves in the near future, outside of small niches. Especially embedding a chip into the brain seems like it would be an extremely invasive, dangerous surgery.
Now, if that were to change in the future, we would need to convince people not to embed chips in their brains without public knowledge of how these hypothetical chips work and what they do, lest we run into a real-world supervillain brain control plot. But I don't think that's going to be an issue we face today even if it's possible for chips to be embedded into the brain in the first place.
Brain implants are still voluntary, unlike pacemakers thereby I take the liberty to hijack this thread to implantable medical devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_Jack#Pacemakers
https://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/karen-sandler
Brain implants should never be compulsory.
@ssdclickofdeath, Google is evil, and much of their technologies are junk.
@armworm, That quote is from the daily mail, if you have ever read it, the Daily mail is a rubbish newspaper.
@salparidise Do Microsoft and Apple not pay their taxes? Very surprised!
I personally genuinly do not understand why anyone would use microsoft windows. Why not use Trisquel? It's free in every way. People can share it with their friends and not be pirates. No virus problems (currently). Trisquel is easier to install than Windows, and there is libreoffice, et cetera - an alternative for almost all windows software. I wont preach to the converted any more
I doubt brain implants will be compulsary. Just in the same way that computers are not compulsary - no law stops us from all getting rid of all our computers and buying loads of books, and communicating with people by sending letters. It is just that it would be a lot harder.
Surely google could be forced to pay their taxes, or forced to leave the UK. And if they did have to leave the UK, that would cause them problems for maps, street view, et cetera.
Of course the various big names could be made to pay their taxes. It's not like their threats to "leave if we're made to" are real. But that would require a Government that wasn't made up of groveling, servile moneygrubbers and thieves.
It would be good to see a genuinely OpenSource project make a lot of money and pay its taxes properly, so they could then be cited to shame such names into paying theirs properly. Maybe it already exists and I just don't know about it.
Then perhaps we wouldn't need to keep hearing about how Corporation X walked away without paying xxx hundred million in taxes followed by more cuts to welfare and social provision.
By geniunly open source, do you mean as in fully free software?
If google were made to leave the UK, so what? They could have their .uk domain taken away from then, and be banned from doing street view in the uk; and so their maps and street view would become more and more outdated.
Maybe the government might even block google? It would not be very popular, and it would be wrong, but it would force google to pay their taxes.
As for StarBucks and Amazon, if they were to leave the UK, surely they would have to leave with all their coffee shops (that apparently make rubbish coffee) and Amazon would have to get rid of their warehouses, and ship from ireland, or elsewhere
Isn't the solution to use an ad-blocking tool, so google don't make money, or to fully stop using google? I have Gmail, I am looking into alternatives. Maybe with a tax-paying or non-profit company. (privacy as well)
If fsf had a paid (or free) email service, I'm sure many people would use it. it would probabaly be a good fundraiser.