JUNK NEWS

I speculate that most people in the U.S., and globally in a larger view, start their day with a news feed when they open their screens, big or small. I recently looked at my Google home page and was annoyed. My news feed was packed with celebrity junk. One article after another about #MeToo celebrity debacles and arguments between hip-hop stars. "How did this happen?", I thought.

I ventured into the tricky underworld of my Google settings. It is a maze of grids and buttons. I noted that my news feed roster was unalterable in a very significant way. "Top stories" could not be positioned elsewhere in my news feed. "Top stories" were indeed entertainment-industry garbage on that day ... and on many days. So it comes down to Google's discernment of what is most important for me to read on a given day. It isn't a stretch to call this "brainwashing", whether intended by Google or not. 

Yes, dear reader, you may well be saying, "So get a new homepage." Ah, yes. But the sting of it is that all the news feed congregators have settings which enlist algorithms, intended either to sell me something or lull me with my own particular social-political biases. In other words, on line news is not geared to inspire freedom and diversity of thought in the reader. That requires individual initiative, a quality rapidly being undermined by algorithms. Is there any wonder there is a culture war raging in America and abroad between the skeptical and the hypnotized?

When I considered the rampant stupidity of the "Top stories" on my Google feed, I realized that Google didn't at all consider my intelligence in their algorithms. It was, instead, trying to seduce me with news which piqued the interest of those with attention deficits and superficial world views who might buy something from one of its monetized folks. I doubt this is being done by some wily young Goebbels. I speculate it is simply the compliance of callow young programmers following the company line at a mega-corporation, which feeds on the tit of West Coast entertainment outlets, which in turn dictate Google's politically vacuous and correct corporate culture. 

So be it. But it is junk news. And where will a culture focused on bread and circuses eventually go? Third Reich, The Victorian Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Versailles, Rome, Carthage, etc... Junk news, obsession with superficial and transitory world events, deprives the people of a critical worldview looking ahead to a constructive future based in the consequences of today's behaviors. News about bourgeois women in pussy hats does not solve the issues of global women who feel undervalued. News about Kanye's opinions on Trump does not address the destructive cultural divide within American Black communities. News about transgender bathroom rights does not address the debate on the devastating effects of dysfunctional parents and schools on psychologically confused children.

Homo sapiens may well be undone by its own technology. This is the darker projection made by Stephen Hawking and others looking at the eventual emergence of independent mechanical intelligence. Yuval Noah Harari speculates a credible future of homo sapiens becoming replaced by a new species of digitally enhanced humans. Those mesmerized by junk news do not see this coming. And perhaps that is an aspect of that evolutionary revolution which is unavoidable. But the displacement of one species by another, as seen when homo sapiens may have hunted down and extinguished Neanderthals, is not likely to be light entertainment for those involved.