Democracy dies in darkness according to the motto of the Washington Post, and this is, of course, just one of many phrases reciting the axiomatic theme that credible and responsibly reported information is the blood of a democratic society like the United States. If true, then why has the “information age” brought democracy itself to the brink of destruction? There ...
Last week, writer and broadcaster Andrew Keen invited me to his podcast Keen On to talk (of course) about artificial intelligence. When we got to the subject of the New York Times lawsuit against Open AI and Microsoft, I noted that 1) it is arguably the strongest copyright case presented to date against an AI developer; 2) that it would ...
This week, Facebook made good on its threat to block Australian news media on its platform. “Australian users cannot share Australian or international news. International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news,” MSN reports. The move by the social giant is a hardline tactic designed to make the Australian government blink on proposed legislation that requires both Facebook and ...
There are a lot of posts going around lately about that photo. You know the one. It depicts St. Louis attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey standing locked and loaded—he with an AR15, she with a Bryco Model 38 handgun—in front of their large house on the afternoon of June 28th. That was the day when approximately 500 protestors, in response ...
“You provide the prose poems. I’ll provide the war.” – Charles Foster Kane, Citizen Kane You are probably familiar with “advertorials,” the relatively benign mash-ups of information and advertising offered by many print and online publications. For instance, a regional electric service company that sells generators might publish a page that reads a lot like an article suggesting some good ...
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin