I really like the “storyteller” metaphor. Most of the news that I read seems to contain a handful of facts weaved into a work with a plot, characters, etc. One such story that comes to mind is the one about Scott Alexander published by the NYT. While it contains many facts about Scott, the whole piece is contorted into such a weird shape (eg. the hints about alt-right ties) that there’s a taste of fiction to it.
So my conclusion is that people who really want good information are better off today, but the average person’s information diet is likely getting a bit worse.
This seems to be a replay of the food situation from the 20th century, when we figured out ways to produce huge quantities of food. The average person did not have the skills to search/filter in that area of life, which triggered a huge increase in average body weight because of all the food-like substances like fast food. Today, in an age of information abundance, despite having access to more, high quality information, there’s also tons of fast-food-like information that merely captures attention, but doesn’t serve any purpose.
I really like the “storyteller” metaphor. Most of the news that I read seems to contain a handful of facts weaved into a work with a plot, characters, etc. One such story that comes to mind is the one about Scott Alexander published by the NYT. While it contains many facts about Scott, the whole piece is contorted into such a weird shape (eg. the hints about alt-right ties) that there’s a taste of fiction to it.
This seems to be a replay of the food situation from the 20th century, when we figured out ways to produce huge quantities of food. The average person did not have the skills to search/filter in that area of life, which triggered a huge increase in average body weight because of all the food-like substances like fast food. Today, in an age of information abundance, despite having access to more, high quality information, there’s also tons of fast-food-like information that merely captures attention, but doesn’t serve any purpose.