It looks obvious

I do not like Google News, Newsvine and Tech.Memeorandum

For someone that his livelihood depends on software development I’m somewhat of technophobe. And although I realize that technological changes are unavoidable and many times very beneficial I also recognize the short falling and the things we are losing. But for me the most dangerous approach is the one who see in technology the solution for all problems and the Holy Grail for human condition.

In a sense Google goal to organize all the information is the purest form of this approach. The belief that any problems or human interaction has a technological solution is not only one dimensional view of reality but it is also dangerous. As I do not believe that human interaction can be regulated by law, and as we trying more we are causing more damage, I do not believe that all human needs can be satisfied with technological solutions.

For long time I’m reading about how the news industry have to change, how they cannot maintain the status of being gatekeepers of information and the oracle of Delphi.  I think that the critics are correct, the “old” media has to change, but I’m not sure that all of it has to become “new” media. And I do not need algorithms, or robots, to replace human editors.

The internet and the blogs opened for us new universe of access to information that was very difficult to get before. In the past I couldn’t read content written by Fred Wilson, Tom Evslin and many others. The discussion in Cato unbound enriched by users trackbacks and I’m exposed to more point of view and knowledge then before. However no online service will replace, for me, the enjoyment of reading the weekend newspaper in bed and No online blog will ever replace the feeling of looking for a book in old book store.

While in newspaper I entrusted the editorial decisions to someone else on the internet I make my own editorial decision. The decisions, of what important or interesting, are too complicated and are based on many variables. Any attempt to build algorithm that aggregate and filter information to create “New Media News service” is doomed to failure. It is impossible to quantify principal decision making or to attempt to automate the decision process with mathematical process.

I don’t think that the value of the crowd has anything more than the value of popularity. and it is, as important as it may be, only one parameter in my personal editorial decision. As objectivist I do not accept the right of the crowd to make decisions about my life, liberty and property and I have no intention to let the crowd make decision about what news I should consume.