> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[snip]
> But one of the reasons this can work is that there are other means of
> communication. TV, radio, the internet. In the past there would
> have been a
> perceived need for more than one newspaper but now this need is
> met by other
> media.
I can't buy that argument for a couple of reasons. The main one is that if
there is an economic opportunity for newspapers, diversity in newspapers
should exist, period. Otherwise, there is no direct competition. As for
indirect competition from other media, there many not be as many monopolies,
but there is clearly a media oligopoly. Five huge corporations own most of
the mass media. How that can possibly reflect a healthy competitive
environment? Is not diversity in economic systems as important as it is in
ecosystems?
> The advantage of the big over the small is true at all levels. It
> works in evolution for instance. Established groups are hard to
> displace even
> if a "better" competitor comes along. Speciation typically
> happens in small
> isolated comunities rather than within a large parent community.
> It is only
> when the previously isolated but now well established new species
> interacts
> with the old species that competition can occur. But this is not
> really bad
> because no matter how much the big stable thing tries to maintain
> its control
> it cannot do so forever.
I think you are confusing bigness and diversity. Are bigger insects more
successful than smaller ones? I don't think so -- co-evolution results in
increasing diversity, with period die-backs.
> Environments change, ecosystems remains
> stable for a
> while resisting change and then collapse or change quickly. Since
> I know that
> Complexity is one of your favorite subjects, I am a bit timid
> about offering
> the notion that the system you described is well covered by
> Kaufman in "At
> Home in the Universe". Complex systems tune themselves to a
> balance between
> stability and change. Too stable and you are unable to react, too
> quick to
> respond to local and possibility transient change and you descend
> into chaos.
Ah, well, I'm more than happy to talk about Kaufman! I'm struggling with
the comparisons, so I won't pretend to see exactly how his ideas map onto
the political economies of mass media and the Internet, but it's THE most
interesting subject at hand for me. He seems to observe that "patches" of
an optimal size create the most efficient problem-solving system (thus he
suggests that states rights may be the critical structural reason for the
United States' economic and political successes). In my head, I'm
translating that to the idea that there is an optimal level of diversity (a
patch = a way of solving co-evolutionary problems). Thus, the monopoly
newspaper or the oligopoly in mass media becomes "too few patches." Or, if
you will, too few approaches in how to solve the problem of connecting
people with information. And it follows, to me, that assuming our system
can be improved only by tweaking, not by considering that the theory of
competition as a regulator is incomplete, is to place too much faith in
competition.
> The forces you desribe do push the system towards stultifying
> stability but
> other forces (other media) push it towards chaos. To consider
> only newspapers
> in the overall equation of communication in a free society is to
> ignore the
> other outlets.
At the risk of being repetitive, I have to observe that the same thing is
going on throughout mass media -- concentration of power and wealth. The
big exception is the Internet, which I'm beginning to see as a collaborative
competitor against the collaboration in the "media-industrial complex" (to
paraphrase Eisenhower) that I see as a force of evil (yeah, I guess I really
see it that way) in the world.
Nick
