AT&T has ownership stakes an a lot of companies which end up working on projects with Fox, Sony, NBC, etc. They also co-own several distribution channels with said companies.
So they absolutely have some control/influence over a sizeable portion of the media that we consume, even the segments they don't technically "own".
They random dialled, then surveyed 6000 people, ~4500 agreed to be surveyed further (with cash incentive), of those ~300 are Reddit users and the stats are taken from there. You can choose to do the survey by web or regular mail .. respondents who agree to be surveyed by mail actually take the survey at a level of 20%; if I read correctly they assume none of those sent the mail survey are net users.
The point of the survey was analysing political activity.
It seems likely to give only broad indications at best. Unfortunately this result from < 300 USAmericans seems to be repeated as "this is the global demographic of Reddit" in a few places.
Imagine if during the height of the Greek golden age most of the largest cities were razed to the ground and their populations systematically exterminated. That means Athens as we knew it would have been reduced to rubble.
That's what happened during the Mongol Conquests. The fall of Baghdad alone caused at least several hundred thousand people to be killed. The main library, which had collected countless works over the centuries, was gone.
Baghdad was rebuilt, of course. Economically and politically it bounced back since it was still right on the silk road. But scientific study never really recovered there.
One might, on the other hand, wonder what might have happened if the Mongols hadn't been infected by Islamic schism and dynastic troubles and completed their push through into Mamluk Egypt. As pivotal as Ayn Jalut was, the groundwork for that failure was laid in the religious conversion of [1]Berke and the Golden Horde to Islam.
[1] Initially listed his brother Batu, rather than Berke, the first Muslim Khan.
Very true! Egypt was able to continue mostly unscathed. Perhaps this indicates that the Arab golden age was in its twilight? Maybe the Mamluks didn't invest in the sciences as much as the Fatimids?
And even further west Andalusia was still chugging along. That was definitely an important source of knowledge for the first universities in the rest of Europe.
I am hoping israel is giving the kick the region needs in terms of scientific progress. They are kicking ass, pushing boundaries. For them, it might have more reasons beyond scientific curiosity and capitalism, it might also be existential.
Definitely. Iran already has more in publications in total than Israel, although they're still way behind when looking at the per capita number. Hopefully this trend continues.
Calling it the Arab Golden Age is pushing it. It was a Golden Age of the Islamic world but the high culture, science and philosophy was often communicated in Persian and most of the great thinkers we remember were not Arabs.
You're probably right that for those of us in developed, western nations data collection isn't quite as bad as some other issues (for now).
I do think that in the rest of the world this sort of data collection has severe human rights consequences. What happens when oppressive regimes are willing to sign a contract with any of the dozens of adtech companies out there?
Imagine one working with some authoritarian government to help them track people considered some a "risk". It might be a criminal risk at the beginning, but it could easily turn into people using this data to track and spy members of the opposition party. Or even just to track people who have voiced dissent or the people who've only _talked_ to those people.
It goes beyond pure politics, too. What if some entity is trying to crack down on members of a particular religion, sexual orientation, or ethnic group. People who might have been able to hide those well enough may not be able to do so if so much of their online activity is being monitored.
