all of your complaints are valid in the context of bad HUMAN nature. they are invalid in the context of bad AMERICAN nature. what is the intellectual value in your mind of prosecuting the usa alone for crimes all of humanity is guilty of?
you need to be morally and intellectually honest. or you are just another useless pointless partisan. the world has enough of those and their tribal venom
to shape conflict into less arbitrary and deadly tactics. not prevent conflict. as gandhi implies, this is impossible. mankind will always live in conflict. but does he resport to bombs? or resort to airing his grievances in words and a court system? obviously the latter is better than the former, and the whole point of progress. so, in a perverse way, resorting to ideological blogs and propaganda is superior to real warfare, and a GOOD development, not a nefarious one
i would rather someone lie to me than kill me. so bring on the propaganda, from all directions. let it flow freely. beats suicide bombs and bombs from the sky
a few spaniards got on some boats, and with some fancy new technology, subdued entire noble ancient civilizations in central and south america
technological progress was not fair to the aztec and incan nobility. you wonder what they thought when they looked upon the gun, the horse, the metal armor, the smallpox. well, if you work for the riaa or a major label, you know more of what it is like to be on the losing side of technological progress like perhaps no other class of people in the western hemisphere right now
so here's to you, music label suit
heres to your vanishing jobs, to the jobs of blacksmiths, to the jobs of chimney sweeps, to the jobs of telegraph operators, to the jobs of steam ship engineer
to the dustbin of history with all of it
please no banging on your coffin while we nail it shut. thanks
1. that the baseline human mind is satisfied with just one source of info. certainly, such people exist, but not all, or even most. most people want to hear a few sources. it's a healthy simple instinct most people develop as they grow up in various social settings with varying descriptions of the same events. its a simple human truth to learn: that not all people see the same things
2. that someone is hermetically sealed in a room with only one source of info. even in authoritarian countries, word gets around with text messages, gossip, etc
3. that someone thinks exactly what is presented to them. certainly it serves as a starting point, but you would be amazed at the various conclusions people deduce from the same facts
so i agree with you: there are people who believe everything they see, from only one source, and think exactly what is presented to them
but that's a tiny minority, in even the most authoritarian states with the most censored media
there was a time once when conservatives talked about the liberal media. this was in the clinton years when the liberals had a hold on the agenda. a conservative in 1994 would say pretty much exactly what you are saying. flashforward to 2004, and when conservatives have a hold on the agenda, the party line with liberals was the great evil of the conservative media
so its all bullshit, blaming the media. blaming the media is a scape goat. certainly there are liberal biased media sources. certainly there are conservaivte biased media sources. the point is, both biases in the media exist ALL THE TIME. but every one of us picks and chooses their bogeyman of choice in the media out there, and shapes a perception of some media "other" out there with some nebulous agenda manipulating impressionable minds. bullshit. look at the guy twiddling his moustache behind the curtain! this is paranoid schizophrenic bullshit
blaming the media for the conservative and liberal swings in the country gets cause and effect wrong. the body politic experiences an ideological sea change, and begins to choose the media sources that suits its purposes, not the other way around. i am saying the dominant media sources of the time is driven by the audience. it is NOT true that the media source feeds an ideology to an audience, the audience is simply given a menu of liberal and conservative media sources, and chooses the media bias it likes. the cause and effect is the reverse of what you are proposing
it is simply intellectual laziness and intellectual dishonesty to talk about the way the country is one way or the other is because of the media. it allows a scape goat for when an ideologue, conservative or liberal, sees the general population have an opinion different than their own, and rather than blame the general populace, which is distressing, they blame the media, because the media is a universal whipping boy and scape goat, and allows the ideologue to believe that deep down, the general populace is still with them
unfortunately blaming the media is simply not understanding how things really work. blame the general populace itself. it swings left, it swings right. and that fact scares the hell out of conservatives and liberals firmly entrenched on their particular side of the divide
compare news from a blog versus news from a newspaper. peg the amount of trust you should put the newspaper at in your mind. now peg the amount of trust you should put in the blog. i think you'll find you'll put more trust in the newspaper than the blog. now try to find a way to get news to you in a way more trustworthy than the newspaper. it doesn't exist
therefore, no matter how untrustworthy you find newspapers, for all the games of telephone you illustrate, you also have to agree there is no more trustworthy way of getting the news
so go ahead and poke holes in the trustworthiness of newspapers. in the end, you'll still be turning to them as the most trustworrhy source of information in the pile of untrustworthy sources before you
your criticism of the trustworthiness of newsreporting would have more validity if there were some magical method of newsreporting that was superior. such a method doesn't exist, so your criticism in the end is empty
but the damage done by blackwater international would still be done if blackwater didn't exist. it would in an alterate universe without corporations be done by a bunch of random self-motivated asshole soldiers of fortune. all blackwater international does it takes all those rats and puts them on one single more easily controllable and identifiable payroll
corporations are not a creator of evil in my mind. they are packagers of evil. which has some benefits in terms of control. some people believe that if we did away with corporations, a lot of the evil corporations do would disappear too. hardly! the evil you see corporations do is a reflection of simple human evil, not some magical aspect of human nature that exists solely when corporations are involved
but i will completely alter your perception of me by saying i don't see them as quite as threatening as many do. they provide social stability and wealth, and for all of their abuses, they are manageable entities that consolidate a lot of control that would otherwise be difficult to control
in other words, a lot of corporate abuses are really just magnifications and distortions of essential human failures that would still be with us, even if all the corporations magically disappeared. a corporation to me is human lust and greed packaged into nice discrete packages for us to wield a stick at. and it's easier to manage a box full of rats than a bunch of rats scampering around on their own. that's how i view corporations: not creators of evil, but amalgamations of evil that would exist with or without corporations
if you insist on using the word illusion, can we ever have any better than this illusion? you seem to be pointing to the fundamental cracks in human communication. couples often have the same goals, and wind up fighting due to miscommunication. if they can't swing it, how can you expect a human organization to do any better?
