a flood of new digital communication platforms inundating free societies with instantaneous information and nonstop networked dialogue.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
The fact that we’re even having to ask that question shows the problem: unlike in the newspaper business and in the broadcast business, social media has no separate sphere that’s divorced from profit maximization.
ro khanna • Ro Khanna makes the case for digital public space
(My 93-year-old mother has kept her subscription to the Washington Post strictly because she loves the crossword puzzles. I have shown her websites teeming with crossword puzzles, but she remains unmoved. My mother wants her bundle, and belongs to the last generation to do so.) Information sought a less grandiose, less industrial level of circulati
... See moreMartin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
“To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized,” Tarnoff writes, adding, “What is at stake is nothing less than the possibility of democracy—a possibility that an internet organized by the profit motive precludes.”
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
In Facebook’s quest to “make the world more open and connected,” it succeeded in empowering individuals, but accidentally eroded the very notion of an authority – not just the notion of an objective truth, but the notion that any established institution could help us to understand truth. We underestimated bad actors, and the ways people would game ... See more