Morlock Elloi on Wed, 30 Jan 2019 14:37:03 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> No evidence of digital wrong-doing...


The three work on different protocol layers, going from top to low level (in OSI terms think of them as Application, Transport and Physical layers):

1. Voting for someone involves some "thinking", in the sense "Is A better for me/my village/guild than B?"

2. Mass media operates by displacing 1:1 human input/gossip with 1:many input, and is essential for creating group identity beyond the village (starting with Bible).

3. Social media, the latest entrant, works (the real work, not the veneer) below the perception level, by exploiting finite nature of wetware, somewhat similar to DoS. If you don't have access to data (you don't), there is no way to know how exactly it works.

There are interactions between the three, mostly one-way, but it's a mistake to consider them operating at the same or even remotely similar level. None of them displaces the other, but the lower ones change the ground for the higher ones.

On 1/30/19, 04:29, Felix Stalder wrote:
Repesentative democracy: institutional capture by special interests and
money necessary to run a political campaigns.

Mass media: small group of professional writers/speakers with narrow set
of opinions and often unacknowledged conflicts of interest.

Social Media: polarization of opinion due to the speed and brevity of
exchanges and the focus of the platforms on producing segmented
"engagement".

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