[Sigia-l] On Evangelism, and How it Affects Enterprise

[Listera]

"Andrew McNaughton" wrote:

> Google functions purely as an aggregator of news

No, it's not a "pure aggregator" of news. Plucky or NetNewsWire is a "pure
aggregator," in that they just collate the top xx number of news item in
chronological order from given sites. Google, the search engine, is not a
pure indexer, either. Like GoogleNews, it makes certain judgments on what
goes into the results, whether we like the algorithm or not.

> and the increase in volume and reduction of human input leads to a greater
> homogenization. This is already a distrubing trend in the media, particularly
> in the larger media organisations.

This may or may not be so. I don't think we know for sure, yet.
  
> It will if human editors uniformly do so.  Some proportion of human
> editors will pick this up as a central issue.  Google never will.

I imagine this would have been pretty self evident to anyone. Stories about
the Knicks are centrally important to me and, I'm sure, to a million New
York basketball fans too. I don't expect them to make the GoogleNews. Is
Knicks intellectually equivalent to, say, nuclear tests in news
"importance"? I don't want that decision made for me by some sheep farmer in
New Zeeland or an editor in Ohio, just as you don't want the former decision
made for you by GoogleNews.

Now, if all you're saying is, GoogleNews is for mass consumption: well,
that's not news. :-)

> My point is that google's current model reinforces this process, and my hope
> and belief is that a different approach to the same problem could function as
> a challenge to this homogenisation of media.

I just don't see how a mass consumption tool could possibly make that
happen. This is a serious issue but GoogleNews is neither the problem nor
the solution to it.
  
> Intelligence and values are particular to individuals.  We don't all have
> the same values, and we don't all think the same thoughts.

This has been a "problem" for several millennia. ;-)

> The sum is considerably less than the parts here, reducing a broad diversity
> to a relatively limited range.

The fact that GoogleNews may introduce people to sources of news they would
never have stumbled upon by themselves is a positive.

> Reading the same views repeatedly rather than a range of views does not enrich
> the flow of information we recieve, or our ability to make sense of what is
> going on in the world.

There's no law that forces anyone to read GoogleNews. There's less choice in
people being able to choose their own OS.

My local-town newspaper happens to be the New York Times, superior in every
way to any newspaper in Arkansas or Alabama, except for local news there.
Yet people also subscribe to NYT or WSJ in those places too. Think of
GoogleNews that way. I have stopped watching the 6:30 PM "national" network
TV news for about 5 years now. And I am excited about GoogleNews. Especially
for the possibilities it signals.

Best,

Ziya