[Bobboau]

now Rictor I would think that you would welcome the decimination of power that the media represents from a few eleets and rich to the population in general, this fear of loss of the autocratic rule of a major facet of civiliseation into more of a direct democracy (wich you have on more than one occasion sung the praises of) seems very much in opposition to what I've come to expect from you.

[BlackDove]

Originally posted by Bobboau
AHHH! Googlezon is atacking!

[EtherShock]

If everyone has a voice, that probably will dilute the impact of the media. However, that voice will not only be by the rich and powerful anymore, and believe me, this is something  the ones in power fear, just look at the RIAA or Hollywood *****ing about people downloading movies and music or the production companies crying about TV torrents.

Moving away from the aristocracy that is the media to something democratic is a good thing though. Of course you'll have to filter out the crap, but that's just a small price for communication freedom that you will ultimately enjoy from this new model.

The flash says the exact opposite will happen, and what it looks like we're headed for: a mega media superconglomerate will control everything, and that is as scary or more than the deadliest of weapons. Information really is the most powerful weapon of all. If you control information, you control everything. You could say 2+2=5 if you wanted to, and 2+2 would = 5. Whoever controls the media, controls the world.

If we're not vigilant, it will happen. It's everyone's duty to ensure it doesn't.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by aldo_14


It can also be full of total bollocks, misguided priorities and out-and-out abuse (just look at the page edit histories for the Rangers/Celtic pages, for example).  It's good for giving a balanced view, albeit sometimes I wonder if it's too balanced - i.e. giving the dafter theories sympathetic treatment to avoid someone, somewhere *****ing (or, of course, editing it in).

You do have to wonder a bit about an encyclopedia that has more pages on Klingons than Portugal, after all.

[color=66ff00]Yeah, I took a look through the edits on both pages, just seems like a handful of idle ****s. The religious topics seem to follow suit with the exception that a good deal of the arguments there centre around an inability to come to the same conclusions.

As for the Klingon/Portugal point: until wikipedia becomes more mainstream the people that are editing it and adding to it are going to be those from a certain demograph.
[/color]

[Flipside]

The thing is that people in general have an inherent distrust of of anything they percieve to be 'externally controlled', particularly in the west where this kind of media would first arrive.

Most people can use the Internet, but not many people understand Bots or Algorhythms and will assume that there is some 'Dark Brotherhood' overseeing it all, we usually do. I'm not saying that won't be the case in a convoluted way, but much of the world is still too distrustful of media and of technology for this to really work in the timeframe suggested. If anything, the next generation is even less trustful of the Internet than mine, mainly thanks to the likes of RIAA and AOL, compaines like these are, ironically enough, a natural anethema to building up the trust required for people to share too much information about themselves on the Net. Together with the paranoia raised about virii and spyware (to a certain degree understandable, but of hype was used simply to sell Antivirus programs) I don't see this kind of total immersion coming about as eagerly or easily as the presentation suggests.

Edit : Googlezon is a stupid name, though Amagle isn't much of an improvement

[Anaz]

One thing that scares me about the idea of news-story-writing bots is that people can use it, and never have to see any fact or idea that they disagree with.

[mikhael]

They can do that already without intelligent news synthesis agents. They do it themselves already. I wasn't kidding about the rich thick curry of advertainment.

[Bobboau]

and what if I like opposieing viewpoints, the news bot will always search out stuff that I disagree with.