I mean, misinformation has been a problem for as long as humans have existed. The overabundance of information and misinformation is new, but not their existence.
Yeah although misinformation is recently on the rise, there is that overabundance of information, I still feel like we're in perhaps the easiest era ever for verifying facts.
In the past when I called bullshit on my friend's factoids, there wasn't much I could do unless I went to a library and maybe there'd be a book on it, and I'd have not much choice but to trust that book. I believed so much nonsense people told me before that I can look up and discuss on a global knowledge in my pocket now, albeit requiring skill to do properly though
I think that's it's more just information in general that's on the rise. As you mention, those of us who grew up before the internet remember believing a lot of bullshit about a lot of things because there was no easy way to verify it. Now there is, but there is so much information out there that you can't fact check it all and some shit ends up getting through and people who lack this ability fall down bullshit rabbit holes. But I do think that people that are able to fact check are getting better and better informed at a good pace.
Yeah. There was that one ancient Greek historian that made up a bunch. Then there were people that altered historic documents to provide evidence that someone or other actually existed.
The past has always been written by those on top to justify the present.
The reach, speed, and scale of misinformation campaigns is certainly much increased.
Information, too.
The irony being that the surviving records of antiquity are literally just predominantly the royal propaganda because those were carved into stone which lasted and other writing formats didn't survive.
The guy carving into the rock here in reality was doing so at the bidding of a guy who would have killed him if he didn't write the version of reality he wanted recorded.
The idea that what was written down could be instantly disputed and checked against facts at all is the part this dude would find unbelievable.
Then the printing press fragmented and diluted the power of the elites. For example, I believe that it's no coincidence that Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation came very soon after Gutenberg; in fact, I believe it was inevitable.
EDIT: well what do you know... it was Martin Luther himself who translated the famous Gutenberg Bible. Talk about one degree of Kevin Bacon.
Yeah, cuneiform was interesting in terms of the medium and how much and how broadly it survived. Their folk tale in terms of how they received the writing was that someone from the ocean arrived and was trying to communicate and pressed reeds into the wet mud.
I sometimes wonder if there was an Aegean earlier Bronze Age/prehistory writing system (like the one found on the Dispilio tablet) that has been lost to the ages because it was on a temporary medium and then the Sumerians ended up with a version of writing that persisted in a loosely similar way to their folk history.
Is that worse than having knowledge curated by only a few?
It depends on which few.
Religiofascists curating science? Dark ages.
Scientists curating religion? Grifter cults die, only vegan, wicca and Buddhism remains as religions, but everything is well-recorded and studied in its sunset.
Military curating education? "IM DOING MY PART!"
Military curating science? MOAR BOMMS
We could rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock the shit out of this. We could, but should we?
Both are awful in each their own way and we're so goddamn lucky that they don't even cancel each other out, they MULTIPLY each other! Wee!
"Facts"
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."
- William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
Definitely don't need to fact check that quote, I believe it.
"And so it began"
CiA agents carefully and selectively misinforming the public on small details trickled in to manipulate public and congress opinion.
Then Kool Aid man comes in and makes it a team sport and suddenly the truth doesn't matter to the public anymore. In fact it probably never did.
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations."
-George Orwell
Apparently the CIA just Nixoned that because even I am close to not being able to tell the gorramn difference.