i think you need to make peace with the fundamental failings of human communication. your "illusion" is just another way to say "miscommunication exists", and always will, REGARDLESS of malicious intent
and what you attribute to malicious intent, i attribute to accident. people are not so malicious. of course malicious intent DOES exist, people DO manipulate communication. but again, can you honestly expect us to do any better? how the heck do you identify subtle malicious intent in miscommunication, and actually get rid of it? make peace with it if it is not too egregious, as just the background noise of life that will always be with us no matter what
that all of the people, all of the time, have functioning bullshit detectors. or that is ever possible
random demagogues exist in every society, because they satisfy a portion of the audience. but they don't appeal to all of the audience, NOR can the audience be completely innoculated against the efforts of demagogues
so you have to make peace with the fact that a large portion of any human society is populated with people with permanently broken or nonfunctional bullshit detectors. and this will always be true, if you respect the notion of free will. which is a much greater thing to value than absolute adherence to some arbitrary bullshit detector standard
put your faith in the large, mostly silent majority of people who can sniff bullshit out when they hear it/ see it. they exist, they really do, and they are self-replicating in a society that values freedom of the press and freedom of expression. they're will is not always expressed unaltered by their government, but again, we live in an imperfect world. we can only approximate the higher standards we are discussing here. all we can do is try harder to approximate better
those are even more scarce on slashdot than thoughtful literate posts;-)
replying to your numbers:
1. consolidation. it is inevitable. so while there might be 100,000 newspapers today (arbitrary) there will be 10,000 tomorrow, and 1,000 in a decade or two
2. yes: we are in the realm of the weirdness of the newspaper without the newspaper. but this is more of a semantic difference than a real world stumbling block to the evolution of newspapers. more broadly, television news and radio news are all under this kind of pressure as newspapers. i bring this up to show that today, cnn means "cable news network", but if cnn still exists in 2108, it won't be on cable. cnn in 2108 will merely mean "news brand of some trust" in the mind of listeners/ readers/ haptic esp device empathitors;-P kind of like coca cola: there's no cocaine in coca cola today, but that's no reason to change the name: everyone trusts the brand. so in the future, "new york times" and "atlanta journal constitution" will merely be brand names associated with a certain level of trust, regardless of the actual media being used
3. i view it as a kind of segmentation and expansion of the mediaverse. today, our newspapers show breaking news, opinion, in depth reporting, etc. added to this function is the new one user feed back (well actually, i guess that's letters to the editor, so not so new after all). what will happen is that the single monolithic function of a newspaper will fragment into a million pieces, each piece the domain of some sort of specialist. like slashdot aggregates, perez hilton does gossip, politico does political ruminations, etc. and the all purpose newspaper will atrophy, until it is left with the one vital piece it still has a monopoly on in the emerging mediaverse: news reporting. facts on the ground, breaking events. blogs can't do that. or they can try to do that, and therefore turn into a newspaper in the process
vinyl still has a following, because there will be always be audiophiles who like analog media over digital media (wax cylinder is a form of analog recording like vinyl)
8-track is a form of magnetic media. and there will always be environments where recording magnetic media will make sense because of economic or space considerations
and clay tablets are just a form of writing directly to permanent hard substances. a "clay" (or rather stone) tablet will lie above you when you rest eternally 6 feet down. so that form of media is not going away either, literally;-)
unbiased neutral media is NEVER possible. it's a theoretical ideal, not an actual real world achievable. all you can do is approximate the truth, come as close as humanly possible
and so what you call an illusion of trust i would relabel as an honest attempt at trust. while meanwhile, a lot fo the free-for-all stuff you find on the internet doesn't even try to be impartial. that's a HUGE difference
you unfairly place newspapers in the same category as outright propagandizers. a newspaper TRIES to be impartial. a propagandizer purposely tries NOT to be truthful. there's a really a big difference right there. people should appreciate that difference. because, in fact, propagandizers win when no one sees a difference between a propagandizer and a genuine news oultet. so in the name of fighting propaganda, you should try to recognize the difference
don't groups newspapers with propaganda outlets simply because it is impossible to be 100% neutral. all media exists on a gradient of bias, from 90% unbiased to 10% unbiased. simply because 100% unbiased can never exist in a world of fallible humans, that is no valid reason for you to group the 90% unbiased news source in with the 10% unbiased news source
once upon a time, all media was unbiased and neutral. then fox news came along and made it into propaganda. really? go into wikipedia and type "yellow journalism". read up on the uss maine and why the usa went to war with spain in 1898. you think the manipulating of facts to start a war is a new invention? please! story as old as time. every regime that has ever existed has engaged in this. go further back in history, all the way to the printing press, and earlier: there never has been, and never will be, such a thing as fair and balanced media (pun intended). ever. in any country. in any era. that ever was or ever will be
why?
