A future for the media?
 

I was shown this yesterday. It seemed interesting, and frankly, debatable. Namely, if the media were to make those moves, would society as a whole come out of it better off, or worse off?

This can go back to the thread on freedom a civilized society can give individuals, as, if such turns were taken, technically all media would have complete freedom in the way it is created, displayed, and consumed, unless I misunderstood entirely. One could ask: is such freedom of expression and lack of control over the news and media beneficial, or excessive?

And there's the question of how likely any of this is, at all.

And, just to get it out of the way: yes, the names they chose for the new companies and products were terrible.

All I got out of that was "Google and Google oh and Google plus Google to the Google with Google in Google by Google of the Google with your Google Google Google Google GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogleGoogleGoogleGoogleGoogleGo ogleGoogleGoogle."

Which might not have been so bad if the narrator hadn't been straining to come up with the absolutely stupidest, most stomach-wrenchingly (seriously listening to that thing made me ill) self-important pronunciation of 'Google' that he could manage.

Around 2010 the predictions just got fucking stupid and I turned it off. They didn't seem too aware that someone has to provide the, you know, actual reporting. Like maybe they think news just magically appears on the internet without anyone schelpping their ass down to City Hall or through some hot-ass desert so they can find things out and write them down. I mean that whole thing scanned like it was put together by Pajamas Media or some such collection of wacky-ass fantasists.

And who gives two shits what happens to the New York Times, when was the last time they did anything worthwhile?

Well, the bit on NYT was probably because there isn't another newspaper more well-known in the US, and the world. So, the author would make them represent the old-style media.

As for it being a Google add, yes, it's true. Whoever did this loves Google, and gives them a bit more credit than they deserve...

And, the system was supposed to make it so that Google stole sentences from existing newspapers systematically.

I think the point was - in exampl - if a car crash happens, then everyone who was there goes home and blogs it, then various free-lance editors sort and prioritize the info for indivdual members' tastes. Thus the eye-witness writes the story instead of being interviewed. The problem I saw was two-fold.

1) As they mentioned, so much would have little to no news value. In the above example, maybe one person would write what they witnessed, and the rest would write, "OMG THE CAR HIT AND WAS LIKE BOOOOM AND IT SUXORD!!!11!! AND THEN MY FREEZY SPILLED WHICH MADE VERYTHING EVEN WORSE, BUT AT LEAST THAT PWNED WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DRIVER WHICH REMINDS ME OF WHAT HAPPENED TO ONION KID IN 8BITTHEATRE..." Add gross misspellings, bad if any punctuation and all the other horrors of internet typing and you see the problem. In the same note, while they mentioned the trivial nature of much of the news, they neglected the people who would actually strive for intelligent and decent reporting and other publications. do they think novelists and philosophers would dissappear?

2)If everything is tailor made to your tastes, then you would only get things that the algorithm would think you would like (or should like, enter the sci-fi nuts), thus you would never see things outside your paradigm (sorry for using that word, I hate it too) and thus how would you know what other things are out there that you might like?

Well, its not that the media WILL take this turn. This seems to all happen a little bit TOO fast if you know what I mean. Moreso, people will not just ditch thier daily newspapers so fast. Lots of people (myself included) hate reading long extensive articles off a computer monitor. I MUCH prefer to read them in print. It just seems like its more credible when its published.

True. But some things have been printed that are very untrue. Guantanamo anyone?

That said, I have three issues with this ever being true. These are:
1. That special algorithm. It poses problems because it will likely never be created.
2. Too much credibility remains within print media for people to abandon it in favor of stylish chaos, even if it is a tad more comfortable.
3. Too much credit is given to Google and Amazon to develop things too quickly. Things just won't happen that fast.

But, if it were to become true, Dasanudas' point #2 needs consideration. If people no longer have to deal with dissent, what would society become?

I wouldn't dismiss this flash out of hand. True, a lot of what we saw was just speculation and a bit of falating of a popular company, but this flash actually hit several kew trends in media squarely on the head.

