Re: <nettime> No evidence of digital wrong-doing...

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

The three work on different protocol layers, going from top to low level 
(in OSI terms think of them as Application, Transport and Physical layers):

1. Voting for someone involves some "thinking", in the sense "Is A 
better for me/my village/guild than B?"

2. Mass media operates by displacing 1:1 human input/gossip with 1:many 
input, and is essential for creating group identity beyond the village 
(starting with Bible).

3. Social media, the latest entrant, works (the real work, not the 
veneer) below the perception level, by exploiting finite nature of 
wetware, somewhat similar to DoS. If you don't have access to data (you 
don't), there is no way to know how exactly it works.

There are interactions between the three, mostly one-way, but it's a 
mistake to consider them operating at the same or even remotely similar 
level. None of them displaces the other, but the lower ones change the 
ground for the higher ones.

On 1/30/19, 04:29, Felix Stalder wrote:
> Repesentative democracy: institutional capture by special interests and
> money necessary to run a political campaigns.
>
> Mass media: small group of professional writers/speakers with narrow set
> of opinions and often unacknowledged conflicts of interest.
>
> Social Media: polarization of opinion due to the speed and brevity of
> exchanges and the focus of the platforms on producing segmented
> "engagement".

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