Merge pull request #677 from gnomevan/patch-24

typos/grammar/ sentences I couldn't figure out 6-3-media.md

contents/english/6-3-media.md

@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
 # Media
 
 
-Immersive and telepathic media experiences promise to transform connection across difference, making the experiences of the marginalized as palpable to us as those of neighbors. Collaborative journalism promises to increase by an order of magnitude the number of citizens who can meaningfully contribute to shaping our shared narration of history as it happens.  Cryptographic securing of sources can increase freedom of the press the equivalent of moving every country up a category (viz. from Satisfactory to Good in the Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index) by lessing the trade-offs between source confidentiality and state secrecy.  Creating a more ⿻ structure of attention allocation and  business models to support it could at least undo the rise in affective polarization in many jurisdictions and possibly reduce them to the levels seen today in the least polarized jurisdictions like Taiwan and the Netherlands.
+Immersive and telepathic media experiences promise to transform connection across difference, making the experiences of the marginalized as palpable to us as those of our neighbors. Collaborative journalism promises to increase by an order of magnitude the number of citizens who can meaningfully contribute to shaping our shared narration of history as it happens.  Cryptographic securing of sources can increase freedom of the press, the equivalent of moving every country up a category (viz. from Satisfactory to Good in the Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index) by lessening the trade-offs between source confidentiality and state secrecy.  Creating a more ⿻ structure of attention allocation and  business models to support it could at least undo the rise in affective polarization in many jurisdictions and possibly reduce them to the levels seen today in the least polarized jurisdictions like Taiwan and the Netherlands.
 
 ---
 
 
-The direct experiences most of have in our everyday lives exposes us to only a tiny sliver of global affairs.  Almost everything we believe we know beyond this is mediated through relationships, schooling and, most of the time, "media", especially journalism (radio, television, newspapers) and social media, as well as directed small or large group communications such as email and group chats. An important promise of digital technology has been to transform media, a possibility we take up here with keen awareness of the dangers and harms to media that are widely attributed to digital technology and social media.  We explore how ⿻ could help correct many of these harms and help achieve something of the potential that pioneers like Lick and Taylor saw in digital media.
+The direct experiences most of us have in our everyday lives exposes us to only a tiny sliver of global affairs.  Almost everything we believe we know beyond this is mediated through relationships, schooling and, most of the time, "media", especially journalism (radio, television, newspapers) and social media, as well as directed small or large group communications such as email and group chats. An important promise of digital technology has been to transform media, a possibility we take up here with keen awareness of the dangers and harms to media that are widely attributed to digital technology and social media.  We explore how ⿻ could help correct many of these harms and help achieve something of the potential that pioneers like Lick and Taylor saw in digital media.
 
 In particular, we highlight how the coming wave of ⿻ may help increase empathy across social distance even more dramatically than photography and television did; how it could increase by an order of magnitude or more the number of people who can meaningfully and helpfully participate in the journalistic process; how it could help restore level of trust in media, as well as norms of respect for confidentiality, much of the way towards what they were at their mid-twentieth-century peak; how they could they could undo most of the rises in levels of "affective polarization" (viz. dislike across lines of political division) not just within national polities but across a range of other social organizations; and how it could help restore sustainable and aligned funding for media.  In short, we show how ⿻ can help address and reverse many of the crises media face today.
 
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ As noted above, a central role of journalism is to allow people to experience th
 
 Remote shared reality technologies promise to create even deeper empathetic connections.  If, as Courtney Cogburn's research suggests, years worth of connections through other media are possible in a short empathetic shared reality experience, journalists will soon be able to bridge social divides with vivid empathy as never before. While they have reached a limited audience so far given the remaining quality and nausea-related challenges of existing virtual reality (VR) headsets, journalists and artists have already begun to pioneer a variety of empathetic VR experiences.  Examples include Winslow Porter work to help people experience life as non-human life like a tree,  Decontee Davis's portrait of one of the world's most horrific diseases from the eyes of an Ebola survivor and Yasmin Eyalat's animated immersion within the world of cyber-security.
 
-Yet these are only the first successful forays into an emerging medium.  As shared reality technologies branch out into other sense (smell, touch and taste), far more complete multisensory connections will be possible with even more surprising and enlightening results.  Brain interfaces will be transformative in a way that is hard to even describe.  The future of journalism empowering us to know things that are profoundly other is therefore bright.
+Yet these are only the first successful forays into an emerging medium.  As shared reality technologies branch out into other senses (smell, touch and taste), far more complete multisensory connections will be possible with even more surprising and enlightening results.  Brain interfaces will be transformative in a way that is hard to even describe.  The future of journalism empowering us to know things that are profoundly different is therefore bright.
 
