Silicon Valley and the Butterflies
September 24, 2017
I read “The Tide Is Starting to Turn Against the World’s Digital Giants.” The idea is that those butterfly wings in Brazil can whip up Irma in Miami. Maybe? Maybe not? “Real” journalists have been paddling their canoes away from a whirlpool for decades.
Their efforts, like those sucked into the digital maws of the evil “Internet” have not gone well. The Guardian newspaper, itself whipped by one digital transformation after another, wants the old order restored. The idea is that “real” journalists and other “intermediaries” were gatekeepers. Now the distributed technologies have replaced the “old” gatekeepers with “new” gatekeepers. Oh, the “real” journalists sign, “We want to be Facebook. We were you know.”
The write up explains that the information satans are about to get their comeuppance. About time, I think the write up suggests.
I noted these comments in the “real” news write up:
[a] Multimillion fines are just the start for Facebook and Google, as the world comes to realize how political big tech has become [a piñata? Satan’s right hand? the destroyer of “real” news? Sentence fragments invite completion even when they appear in the Guardian newspaper]
[b] What’s more interesting are various straws in the wind that show how digital behemoths are losing their shine. Many of these relate to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and to the dawning of a realization that Google and Facebook in particular may have played some role in these political earthquakes.
[c] What we’ve come to understand over the last two years is that, to coin a slogan, the technical is political.
I find it interesting that the intellectual touchstone for the write up is not the history book but Buzzfeed. Yep, Buzzfeed, a love child of the Guardian in spirit perhaps?
Ah, “real” journalism. Bashing successful companies is effective with a digital information service as one’s inspiration.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2017
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