On Information
the past, present, and future of how we find, monetize, and relate to information.
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On Information
Our feeds are designed to “prod the would-be attender ever onward from one monetizable object to the next,” he writes. This has had a deadening effect on all kinds of culture, from Marvel blockbusters that optimize for attention minute to minute, to automated Spotify recommendations that push one similar song after another.
Kyle Chayka • How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines
What we are trying to do influences what becomes salient to us. If you are looking for a friend in a crowd, faces become salient to you, faces that would have otherwise passed you by. If you are making videos, you will notice patterns in the videos you watch. If you’re not, you can watch a thousand videos and have them pass through your head
... See moreHenrik Karlsson • How MrBeast Learns
it’s because we have generated a cult of experts that we have been subjected to the podcastization of all knowledge. If you “dialogue with the experts” in the right way, it’s as if the knowledge magically becomes yours.
We have begun treating knowledge in an acquisitive way , as if the more little tidbits one knows, the more intelligent one is
We have begun treating knowledge in an acquisitive way , as if the more little tidbits one knows, the more intelligent one is
Luke Burgis • There Are No More Hedgehogs
alex and
When everything is measured in terms of engagement, content will be optimized for addictiveness. Not entertainment or artistic merit. Not intellectual substance or creativity. Pure, plain addictiveness.
Mark Manson • Are you not entertained?
The current problem, in short, is not a lack of content, nor an inability to sift through it. The problem is finding ways to care about the things we encounter in our digitally mediated environment, or at least alleviating the overwhelming sense of that environment being flooded with garbage.
Parasocial media, however unsophisticated and shallow much of it may be, at least reflects a theory of how we might navigate this digital landscape. It at least attempts, imperfectly, to answer the question: Why should I care about any of this? (Plenty of content thinks it answers this question but doesn’t.)
Returning to the topic of AI, its prospective applications for content creation seem to mostly get this wrong, doubling down on the fallacy embodied in recommendation algorithms: that humans are not the original source of meaning but passive receptacles waiting to be filled with it. The situation I’ve just described will grow increasingly urgent, thrusting the internet into an entropic state, as AI-generated content proliferates without better mechanisms for making it matter—for making us care about what’s being produced. Or maybe most of it will dump straight into digital landfills, unseen, and it won’t even matter that it doesn’t matter.
From a Ted Koppel interview in Frontline: News War:
To the extent that we're now judging journalism by the same standards that we apply to entertainment — in other words, give the public what it wants, not necessarily what it ought to hear, what it ought to see, what it needs, but what it wants — that may prove to be... See more
In this world, with content as a supreme cultural value, it’s better for something to be interesting than ethically sound. Widespread attention bestows an aura; becoming content is how reality is made real.
Drew Austin • The grifter content mill
