Re:Algorithms are changing what we read online
by jseliger on Monday September 14, 2020 @03:43PM
(#24474255)
I saw this essay in Arts and Letters Daily (https://www.aldaily.com/) and added it to my blog's next links post, with a variation of this comment: I've never heard of this guy and yet his work sounds like just the sort of thing I'd like to read: I'm not interested in most of the standard political and pop culture stuff that's endlessly written and re-written. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have a link list of his recent works anywhere, at least that I can find. His website (https://russellsmith.ca/) appears to be pretty generic, and its RSS feed seems to have last been updated in 2015. How are we supposed to find his work and follow him, if we are interested in his work (and I am, after reading this)?
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Re:Algorithms are changing what we read online
by motohagiography on Monday September 14, 2020 @05:02PM
(#24475113)
Can recommend highly, particularly his books, "Confidence" and "How Insensitive." I read his column in the Globe for years.
When you compare what he writes to the content that gets pushed to us like in that Social Dilemma documentary in another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468533), smart people are writing, they're just getting drowned out. Content algorithms are like rating food on how efficiently it can deliver sugar and caffeine with no other criteria for "good."