It’s getting ever harder to distinguish humans from bots, not just because bots are becoming more humanlike, but also because humans are becoming more botlike.
As knowledge of human psychology evolves, algorithms become better at shaping human behavior.
“The idea that we get our information as citizens through algorithms determined by the world’s largest advertising company is my definition of dystopia.”
spending too much time in the big algorithmic feeds winds up being a form of intellectual monocropping. It’s not terribly diverse or surprising. It’s not that the stuff in your feeds is all bad; some of it’s great! But it’s got a deadening sameness to it.
Independent creators today, consciously or unconsciously, subscribe to a kind of algorithmic polytheism. If you publish words on Twitter, you're doing proof-of-work sacrifices to honor one unknowable god; if you publish videos to Youtube, you're doing different proof-of-work sacrifices to honor a different unknowable god. And so on.
“The web promises to make our world bigger. But as it works now, it also narrows our exposure to ideas. We can end up in a bubble in which we hear only the ideas we already know. Or already like.”
― Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
One of the most insidious effects of algorithmic curation is its redefinition of success. In the pre-digital age, greatness was measured by critical acclaim, cultural impact, or historical longevity. Today, it is measured by metrics: views, likes, shares, and subscriptions.
This shift has profound implications for creators. To succeed in an... See more