If you think of them as communication platforms, you’re missing a big part of the picture.

These systems are the next step in the evolution of media. Media is a complex beast with tentacles into culture and politics and individual society. We’ve known this for a long time. What’s applicable here is Marshal McLuhan, media theory, and heck David Foster Wallace. A lot of this stuff was way ahead of its time, but that time has arrived.

“The medium is the message” was a genius insight. Extending it to algorithmic media has all sorts of (disquieting) implications.