g’day
we’re feasting on information (but starving for depth).
the internet has changed how we consume news media. we draw our opinions from headlines, soundbites, and social media comments (just ask your aunty or mother-in-law). despite having access to the largest corpus of raw information in history, our understanding of the world is as shallow as ever.
there is simply no incentive to wade through this raw information. journalists (who drive the public discourse) don’t have the time, and the media companies that employ them can’t afford to let them spend time on anything other than generating clicks.
the internet news cycle is daily (or shorter), and there’s a powerful incentive to write narrative-driven opinion (which drives better engagement, and more eyeballs).
there’s no one to blame — it’s human nature to enjoy a good story. the best stories are full of conflict and villainy. they always win out over the nuanced (and often boring) truth.
the most successful journalists in 2025 are the ones who get the most clicks — in other words, those who can produce the most interesting story (and headline) in the shortest time.
the biggest second-order effect of this shift has been on our politics.
i used to think politics was broken because the people were dumb: it’s the incentives.
out of necessity, politicians have been drawn into the daily news cycle and the fight for attention.
today, the average politician spends a non-trivial share of their time thinking about how they and their party’s ideas are portrayed in the media. point-scoring against the other side is rife, and the score is measured by polls and media coverage. there’s no incentive to collaborate, and no reason to think beyond tomorrow’s headlines.
when it comes to soundbites, the shorter and shallower, the better. the more meaningless, the better: no hard edges to allow the other side to grab onto.
but all hope is not lost — there are good people in politics, with long term visions and big ideas.
it’s just that the system, in the internet age, is rigged in a way that penalises depth. depth in public discourse. depth of communication. depth of understanding and shared achievement.
thankfully, technology is again the antidote.
large language models (llms) have made summarisation of huge datasets possible. it’s now possible to ingest all of hansard, all the news media, all the press releases and interviews — and work out what’s really being said.
who’s acting in good faith. who’s thinking long term. who’s building for the future — not just playing to tomorrow’s headlines.
if we want better ideas, we need to reward depth.
watch this space,
charlie
ps – new video dropped today, see below
new video just dropped, the four levers of unfair advantage
