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Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. An article may be the top story

Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. An article may be the top story of the day, but that doesn't mean it is important or relevant to me. Clearly there is a "news cycle" and every day there must be some top story. The reader is not compelled to pay heed. The discriminating reader does not perceive a newspaper to be some distilled briefing of matters important to them personally. As with anything else, you must research your news if you hope to understand it, and you must seek out the truly pertinent things. I truly fear that the research culture fostered by Google searches, etc. is greatly damaging our own ability to parse sources. It is a wonderful convenience to have indexing machines working in concert with query engines, allowing the researcher to skip the 300pp of drivel to unearth some crucial paragraph by asking the question in their own words. It troubles me greatly that the solution always is to find a better indexing engine or aggregator (or sharpen one's skills with the software), rather than refining one's own ability to parse sources. Yes, these engines expose an impossible amount of information, and this is tremendously valuable technology. It will never be a full substitute for the pain of manual research.

harlanlewis 14y ago
We have a real problem if the masochistic few who have historically embraced hard questions by parsing original sources either choose not to or never discover their interest when regularly presented with an easy way out. Can the self-interested pursuit of real knowledge & understanding exist in a world of algorithmically generated bite-sized morsels? I believe it can. People have bemoaned society's advancements negatively impacting the dissemination of information to a thoughtful populace since before paper boys shouted headlines from corners. It happened with radio, it happened with television, it happened with dotcom portals. Smart people aren't so easily distracted from learning. The pain of manual research means most people don't bother to do it. Improved indexers, aggregators, and summarizers improve access to those with attention which only affords the surface.
late2part 14y ago
I think you covered 99% of America here: "Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration."
sageikosa 14y ago
Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of "knowledge" by schedule. The alternatives are to become "knowledge" rebels, which often means not just bucking the establishment, but one's peer groups as well, whom you can't escape in mandatory educational institutions. Real education begins when mandatory learning ends.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of "knowledge" by schedule. WTF? Did I step into an Alex Jones site by mistake here? checks URL Guess not. Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better than the alternative. Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone. Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the marks of someone who should not be taken seriously.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    > Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the marks of someone who should not be taken seriously. Dropping the critical context of "mandatory" and "public"...hard to take that seriously. > Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better than the alternative. What is the alternative again? "Non-mandatory" education, "non-public" education, or simply no education? Since the context was already dropped, the uncareful reader may be lead (like a student) down the wrong track of assuming the original poster (vis-a-vis me) doesn't like education. If you can accept that education can be non-mandatory and/or non-public, then the educated reader can agree that education is still a good. > Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone. I firmly believe being educated is important to each individual, which is why leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and self-serving bureaucracy is an uneducated leap of faith. The socialization aspect of mandatory public education is the goal of said education, it isn't to make the individual better, it is to make a person that the rest of society can keep in formation. That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to predetermined stories.
Millennium 14y ago
> Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. Is this really so flawed, at least in aggregate? Large parts of our society judge people by their awareness of these wider events over which they have no control, and by the value judgments they make concerning those events. When this is what it takes to be considered a good person, people will line up to do it: passively waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration, just as you describe.

harlanlewis 14y ago

We have a real problem if the masochistic few who have historically embraced hard questions by parsing original sources either choose not to or never discover their interest when regularly presented with an easy way out. Can the self-interested pursuit of real knowledge & understanding exist in a world of algorithmically generated bite-sized morsels? I believe it can. People have bemoaned society's advancements negatively impacting the dissemination of information to a thoughtful populace since before paper boys shouted headlines from corners. It happened with radio, it happened with television, it happened with dotcom portals. Smart people aren't so easily distracted from learning. The pain of manual research means most people don't bother to do it. Improved indexers, aggregators, and summarizers improve access to those with attention which only affords the surface.

late2part 14y ago

I think you covered 99% of America here: "Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration."

sageikosa 14y ago

Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of "knowledge" by schedule. The alternatives are to become "knowledge" rebels, which often means not just bucking the establishment, but one's peer groups as well, whom you can't escape in mandatory educational institutions. Real education begins when mandatory learning ends.

Karunamon 14y ago
>Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of "knowledge" by schedule. WTF? Did I step into an Alex Jones site by mistake here? checks URL Guess not. Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better than the alternative. Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone. Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the marks of someone who should not be taken seriously.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  > Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the marks of someone who should not be taken seriously. Dropping the critical context of "mandatory" and "public"...hard to take that seriously. > Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better than the alternative. What is the alternative again? "Non-mandatory" education, "non-public" education, or simply no education? Since the context was already dropped, the uncareful reader may be lead (like a student) down the wrong track of assuming the original poster (vis-a-vis me) doesn't like education. If you can accept that education can be non-mandatory and/or non-public, then the educated reader can agree that education is still a good. > Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone. I firmly believe being educated is important to each individual, which is why leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and self-serving bureaucracy is an uneducated leap of faith. The socialization aspect of mandatory public education is the goal of said education, it isn't to make the individual better, it is to make a person that the rest of society can keep in formation. That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to predetermined stories.

Millennium 14y ago

> Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. Is this really so flawed, at least in aggregate? Large parts of our society judge people by their awareness of these wider events over which they have no control, and by the value judgments they make concerning those events. When this is what it takes to be considered a good person, people will line up to do it: passively waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration, just as you describe.