All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it. | | | | We're on these drugs. Most don't know it. They're shaping our lives and minds and we don't really know all the effects yet.
| | | | | | “All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.”
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| | rantnrave:// I dove right into the internet early. With reckless abandon. IRC. Email. The web. Amazon. CDNow. I commented. I put my credit card down. I accepted “cookies.” The benefit was clear. To connect. To entertain. To learn. Then the social nets came. AOL IM, FRIENDSTER, MYSPACE. Then FACEBOOK. Ioved it. I love TWITTER. It gives me a voice and a following. I love my iPHONE. Super helpful in managing my life and communications. My niece LILY was 18 months when she started to play with my phone. Basic mimicry. So I got her an iTOUCH. I was the proud techie uncle. All these things are true. But I'm really concerned now. Lily is buried in her screens. So is her brother. These platforms and devices were often created by people that didn’t know how to connect in the real world. To do no evil. To make the world smaller and to give everyone a voice. I believed that was the plan. I believed in it. There was an ethic. But commerce has its downsides. And arrogance always. I worry that they've lost the plot and drifted into uncharted territory with some scary results. Two of the biggest companies ever are Facebook and GOOGLE. They make almost all their money via advertising and they get there by engagement. They use some clever and some very cynical tactics to get us there. A/B testing. Machine learning. Notifications. Algorithms. Manipulations. All to get your time and money. It reminds me of the count room scene in CASINO. There’s a lot of talk lately about the downsides of these great innovations: Mental health, political fears, societal divisions, bullying and more. These are not new arguments. They are as old as the printing press and brought up again with radio, phones, and TV. As TYLER COWEN recently wrote: "Would You Blame the Phone for Russian Interference?" But the velocity of information dissemination is on another level. The anxiety and venom on tilt too. We discussed it on Twitter. Yes it's our responsibility to filter what we read and find counter balances to get to the truth. But should the platform help? What responsibility do these platforms and their founders think they have to the public? They say they don't want to get involved with what we see. That's B.S. The algorithm already does that. And it's cynical. Giving us what we’ve already “asked for.” That means we clicked on something. Preying on anxieties and prurient interests. No different than local TV news or your local tabloid but exponentially faster and more information. The metrics for success? Daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), time spent per session. Revenue. What you don't see in the metrics: empathy, truth, appreciation, usefulness, helpfulness, or health. We need ethicists, psychologists, ombudsmen and outsiders to help shape and ask questions. They are often not welcome. I’ve reached out a few times. Some employees have disdain for anyone they deem not smart enough to understand their tech. The early response from leaders are disturbing. ZUCKERBERG scoffed at election interference. SANDBERG didn't adequately address. And I worry that most just don't have that gene to be self-aware about the issues. Not everything is a math problem. And people that don't code can also be smart. Yes, these concerns are not new. But they do go against the perceived charter and ethics we thought they stood for. I see all the upsides of the innovations. I'm grateful for them. Yet, I know I'm complicit with them and responsible for myself at the same time. But this isn't a drug deal done over phone lines. The platforms actively engage in tactics that treat the audience like dogs in a Pavlovian study. Making money off of false and incendiary content which is affecting our democracy and society. And “God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.” The irony that these platforms were built to bring us closer together but may be tearing us apart is not lost on me. They allow for infinitely deep holes with like minds that rarely crossover to others for counter ideas. They've amassed data. Data they think that represents our psyche. And many attributes do. But it's not us. We're more than that. More than what we clicked on or liked. The same minds that were smart and single-minded enough to make these innovations are ill suited to troubleshoot the unprecedented effects. As former Facebook president SEAN PARKER recently said: “You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology ... [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway." Why did he allow it? I don't know the answers. I'm digging and asking questions. Hoping the leaders care enough to combat. We take a hard and sobering look at a subject that we should all be concerned with: "The Downside of Social Media"... Happy Birthday to ROB FINKELMAN, JEFF DACHIS, JENNI CARLSON ARIANA URBONT, and CASEY POTENZONE. Belated to RACHEL ZALIS, KATIA BEAUCHAMP, JEREMY WENOKUR, PETER BARON, BILL WERDE, JOHN SCHWARTZ, JULIE ALEXANDRIA MILLER, ADAM LILLING, and BRAD ELDERS. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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| Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major platforms helped us to connect, entertain and learn. The benefits have been obvious. But now, so are the dangers. Engagement and revenue over well-being? Are we addicted? Election influence. Fake news. Bullying bots. Treating users like Pavlovian dogs. Do we understand the effects? Do the platforms' founders? | | |
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| NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is in a bitter battle few saw coming, led by Jerry Jones, the league's most opinionated and powerful owner. Nobody knows how this will end. | | |
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| How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist-and how might he be stopped? | | |
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| He was fired from Google for arguing that men may be more suited to working in tech than women. Now James Damore opens up about his regrets - and how autism may have shaped his experience of the world | | |
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| Inside the web of conspiracy theorists, Russian operatives, Trump campaigners and Twitter bots who manufactured the 'news' that Hillary Clinton ran a pizza-restaurant child-sex ring | | |
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| The guitarist, who died yesterday at the age of sixty-four, was the soul of the seminal rock band, its leader on and off the stage. | | |
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| Bryan Johnson's insanely ambitious dream to create a "neuroprosthesis," or a brain-computer interface, would allow humans to “coevolve” with artificial intelligence and even unlock the secrets of telepathy. | | |
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| Rebecca Traister on the inevitable blowback, the Shitty Media Men list, and the Bill Clinton reckoning. | | |
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| Shipping costs have been a pain in the ass throughout history -- just ask George Washington. | | |
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| Azzedine Alaïa was a true master of fashion, creating mesmerizing clothes that sculpted and celebrated the female form. Known for intimate gatherings at his atelier and steadfast independence from the fashion system, his clients and friends remained so for life. To the industry and the women who wore Alaïa, he brought a sense of empowerment—and pure joy. | | |
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| West Houston’s Energy Corridor was hit with a wall of water to avoid a catastrophic reservoir failure. | | |
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| An on-the-ground investigation reveals that the U.S.-led battle against ISIS - hailed as the most precise air campaign in history - is killing far more Iraqi civilians than the coalition has acknowledged. | | |
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| The newspaper created a platform to tackle its own challenges. Then, with Amazon-like spirit, it realized there was a business in helping other publishers do the same. | | |
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| At least five people, including one past speaker, reported being harassed or groped by attendees at Vancouver conference | | |
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| The actress and entrepreneur reveals her grand ambitions for Goop on the latest episode of Inside the Hive. | | |
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| The New York Times published its exposé on Harvey Weinstein on October 5, and in the not-quite six weeks since its publication, long-buried bombs have been exploding throughout the entertainment industry, often in unpredictable fashion. | | |
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| The media industry is suddenly mulling a flurry of huge deals. "In this case," the founder of an M&A advisory firm says, "it's motivated by fear, not greed." | | |
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| A new AI era is upon us. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is leading the charge. | | |
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| Cities that were at the forefront of limiting their own participation in aggressive federal immigration enforcement are now expanding the scope of their work: Protecting their residents from data-collection and surveillance, too. | | |
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| From "Stranger Things'" "Dungeons & Dragons" obsession to the YouTube and Twitch players becoming online celebrities, RPGs are now public entertainment. | | |
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