I don’t think cutting my mass media consumption would make me blind to trends. For example, the big political trend these days is advocated for on the homepage of a webcomic I read three times per week, graffitied twice on the path from my house to the nearest grocery store and displayed in giant bold sans-serif on Amazon’s AWS sign-in page. Two of my immediate family members actively participate as leaders in the streets and hundreds of protesters marched through my neighborhood while I was working out in the park. When the city police repeatedly teargassed the protesters I received a series of emergency curfew notifications on my phone from the city government. Such trends are hard to miss.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
If I had trusted mass media then I would have under-prepared for COVID-19 instead of starting a company to mass produce preventative equipment the day the virus was discovered in my country. I even ordered masks many weeks before the virus was discovered in the USA. This all happened months into a period where I had stopped following the news.
That said, I absolutely agree that there are no good tools for aggregation. I might reconsider the value of news if someone could build a good AI to filter it for me.
I don’t think cutting my mass media consumption would make me blind to trends. For example, the big political trend these days is advocated for on the homepage of a webcomic I read three times per week, graffitied twice on the path from my house to the nearest grocery store and displayed in giant bold sans-serif on Amazon’s AWS sign-in page. Two of my immediate family members actively participate as leaders in the streets and hundreds of protesters marched through my neighborhood while I was working out in the park. When the city police repeatedly teargassed the protesters I received a series of emergency curfew notifications on my phone from the city government. Such trends are hard to miss.
If I had trusted mass media then I would have under-prepared for COVID-19 instead of starting a company to mass produce preventative equipment the day the virus was discovered in my country. I even ordered masks many weeks before the virus was discovered in the USA. This all happened months into a period where I had stopped following the news.
That said, I absolutely agree that there are no good tools for aggregation. I might reconsider the value of news if someone could build a good AI to filter it for me.