Many of us who grew up before the Internet probably remember protracted debates with friends over matters of trivia. A buddy of mine and I argued for several years over which NFL player had the most all-purpose yards. Short of a trip to the library, which we weren’t going to do, the debate remained in the ether until, with the tiniest provocation, suddenly erupted again. This was a world where gut feelings, hearsay, bias and uneducated guesses coalesced into arguable dissertations. The winner was usually decided by an equally ignorant third party, persuaded more by his own bias and the more eloquent or forceful debater than by facts.
Things changed in the early 90s when a few button-clicks and a few seconds could quiet even the most passionate arguer. The Internet promised and, in many ways, fulfilled our desire for unlimited information instantly accessible to anyone with modest means. An apprentice didn’t have to suffer for years under a grumpy carpenter to learn how to cut crown moldings – he just had to watch a video and practice a bit. Political speeches could be instantly fact checked and second, third and fourth medical opinions about every disorder could be diagnosed from the web. The Internet became, by far, the most powerful tool mankind had developed for uncovering the truth.
It speaks to our species intimate commingling with deception that a truth sayer as powerful as the Internet quickly became an equally powerful spreader of misinformation, propaganda, misdirection and outright lies. Maybe not always the kind of deception that could be easily fact checked, but more nuanced and slicker using our own psychology against us. Misinformation born of spin targeted our attention by using emotion, not logic. Nothing draws interest like drama and drama requires two sides fussing, neither side invested in the truth or what is best, both dependent on one another for their bottom line. As advertisers rerouted dollars, traditional media dimmed and the all-important click reined. The click was replaced by the scroll all the while AI watched us so it could learn how to feed us a diet of exactly what we liked, truth or not. And into the echo chambers we fell.