that gets us to misperception #2:
that a neutral unbiased media is even possible. it is impossible. the media is made by human beings. all human beings are biased in one way or another. everyone has an agenda. those who claim they are not biased, or actually fervently believe they are not biased, are in fact probably the most biased of all: blind to one's own nature
so what does one do in a world with bias everywhere? answer: they develop a good bullshit detector
and making peace with this fact of biased media is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. do you honestly believe it is a better world where everyone just took something written by a media mouthpiece as solid gold truth, and never questioned it? isn't it better to have a well-read populace who disbelieves and doubts everything? and how do you train such a populace? you throw bias at them from every monitor and printed word, and you train their mind like a muscle to develop an extremely strong and sophisticated bullshit detector
those who argue for censorship do so in the name of preventing the spreading of lies, from the right or the left. but when they do this, they actually show little faith in the general populace. they don't save the populace from themselves this way, they merely breed zombies and sheep. in the name of preventing lies, they create the environment for more lies. this is the true value of free speech: a darwinian competition of ideas. to let out all of it, all the bullshit, let it all be spoken. even the biggest lies and the most vile words. in this way, the general populace can decide for themselves, and you get a general populace that values critical thought. you never get critical thought in a society where unbiased media existed. in fact there is societies today where "unbiased" media exists: iran, china, russia, etc.: the places where freedoms are the least. and the people there, unfortunately, have very weakly developed bullshit detectors, and are therefore prone to the kind of pies manipulation and propaganda that makes your concerns over fox news look quaint. just look at china's one sided coverage of tibet: all they show is ethnic colonial han getting attacked. as if that is all that is going on and the tibetans aren't being attacked! propaganda. half-truth. beijing understands the idea very well
a world of biased media everywhere is actually SUPERIOR: it trains the minds of the general public to have a healthy bullshit meter. so while some people lament things like fox news, i, as a liberal in the deepest sense of the word liberal, am thankful for fox news. because fox news serves as a cautionary tale, an innoculation device. it weans people off propaganda, by being propaganda. fox news is a training device fro stronger minds to overcome. and for all those who believe fox news 100% and look no further for the "truth": do you honestly believe that in a world of "unbiased" media they would be flower children? no. a right winger is not made. it's like being gay. their minds are just made that way;-P
television was supposed to kill both radio and the movies. well, we don't see movie news reels anymore, and we don't see radio serials either, but you can't watch tv while driving to work, and no one wants to see indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull in your parent's basement by yourself on a 19 inch monitor
what new media does do is dramatically alter the audience and purpose of old media. so newspapers will come to see the point where their income from online content will eclipse their income from print content. so then what is the purpose of newspapers without the actual newspaper?
one answer: trust
like the story summary suggests, user generated content sucks. in terms of quality and in terms of partisanship. so newspaper sites will still be the place people go for breaking news and truthful reporting. you can't beat a salaried professional news gathering organzation in terms of trust. nothing the internet can spew forth threatens that
the internet has merely created lots of partisan fiefdoms with an agenda and user venting. much of it rambling, illiterate, unhinged, and mostly useless. usless to readers, not those who vent: that's the psychological value of catharsis. that is, user generated content is usually more useful for whomever is commenting than anyone who reads the comment. this form of online content obviously isn't a threat to anything newspaper's do, merely a weird ecological tweak to how they fit into the media universe. the internet makes newspapers part of a loud room of noisy feedback, rather than the lonely ivory towers they used to be
and so the newspaper will morph into a less prestigious role in society, but it will never die, and will still be vital in a modified way
numbers were carried over the bering sea and down to mesoamerica? are these the same tribes you refered to in your original comment as without numbers? (snicker)
it's not conceivable to you that numbers were invented at various times by various cultures? if numbers were magically erased from human culture right now, it would be impossible for humankind to reinvent them?
