Linux Flash going to be limited to Chrome

[Thomas Milne]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:46 PM, Andrej Marjan <andrej-igvx78u1SeH3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:40 PM, Thomas Milne <thomas.bruce.milne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The first comment on that page describes what I've found recently,
>> Twitter is often a much better news source than Google, though it
>> takes some time and effort to get to that point, and obviously there's
>> still a danger you can build and even more restrictive bubble. But
>> that's true with any medium, it takes extra effort to seek out the
>> information that is not 'fit to print'. It's not like the Internet is
>> doing anything different than TV, newspapers, and magazines have
>> always done. It's all about advertising and PR.
>
>
> It's very different: it's targeting you as an individual. Nobody else sees
> what you see.

Well, I suppose the Internet is making it easier to limit your
individual horizon, but I don't see it as a qualitative difference.
The overall tendency has always been to feed the consumer the news
that is most unoffensive to them personally and least likely to
subvert their willingness to keep their mouth shut and do their job.
It's always been about obedience, only the medium has changed.

In any case, I would challenge anyone to find a demographically
significant number of people that believe anything radically different
from what's served up by their local nightly news. I don't see the
'filter bubble' making things much worse. If they could get worse.

For my second book recommendation of the night: Manufacturing Consent
(Noam Chomsky) is another necessary read.

> While mass media have fostered the creation of publics in the past (every
> member of the audience sees and responds to the same stories and concerns),

Can you give me an example of a public that was fostered by the mass
media? So far as I've ever seen, publics have been created by
resistance, whereas the mass media has always been a servant of power,
with only minor, anecdotal exceptions. Mass media is almost by
definition propaganda. Just because something is a shared experience
doesn't make it more real.

Maybe we have a different definition of 'publics'.

> the "filter bubble" effect could lead to destroying publics by isolating
> every individual from every other individual.

People are already vastly alienated from each other. All you have to
do is drive on the 401 to see that :)

I'm not discounting the damage potential of what the advertisers are
doing to the Internet, but the tendency to nostalgia about some
mythical past golden age of truth and togetherness in the mass media
is just as vexing.

> As for Google News, I've never liked it - the results were always
> uninteresting and poor quality IMHO.
>

Well, without knowing what you expect from it I can't comment on that,
but personally all I ever wanted from Google was the standard 'Top
Stories' that would be on the front page of any traditional newspaper
like the NYT or The Guardian or the Toronto Star.  It certainly
fulfils that role quite well.

-- 
Thomas Milne
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