Brainjunk and the killing of the internet mind
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Because the thing is:
> But if you actually want to learn, to improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world, you have to shell out.
I don't need to shell out anything. I can find perfectly good content from people that care for free, and I myself write perfectly good content for people that are interested in the topic and provide it for free.
The people that want good content don't need to pay for it, they can find for it free. And the people who don't care for good content now...
Probably weren't caring much for it in the past either. Do you really think the folks that read the tabloid papers (or the Daily Mail) wanted a super deep, thought provoking piece that questions every bit of their world view?
That the people who watch cable news shows or what not were going to pay for something from a professional organisation?
That wasn't going to happen, and it didn't. Instead, the people who wanted good content found they could get good content elsewhere, the ones who wanted mediocre content found they could get the same stuff elsewhere and the old media are left in a situation where they're really not the best at either of these things.
What kind of content is this, exactly?
I think you're missing the forest by focusing on a few unique trees. I agree, you're likely to find far better free stuff about tinkering around with microcontrollers (for instance) that are written by hobbyists than you will from paid publications. Taken all together, though, that kind of stuff is ultimately very limited and misses whole universes of valuable areas. For instance: news reporting, history books, etc. require a breadth of attention and effort to create that just isn't possible with a day job. If you want to "improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world" you can't hyper-focus on hobbies.
Of the publications where I found thought provoking, long form articles, they are almost always a non-profit. The internet ad-based business model for content simply forbids huge ROI for real content; I totally support more-and-more non-profit content creators whose charter is quality content.
If you are interested in non-hobby, free long form writing, I always recommend Aeon[1]! For non-free, I recommend Lapham's Quarterly[2].
One thing though, I won't call aeon "free," exactly. They take donations and I would encourage people to donate if they like it, even as a one-off.
I think an idea that underlies the OP's maxim "Enjoy content. Not too much. Mostly paid," is the economics of paid content is clearer and more pro-consumer. I think that's true whether the payment actually gates the content or not.
There are exceptions, but I do think, say, dedicated long-term investigative journalism is something worth paying for, since it's not always easy to do as anything other than a "main" grind.
In terms of written content I have more or less given up on books specifically because I find free content to be far more diverse. Read a few thousand science fiction books for example and they really all blend together with minimal originality.
High quality, good free content can still be found on the web. Some people, including me, actually like the idea of giving away content for free.
I found a pretty strong visual content filter is the bling factor: you know, those extremely insightful old fashioned no bullshit plain html sites with minimal CSS, and no ads... One of the reasons they don't really need ads is because it costs pennies to host and serve KiBs of content, there is no "platform" or "ad engines" or any of that nonsense, it's just some people who want to share some insights, they write some static html and throw it up for pennies because it's KiBs. This style of content authoring tends towards good content because it's not prone to hunt for eyeballs... it's just there, there is no difference to the author or the content's existence regardless of how many views and clicks happen.
That said it doesn't have to look crude, It's some clean minimal CSS design can improve the legibility of the content immensely without bloating it - it's just less common.
It's hard for authors to do this full-time without advertising. Who pays them if not users or advertisers? Hobbyists and amateur publishers are one thing, but people who do things and write about them full-time are searching for a way to support themselves.
I would replace "no ads" in your comment with "respectful and honest ads" (and even better if those ad fees are paid directly to the author or a small distributor that is being selective about matching ads to pages).
This is just my opinion: but I think this is the so called "problem" that people need to not solve... medium keep talking about "how can we replace the ad model", and hey, maybe in "reporting" style content this is a legitimate problem, but going forward I don't see it applying to a lot of written content, people with insightful things to write about often have those insights because they do something other than writing for a living. Directly making monkey off literature in the traditional sense is not necessary - but making the literature can indirectly make you monkey by e.g improving your employment prospects if that's important to you, not to mention writing literature can be an enjoyable art form in itself.
> writing literature can be an art form
Right. There are some amazing writers out there who are true artists and yet have to subsidize their writing with traditional employment. The writing far outvalues the other-job output.
(This isn't a problem just for writers - many artists are starving of course)
I'd like to find a model that lets them do writing full-time and get paid in a way such that better writing => more readers => more income.
It's unclear how to pay a great writer for their writing if not for ads or directly from readers.
My "completely free" opinion applies more to people writing informative content based on their successes and experiences separate from the writing it self.
It definitely doesn't apply for those who are writing for the sake of writing as a creative work, where the "other" job is just a means. In this case it's back to the same question, and it may even suit the content more because it's more about what people enjoy to read than what is objectively "good" of "useful", in which case voting with your monkey seems not to corrupt as much... then again there is hollywood and pop music so scratch that. I think the best ideas about for this now are things like patreon - where the focus is more on encouraging author creativity rather than monetisation of past works like copyright. However this still has it's downsides... e.g it suits and encourages continuous streams of small pieces of works more than masterpiece style sized works.
My site fits your descriptions, but I have avoided adding ads because all good options I know are scary and not good for the readers.
It would be nice to be able to justify writing more though.