First, there's the issue of the internet and blogger challenge to the established media. Nowhere was this more evident that the 2004 US presidential election where we saw the bloggers actually discredit a network news story and supercede print and broadcast media in framing and agenda-setting. This is totally unprecedented, and more than likely there's more where that came from. More and more the bloggers are framing the news, setting the agenda, and attracting legions of readers who are disaffected with the current media establishment.

Second, and drawing very closely off the first point, is a severe deficit of trust between the public and the media. For years the media has been dogged by allegations that it is biased or even a propaganda machine. What is striking is that these allegations come as often from the left as from the right. The right has long lodged complaints about a "liberal media elite," but on the flipside the left has also, and simultaneously, accused the media of being a propaganda machine for the state (especially during the Iraq war) and of selectively reporting to suit the interests of the establishment. Both sides have turned to the internet to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, and network and print news have been suffering as a result.

Additionally, the internet as a whole has been supplanting traditional forms of information and entertainment beyond just the news. The internet has become almost the primary source for research material for college essays, now takes up (among certain demographics) more time than television viewing for entertainment, and provides alternative forms of access to literature with the advent of online books. The internet is simply becoming more popular than the television and the printed page, and it only makes sense that the newsmedia would similarly feel the effects.

On top of all this, you have the fusion of information and entertainment. This is, quite possibly, reflective of the diminishing attention spans of the public, or maybe just a symptom of the increasing involved lives people lead. Nevertheless, shallow sensationalism grabs the viewers, lengthy, in-depth reporting does not. It's sad, but true.

So, I'm really wondering here if this is all that far-fetched. The truth is, if you're worried that people aren't going to see dissenting perspectives in the future, the fact is they don't, for the most part, now. If you're a Democrat, CNN and MSNBC will never disappoint at showing you what you want to see, and if you are a Republican, there's good old Fox News. If you're worried that you will be at the mercy of amatuerish bloggers for your news in the future; 1. who says you aren't now 2. who says the executive producers of the network news stories are any better? In either instance you're at Editor in Chief of a paper who decides his paper isn't far enough to the whatever end of the political spectrum, or the executive producer of a story who doesn't bother to vett the sources he uses.

I don't think that this flash is all that far off from what we're living in now. I'd certainly say that the potential for it is already there, and maybe a bit of the practice of it as well.

Its an interesting thought, but it will most likely cause most people to turn a blind eye to the news. As a society we've already begun to watch the news less and less, turning to the daily show and the colbert report so they can filter out the events of no importance.

Blogs flooded the market for news on the internet, and doing so over ipods would just cause people to turn to one or two stations that they agree with like Dasanudas said. In the end it will probably cause people to begin living there own lives again instead of watching other people on the tele.

Then again I'm probably wrong, predicting the future is a tricky business, afterall look at all those people who play the lotto.

I watch FOX and CNN personaly. The Daily Show is just a half-hour of cheapshots at Bush and bad jokes, if I wanted to see that, I'd call my lesbian cousin..

Despite what some might say, I think it's great we live in an age where the average person can just whipout thier cellphone or whatever, and inform the entire world of what is happening. A bird's eye view, no bias reporting, no false information, no bad anchring, just honost shots and personal opinions..

Ofcourse it will never be as proffessional or as attractive as the REAL news, but then, that's why we have FOX for..

Lord Biteman said most of what I wanted to say, except I can't tell if he's putting a negative spin on it or not. If so, even if it's just a smidgen, aren't there gradations? Can't there still be blogs and news sites that strive to be neutral and report everything?

What I don't get is how when a group of people accuse a government of doing something that it is actually doing, and make 'allegations' of things that are actually happening, and then it's reported on, suddenly that group is 'being fed what it wants to here.' On the contrary, if we were to use an example, like the Iraq War, I would say those denying the allegations (not universally--in this case) would then watch or read what would censor it for them. Just because there's two sides (generally speaking) doesn't mean they're 'both' doing it.