The Problem

So how do you get your news? Or find out about new music or stuff to watch?

Beyond friends and family, for most people, the answer is a very few companies or organizations. But we all know everyone is biased. And organizations and companies have other incentives that can often work against our interests. That leads to all of us being less well informed than we could be and missing out on a lot of great work.

And as a society, it means our culture feels superficial and our civic life feels broken. Only a few big media companies dominate and out of everything that can now exist online, what actually gets attention is determined by the algorithms of a few large social media companies. Nothing that threatens them gets made or is allowed to go viral. We are constantly entertained but never encouraged to think.