It is now approaching two decades since the company now known as Alphabet started its attack against rational media [1], and at the same time started promoting its own brand names (such as Google). Other companies in the irrational media space have likewise fed mainstream consumers with similar myths regarding their own algorithms. All of this propaganda is spread not only via all of the traditional irrational media channels, but also falls on mostly illiterate ears, as most users of information technology have no idea whatsoever how the tech gizmos they simply use blindly as consumers work.
The so-called tech giants can hardly slow down the floods of cash flowing into their coffers — they are completely awash with advertising money in order mesmerize and manipulate hungry consumers with offers, deals and spending opportunities galore. It is a wonder that they still seem able to spend so much cash, it almost seems like they’re looking for new enterprises on a daily basis, new worlds, new ventures and new expeditions to places where no rational human being has ever ventured before.
As a result, potential consumers are nearly drowning in ads. Since they mostly lack the literacy skills to recognize how they are being manipulated, pretty much the entire advertising industry feels the entire world is hunky dory … except that it’s also becoming more competitive. New and improved algorithms are starting to show up on every virtual corner, increasingly consumers can start becoming more and more comparison shoppers. Slowly but surely neither Main Street nor Madison Avenue are the only shop in town any more.
Bells and whistles, ding dongs and bright lights are now virtually everywhere. Content now flows in all directions, from every direction, and the race to bargain basement prices is on — look for many more sweat shops coming soon to a theater near you.
So far, I see this mostly happening behind the closed doors of so-called “proprietary” institutions … but some recent developments in leading open-source communities are also worrisome at least. I hope and also expect that course corrections will happen, but I do not rule out the risk that open and transparent information (which “wants to be free” [to move like water] ) may at some point be stuffed into a pipe and brought to you by some new and improved irrational media company.
In the long run, irrational media will fall to cancel culture — we don’t need no propaganda. Yet before we reach that point, we may very well have a very long trek of whack-a-mole wars ahead of us. Any company willing to bet on illiteracy as a long-range plan would probably do well to consider how the Roman Catholic Church had to revise their game plans after several centuries of death, destruction, wars, bloodshed and overall general turmoil.
I do not for one moment doubt that in the long run, literacy will win against illiteracy. But perhaps another path will open up — perhaps yet another new and improved technology?
Socio Business blog 