Brave New World

The Facebook article reminds me of an incident that happened with my cousin’s daughter. On the first day of school my cousin posted a picture of her daughter, and then that photo got a lot of likes. Apparently she told her daughter who was surprised at how many likes it got, so then her daughter wanted her to post a picture of her going to school the next several days. At the time I knew I was probably not going to like her daughter’s picture everyday, just because I knew I wouldn’t be logging into FB that often, and I felt a tad guilty, like would I be contributing to my cousin’s daughter not feeling as good about herself if I didn’t log on and like her daughter’s picture everyday?

The analytics article suggest that it can start to seem that whatever article gets the most traffic for the longest amount of time is a success. If that ever does become the standard, that means that popularity determines what is published. That has already happened in some ways such as when the Associated Press cut other types of reporters for more entertainment reporters. Or, closer to home, the Dallas Morning News in February put a story about a mother in a car accident who confronted the man who stole her van with her child inside on the front page because it was popular; this was a change in thought and occurred because of new leadership. Is it good or bad? I don’t know. I guess it depends on what other story got bumped, and if readers who were wanting to read about the story would have bought the paper and been disappointed because the story was hard to find.

If what the journalist who used to be a marketer says is true, then two things do suggest a brave new world: that data warehousers and advertisers are the news industry’s only path to survival in the 21^st century; and that surveillance over time CREATES a person’s tastes – wow!

While some would say that digital culture should eliminate social biases, the articles about test preps companies charging more by race and how bias creeps into computer programs such as Flickr suggest otherwise, and is not surprising to me. Humans program these systems so human shortcomings will also be part of digital culture.