[FRIAM] Hope or Despair

[Marcus Daniels]

“The only solution to the problem of fake news that neither misdiagnoses the problem nor overpowers the elites is to completely rethink the fundamentals of digital capitalism. We need to make online advertising – and its destructive click-and-share drive – less central to how we live, work and communicate.”

Well, advertising existed before digital advertising.   Investigative reporting has been and is an important profession.  It takes time, effort, and expertise to turn over rocks and figure out what the important questions are, and how to answer them.  That digital capitalism has a particular technical mechanism that is prone to proliferating nonsense is a problem that can be fixed with a combination of legislation/regulation and technology.   That is no more elitist (or authoritarian) to insist that food producers publish standard nutritional properties.   Yes, there are more and less credible sources for reporting, and in principle, the web makes this easier to communicate to readers, not harder.   We have cryptographic ways to (reasonably) prove that entities are who they say they are, and ways to prove that source documents have not be tainted.  We even have very sophisticated open source technology for parsing natural language into data structures and for reasoning based on these data structures.

I would not say that online advertising is becoming more conspicuous in my work or personal use of computing technology.   I don’t use Facebook at all, and Twitter is mainly interesting as a way to gain insight about large scale social networks.   I don’t communicate with Twitter.   I don’t use Instagram.   I do use Google and a few other search engines, and I don’t find it hard to discriminate between ads and content.    I consume advertisements from credible news outlets like I would have 30 years ago.   All of the modeling these companies do of me can be defeated just by using Tor, if I should choose to be so paranoid.   Actually I think I get less advertising than I used to because I now just pay for Hulu, Netflix and XM radio instead of using broadcast television and radio.

If I am annoyed by one thing, it is that there are so many morons on the Internet that now don’t have to be exposed to criticism.   Usenet was different in this respect.    Let us bring back the good old days of Usenet flame wars.  When stubborn ignorance could get you humiliated in public and without mercy, over and over.

Marcus

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2017 9:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hope or Despair

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/08/blaming-fake-news-not-the-answer-democracy-crisis

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 10:58 PM, Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com<mailto:merlelefkoff at gmail.com>> wrote:
There's no need for a he/she, Owen.  The term has no relevance when talking about the presidency.

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net<mailto:owen at backspaces.net>> wrote:
Clearly you need to attend to Kissinger and Bremmer.

In terms of Russia, Kissinger's analysis of the Nation State suggests we have been far too shallow. There are very good reasons for the Russian people to feel exposed by the west's encroachment, and why they approve of Putin to the degree they do.

Trump is no threat. I personally have not given up even one of my 25 Damns over him. Any threatened Rape and Pillage will likely just cause another economic implosion which we survived pretty well.

I am curious, however, which of Bremmers 3 Americas Trump tends to, or what blend of the three. And what Trump thinks of Kissinger's recent defense of the nation state .. I know Kissinger is meeting with Trump.

Presidential politics are unique. Presidential historians agree that, whatever a president has promised, he/she is always formed by unexpected, exogenous events. At a guess, they will be foreign affairs in Trump's case. I hope he takes the MoneyBall stance.

   -- Owen

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
merlelefoff at gmail.com<mailto:merlelefoff at gmail.com>
mobile:  (303) 859-5609<tel:(303)%20859-5609>
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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