The viral editor

In place of the human gatekeepers and curators of culture, the editors and DJs, we now have a set of algorithmic gatekeepers. While this shift has lowered many cultural barriers to entry, since anyone can make their work public online, it has also resulted in a kind of tyranny of real-time data. Attention becomes the only metric by which culture is

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When human beings serve as the repeaters in a communication network—when they take on a signal-amplification role while still acting in their traditional roles as creators and interpreters of messages—Shannon’s distinction between mechanism and meaning gets shakier still. Meaning becomes a network effect. What’s true is what comes out of the

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People still select and deliver important content to one another, but content no longer takes the form of logical statements with truth-values that can be tested against the absolute truth. Instead, content becomes a vehicle for the expression of emotional attitudes. The automatic means of reaction, such as likes and reposts, on social media do not... See more

In the same way that digital speech combines oral and written speech, digital orality combines the preliterate and literate epistemologies of truth. The emancipation of authorship by the Internet undermined preexisting authorities, including the authority of absolute truth. As millions of people entered the business of meaning-production, the... See more

If professional editors serve as gatekeepers, determining the importance of various stories before publication, the Internet opens the gates, deciding on the significance of content after it’s published. Hence, it’s not just a collective editor—it’s what I call the Viral Editor. Anyone can post anything, including rubbish. But people then vote with... See more