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I'm Lauren Rae Orsini, a graduate student, journalist, infographic designer, anime convention reporter, and documentarian. Welcome.
“Googlezon” and other impossibilities
Filed Under Future of News
Since we’re easing into 2010, this is an opportune time to share a short video that one of my professors shared last semester: Epic 2014. Framed as a “future history of media,” this clip by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson shares one theory for how the internet might influence the fate of the media, including a very important merger predicted to happen in this upcoming year. I’ve embedded the video from Youtube which, despite being labeled Epic 2015, is the same clip as on the original site:
Could this really happen? I don’t think so. Here’s my reasoning:
- The fourth estate will fight back. This video’s main premise relies on the traditional news media not offering the least bit of resistance. So far, from dot coms to blogging, traditional news has kept up with every curve the internet has thrown at it. Why would it stop in 2010?
- News consumers will protest. Sure, people love to indulge in lighter news like celebrity gossip. But after a while, it’ll give people the same feeling as when they’ve eaten too much candy and not enough vegetables. If the news becomes so watered down that all we get is a sensationalized mess, people are intelligent enough that they will demand quality.
- It’d be against the law. Seriously, if Amazon and Google teamed up and became the only news source in the world, that would constitute a monopoly. It’d be completely illegal. The Supreme Court would not stand by that union if the New York Times brought a case against it.
However, these are just my opinions. After your viewing, do you agree with the clip that the traditional media could be dead within the next five years?
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12 Responses to ““Googlezon” and other impossibilities”
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What a protectionist viewpoint! News customers are *loving* the move away from traditional media, because it finally means we don’t have to stand for Rupert Murdoch’s well-known biases. Traditional news didn’t even stand up well to the introduction of The Daily Show, and now traditional news’ attempt at blogging is pathetic at best. The *real* blogs– like HuffPo, DailyKos, etc.– are where the news happens these days, often days if not weeks ahead of mainstream media. The fourth estate *is* fighting back– and has already lost.
As for it being against the law– this just shows a real lack of understanding about *both* the EPIC 2014 video, *and* antitrust law. EPIC doesn’t postulate that Google will crush all competition (as Murdoch has openly stated is *his* goal), EPIC just postulates that Google will be the underlying information grid for *everyone* to post news on. You know, like the Internet.
I find some parts of that clip absolutely ridiculous. For example Googlezon is a terrible name and judging my googles past record, they would just keep the name. Youtube isn’t Googletube for example…
Anyway I think your right about the reasons why this can’t happen, or at least why it won’t happen the way this clip describes.
However I don’t think that the fact that it’s against the law would be an issue. It’s not against the law to be a monopoly, it’s against the law to commit business practices which create unfair competitive pressures on your competitors to run them out of business. I could see this going either way though, as “Googlezon’s” service might constitute a violation of anti-trust laws, or it might not if it’s not setting out to run other news mediums out of business. This is why anti-trust laws are so tricky.
Your right that news consumers will protest eventually. I find that the public isn’t given enough credit a lot of the time… there are plenty of people who would care or would notice, and just as many who wouldn’t but it only takes a handful of people drawing attention to something to make a difference.
“If the news becomes so watered down that all we get is a sensationalized mess, people are intelligent enough that they will demand quality.”
This actually reminds me of whats happening right now. People are distrustful of the news because they feel it’s lost it’s quality or become to sensationalist, or too biased. Some of which is right and some of it’s perceived but not real, but over all people are starting to demand more quality from network news.
Another reason why this wont happen anytime soon is that it would take too much computing power to generate a new story on the fly for every user. Where not quite there yet.
Well said Brendan, but I’m not ready to back down just yet! If all our news came from everyone’s postings on something like Google Grid, “like the Internet,” how would we be able to determine which facts are and are not true? We already have that problem with the Internet, and if I’m not mistaken, there hasn’t been an end-all solution to that either. The Googlezon video suggests editors, but just think about how much information this would be to deal with. And, probably, every editor would be editing based on his or her own views.
I’m not saying that the traditional news model is way better than the concept put forward in this video, just that I don’t think this option would be any better (as the video agrees).
What I’m interested in hearing about, Brendan, is what you think the future of news will be.
Well, dearest admin, filtering is just a reputation problem. About which I’ve written extensively .
