Disrupting the News

By Gordon Hopkins Being disruptive in the classroom can get you sent to the principal's office.Sometimes, I wish we could do the same to disruptive technology.Disruptive technology is something that permanently, fundamentally alters the way society functions. Obvious examples are the wheel, the light bulb, the telephone and cornflakes. (Hey, you think I'm kidding about that last one? Remember when people used to have to cook to have breakfast?)When it comes to information technology, I suppose the first big disruptive technology was the invention of the printing press, generally credited to Johannes Gutenberg, although versions of automated book printing was being done long before Mr. Gutenberg began printing his Bibles. Woodblock printing was being done in China as far back as the Ninth Century.The point is, the printed word became readily available to the unwashed masses (who probably should have been spending their money on soap instead of books) and the world changed.It took a few centuries before the next big technology changed how people got their information (aka: news). I won't get into the long, complicated story that led to the invention of radio. It was in the 1920s when the radio became widely used.From then, it was only a few brief decades before television came around. There is a not very good movie called “30,” (1959), about a day in the life of a newspaper. Jack Webb starred as the managing editor. There is a scene where the city editor, played by a pre-Cannon William Conrad, laments, “Why, oh, why didn't we stamp out television when we had the chance?”Just like radio before it, television changed the way the world interacted with itself and how people got their news.And then the internet happened.An important thing to note about each one of these disruptive technologies is that the world had the chance to get used to one before another came around. Radio basically prepared the world for television. When TV first came around, most people just saw it as radio with pictures. Television evolved over the years, growing from three networks to cable TV with its countless channels and 24 hour news broadcasts. Television was pretty well an established fact of life when the internet came around and, once again, completely changed the game for how people got their information.And that brings me to another important thing to note about these technologies. They are coming at us faster and faster.The next disruptive technology on the horizon is AI (artificial intelligence). Some folks are already trying to figure out how to use AI as a way to disseminate news (both real and fake).The problem is this: We haven't gotten used to the internet, yet. Oh, you think you have, but knowing how to access the wifi and knowing how to tell the difference between real, reliable news stories and fabrications are two very different things.When people got their news primarily from newspapers, they understood the difference between a story about the President signing a new bill into law and a story about Elvis being abducted by aliens. Yes, both stories have been published in newspapers but readers (well, most readers) could tell the difference.Folks really haven't figured out how to do that yet with the internet. Throwing AI into the mix before we have learned that all-important skill is going to make telling the difference between truth and lies even harder.Of course, there is a solution. Try getting your news from a source that employs reporters whose job it is to gather and report news that they have ensured is correct and accurate. In other words: newspapers.Is this column a bit self-serving? Obviously. Still, I think the world could be a better (or at least better-informed) place if people got their news from flesh-and-blood reporters and not robots.

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