Free "junky" content is popular simply because it's free and plentiful, and has a vastly, unquantifiably lower barrier to entry than paid content -- and not because it's dopamine-releasing junk. It's popular because it's accessible, requires little cognitive load to evaluate ahead of time, and its momentary consumption is noncommittal. If article mills stopped producing throwaway clickbait to fill an Outbrain footer, the corresponding "demand" would plummet.
But this content keeps being produced, because business models on the web suck, so every publisher feels they have to put some eggs into advertising. Because reader attention has an upper bound, one publisher's gain is quite often another's loss, and this directly translates into advertising revenue.
Given the low appetite for the masses to pay, Apple, Google, Facebook, Medium, and incumbent news publications have all tried to solve this problem in ways that further integrate advertising, analytics, and personalized suggestions, and these efforts continue to face challenges due to the misalignment of incentives.
The only thing that creeps up on TV consumption in the US is social media use. Billions of books containing hundreds of pages each are sold in the US each year and presumably some large fraction of those are read.
Hundreds of millions of magazine subscriptions are sold in the US, mostly of monthlies.
The metrics used to measure online success are just sort of muddled. Imagine if we evaluated magazines by how many pages were turned. You would get some very silly magazines very quickly.
Instead magazines are evaluated by the demographics of their subscribers, prestige as judged by things like prizes, and the scale of the subscriber base.
Unlike websites which just model demographics and are usually not audited, magazines can have their subscriber lists audited and are mostly not modeled. Same thing with cable TV/Netflix/other paid services. The demographics don't really have to be modeled because you have every person's name and address. Each individual or household has to pay so you know they're individuals that exist and not bots.
I think one issue with the way media companies have evaluated 'social media' is that they considered it to be another form of professional media. Really what it replaces are phone calls, mail, and in-person chatter or photo album sharing. It does not and has not really replaced traditional media consumption.
Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten, mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold, fen ond fæsten; fifelcynnes eard wonsæli wer weardode hwile, siþðan him scyppend forscrifen hæfde in Caines cynne.
Many people struggle to read their own language sadly, or comprehend stories with any amount of depth. Old English is probably asking too much of them.
I’m not convinced that this is new though, we’re just far more connected to the LCD than ever before.
Edit: Translation of excerpt:
Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged...
That is an extremely simplistic look at literature - you just reduced it to one sentence description of plot alone. That is not how it works and that is not how it ever worked. What makes it hard is the way it is written, presence of either dragon or killing does not make something easier to read. He is right in that most people would not enjoy it.
> And beyond that, there are many books on there that are accessible for anyone who can read.
And many many more that are decisively not accessible. You assume that people will dig for hours through guttenberg to find something fun and accessible, but they wont and probably cant.
There's more in the text than just the plot, but the story alone can be enjoyable without knowing everything else. I'll agree the old translation of an ancient poem is probably still going to be a chore, a better example is something like Dracula.
>And many many more that are decisively not accessible. You assume that people will dig for hours through guttenberg to find something fun and accessible, but they wont and probably cant.
No, I assume that people will find something fun and accessible by the same means they do elsewhere, either through talking to other people or looking at what's popular.
In short, what you’re saying isn’t wrong or unreasonable, but I think it’s fair to say that it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what “average” looks like.
And remember what's being discussed here. You can't blame "brainjunk" on people unwilling to pay for content, as they are also ignoring the free content on Project Gutenberg.
Also, if you have hard time to interpret the story, because the sentences are oddly written and unnatural and characters talk the way real people now don't talk, you wont have no fun no matter how many dragons.
> No, I assume that people will find something fun and accessible by the same means they do elsewhere, either through talking to other people or looking at what's popular.
On Guttenberg? That brain junk stuff goes out of their way to reach you. It is completely different model. That is not criticism of Guttenberg, their mission is to preserve and they do it well.
>On Guttenberg? That brain junk stuff goes out of their way to reach you. It is completely different model.
Yeah, this is the point. Project Gutenberg isn't ignored now because you need decades of education to possibly enjoy it, brainjunk is crafted to be addictive.
And the education is necessary to be able to figure out which few books on Guttenberg might be interesting to you. Because overwhelming majority of them is not interesting to you or anyone except few specialists on something.
And majority of that could not possibly replace the kind of reading you do when you relax for 6 minutes between one task and another task at work.
People read in those situations, but that is a different argument altogether.
It is great place for study, good place if you actually are into some historical period and not much of a place if you are contemporary person and just wanna have some fun. No, majority of those most popular books are not fun for most people.
Of course (freedom of choice) one may select the Kardashians (and unfortunately not the Star Trek ones) over poetry. I want them to select what they feel like consuming, and I want me to have the same choice. The problem is with many outlets switching to 'junkfood', the few that may remain become hostage to money-hungry shareholders and thus the game is slowly being lost.
I get that the scale of YouTube is far too big to do it by human hands & eyes, but the approach they're taking currently is flat out failing.
It probably isn't for the creators I follow, and I try to put a few bucks of coffee money into patreon like collections for them. The value for youtube red is in time saved and advertisement avoided for the user. Then again never being interrupted by advertisements I don't go looking for is a personal eccentricity so it's a time money trade-off. How many minutes of video commercials avoided a month is worth $10?
