A Quote by Katharine Viner
Facebook has become the richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms - shattering the public square into millions of personalised news feeds, shifting entire societies away from the open terrain of genuine debate and argument while they make billions from our valued attention.
Related Quotes
So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible.
As algorithms push humans out of the job market, wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of the tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms, creating unprecedented social and political inequality. Alternatively, the algorithms might themselves become the owners.
AIs are only as good as the data they are trained on. And while many of the tech giants working on AI, like Google and Facebook, have open-sourced some of their algorithms, they hold back most of their data.
I think that as poets, we can get away with stuff because we can ride on the melt of metaphor. We cover a lot of terrain psychically and temporally and linguistically via metaphor, and that can be a stand-in for an argument, whereas in prose, you have to make the argument, and you have to be convincing because the sequence must make sense in time and purpose.
Throughout history we have seen the tyranny of the powerful over the less powerful - think of the history of colonialism or of slavery - and the tragic mistakes made when important information was not "heard" or valued.
Google helps us sort the Internet by providing a sense of hierarchy to information. Facebook uses its algorithms and its intricate understanding of our social circles to filter the news we encounter. Amazon bestrides book publishing with its overwhelming hold on that market.
The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels... If we succeed, we create booming new industries, wealth, clean secure energy and maybe we prevent the greatest disaster so far in human history, saving millions of lives while improving billions more. If we fail, basically it's business as usual while things slowly get worse all around us.
History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.
Richard John Neuhaus, in his well-known book The Naked Public Square, tells us that in America, the public square has become openly hostile to religion.
Do not let anyone get away with the argument that tearing our country out of one of the most successful partnerships in our history is somehow a great act of patriotism. It is not.
People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention to yourself. Open source is a hedonic culture.
Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others.
Love is richest, most genuine, and most long lasting when you focus on being yourself and doing everything you can to make it possible for the other person to be him- or herself.
The most powerful argument of all for saving open space is economics; in most states, tourism is the number two industry.
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
Over time, each day has become another stretch on an endless pilgrimage road. The terrain of this sacred journey has become fluid and ever-shifting. Every step of the way is an arrival, but not a place to linger.
Related Authors
Ambrose Bierce Quotes
American
Journalist
Andy Rooney Quotes
American
Journalist
Ann Coulter Quotes
American
Journalist
Anna Quindlen Quotes
American
Journalist
Bill Vaughan Quotes
American
Journalist
Dave Barry Quotes
American
Journalist
Dennis Prager Quotes
American
Journalist
Erma Bombeck Quotes
American
Journalist
Fran Lebowitz Quotes
American
Journalist
George Will Quotes
American
Journalist
Glenn Beck Quotes
American
Journalist
Hunter S. Thompson Quotes
American
Journalist
Mignon McLaughlin Quotes
American
Journalist
Molly Ivins Quotes
American
Journalist
Rachel Maddow Quotes
American
Journalist
Walter Lippmann Quotes
American
Journalist