Platforms are not the open and egalitarian spaces they claim to be
Those who applaud social production and networked amateurism, the colorful cacophony that is the Internet, and the creative capacities of everyday people to produce entertaining and enlightening things online, are right to marvel. There is amazing inventiveness, boundless talent and ability, and overwhelming generosity on display. Where they go wrong is thinking that the Internet is an egalitarian, let alone revolutionary, platform for our self-expression and development, that being able to shout into the digital torrent is adequate for democracy.
Your example
The only morality of the algorithm is to optimise you as a consumer and in many cases you become the product. There are very few examples in human history of industries where people themselves become products and those are scary industries – slavery and the sex trade. And now we have social media.
Pixar former story artist Emma Coats tweeted en 2011 a series of “story basics”, guidelines that she learned from her more ...
The visionary producer Monroe Stahr is schooling a British novelist in the art of screenwriting: “Suppose you’re in your office ...
[...] true knowledge [...] is experiential. How do we explain the taste of sugar? Verbal descriptions do not give us the sensation. To know the taste, one must experience it. The philosophy of the arts is not meant to be mused over and intellectualized; it is meant to be experienced. Thus, inevitably, words will convey only part of the meaning.
Therefore, what purpose do we assign to new communication tools? Their most socially useful use would undoubtedly be to provide ...
