Forgive me if today’s subject seems unnecessarily repetitive, but I recently came across an article from The Bulwark that eloquently explained my concerns with our digital information environment. The article was titled “American Folklore,” and “Folklore” was an apt description of what has become of my original excitement/thrill/misunderstanding of the then-new communication mechanism called the Internet.
The dream of the internet was that it would create a high-information, high-trust society. Technology was supposed to make facts and primary sources immediately available to everyone, thereby ushering in an age of rationality and data-driven decision-making.
If you lived in Bumblefuck, Missouri, the internet meant that you were no longer beholden to the limited stream of news provided by your local paper, three broadcast networks, and assorted cable news players. You’d be able to see the information with your own eyes.
A Senate committee issued an important report? A scientific journal published a landmark study? You’d be able to sit in your living room and pull up the actual study or report and read it yourself, from soup to nuts. Your local newspaper might run a 600-word story about a speech some politician gave. The internet meant that you could watch the entire speech, unfiltered, and draw your own conclusions.
It was a lovely dream. And as we all know now, incredibly unrealistic..
As the article acknowledged, the internet has, indeed, made all of that data readily available to people. But the magnitude of even credible information is overwhelming, and much of it is too complicated for non-experts to understand. Furthermore, as the author says, the “bigger problem has been the sheer volume of noise that the internet gave rise to.” That noise has overwhelmed the information, and is largely the reason for the decline of trust in institutions.
I think there is another, even bigger problem.
Not only does the massive amount of information and disinformation challenge ordinary citizens, the way in which the Internet distributes information– the way that information is made accessible–requires each of us to be our own gatekeeper. It requires us to know what it is we need to know, and then to search it out and determine its credibility.
Let me use an example. A site called Chalkbeat provides vetted, credible information about education in several states, including my own state of Indiana. A couple of years ago, I asked over twenty reasonably bright, educated people if they had ever heard of the site or visited it; every one of them was unaware of its existence.
When we had local newspapers that were widely read, gatekeepers (editors) determined what subjects were important to disseminate–what informed citizens needed to know. They weren’t uniformly right, but those papers included education news, and readers who may not have had children in school or who were unaware of or disinterested in how education policy affected them (think property taxes, the effects of school reputation on sales price of homes, etc.) would at least see headlines that might lead them to better understanding of why they should keep informed about the subject.
The gatekeepers weren’t perfect, but they were helpful. Today, we can remain blissfully unaware of what is occurring in many policy areas and the relevance, let alone the existence, of sources of information on the topics.
The scattered nature of our information environment not only puts the onus on the individual to determine what s/he needs to know and where to find trustworthy sources, but it is the major reason that we Americans occupy incompatible realities. The “zone”–that is, the Internet–has been flooded with propaganda, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, as well as sincere but different ideological approaches to most subjects. There’s a reason so many people have turned to social media for their “news”–it is simply unreasonable to expect every American to decide what subjects s/he needs to know and then to search out and evaluate information on those subjects.
As the linked essay notes,
The result of all of this [changing economics of media] is a growing consumer alienation from the actual sources of information, a return to a kind of folk-story society ripe for manipulation by demagogues who promise simplicity in an increasingly complex world…
We are now a folk-story society. The drones. The immigrants eating cats and dogs. The crime wave and “economic hardships” that haven’t been real since 2022.
It’s all folklore. Stories that a post-literate people pass on to one another in the oral tradition.
Our information environment isn’t the only cause of our current dysfunctions, but it is a major contributor.
“Our information environment isn’t the only cause of our current dysfunctions, but it is a major contributor.”
The Internet gave us what should have been an advantage over those “good Germans” who knew nothing about what Hitler was up to as they watched their neighbors being hauled away in trucks and saw the humanity filled boxcars on trains passing through. We watched Trump and his MAGAs lie and bully their way through the three branches of our government and allowed them to take over. Like that old recommendation as to what to do if you are being raped, “Just lay back and enjoy it.” The numbers don’t lie, our lying eyes watching it happen didn’t deceive us so the loss of all three branches of government to the criminal faction of the new GOP should not have been the “Unanticipated Consequences” the losers are claiming.
The entire Democratic party is now down here peeping through the weeds at grass roots level with the rest of us wondering what the fuck happened.
Oh, by the way, Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas while we still have the freedom to choose or ignore it all.
In the run up to the election I felt sure that the young voters who grew up with the internet had a much more skilled BS Detector. I felt the would detect and dismiss the mountains of BS. I was wrong
Great sharing Sheila.
