THE CORPORATION

Herbert Schiller's "Data Deprivation" brought to mind a documentary I watched a few months ago, The Corporation, in which the filmmakers traced the increasing privatization of what we would normally think of as public goods. Like Schiller, they brought up the legal identity of the corporation as as individual, and demonstrated how that identification could result in the deprivation of actual individual rights.

I buy a lot of the argument, and certainly feel the fear of ClearChannel and other media conglomerations. But I still read the New York Times and other corporate media.

I think that the internet has allowed a bit more diversification of media outlets, but I can see that the main players in print and television media are still the main players in internet news, perhaps with the notable exception of google, which really just collates the news from other corporate sources.

Even though Google exists, I think we still lack good sorting mechanisms. The information may be out there, but how do I even know what to search for? As Schiller suggests, if information is disappearing, how do I know? Would an ideal search mechanism be a kind of amazon user reviews of news, tailored specifically to my tastes and interests? And then, what if I should know something I don't want to know? And can we trust an algorithm for our information?