Beware the“.com”Bubble
By Jolie Baynes
In this new digital age news, and media consumers of all ages are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that comes at them every second of every day. What’s more, is these same consumers are not just news watchers, but newsmakers and have the power to recycle news and information which then become another individuals source of media. The information age has given too much to take in or even manage. So somewhere the solution became deligating content management to someone else, and somehow that someone is more than likely a computer.
Whether you know it or not somewhere there is an intelligent thing ( most likely a computer) processing your information, analyzing speech, perceiving something in a way that could be seen as human. In an article by Sebastian Auyanet and Melissa DiPento, they mentioned how according to quantitive futurist Amy Webb “ Future Today Institute 2017 Tech Trends Report, AI is simply “a branch of computer science in which computers are programmed to do things that normally require human intelligence.”
Things like content management are being left to AI and while t is convenient can this program really deliberate like a human. Artificially intelligent beings are taking over the way we as consumers and producers see information, get news, find facts, and share data. This beg’s the question of how will AI and bots like it affects our media culture today, and of the future?
In this regard, I’ll skip the cliche, and slightly paranoid theory of computers taking over the world. However, I will say that if we are not careful they’ll be filtering out lives more than they are now.
Through .com bubble filters, this bots already control what you see when you search something on google. Algorithms are blocking people from seeing information that could be enjoyable, useful, and quite possibly important to our everyday lives. Not to mention all social media, and news consumers have the right to see and share what they want; but what happens when a bot blocks us from seeing it. Overall I’d say we as a society in the digital and information age would be clever to be cautious.