 ### Citizen co-journalism
 
@@ -37,15 +37,15 @@ One of the most frequently dramatized tensions in journalism surrounds the role
 
 Many parts of the of the above process are naturally facilitated by the tools we highlight in the "Identity and Personhood" and "Association and ⿻ Publics" chapters.  Most of the tools for protecting ⿻ publics could be applied by organizations to reduce the credibility of documents shared outside their intended social context.  At the same time, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) based on public credentials could allow sources to remain confidential even to journalists while proving (elements of) their position even to journalists' audiences.  Yet, absent some reconciliation, such strategies could quickly become an "arms race", escalating cryptography without arriving at a better social outcome.
 
-A potential resolution of this impasse arises from the subtle distinctions these protocols make regarding verification.  If someone publicly holds a position in an organization, they will typically be able to prove this to others using a ZKP without revealing other elements of their identity.  They may be then able to harness the associated reputation, but no more, to make claims about things occurring in the organization.  But more more sensitive information and expansive claims, especially if the person only holds a relatively low position in the organization, additional verification will usually be required to make this credible.  One way is by revealing more (public) information about themselves, but this will narrow the pool of people they could be and thus expose them.  Another is to provide direct verification ("receipts") of the claims.  However, if these receipts are protected by technologies like designated verifier signatures, this is only possible by exposing their "private key" to another person (e.g. the journalist or legal authority), which puts them at risk of exploitation or exposure by that other person unless she is herself highly trustworthy.
+A potential resolution of this impasse arises from the subtle distinctions these protocols make regarding verification.  If someone publicly holds a position in an organization, they will typically be able to prove this to others using a ZKP without revealing other elements of their identity.  They may be then able to harness the associated reputation, but no more, to make claims about things occurring in the organization.  But for more sensitive information and expansive claims, especially if the person only holds a relatively low position in the organization, additional verification will usually be required to make this credible.  One way is by revealing more (public) information about themselves, but this will narrow the pool of people they could be and thus expose them.  Another is to provide direct verification ("receipts") of the claims.  However, if these receipts are protected by technologies like designated verifier signatures, this is only possible by exposing their "private key" to another person (e.g. the journalist or legal authority), which puts them at risk of exploitation or exposure by that other person unless she is herself highly trustworthy.
 
-Of course, the precise details greatly on which precise tools are used by each participant in this dance.  But overall, it illustrates how ⿻ cryptography can simultaneously allow for a quite intricate mix of trustworthy and private disclosures, protection of community norms of confidentiality and the ability to override these norms at personal cost in the a broader social interest when critical.  
+Of course, the precise details vary greatly depending on which precise tools are used by each participant in this dance.  But overall, it illustrates how ⿻ cryptography can simultaneously allow for a quite intricate mix of trustworthy and private disclosures, protection of community norms of confidentiality and the ability to override these norms at personal cost in the a broader social interest when critical.  
 
 ### Stories that bring us together
 
-While many Americans look back with nostalgia on the history of the press, the era of "press responsibility" against which they judge the harms of anti-social media dates only to the 1940s, when the "Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press" developed a code of social responsibility under which the press would act as the "common carriers of public discussion", creating a baseline of shared understanding on which public debate could proceed.  That commission argued that a central role of a free press in a democratic society is to clarify to all citizens both the points of consensus and fact and those of divergence in a balance matter to allow self-government to thrive.   While many appreciate what this era achieved at the national level for one country, the essence of ⿻ is that we live (especially today) in a much richer and more diverse world, with many loci of democracy across, between, within and beyond nations.  Whatever the many failings of social media, one thing it has achieved is to allow this diversity to shape the media ecosystem.  How might it do this while still being pro-social media in the sense of the Hutchins report?
+While many Americans look back with nostalgia on the history of the press, the era of "press responsibility" against which they judge the harms of anti-social media, dates only to the 1940s. This was when the "Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press" developed a code of social responsibility under which the press would act as the "common carriers of public discussion", creating a baseline of shared understanding on which public debate could proceed.  That commission argued that a central role of a free press in a democratic society is to clarify to all citizens both the points of consensus and fact and those of divergence in a balance matter to allow self-government to thrive.   While many appreciate what this era achieved at the national level for one country, the essence of ⿻ is that we live (especially today) in a much richer and more diverse world, with many loci of democracy across, between, within and beyond nations.  Whatever the many failings of social media, one thing it has achieved is to allow this diversity to shape the media ecosystem.  How might it do this while still being pro-social media in the sense of the Hutchins report?
 
-The "Deliberation" chapter above suggests a natural strategy.  Social media algorithms could "communities" based both on patterns of behavior internal to the platform (e.g. views, likes, responses, propagation, choices to join) and on external data such as social science or group explicit self-identification (more on this below).  For each such community, the algorithms could highlight "common content" (commonly agreed facts and values) of the group that span the divides internally, as well as important points of division within the community.  Content could then be highlighted to citizens of the communities within this social context, making clear which content is rough consensus in which communities that citizen is a member  and which content is divisive, as well as offering opportunities for the citizen to explore content that is consensus on the other side of each divide from the one she is on within that community. 
+The "Deliberation" chapter above suggests a natural strategy.  Social media algorithms could create "communities" based both on patterns of behavior internal to the platform (e.g. views, likes, responses, propagation, choices to join) and on external data such as social science or group explicit self-identification (more on this below).  For each such community, the algorithms could highlight "common content" (commonly agreed facts and values) of the group that span the divides internally, as well as important points of division within the community.  Content could then be highlighted to citizens of the communities within this social context, making clear which content is rough consensus in communities that citizen is a member  and which content is divisive, as well as offering opportunities for the citizen to explore content that is consensus on the other side of each divide from the one she is on within that community. 
 
 Such a design would continue to offer individuals and communities the agency social media affords them to respectively shape their own intersectional identities and self-govern.  Yet at the same time it would avoid the rampant "false consensus" effect where netizens come to believe that extreme or idiosyncratic views are widely shared, fueling demonization of those who do not share them and a feeling of resentment when associated political outcomes are not achieved or "⿻istic ignorance" where netizens are unable to act collectively on "silent majority" views.[^Note] Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, it would reshape the incentives of journalists and other creators away from divisive content and towards stories that bring us together.  It is relevant beyond "hard journalism" *per se* as many other cultural forms (e.g. music) benefit from audiences who want to share cultural objects and fandom with others.
 
@@ -60,10 +60,10 @@ Replacing advertising with funding from a diversity of communities does not requ
 
 Furthermore, there are good reasons to believe such organizations could afford to displace advertising revenue.  Most democratic governments (e.g. Germany, Finland, United States) spend more than a billion dollars a year supporting public media and far more than that subsidizing other culture.[^Publicmedia] Even religious media received more than $100 million in the United States alone in 2022.[^Religiousmedia]  This compares to roughly $5 billion in advertising revenue earned by Twitter (now X) in 2022, at its peak.[^Twitterrev]  It thus seems quite plausible that, together, a range of community representative organizations could replace advertising as a revenue stream, if community leaders focused on this space and social media channeled its attention to this new business model.
 
-This might play out in a variety of ways, but a simple one would be for participants to opt into a set of communities they identify with.  Each would "sponsor" their community members' use in exchange for the prioritization for their members' attention of the community-relevant content we discussed above.  Users who did not sign up for communities paying sufficiently might have to accept some amount of advertising or pay a subscription feel, and the service could identify from its own patterns communities and approach their leaders to ask for payment.  In short, social media might become a more ⿻ version of public media.
+This might play out in a variety of ways, but a simple one would be for participants to opt into a set of communities they identify with.  Each would "sponsor" their community members' use in exchange for the prioritization for their members' attention to the community-relevant content we discussed above.  Users who did not sign up for communities paying sufficiently might have to accept some amount of advertising or pay a subscription fee, and the service could identify from its own patterns communities and approach their leaders to ask for payment.  In short, social media might become a more ⿻ version of public media.
 
 
-Overall, the examples above show how ⿻ can empower a new pro-social, ⿻ media environment: one where we can connect deeply with others from very different from us, where people come together to tell their stories in authoritative and verifiable ways without compromising community or individual privacy and where we come to understand what unites and divides us in the interests of the dynamism and solidarity of all our communities.
+Overall, the examples above show how ⿻ can empower a new pro-social, ⿻ media environment: one where we can connect deeply with others from very different backgrounds as us, where people come together to tell their stories in authoritative and verifiable ways without compromising community or individual privacy and where we come to understand what unites and divides us in the interests of the dynamism and solidarity of all our communities.
 
 [^Note]: An example of false consensus is that many observers believe SARS-Cov-2 escaped from a laboratory ('lab leak' hypothesis).  The rationalist web site Rootclaim (https://www.rootclaim.com/) even assessed 'lab leak' at 89% probability (~8 to 1 in favour).  Subsequently, educated laypersons were exposed to the evidence (e.g. Pekar et al., Science 377, 960–966, 2022 and Worobey et al., Science 377, 951–959, 2022.) in over 18 hours of adversarial debate and found posterior probabilities on the order of ~800 to 1 *against* lab leak, implying a Bayes factor of ~100,000 to 1 against lab leak. Despite the strength of the evidence, the lab leak claim persists since not only does zoonosis lack emotional resonance but it also requires hard work to evaluate and offers no cathartic pay-off.  Similarly, due to ⿻istic ignorance, despite the fact that more than 81 million people in the United States voted for Joe Biden in 2020, a small crowd of several thousand highly motivated individuals almost succeeded in disrupting the Electoral College vote count on 6 January 2021.  
 [^Publicmedia]: Kleis Nielsen, Rasmus, and Geert Linnebank, “Public Support for the Media: A Six-Country Overview of Direct and Indirect Subsidies,” (Oxfordshire: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: University of Oxford, 2011), https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2017-11/Public%20support%20for%20Media.pdf.