and i take your silence on the light bulb topic as a stubborn man's way of acquiescing to a superior point. i'm sorry i had to be the one to dismantle the essential falsehoods of the cult of the innovator and shatter your illusions
welcome to reality. you previously referred to it as marketroid fiction;-P
the great thing about the internet is you really can't censor it. just ask the riaa. the methods mentioned here can be surmounted with encryption. yes, a wide open web can be destroyed by authoritarian governments. but communication can still occur, with a little extra effort
your glorious numbers were invented independently many times, by many cultures, ever hear of the olmecs, mayans, the aztecs? chinese tally marks? roman numerals versus sanskrit?
it is the entirety of putting an innovation to use and mass acceptance of the innovation that makes an innovation matter. what you call marketroid fiction is in fact reality
fundamental technological progress places a cutting edge of minds at the forefront of the next great leap forward. plenty of those minds make lots of false starts and hesitant steps. these sputtering mental forays are what invention and innovation is. it is common, typical, continuous, this process of invention. what is not continuous and typical is the execution of those fledgling ideas into workable products or ideas that are accepted en masse, and alter society forever. this is not invention or innovation thatg changes society and matters then, it is everything that comes after invention that matters: the engineering, finance, mass production or evangleization, and marketing. and it is those steps which forever alter history, not the lonely guy in a garage or shed
meanwhile you live and die by the church of the lone tinkerer as the absolute progenitor of progress. nonsense. inventors are a dime a dozen. here, allow me to dismantle your church of the inventor some more:
In addressing the question "Who invented the incandescent lamp?" historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel [1] list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Swan and Edison. They conclude that Edison's version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve and a high resistance lamp that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable. Another historian, Thomas Hughes, has attributed Edison's success to the fact that he invented an entire, integrated system of electric lighting. "The lamp was a small component in his system of electric lighting, and no more critical to its effective functioning than the Edison Jumbo generator, the Edison main and feeder, and the parallel-distribution system. Other inventors with generators and incandescent lamps, and with comparable ingenuity and excellence, have long been forgotten because their creators did not preside over their introduction in a system of lighting." [2] [3]
true inventors champion the identification of what is most important in the facts before them. truly, in the nature of the inventor in you, you can appreciate the fact that the inventor is a minor cog in the engine of progress. he is step abcd. there are many steps abcd that never proceed any further. it is the guy who executes lmnop and gets all the way to wxyz who is the only who really matters in the end
sorry, them's the facts of the reality you live in. i'm sorry reality clashes with your cult of the inventor. you may consider reality to be nothing but a marketroid fiction if coping with reality proves too painful for you if you so desire though
you just somehow believe that revelling in the minor mismatched details of the analogy is somehow valid. everyone is aware of the minor details you allude to, but most people filter out the minor discrepancies in order to see the larger themes. it's a common problem for people with asperger's and autism
that is, some people's minds are equipped with only a flashlight in a dark room. such people like yourself can only point at corners of the room. other people can turn on a light switch and illuminate the entire room. however, the mental strength of asperger's/ autism minds is that that bright flashlight illuminates fine details on a small subject matter, allowing for specialization in a certain mental topic that the average mind cannot achieve. but this strengh comes with the mental weakness of being unable to spot broad parallels and overarching themes and ideas that nonasperger's nonautism sufferers can grasp easily
the average mental skill of broad, but weak illumination is a fundamental need for social skills, and that is why asperger's / autism sufferers can excel at math and science oriented pursuits (pursuits which require a bright spotlight on fine details of a small area) but are unable to be socially adept, always feeling out of joint with what their peers are laughing at, alluding to, are interested in
you of course should feel free to poke holes in my large room/ small flashlight analogy;-)
it just so happened around the time you imagine the french hit a wall, another light brightened up across the atlantic. so its not a case of their light going out so much as it is a case of their light being outshone. the usa gobbled up the lions share of the glory in the 20th century
but i think you are right that much of french, and european, glory was cut off at the knees by the wars there starting with the crimean war up through world war ii, with the last one being certainly among the worst human decency devouring spectacles the planet has ever put on. and now it's the usa's turn to get mired in war after war, while the glory of china and india grows to take the spotlight and outshine the usa
Slashdot Mirror
taking advice on how to be funny from the unfunny is like ...
