> Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money.
How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news?
This line about perception of reality somehow being different today than it was, say, in the 1980s keeps coming up. The main shift is that the number of (dis)information sources has risen sharply and they've become much more efficient. Secondarily, entire media channels (newspapers and TV) have lost relevance to all but the older generation. Increasingly, those news outlets just track social media, which may be the oddest development of all.
In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands.