The long read on Katherine Viner’s “How Technology Disrupted the Truth” in The Guardian, was insightful and helpful in understanding how people feel towards digital technologies especially the social media.
I don't think it is technology that has disrupted the truth. Truth has often been a subjective reality of a person or group and has always been manipulated using the various medium in time. Technology is more about its use than the technology itself. People will always be people and those that intend good will still direct its usage towards good. However, technology enhances things and this means that anyone who intends bad will be helped towards that by its use. Technology can only be said to help spread the false phenomenon faster and broader.
Most people feel technology makes it easy to manipulate and spread falsehood and I think that's just what it is; a means.
Facts exist, like gravity; like good and evil; like hunger and sex and other things but truth and technology are like the message and the medium. Somebody encodes it and then transmits it through a medium expecting a certain outcome. The real problem now is people do not filter or facts check anything again. It is selective exposure without question. You can pretty much convince people with dodgy videos and they would swear it's true. A case in question is the latest hoax on plastic rice. It always just happens that those who spread falsehood usually are more determined and motivated.
Technology creates a fantasy and can be used to elevate or exaggerate falsehood just like it could be used to create an opposite reality altogether. Same technology can be used to spread the truth by those who wish to counter the general falsehood that's been spread around.
Interesting perspective; keep it up!
ReplyDeleteThanks Abel.
Delete