finish the quote from the original source, asshole xoxoxoxox
i just wonder at the point of criticizing the usa alone for what every country does, has ever done, and will always do
american?
american?
american?
american?
all of your complaints are valid in the context of bad HUMAN nature. they are invalid in the context of bad AMERICAN nature. what is the intellectual value in your mind of prosecuting the usa alone for crimes all of humanity is guilty of?
you need to be morally and intellectually honest. or you are just another useless pointless partisan. the world has enough of those and their tribal venom
to shape conflict into less arbitrary and deadly tactics. not prevent conflict. as gandhi implies, this is impossible. mankind will always live in conflict. but does he resport to bombs? or resort to airing his grievances in words and a court system? obviously the latter is better than the former, and the whole point of progress. so, in a perverse way, resorting to ideological blogs and propaganda is superior to real warfare, and a GOOD development, not a nefarious one
i would rather someone lie to me than kill me. so bring on the propaganda, from all directions. let it flow freely. beats suicide bombs and bombs from the sky
"blogs are a continuation of war by other means"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz#Cultural_References
a few spaniards got on some boats, and with some fancy new technology, subdued entire noble ancient civilizations in central and south america
technological progress was not fair to the aztec and incan nobility. you wonder what they thought when they looked upon the gun, the horse, the metal armor, the smallpox. well, if you work for the riaa or a major label, you know more of what it is like to be on the losing side of technological progress like perhaps no other class of people in the western hemisphere right now
so here's to you, music label suit
heres to your vanishing jobs, to the jobs of blacksmiths, to the jobs of chimney sweeps, to the jobs of telegraph operators, to the jobs of steam ship engineer
to the dustbin of history with all of it
please no banging on your coffin while we nail it shut. thanks
1. that the baseline human mind is satisfied with just one source of info. certainly, such people exist, but not all, or even most. most people want to hear a few sources. it's a healthy simple instinct most people develop as they grow up in various social settings with varying descriptions of the same events. its a simple human truth to learn: that not all people see the same things
2. that someone is hermetically sealed in a room with only one source of info. even in authoritarian countries, word gets around with text messages, gossip, etc
3. that someone thinks exactly what is presented to them. certainly it serves as a starting point, but you would be amazed at the various conclusions people deduce from the same facts
so i agree with you: there are people who believe everything they see, from only one source, and think exactly what is presented to them
but that's a tiny minority, in even the most authoritarian states with the most censored media
there was a time once when conservatives talked about the liberal media. this was in the clinton years when the liberals had a hold on the agenda. a conservative in 1994 would say pretty much exactly what you are saying. flashforward to 2004, and when conservatives have a hold on the agenda, the party line with liberals was the great evil of the conservative media
so its all bullshit, blaming the media. blaming the media is a scape goat. certainly there are liberal biased media sources. certainly there are conservaivte biased media sources. the point is, both biases in the media exist ALL THE TIME. but every one of us picks and chooses their bogeyman of choice in the media out there, and shapes a perception of some media "other" out there with some nebulous agenda manipulating impressionable minds. bullshit. look at the guy twiddling his moustache behind the curtain! this is paranoid schizophrenic bullshit
blaming the media for the conservative and liberal swings in the country gets cause and effect wrong. the body politic experiences an ideological sea change, and begins to choose the media sources that suits its purposes, not the other way around. i am saying the dominant media sources of the time is driven by the audience. it is NOT true that the media source feeds an ideology to an audience, the audience is simply given a menu of liberal and conservative media sources, and chooses the media bias it likes. the cause and effect is the reverse of what you are proposing
it is simply intellectual laziness and intellectual dishonesty to talk about the way the country is one way or the other is because of the media. it allows a scape goat for when an ideologue, conservative or liberal, sees the general population have an opinion different than their own, and rather than blame the general populace, which is distressing, they blame the media, because the media is a universal whipping boy and scape goat, and allows the ideologue to believe that deep down, the general populace is still with them
unfortunately blaming the media is simply not understanding how things really work. blame the general populace itself. it swings left, it swings right. and that fact scares the hell out of conservatives and liberals firmly entrenched on their particular side of the divide
compare news from a blog versus news from a newspaper. peg the amount of trust you should put the newspaper at in your mind. now peg the amount of trust you should put in the blog. i think you'll find you'll put more trust in the newspaper than the blog. now try to find a way to get news to you in a way more trustworthy than the newspaper. it doesn't exist
therefore, no matter how untrustworthy you find newspapers, for all the games of telephone you illustrate, you also have to agree there is no more trustworthy way of getting the news
so go ahead and poke holes in the trustworthiness of newspapers. in the end, you'll still be turning to them as the most trustworrhy source of information in the pile of untrustworthy sources before you
