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Information Versus Diversity
May. 1st, 2009 08:27 amWilliam Bowers (in reference to Tinysong and Twisten.fm, "which combine to crawl Twitter for music")(Puritan Blister #43 Twisten to Yr Heart): Isn't it a tad more populist/democratic than Hype Machine even, because your users are mostly "folks," right, which is not to give bloggers too much status/esteem, but some of 'em are getting royalty-esque. Not in the sense of money-royalties, but 'tude, maybe?
My question here is, what does Bowers* mean by "populist/democratic"? Is what the populace pays attention to inherently populist/democratic simply because the populace pays attention to it? One could argue that Twisten gets rid of traditional gatekeepers, going straight to the people for its information.** But one could also then argue that the Twisten results become gatekeepers themselves. My buzzword here is "cumulative advantage," which just means that that which is somewhat popular has a huge leg up in becoming more popular, and this is merely because it's popular (above and beyond its inherent appeal), and that which is little-known remains little-known. So the more information that flows about how much people listen, the less diverse the listening will get over space and time. As the world gets more cosmopolitan, it gets less diverse, even if individually we become more aware of the diversity that does exist. - I'm not committing myself to what I just said, by the way. I'm making arguments, creating hypotheses.
Democracy doesn't just mean "majority rules," it also depends on diversity, depends on there being diverse people with diverse opinions; otherwise we wouldn't need to vote, we could just poll a single individual and let those results decide for everybody. And its rationale is that, with access to the diversity of ideas (rather than just ideas coming from the top down), the people get to debate and choose which ideas are best, and they get to experiment with new ideas. So the flow of information is critical to democracy, since it's critical that diverse ideas be heard; but also, owing to cumulative advantage, the flow of information cuts down on diversity. (Same caveat as before about not altogether committing myself to this argument.)
*If you click the link, you'll see that Bowers is actually VERY skeptical about the benefits of new media.
**And I'd hypothesize that The People chose to use gatekeepers, and chose their gatekeepers, in the first place.
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freakytigger
My question here is, what does Bowers* mean by "populist/democratic"? Is what the populace pays attention to inherently populist/democratic simply because the populace pays attention to it? One could argue that Twisten gets rid of traditional gatekeepers, going straight to the people for its information.** But one could also then argue that the Twisten results become gatekeepers themselves. My buzzword here is "cumulative advantage," which just means that that which is somewhat popular has a huge leg up in becoming more popular, and this is merely because it's popular (above and beyond its inherent appeal), and that which is little-known remains little-known. So the more information that flows about how much people listen, the less diverse the listening will get over space and time. As the world gets more cosmopolitan, it gets less diverse, even if individually we become more aware of the diversity that does exist. - I'm not committing myself to what I just said, by the way. I'm making arguments, creating hypotheses.
Democracy doesn't just mean "majority rules," it also depends on diversity, depends on there being diverse people with diverse opinions; otherwise we wouldn't need to vote, we could just poll a single individual and let those results decide for everybody. And its rationale is that, with access to the diversity of ideas (rather than just ideas coming from the top down), the people get to debate and choose which ideas are best, and they get to experiment with new ideas. So the flow of information is critical to democracy, since it's critical that diverse ideas be heard; but also, owing to cumulative advantage, the flow of information cuts down on diversity. (Same caveat as before about not altogether committing myself to this argument.)
*If you click the link, you'll see that Bowers is actually VERY skeptical about the benefits of new media.
**And I'd hypothesize that The People chose to use gatekeepers, and chose their gatekeepers, in the first place.
h/t
freakytigger
