now we're getting cyberpunkhttps://twitter.com/Slate/status/800758951365251072 …
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the way he saw it, this was the start of the third epoch, the preceding two ushered in by 1) the invention of writing, 2) the printing press
writing broke communal oral tradition and replaced it with record-keeping and authoritative narration by the literate minority to the masses
only the few could produce texts, and the many depended on them to recite and interpret. this the frame (pre-V2 maybe) catholicism inhabits
the printing press led to mass literacy. this is the frame of protestantism, the idea it is for each man to read and interpret for himself
but after a brief spate of widely-accessable press (remember paine's common sense? very dangerous!) access tightened up
hence mass media as gatekeeper, arbiter of consensus reality. the few report, and the many receive
not that journalists were ever the elite, just as the egyptian scribes. they were the priestly class, weber's "new middle"
(also lawyers. remember the backwoods lawyer? used to be all you needed was the books and a good head. before credentialism ate the field)
the internet killed consensus reality. now anyone can trivially disseminate arbitrary text
but the platforms on which those texts are seen are controlled by the new priests, line programmers, which determine how information flows
this is what critics of "the facebook algorithm" et al are groping at. the many can create, the few craft the landscape that hosts creation
it's still early, remains to be seen if we can keep relatively open platforms (like twitter circa 2010; open in the unimpeded sense)
or if the space narrows, new gatekeepers secure hold. but that will be determined by programmers. (maybe lawmakers). rest along for the ride
barely related blog post from the weekend, on open source software & it's relations to code literacy, https://plus.google.com/113218107235105855584/posts/5TYCVuk6esm …
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