information as infrastructure
The digital network is an environment, we're incorporated into as components: nodes, continuously receiving and transmitting signals. Our actions are stored as data, classified or scored on some sort of scale, and deployed in real time to modulate the outcomes and behaviors of people, machines, and organizations. The ethos of the system is one of
... See moreFive companies that privately own the public communications and commercial operating system that increasingly write the rules of society
We have outsourced the management of our critical informational pathways to algorithms run by for-profit companies, working hand in glove with governments,
Centralized clearinghouses of news, messages, and content.
Any decline in the force of institutions makes people vulnerable to information chaos. Institutions govern information and attentional flows. We've lost control of our information ecology and it has led to epistemic and narrative collapse -- cultural incoherence. As communication speeds up, once-stable social structures and relations become as
... See moreat root, about what kind of collective sense-making we’re willing to pay for.
A Z Mackay • Disinformation Without Effort
Natural language is now both interface and infrastructure. The old divisions vanish: to build is to write is to build again. Computational force and cultural resonance emerge from the same source. This compound creature thrives on reciprocal nourishment: feed its media half and its machine capabilities grow; starve its machine needs and its... See more
Anu • Media and Machines.
The uncomfortable truth is that all content that’s digitized inevitably becomes infrastructure food. Taylor Swift’s greatest economic power isn’t necessarily her songs but the Swifties and the Taylorverse ecosystem she controls. The only information that maintains human-controlled value is what stays offline or remains tacit; insider knowledge,... See more