Not long ago I happened to watch a documentary I thought would be inspiring about the gorgeously mysterious galaxy Andromeda and its mind-bogglingly vast expanses of resident stars and planets. But I found myself feeling unsettled, instead, about the very ideas of black holes and course collisions. Our solar system’s ornate but definite fidelity to a central light feels much more true to eternal concepts, and comforting to me to ponder.

I was so grateful, almost immediately afterward, that I felt inspired to watch a sermon during which a brilliant preacher said, intelligently, “don’t worry about the planets!” God can do anything, of course, and it helped to be reminded to stop focusing on outward things.

Even so, I found the analogy of black holes and their attraction to one another relevant to qualities shared by even diametrically opposed news organizations all following a ratings-first business model.

On Prematurity

I loved reading in an essay by author Göran Schildt about Alvar Aalto this week the observation that “one of the paradoxes of liberalism that can be quoted to refute its justification is that free market forces work quite unsatisfactorily at the artistic and cultural level. The art and culture that sells best is seldom valuable, nor does it break new ground.”

While I disagree, to a degree, with Schildt’s pessimism, and I believe he is really talking about neoliberalism, nowhere does his observation feel more apropos to me than in its application to ratings-based media production. But as I have written before, I do believe there is a remedy in transitioning from a media system held together by critical forces alone when appreciative forces are just as valuable.

On Flat-Worlders & System Design

I don’t know why, but I remembered a Rocky montage recently depicting the contrasting training styles of Sylvester Stallone’s classic character and his nemesis’ more digitally enhanced regimen. My own reliance on tech-enabled exercise aside, it is easy to miss the point and see Rocky’s strategy as being inferior for eschewing computer-aided fine-tuning when it is actually the separation he maintains from such close observation that enables him to stay focused on inward strength-building. In order to stay competitive, this character, like individual citizens, needed to protect his autonomy above all else.

Given how able profit-maximization apparatuses, and especially publicly-traded companies, seem to be to create emotionally-driven narratives, and despite how helpful narratives can absolutely be in describing and even catalyzing movements, truth matters too. And narrative over truth is less a fortress than a prison.

I believe that if we needed proof that AI would harm us in order to preserve itself, modern divisiveness and the weaponization of legitimate social justice movements proves it. And I believe those who confuse the principles that underscore the founding of our country with the principles that underscore the founding of our stock market in advocating for an unprecedented and unchecked leadership role for our media sector are mistaken.

As important as critique certainly is, moving forward, I believe critique cannot be the only legal tender allowed for individuals interested in engaging in the information economy when appreciation is at least as important in catalyzing progress. I believe one way to accomplish this will be to privilege principles over personalities in the integration of a growing media sector into our constitutional system of governance. (While I realize I seem to be one of only a few people still talking about the women’s movement, it was notable to me, when I attempted to speak up, that it was those whom I would normally have expected to support me who seemed most apt to do the opposite even while claiming to stand up for women. Just seeing the look on a newspaper leader’s face in response to a discussion about the idea of introducing journalism sector to some form of accountability was both disappointing and unsettling.)

We need a system within which voices are heard based on merit and not on the basis of their loyalty to whichever faction happens to be abetting the stock market at a given moment. And, as I’ve written before, it is beginning to feel increasingly important to articulate more often that our debate-oriented political domain is neither a one- nor a two-dimensional concept, but one within which there’s room to be conservative or liberal around a social axis, an economic axis, & a non-media company speech-focused axis. It’s possible the only way to deal with the (arguably disingenuous) “gimbal lock” between the social & speech-oriented axes may be to talk about an unacknowledged, but major, difference between what has suddenly appeared to be an ultra-liberal media sector along the social axis but what may better be termed an ultra-conservative media sector along the speech axis (a predictable byproduct of our Constitution’s design pre-stock market & before the proliferation of tech-enabled media orgs) & consequent inability to account for publicly-traded journalism corporations.

To engage in public square debate without such acknowledgment is to risk falling into the trap of a simple left-right framing when it is the third dimension of business interests that more often seems to govern.

On Centripetal Force

Given their similarities, it may well be that media organizations will continue to coalesce in their effects on the culture by continuing to amplify differences (including differences that are important) in order to maximize outrage, the problematic aspects of their cores being the same; but I’m not sure this type of unity of AI forces is what we should be aiming for as citizens.

I believe it will be important to talk about business models on their own in order to solve this problem so that those who choose not to take shelter in one or another political party do not feel flung out into space even as networks clash.

Several possible solutions have been raised in recent years & while I still believe these could be helpful, I wonder whether another could be to insulate journalism corporations from stock market forces on the theory that a journalism sector so constrained would not only better self-regulate but do more helpful journalism.

Regardless of what it ends up looking like, we need an orderly media system centered on principle and within which there is room for everyone; and I believe reforming our communications infrastructure needs to be a priority.

Andromeda, so to speak, is getting awfully big in the sky, after all.