Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Once journalists have internalized the notion that there’s something crazy about someone who suspects a conspiracy, they’re useless as guardians of our freedom. Just call something a conspiracy theory and journalists snap into attack mode, roll their eyes, and jeer.”
Sharyl Attkisson • The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote
Since the rise of Trumpists, Brexiteers, and populists around the world, huge resources have been poured into hiring tens of thousands of content moderators, writing machine-learning algorithms, passing laws, and building regulatory bureaucracies to rid the internet, if not the world, of lies and idiocy, fake news and disinformation. What a fool’s
... See moreJeff Jarvis • The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet
Clear and unbiased truth in our information ecology is seriously limited by the amount of bullshit we consume every day, in part a result of the overwhelming intensity of marketing motives and the conformity demands of our in-group. Furthermore, the intentions of our information sources are as often as not based on clickbait or ideology rather than... See more
Rebel Wisdom • The War on Sensemaking
For the first time there are facts and (in Kellyanne Conway’s notorious phrase) ‘alternative facts’. As facts become fluid they become contestable; the truth becomes (once again) something you assert, not something you prove. It used to be a peculiar characteristic of totalitarian regimes that they made the facts fit their purposes; now it seems th... See more