But beyond that, editors *already* edit based on their own views; look at Fox. Or the Washington Times, if you prefer print. The difference is that on the Internet, there isn’t a monopolistic source of information; Google has *never* sought to control sources, just to give you a faster way to access them.
I’m with Brendan. How did we ever know that what the mainstream media said was true?
There is no end-all solution to factual accuracy. There is only healthy skepticism, combined with filters for the sources that you trust (and even there trust in specifics should always be tentative).
@Adam and Brendan.
We don’t know that what the mainstream media said was or is true. However we do know that someone is going to be held accountable if it isn’t and therefor the economic incentive is aligned with being truthful.This doesn’t mean they can’t be biased or interpret the truth in many different ways they just have to be grounded in reality.
We don’t know that what the mainstream media said was or is true. However we do know that someone is going to be held accountable if it isn’t
Whoa whoa whoa, back up there. How do we know that?
I would argue that Journalist are in the critical eye of the public more then any other profession. I f-up my job once it could cost the government significantly, but I wouldn’t be likely to lose my job over it. A journalist f’s up their job and they might as well clean out their cubical because no one is going to take them seriously again. A journalist who puts something to press that isn’t factually sound and then gets caught, (which is likely to happen because again they are in the public eye) usually has to find a new field of work.
I mean after all you are so critical of journalist… yet you don’t hold them accountable? Your doing it right now because of how skeptical you are. I doubt your nearly as critical of nearly all other professions as you are of journalism. If the paper prints something totally egregious are you likely to read that paper again if they don’t acknowledge the error and correct it? Judging by your criticism probably not, so it’s in the best interest of the paper if they want to keep your and a majority of the publics interest to hold themselves accountable.
Well I try and maintain a healthy level of skepticism about anything that I read, for one thing.
But for another, I don’t share your assessment that journalists are in the “critical eye” of the public and that it somehow holds them accountable. It might hold them accountable today, when the web provides a venue for which those critical eyes can translate into critical words in a public manner.
But I have heard many stories–and granted it’s totally anecdotal–about people who have seen stories covered in subjects they are familiar with and been terribly disappointed, making them skeptical of how accurate stories are in areas that they aren’t skeptical of. But how does that one person’s skepticism translate into a journalist losing a job or something?
To be clear, my argument is not that journalists and old media are inaccurate. My argument is that we have no more means of knowing whether or not they’re accurate than we do for new media.
(And this discussion inspired me to write a post, if you’re interested
)
I’ve read plenty of stories recently about the economy and have been very disappointed at the level of discourse, and the level of understanding presented in the news. However thats not to say that the stories are inaccurate or falsified just not at a level of discourse that I having a B.S. in economics would like to see. The news is going to get things wrong sometimes, nothing can be right 100% of the time, however the New York Times can’t publish an article about the invasion of Pakistan which didn’t happen, but a blogger, or a series of bloggers or anyone on the internet can. They can make fake videos and or images… and fool a great many people. Maybe go so far as to make it on “googlezon” if it gets enough hits. Maybe they would do it to make a point about the dangerous situation or something but they don’t have to be accountable for what they post. Their revenue isn’t tied to keeping you trusting the quality of their reporting, it’s tied to attracting attention to themselves.
This has happened with various video bloggers and personal blogs, where the blogs were faked, and the personalities were just actors making up stories to attract attention and donations. This hasn’t happened as dramatically with news yet, but it’s not inconceivable, and arguably more likely when if your only source of news is an internet server running an aggregation algorithm based on popularity. When you take human oversight out of the situation which generally the internet does (it removes all the middle men who would ordinarily have to put their name on something, and stand behind it) it becomes much easier to pass opinion as fact or worse falsify the situation entirely.
Also don’t discount the ability for people to do research before the internet, the internet just makes it easer, but people have had a healthy skepticism about “the man” all the way back to the Greeks, and news papers have always been under fire.
What I mean about accountability in the public eye is, if i call President Obama, President Osama on my blog by mistake it’s not a big deal. It might actually be looked at as a strong political stance and generate me hits. If Lauren writes that in a article in the Washington Post… it’s a huge deal and would probably cost her editor his job.
So glad that this post sparked so much debate. Look forward to a follow up post soon!
[...] glad my last post on Googlezon generated such fervor. Everyone had some very good points on the issue, some which I do agree with. [...]