As I became more and more educated on certain topics I noticed this more and more - articles about a field I know a lot about often get the details wrong, and draw the wrong conclusions because of it. I'm reasonably sure this isn't unique to my fields of expertise.
That has nothing to do with paid/free, but if someone is going to say I should pay them to provide me with knowledge, I'd like to be sure they actually possess said knowledge, consistently.
As it is, different papers are good for different things and almost completely untrustworthy for others. By virtue of a subscription, I subsidize both.
https://seekerblog.com/2006/01/31/the-murray-gell-mann-amnes...
Harvey Weinstein arguably produced some of the best content in Hollywood during his tenure, and so the two shouldn't be coupled. Yea, fire the dude and move on, but don't make this about cheap content, and don't make this also about the press failing to generate revenue. All very different things and misses the nuance of what is going on.
[...] if you actually want to learn, to improve your mind, to improve your awareness and understanding of the world, you have to shell out.”
The “paid” part seems awfully arbitrary. I went to a great exhibit the other night, where I got to see wonderful photography, for free. I just read a great biology paper published for free by the Royal Society on my way to work. And I am now listening to a fascinating NPR podcast, also downloaded for free.
I guess my taxes paid for all of those in some way (even though I only lived in the UK for a year, so that was a meager contribution to the Royal Society’s coffers), but I wouldn’t say I “shelled out” for all these things.
(Which should be a strong indicator that Google's SEO algorithm is wildly broken from a user's point of view. But at this point, Google, the de-facto search and web advertisement monopoly, has no incentive to prioritize quality content, and every incentive to prioritize content that brings them ad revenue. Which garbage content, presented poorly, is great at doing.)
Some days I long for DMOZ…
Information is a public good. It should be financed as public goods are: via taxes, based on ability to pay (e.g., progressive taxation).
"At the Graduate Center, we believe knowledge is a public good. This idea inspires our research, teaching, and public events. We invite you to join us for timely discussions, diverse cultural perspectives, and thought-provoking ideas."
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Public-Programming/GC-Presents
Joseph Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," in Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, Marc A. Stern (eds.), United Nations Development Programme, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 308-325.
http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343...
There are non-subscription models, e.g. people pay for ebooks.
There are niche subscriptions, e.g. finance, health, which cost much more than Netflix.
Some websites have occasional article gems, but there's no way to pay for a high quality, non-DRM, indexable, offline readable, surveillance-free PDF/A version.
> There are non-subscription models, e.g. people pay for ebooks.
Another nice example is Blendle.
While there exist good reasons to pay for quality journalism there's no reason why I should pay a monthly subscription to every news outlet I ever want to read anything from.
One of the good things about internet journalism is that I can read different publications very easily, every day. Some of them I'd actually like to pay, but not by way of a subscription, because paying for five or ten subscriptions at ~$30 per month each is just too much.
With paper newspapers, I can at least buy a single issue. With online articles, it would be feasible to pay per article, heck, even per half articles or whatever. But for some reason all the publishers come up with is obnoxious paywalls, and the option to subscribe or get lost. I honestly don't understand why micropayments haven't become a thing for online journalism.
Flattr had a similar problem, you could pay-per-article via their button, but as I understand the adoption just wasn't sufficient, by both publishers and readers.
Maybe if publishers could add a micropayment button that used ApplePay/GooglePay/AmazonPay/PayPal, so that readers wouldn't have to sign up for an additional service and could just use their credit card in a one-click transaction.
And there is absolutely a ton of excellent free material on youtube, of all places. Tons and tons of DIY and how-to videos. Woodworking, machining, electronics, knitting, sewing, cooking, the internet is a treasure trove of data. And some of the best educational content on linear algebra and calculus in the Universe at any price is on youtube for free (from 3blue1brown).
Overall this critique strikes me as generationalist and classist.
I just got finished reading the Information Diet a couple weeks ago and was pretty disappointed in the book overall. Same with this article. Both seem to have a problem that I agree with: we should be more intentional about the information we consume. However, the "solution" in both isn't fully realized or it's tainted with an agenda of some sort.
I'm really ready for a good book on this topic as I raise my kids in the junk knowledge/misinformation age.
Anybody have any recommendations?
Perhaps _You are not a gadget_ by Jaron Lanier or _Hamlet's Blackberry_ by William Powers, but neither of those are books I could finish.
Finally, I read _Deep work_ not long ago and thought it was pretty good.
I actually loved Lanier's "You Are Not A Gadget", it was the first deep dive of technology philosophy that I've ever read, and was definitely worth finishing.
I'll definitely check out some of these other ones you mention. Thanks for the recommendations!
I value the level of comments here just as much and sometimes more than the articles people share
And so it is with content. I read quality books. James Clavell, Robert Ruark or Frederick Forsyth for example, over J. K. Rowling or E.L James, for instance. I source my news with care, and if a story interests me I look for counter positions or arguments.
We all have this choice.
One path makes you look stupid, and, in comparison, the other makes you look interesting, learned and intelligent. Amongst other benefits.
Like I said this is a choice we all make. Regardless of income (junk food is expensive, and libraries are free).