your criticism of the trustworthiness of newsreporting would have more validity if there were some magical method of newsreporting that was superior. such a method doesn't exist, so your criticism in the end is empty
but the damage done by blackwater international would still be done if blackwater didn't exist. it would in an alterate universe without corporations be done by a bunch of random self-motivated asshole soldiers of fortune. all blackwater international does it takes all those rats and puts them on one single more easily controllable and identifiable payroll
corporations are not a creator of evil in my mind. they are packagers of evil. which has some benefits in terms of control. some people believe that if we did away with corporations, a lot of the evil corporations do would disappear too. hardly! the evil you see corporations do is a reflection of simple human evil, not some magical aspect of human nature that exists solely when corporations are involved
unfortunately, not many of my comments are insightful, so with my batting average, you will have to refer to a parallel universe
there you will find that this comment contains something worthwhile reading. sorry
but i will completely alter your perception of me by saying i don't see them as quite as threatening as many do. they provide social stability and wealth, and for all of their abuses, they are manageable entities that consolidate a lot of control that would otherwise be difficult to control
in other words, a lot of corporate abuses are really just magnifications and distortions of essential human failures that would still be with us, even if all the corporations magically disappeared. a corporation to me is human lust and greed packaged into nice discrete packages for us to wield a stick at. and it's easier to manage a box full of rats than a bunch of rats scampering around on their own. that's how i view corporations: not creators of evil, but amalgamations of evil that would exist with or without corporations
if it's hard to relate to an "anecdote" you are in good company with everyone else who disregards the mistakes of history and their lessons
read up on the uss maine. if that doesn't strike you as eerily similar to WMDs in iraq, you are being intellectually dishonest
your "anecdotes" are perhaps better written as "antidotes". that many fail to take
if you insist on using the word illusion, can we ever have any better than this illusion? you seem to be pointing to the fundamental cracks in human communication. couples often have the same goals, and wind up fighting due to miscommunication. if they can't swing it, how can you expect a human organization to do any better?
i think you need to make peace with the fundamental failings of human communication. your "illusion" is just another way to say "miscommunication exists", and always will, REGARDLESS of malicious intent
and what you attribute to malicious intent, i attribute to accident. people are not so malicious. of course malicious intent DOES exist, people DO manipulate communication. but again, can you honestly expect us to do any better? how the heck do you identify subtle malicious intent in miscommunication, and actually get rid of it? make peace with it if it is not too egregious, as just the background noise of life that will always be with us no matter what
that all of the people, all of the time, have functioning bullshit detectors. or that is ever possible
random demagogues exist in every society, because they satisfy a portion of the audience. but they don't appeal to all of the audience, NOR can the audience be completely innoculated against the efforts of demagogues
so you have to make peace with the fact that a large portion of any human society is populated with people with permanently broken or nonfunctional bullshit detectors. and this will always be true, if you respect the notion of free will. which is a much greater thing to value than absolute adherence to some arbitrary bullshit detector standard
put your faith in the large, mostly silent majority of people who can sniff bullshit out when they hear it/ see it. they exist, they really do, and they are self-replicating in a society that values freedom of the press and freedom of expression. they're will is not always expressed unaltered by their government, but again, we live in an imperfect world. we can only approximate the higher standards we are discussing here. all we can do is try harder to approximate better
those are even more scarce on slashdot than thoughtful literate posts ;-)
;-P kind of like coca cola: there's no cocaine in coca cola today, but that's no reason to change the name: everyone trusts the brand. so in the future, "new york times" and "atlanta journal constitution" will merely be brand names associated with a certain level of trust, regardless of the actual media being used
replying to your numbers:
1. consolidation. it is inevitable. so while there might be 100,000 newspapers today (arbitrary) there will be 10,000 tomorrow, and 1,000 in a decade or two
2. yes: we are in the realm of the weirdness of the newspaper without the newspaper. but this is more of a semantic difference than a real world stumbling block to the evolution of newspapers. more broadly, television news and radio news are all under this kind of pressure as newspapers. i bring this up to show that today, cnn means "cable news network", but if cnn still exists in 2108, it won't be on cable. cnn in 2108 will merely mean "news brand of some trust" in the mind of listeners/ readers/ haptic esp device empathitors
3. i view it as a kind of segmentation and expansion of the mediaverse. today, our newspapers show breaking news, opinion, in depth reporting, etc. added to this function is the new one user feed back (well actually, i guess that's letters to the editor, so not so new after all). what will happen is that the single monolithic function of a newspaper will fragment into a million pieces, each piece the domain of some sort of specialist. like slashdot aggregates, perez hilton does gossip, politico does political ruminations, etc. and the all purpose newspaper will atrophy, until it is left with the one vital piece it still has a monopoly on in the emerging mediaverse: news reporting. facts on the ground, breaking events. blogs can't do that. or they can try to do that, and therefore turn into a newspaper in the process
4. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=504748&cid=22914300
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=504748&cid=22914250
vinyl still has a following, because there will be always be audiophiles who like analog media over digital media (wax cylinder is a form of analog recording like vinyl)
;-)
8-track is a form of magnetic media. and there will always be environments where recording magnetic media will make sense because of economic or space considerations
and clay tablets are just a form of writing directly to permanent hard substances. a "clay" (or rather stone) tablet will lie above you when you rest eternally 6 feet down. so that form of media is not going away either, literally
unbiased neutral media is NEVER possible. it's a theoretical ideal, not an actual real world achievable. all you can do is approximate the truth, come as close as humanly possible
and so what you call an illusion of trust i would relabel as an honest attempt at trust. while meanwhile, a lot fo the free-for-all stuff you find on the internet doesn't even try to be impartial. that's a HUGE difference
you unfairly place newspapers in the same category as outright propagandizers. a newspaper TRIES to be impartial. a propagandizer purposely tries NOT to be truthful. there's a really a big difference right there. people should appreciate that difference. because, in fact, propagandizers win when no one sees a difference between a propagandizer and a genuine news oultet. so in the name of fighting propaganda, you should try to recognize the difference
don't groups newspapers with propaganda outlets simply because it is impossible to be 100% neutral. all media exists on a gradient of bias, from 90% unbiased to 10% unbiased. simply because 100% unbiased can never exist in a world of fallible humans, that is no valid reason for you to group the 90% unbiased news source in with the 10% unbiased news source
misperception #1:
;-P
once upon a time, all media was unbiased and neutral. then fox news came along and made it into propaganda. really? go into wikipedia and type "yellow journalism". read up on the uss maine and why the usa went to war with spain in 1898. you think the manipulating of facts to start a war is a new invention? please! story as old as time. every regime that has ever existed has engaged in this. go further back in history, all the way to the printing press, and earlier: there never has been, and never will be, such a thing as fair and balanced media (pun intended). ever. in any country. in any era. that ever was or ever will be
why?
that gets us to misperception #2:
that a neutral unbiased media is even possible. it is impossible. the media is made by human beings. all human beings are biased in one way or another. everyone has an agenda. those who claim they are not biased, or actually fervently believe they are not biased, are in fact probably the most biased of all: blind to one's own nature
so what does one do in a world with bias everywhere? answer: they develop a good bullshit detector
and making peace with this fact of biased media is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. do you honestly believe it is a better world where everyone just took something written by a media mouthpiece as solid gold truth, and never questioned it? isn't it better to have a well-read populace who disbelieves and doubts everything? and how do you train such a populace? you throw bias at them from every monitor and printed word, and you train their mind like a muscle to develop an extremely strong and sophisticated bullshit detector
those who argue for censorship do so in the name of preventing the spreading of lies, from the right or the left. but when they do this, they actually show little faith in the general populace. they don't save the populace from themselves this way, they merely breed zombies and sheep. in the name of preventing lies, they create the environment for more lies. this is the true value of free speech: a darwinian competition of ideas. to let out all of it, all the bullshit, let it all be spoken. even the biggest lies and the most vile words. in this way, the general populace can decide for themselves, and you get a general populace that values critical thought. you never get critical thought in a society where unbiased media existed. in fact there is societies today where "unbiased" media exists: iran, china, russia, etc.: the places where freedoms are the least. and the people there, unfortunately, have very weakly developed bullshit detectors, and are therefore prone to the kind of pies manipulation and propaganda that makes your concerns over fox news look quaint. just look at china's one sided coverage of tibet: all they show is ethnic colonial han getting attacked. as if that is all that is going on and the tibetans aren't being attacked! propaganda. half-truth. beijing understands the idea very well
a world of biased media everywhere is actually SUPERIOR: it trains the minds of the general public to have a healthy bullshit meter. so while some people lament things like fox news, i, as a liberal in the deepest sense of the word liberal, am thankful for fox news. because fox news serves as a cautionary tale, an innoculation device. it weans people off propaganda, by being propaganda. fox news is a training device fro stronger minds to overcome. and for all those who believe fox news 100% and look no further for the "truth": do you honestly believe that in a world of "unbiased" media they would be flower children? no. a right winger is not made. it's like being gay. their minds are just made that way
no media ever dies
television was supposed to kill both radio and the movies. well, we don't see movie news reels anymore, and we don't see radio serials either, but you can't watch tv while driving to work, and no one wants to see indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull in your parent's basement by yourself on a 19 inch monitor
what new media does do is dramatically alter the audience and purpose of old media. so newspapers will come to see the point where their income from online content will eclipse their income from print content. so then what is the purpose of newspapers without the actual newspaper?
