Technologists like me tend to see the beauty in innovation — the efficiency, the clean lines of code and well-ordered rows in databases. The delight when something “just works.” And, to be truthful, the dollar signs that come with the massive productivity gains, cost savings and fortunes to be made in the next new thing.
Yet, there is another side to this story, which is the disruption and dislocation felt in society as whole industries are remade — or collapse — under the disruptive forces of tech. It seems to me that the category where we currently are most keenly confronting this kind of disorganized capitulation to technological forces is in media, and more specifically in news.
Yes, dirty newsprint is replaced by the elegant design of websites and social media. If I were to draw a schematic of 1980s “voice of God” media and hold it up against the way information flows today it would be clear that we now have a much more advanced system for movement of information in ever faster and more direct ways. It’s really a remarkable and positive thing when viewed from that angle.
But, let’s face it: The advertising-driven digital media business model is broken. Fake news, “native ads,” memes created mostly to irritate those on the other side of the political spectrum, close-up photos of celebrity cellulite — these I could do without. Yet, it seems like even mainstream media is grasping at some of these tactics in desperation to survive.
Innovation can go both ways, of course. And even as digital is killing newspapers and publishers are doing a Facebook dance with the devil, could entrepreneurial enterprises also help revitalize news?
There are venture capital efforts that are trying, such as Matter.vc and the Knight Foundation’s Enterprise Fund, run by Benoit Wirz.
It’s an important problem to solve: When the internet put travel agents or some of our other beloved Main Street businesses out of business, we might be nostalgic. But, it was never seen as an existential threat. However, media disruption goes to the heart of an informed society. We are consuming more information than ever, but are somehow weaker than ever in our ability to understand each other and the substance of the issues.
As a business person, I see the weakness in the ad-supported media model online, and doubt there is some kind of floor under…