LyrArc Article Gist
Peter Robinson of Uncommon Knowledge (Hoover Institution) interview with Robert Thomson, CEO News Corp. on March 29, 2014. Much of what Robinson has described in this interview comes out to be true. He says here in 2014 that anything Google touches it devalues. Thomson is saying that by aggregating content as an outsider this creates this condition of devaluing the content. Google and other social media companies are not creators of the content. The WSJ, NYT, BBC. Le Monde and others create the content. When Google and others like it acquire so much power over distribution of the content it creates a situation where distribution becomes vastly more important than the creation of the content. This is inimical, says Thomson, to creators and creation of the content. Hidden here is that this power is acquired by engineering it from the start. The distribution platforms are not regulated, and are not restricted by anti-monopoly laws, so that the technologies can be designed around products that give maximum power and revenue potential to distributors of content like Google. Content become almost an after thought- it is there simply to be exploited by the distributors of the content who invent the technologies or shape these technologies after acquiring them in a monopoly environment. Otner dangers posed by distributos of content becoming door keepers to "knowledge" in society are that they treat all content good and bad as the same. Some creators of content are also unwittingly adopting strategies that pose other dangers to society, to competition, to an educated public, including News Corp. News Corp strategy is to create affinity, to create communities for content. When actively done and pursued in excess by powerful creators of content such as New Corp. this leads to the fragmentation of civic society into groups not generated by honest discussion among civic minded people, but by revenue generating artificially created groups where the affinity is exploited by the creator of content as an outsider. This is inimical to society, education, honest discussion of civic minded people, and of democracy itself. ...
Peter Robinson of Uncommon Knowledge (Hoover Institution) interview with Robert Thomson, CEO News Corp. on March 29, 2014. Much of what Robinson has described in this interview comes out to be true. He says here in 2014 that anything Google touches it devalues. Thomson is saying that by aggregating content as an outsider this creates this condition of devaluing the content. Google and other social media companies are not creators of the content. The WSJ, NYT, BBC. Le Monde and others create the content. When Google and others like it acquire so much power over distribution of the content it creates a situation where distribution becomes vastly more important than the creation of the content. This is inimical, says Thomson, to creators and creation of the content. Hidden here is that this power is acquired by engineering it from the start. The distribution platforms are not regulated, and are not restricted by anti-monopoly laws, so that the technologies can be designed around products that give maximum power and revenue potential to distributors of content like Google. Content become almost an after thought- it is there simply to be exploited by the distributors of the content who invent the technologies or shape these technologies after acquiring them in a monopoly environment. Otner dangers posed by distributos of content becoming door keepers to "knowledge" in society are that they treat all content good and bad as the same. Some creators of content are also unwittingly adopting strategies that pose other dangers to society, to competition, to an educated public, including News Corp. News Corp strategy is to create affinity, to create communities for content. When actively done and pursued in excess by powerful creators of content such as New Corp. this leads to the fragmentation of civic society into groups not generated by honest discussion among civic minded people, but by revenue generating artificially created groups where the affinity is exploited by the creator of content as an outsider. This is inimical to society, education, honest discussion of civic minded people, and of democracy itself. ...