I just came across ITAA, a nation/country wide link to support others who seem to be addicted to mass scrolling thru sites, often which are so removed from their own physical reality. It, IT, has us enraptured, I even forget to do my laundry!
Happy Holidays to All! May the Holiday Lights brighten and sparkle up each and everyone if us.
“Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg[a] (c. 1393–1406 – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who invented the movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press[2] enabled a much faster printing rate.”
The concept of massively networked computers was the same invention all over again with a single added feature. That was the speed at which information traveled.
AI trains by memorizing everything on the Internet using Large Language Models, because the information on the Internet and the output of the LLM are words.
Just like books.
The culprit of our society are mass media screens. Commercials for products to pay for commercial content for product commercials, the goal being keeping eyeballs and ears and minds glued in place.
The unfortunate consequence are commercials for politicians who promise everything and deliver nothing. Or, worse, deliver destruction.
AI could do better even at this early stage of development of continuously developing Constitutional liberal democracy.
Herrs Musk, Trump, Koch, Patel, Kennedy, Putin, Xi, Jong Un, Netanyahu, Orban, and Basherr, have a single mission and that is to make the world safe for oligarchy.
AI could do better even at this early stage of development of continuously developing Constitutional liberal democracy.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanza! Happy Solstice! Happy Holidays!
I think I hit all the algorithms, but please let me know if I missed yours!
🎄🎁🔯
As I’ve mentioned, and so have Sheila and others, the internet and social media are not the problem. Both are tools for ‘people’ to use. If you want to know what is happening worldwide, open a Telegram account. It provides a very high-level flow of information directly from the sources. Why? It’s encrypted, and the owner refuses to sell out to international governments, including the US.
Our old oligarch-owned media has been controlled by gatekeepers called editors and executives for years. Einstein told us in the 40s, and Noam Chomsky told us in the 80s. It was all propaganda. You might have enjoyed the propaganda, but it was still propaganda. The internet blew up all the dams created by gatekeepers, presenting a problem for the oligarchy since they no longer controlled the free flow of information. They’ve been scrambling to regain all the information so they can control it. Julian Assange told us that Google was NOT just a search engine. They were a quasi-government that the oligarchy used to control the internet.
If you search for right-wing information online, their cookies will deliver more right-wing information to you. You won’t get left-wing data unless you land on those websites. It’s why these mothers and politicians are full of shit when they testify that their son committed suicide because of all the “dark info” TikTok shared with him. It wasn’t an accident! The kid was looking for dark material because he was pondering suicide. That’s how cookies work.
The bottom line is our media system was trash and went the way of the dinosaur due to their publishing of bullshite. They manipulated the people with propaganda. Can you get inundated by information on the internet? Yes, but you’ll only get information you’re interested in based on tracking and cookies. Test it by shopping for a specific brand of oatmeal or car. Suddenly, you’ll see ads from the makers of oatmeal and cars because you’ve been tracked.
The internet and social media aren’t the problems – the people don’t understand what it is all about. Many don’t want to learn about or use it beyond social media, so they can tell everybody lies about their lives. 😉
As for the young people, they did see through all the bullshit primarily being dished out by Kamala and the Democrats. If Kamala had taken a hard stance against Israel and Ukraine, she might have attracted the youth vote, but she chose to stick behind #GenocideJoe. And, if you’ve been watching closely, Biden’s clan and other Democratic politicians have essentially rolled over and are kissing the king’s ring. 😉
The disintegration of our culture, politics and world is a multi-legged stool; the relationship between the Web and information is just one link. This holiday time is a good time to revisit the books, “Bowling Along” and “Amusing Ourselves to Death” prophets of us now. All please pray for our country and world at this time.
One of my colleagues from Elkhart called the internet the devil. Evil. I shook my head, the internet is what you make of it. If you follow evil, you will eventually meet the devil. I wonder what happened to Aaron.
Happy Holidays to everyone in Sheila’s world!
Hey everyone, Marv says hey! He’s kind of sick, but he was asking about all of you. I told him you all were doing fine, and that his opinions are missed. He also mentioned that Todd had some interesting viewpoints. I just figured I’d mention it, because in my opinion, Marv is a pretty interesting dude. And besides, the stuff that he talked about concerning his history, is rock solid, because in this day and age, you can research pretty much anything. And it is all in black and white.
John Sorg; please tell Marv that JoAnn says “Hey!”