one answer: trust
like the story summary suggests, user generated content sucks. in terms of quality and in terms of partisanship. so newspaper sites will still be the place people go for breaking news and truthful reporting. you can't beat a salaried professional news gathering organzation in terms of trust. nothing the internet can spew forth threatens that
the internet has merely created lots of partisan fiefdoms with an agenda and user venting. much of it rambling, illiterate, unhinged, and mostly useless. usless to readers, not those who vent: that's the psychological value of catharsis. that is, user generated content is usually more useful for whomever is commenting than anyone who reads the comment. this form of online content obviously isn't a threat to anything newspaper's do, merely a weird ecological tweak to how they fit into the media universe. the internet makes newspapers part of a loud room of noisy feedback, rather than the lonely ivory towers they used to be
and so the newspaper will morph into a less prestigious role in society, but it will never die, and will still be vital in a modified way
"it is not conceivable that numbers were invented at various times by various cultures"
you must be trolling me, right?
numbers were carried over the bering sea and down to mesoamerica? are these the same tribes you refered to in your original comment as without numbers? (snicker)
;-P
it's not conceivable to you that numbers were invented at various times by various cultures? if numbers were magically erased from human culture right now, it would be impossible for humankind to reinvent them?
and i take your silence on the light bulb topic as a stubborn man's way of acquiescing to a superior point. i'm sorry i had to be the one to dismantle the essential falsehoods of the cult of the innovator and shatter your illusions
welcome to reality. you previously referred to it as marketroid fiction
the great thing about the internet is you really can't censor it. just ask the riaa. the methods mentioned here can be surmounted with encryption. yes, a wide open web can be destroyed by authoritarian governments. but communication can still occur, with a little extra effort
here, get some education before asserting the patently false (pun intended
it is the entirety of putting an innovation to use and mass acceptance of the innovation that makes an innovation matter. what you call marketroid fiction is in fact reality
fundamental technological progress places a cutting edge of minds at the forefront of the next great leap forward. plenty of those minds make lots of false starts and hesitant steps. these sputtering mental forays are what invention and innovation is. it is common, typical, continuous, this process of invention. what is not continuous and typical is the execution of those fledgling ideas into workable products or ideas that are accepted en masse, and alter society forever. this is not invention or innovation thatg changes society and matters then, it is everything that comes after invention that matters: the engineering, finance, mass production or evangleization, and marketing. and it is those steps which forever alter history, not the lonely guy in a garage or shed
meanwhile you live and die by the church of the lone tinkerer as the absolute progenitor of progress. nonsense. inventors are a dime a dozen. here, allow me to dismantle your church of the inventor some more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#History_of_the_light_bulb
true inventors champion the identification of what is most important in the facts before them. truly, in the nature of the inventor in you, you can appreciate the fact that the inventor is a minor cog in the engine of progress. he is step abcd. there are many steps abcd that never proceed any further. it is the guy who executes lmnop and gets all the way to wxyz who is the only who really matters in the end
sorry, them's the facts of the reality you live in. i'm sorry reality clashes with your cult of the inventor. you may consider reality to be nothing but a marketroid fiction if coping with reality proves too painful for you if you so desire though
you just somehow believe that revelling in the minor mismatched details of the analogy is somehow valid. everyone is aware of the minor details you allude to, but most people filter out the minor discrepancies in order to see the larger themes. it's a common problem for people with asperger's and autism
;-)
that is, some people's minds are equipped with only a flashlight in a dark room. such people like yourself can only point at corners of the room. other people can turn on a light switch and illuminate the entire room. however, the mental strength of asperger's/ autism minds is that that bright flashlight illuminates fine details on a small subject matter, allowing for specialization in a certain mental topic that the average mind cannot achieve. but this strengh comes with the mental weakness of being unable to spot broad parallels and overarching themes and ideas that nonasperger's nonautism sufferers can grasp easily
the average mental skill of broad, but weak illumination is a fundamental need for social skills, and that is why asperger's / autism sufferers can excel at math and science oriented pursuits (pursuits which require a bright spotlight on fine details of a small area) but are unable to be socially adept, always feeling out of joint with what their peers are laughing at, alluding to, are interested in
you of course should feel free to poke holes in my large room/ small flashlight analogy
it just so happened around the time you imagine the french hit a wall, another light brightened up across the atlantic. so its not a case of their light going out so much as it is a case of their light being outshone. the usa gobbled up the lions share of the glory in the 20th century
but i think you are right that much of french, and european, glory was cut off at the knees by the wars there starting with the crimean war up through world war ii, with the last one being certainly among the worst human decency devouring spectacles the planet has ever put on. and now it's the usa's turn to get mired in war after war, while the glory of china and india grows to take the spotlight and outshine the usa