computer-generated 'news'

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A friend sent along this article about the rising tide of computer-generated news.

Basically, programs have been created that can turn the raw data of sports or Wall Street or a range of other topics into passable English.  It's quick, it's kool, it's cheap.

Publishers looking for a way to save a buck and make more bucks are no doubt salivating: Who would want to pay a reporter to go to Timbuktu when a machine could churn out something 'resembling' a news story in no time flat ... and readers would learn to reframe their understanding of what news was?

"I don't have a philosophical objection to that kind of writing being outsourced to a computer, if the reporter who would have been writing it could use the time for something more interesting," Doig said.

But "something more interesting" costs money and commitment and computer-generated news, well, there's gold in them thar hills!

And democracy is about to take another hit on behalf of income, greed, self-aggrandizement ... the usual suspects.

It's called "progress."

Joseph Goebbels would be delighted.
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