The New Ecology 27
Artificial intelligence is a term that is regularly applied throughout
this book, although what is really being discussed is the automation of
cognitive tasks. This certainly is possible with regard to some writing
but, at our present level of technological mastery, there is much within
the sphere of journalism that, as Dreyfus would observe, falls into the
intuitive, semi-, or unconscious “knowing-how” we achieve certain
aims rather than the conscious “knowing-that” steps of problem-solving
that can be emulated by an algorithm, the former a contextual “background” that is close to Heidegger’s notion of Dasein.
63
To repeat, this
book is entirely agnostic about the possibility of AGI and the notion of
a singularity – sceptical in the sense that I simply do not know whether
it is possible rather than I do not believe – and instead restricts itself
to AI in the more limited sense of cognitive automation. Even in that
restricted sense, AI is already transforming the media ecology by means
of which journalism is produced in the twenty-first century: there is no
Prometheus creating omniscient news stories far superior to anything
capable of being written by humans. Instead, what we have is a small
number of big tech companies that are using such automation to radically transform our economic and sociopolitical environment, one of
the most important of which at the time of writing is the richest company in the world: Apple. How it has attempted – sometimes succeeding,
sometimes failing – to change the journalism environment is now our
extended case study for understanding the relationship between big tech
and a media ecology.
The Age of Apple
The history of Apple is very much one of two acts. Founded by Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, its first phase was as the company
which, alongside Microsoft, probably did more than any other to transform public perceptions of the personal computer. Fascinating as that
story is in its own right, it is of little significance to the development of a
media ecology in the twenty-first century. Indeed, after Jobs was forced
out of Apple in 1985, the company began a decade-long slide into irrelevance until Jobs, the prodigal founder, returned in 1997, kickstarting
Act II of the Apple play and bringing with him a new management style
and a new computer, the iMac. As Luke Dormehl observes, the genius
of the iMac was really its name – other than a simple ability to plug in
simply to the Internet and a bright and breezy design, there was “nothing innately superior about the iMac over any other computer”.
64
Nonetheless, the iMac marked a return to profitability at Apple, allowing it to
post a $309 million profit in 1998 as opposed to losses of $1.05 billion
in 1997, and the coming decades would see the company abandon many
more legacy issues than simply removing floppy disk drives. The fact that
Apple Computer, Inc. would become, simply, Apple Inc. in 2007 spoke
Artificial intelligence is a term that is regularly applied throughout
this book, although what is really being discussed is the automation of
cognitive tasks. This certainly is possible with regard to some writing
but, at our present level of technological mastery, there is much within
the sphere of journalism that, as Dreyfus would observe, falls into the
intuitive, semi-, or unconscious “knowing-how” we achieve certain
aims rather than the conscious “knowing-that” steps of problem-solving
that can be emulated by an algorithm, the former a contextual “background” that is close to Heidegger’s notion of Dasein.
63
To repeat, this
book is entirely agnostic about the possibility of AGI and the notion of
a singularity – sceptical in the sense that I simply do not know whether
it is possible rather than I do not believe – and instead restricts itself
to AI in the more limited sense of cognitive automation. Even in that
restricted sense, AI is already transforming the media ecology by means
of which journalism is produced in the twenty-first century: there is no
Prometheus creating omniscient news stories far superior to anything
capable of being written by humans. Instead, what we have is a small
number of big tech companies that are using such automation to radically transform our economic and sociopolitical environment, one of
the most important of which at the time of writing is the richest company in the world: Apple. How it has attempted – sometimes succeeding,
sometimes failing – to change the journalism environment is now our
extended case study for understanding the relationship between big tech
and a media ecology.
The Age of Apple
The history of Apple is very much one of two acts. Founded by Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, its first phase was as the company
which, alongside Microsoft, probably did more than any other to transform public perceptions of the personal computer. Fascinating as that
story is in its own right, it is of little significance to the development of a
media ecology in the twenty-first century. Indeed, after Jobs was forced
out of Apple in 1985, the company began a decade-long slide into irrelevance until Jobs, the prodigal founder, returned in 1997, kickstarting
Act II of the Apple play and bringing with him a new management style
and a new computer, the iMac. As Luke Dormehl observes, the genius
of the iMac was really its name – other than a simple ability to plug in
simply to the Internet and a bright and breezy design, there was “nothing innately superior about the iMac over any other computer”.
64
Nonetheless, the iMac marked a return to profitability at Apple, allowing it to
post a $309 million profit in 1998 as opposed to losses of $1.05 billion
in 1997, and the coming decades would see the company abandon many
more legacy issues than simply removing floppy disk drives. The fact that
Apple Computer, Inc. would become, simply, Apple Inc. in 2007 spoke