Last night I listened to Yuval Harari and Ari Meiber speak about Nexus, the new book and related topics and the concept that I found really stood out is about freedom of speech and volume. Yuval Harari believes that we should be able to share information and lies, but that social networks are responsible for how it is promoted and amplified, how loud the volume of certain ideas is.
“Freedom of speech is very different to control of volume” source because freedom of speech is the ability to discuss without fearing imprionsment but control of volume is how visible, or amplified a post becomes, and whether by encouraging engagement a post is spreading hate or negative messages.
In the mid to lake 90s and the early two thousands we could browse from news site to news site. I would visit the Guardian, the Independent, Le Temps, Tribune de Genève, New York Times and more. I would also look at the RTS, BBC News and other sites to check a number of sites for news. With time that freedom was lost.
We lost that freedom because websites became paywalled.
As I struggled to find a neutral topic to write about I noticed the distinct difference between how the French and the Swiss media are speaking about the fifth wave. The swiss say that it is “pre-occupying” and that it “has won the French speaking part of Switzerland” and “no long term impact on Swiss finances.” Switzerland is not taking the pandemic seriously anymore and reminds me of England. It is denying that there is a problem and taking reactive rather than pro-active measures.
Social media is really fast because there are so many participants. It’s also fast because one person telling a few others is simplified. The social media are a crowd and when one person says something then others repeat what they have just heard to find out what has happened. Within a few minutes the crowd knows what is going on. The difference is that whereas the crowd standing at a street corner five years ago would have spread it would have spread at the speed of the telephone and the rate at which people can move around.
An interesting look back in to the past. I remember seeing this conflict on television. I know people who covered the story and I’ve heard about how a colleague gave one person a gameboy when he left Sarajevo. That person called and asked about the individual and that’s how I knew of a personal story. One or two segments in this video show the tape to tape editing process. I learned how to edit this way but by the time I worked as an editor everything had moved to non linear editing systems.
Mariuca - May 5, 2007
Hi Richard, wow you’ve been busy! Congrats on completing your dissertation! I bet you’ll do great and all the best to you :) :)
 If you love reading the news and seeing what’s going on around the world then Trendio is an interesting site for you. I looked at the events that are going to take place and whether Trendio already has them listed. If it does then I decided to buy some stock for those words and as their quantity increases so it means I will get some income. Knowing that the French elections would take place I bought stock in two of the key elements to see by how much they would increase.
Too much academic research and concentrating on dissertations has cut me off from world news to such an extent that apart from tech goings on I had no clue. I hardly followed the French elections, hardly noticed the death of Yeltsin, hardly noticed the regional elections. There are three reasons for this. England is a hard news vacuum with it’s slightly islandish mentality (don’t yell at me for this view, I’ve been here a fifth of my life), online news resources, (finding the news I want) and thirdly researching and writing my dissertation.
I hate slow connections, they force you to wait patiently whilst the content you desire shows itself. It forces you to select more carefully the content you are about to read. When the connection is fast you skim through the pages reading the first paragraph before jumping onto the next page until several hours have passed. In contrast with slow connections you look through articles of interest and start downloading them.
Satellite broadcasting has progressed since I was last able to watch a lot of television. The spacing of channels and the programs have progressed. I’ve watched France 24, Al Jazeera English and a few more channels. As time is progressing so the channels are re-indexing themselves within the sky digital world. They are no longer organised by the discovery channel. Instead, we find that some of the documentary programs are included within specific interests.