Om the paper of record, oändliga valmöjligheter och filter

Postat: 2006-08-14 kl. 09.27

Pontus Schultz skriver om Jan Wifstrands avhopp från DN och vad DN faktiskt behöver vara:

Som tidningsläsare, och framför allt den generation tidningsläsare som kommer efter mig, prenumererar jag inte för att få en nyhetssammanfattning. Jag prenumererar för det där jag inte visste jag ville ha. Den långa intervjun. Det stora reportaget. Den kul vinkeln. Den personliga analysen. Affärsutveckling.

Dagens PS Hon tar över efter Wifstrand på DN (2006-08-14)

Det ekar från en passage jag läste i morse ur Chris Andersons The Long Tail:

Is a fragmented culture better or worse culture? Many believe that mass culture serves as a sort of social glue, keeping society together. But if we're now all off doing our own thing, is there still a common culture? Are our interests still aligned with those of our neighbours?

In his book Republic.com, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein argues that the risks are real – online culture is indeed encouraging group polarization: "As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving." He evokes the famous Daily Me, the ultimate personalized newspaper hypothesized by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab. To Sunstein, a world where we are all reading our own Daily Me is one where "you need to come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less."

Christine Rosen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, shares Sunstein's concerns. In an essay in The New Atlantis, she writes:

If these technologies facilitate polarization in politics, what influence are they exerting over art, literature, and music? In our haste to find the quickest, most convenient, and most easily individualized way of getting what we want, are we creating eclectic personal theaters or sophisticated echo chambers? Are we promoting a creative individualism or a narrow individualism? An expansion of choices or a deadening of taste?

The effect of these technologies, Rosen argues, is the rise of "egocasting," the thoroughly individual and extremely narrow pursuit of one's personal taste. TiVos, iPods, and narrowcast content of all sorts allow us to construct our own cultural narrative. And that, she says, is a bad thing:

By giving us the illusion of perfect control, these technologies risk making us incapable of ever being surprised. They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality.

The Long Tail, s 189-190 (2006-08)

Anderson håller naturligtvis inte med och menar att det är just den typen av filter, som Schultz menar att DN borde vara, som är nyckeln till att vända den negativa effekten av oändliga nischer och anpassat innehåll.

(Och för den som möjligtvis blir nyfiken på vem Pontus Schultz menar är hon som ska ta över efter Wifstrand på DN men inte orkar läsa artikeln kan jag meddela att han tror det blir Eva Swartz som nu är vd på Natur och Kultur.)