Against the Algorithm: 'When I Hear the Word Culture I Reach for My.... Airpods'

Peter Jukes explains the reason for launching Byline Audio as part of a fight back against the cultural dominance of AI, machine learning and the elevation of probabilities over possibilities

Joseph Goebbels infamous dictum about culture (“when I hear the word culture I reach for my gun”) has been echoed, slightly differently, from a more modern perspective by another propagandist of the far right.

Alt Reich guru, Breitbart supremo and co-founder of Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon used to constantly tell the whistleblower Chris Wylie who helped start up the digital campaign company that “culture is upstream of politics”. Wylie came from the world of fashion, and Bannon’s insights - however unlawfully used - helped shape the momentous Brexit and Trump election results of 2016.

Bannon’s words have haunted me ever since. I came into the world of journalism over a decade ago after several decades in the world of culture - books, TV shows, radio, and theatre - and felt journalism was more important. By the time of the phone hacking trial which I live-tweeted, I’d had enough of fictions. I wanted more facts, and I could see how big media conglomerates were not only dictating our tastes and preferences but even our sense of reality.

But after the successful launch of Byline Times into retail last year, our readers, supporters, and much of our team have begun to wonder if we don’t need to offer more cultural offerings. The incessant news of corruption and disinformation can be disheartening. People turn off.

Besides, as Brian Klaas explained to myself and Hardeep Matharu in the June edition of Byline Times about to hit the newsstands and people’s letterboxes, most of the voting public don’t follow policy detail or the up-and-downs of daily news. They get impressions and memorable memes, often carefully sculpted by the right (‘Build the Wall, ‘Take Back Control’, ‘Stop the Boats’).

So how do we push back against the manipulation of culture by oligarchs and corporations?

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The Automation of Consensus

The world of culture isn’t free of the monopolies, abuse of power, secrecy and manipulation we see in contemporary politics. In fact, and I can say this from personal experience, those monopoly abuses can be even worse. The #MeToo movement (and #MenToo if you’re asking) shows that cultural institutions can be even worse than political institutions when it comes to exploiting eager and starry-eyed employees.

So we are determined to do something about this. At Byline all our offerings have tried to push back against media concentration in the mainstream. Our print edition aims to tell you “what the papers don’t say”, our video offerings “what the TV doesn’t tell you” our Byline Podcast “what the radio won’t report”. But what would a cultural offering look like?

The thing that always astonishes me when I go on a streaming service, or buy a book on Amazon, or flick through the cultural pages of most newspapers and magazines, is that all the content is determined by two simple mechanical things: the Cambridge Analytica style algorithm that offers you cultural products based on a data analysis of your past preferences and choices: and then the PR cycle of launches, campaigns, interviews and merchandise, based on some pre-programmed movie premiere, album release, perfume launch or preplanned viral marketing

It is as if our culture was determined by two figures. A Don Draper madman adman trying to capitalise on our dreams and desires and commodify them. Or, moving from the manufacture of consensus to the automation of consensus, a Dominic Cummings data guru looking a Bayesian probabilities and trawling through big data to encapsulate us in code.

But what about the unplanned, the unpredictable, the unknown unknowns? After all, from the Elizabethan Theatre to the origin of Hollywood, most great cultural moments have arisen out of the blue, from the margins. Real creativity doesn’t come from the artificial calculation of probabilities, but from the unexpected possibilities of the human brain.

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Possibilities rather than Probabilities

This weekend we launched a new phase of cultural content on Byline Audio, and plans are afoot for a dedicated Byline Times cultural print edition.

It’s no surprise then that the first series of podcasts pitches the immense wetware brains of our regular writers Otto English and John Mitchinson against the power of AI Jo (played by Joanna Scanlan) as they seek to separate urban myth and legend from reality.

Is Britain full? Were the Victorians off their faces with opiates? Did anyone really identify as a cat? Has the internet got smaller? These are the questions John and Otto seek to answer in competition with the massed neural networks of artificial intelligence. And the answers are - if not always conclusive - very funny.

There is additional content for members, Even More Bollocks, where I join the hosts to discuss the episode and have some more impromptu and unscripted conversations about urban myths and legends. Subscribers to Byline Supplement can listen to it below the paywall.

Utter Bollocks is just the first of three new series of podcasts already in the pipeline. Prior to the US Elections, Bonnie Greer and Hardeep Matharu embarked on a series of road journeys into the icons of the United States, Travels in Americana, touring important cultural phenomena such as The Godfather movies, the OJ Simpson trials and Taylor Swift, seeing what these legendary emblems reveal about race, immigration, class and the American Dream.

Fully exploring the world possibilities rather than just probabilities, Dawn Butler MP will be delving back into the hinterland behind politics, moving beyond party allegiance and tribalism to see if, from rappers to ministers, we can find some kind of common ground in our aspirations, as guests and leaders try to build the infrastructure, laws and norms for an imaginary metaverse of If Only…

In addition to his peerless Byline Podcast (formerly the Byline Times Podcast), Adrian Goldberg will be bringing us extra content, long interviews, investigations and cultural riffs in his Goldberg Variations. Meanwhile, I will be interviewing various well-known figures who, in a moment of crisis, have had to stand up to lies and disinformation in a new series called Tell Me the Truth.

This is just the beginning of our audio and cultural journey. We have many more plans to announce. But we do need to pay our production team and, to help us on this journey, you can support us by signing up for ad-free podcast and bonus content. Even More Bollocks below is

the first example, with 20 mins of extra content, soon to be followed by In the Diner with Bonnie and Hardeep, the Ifonlyans Assembly with Dawn Butler.

Founder members of Byline Audio will be named on the website and get extra benefits such as Byline Festival tickets.

Do let us know what you think as more episodes and podcasts are released. And help us fight the algorithm with possibilities rather than probabilities.

Bonus content from our first episode of Even More Bollocks below the line for subscribers