Context: Social media users more likely to believe misinformation The adoption of a “social” communications technology walks hand in hand with the suspension of disbelief as to the veracity of curated information broadcast on that channel; a wilful or semi-unconscious cognitive entrapment as progressive desensitisation to serial falsehoods. This may have taken a particular shape […]
Where we speak of disinformation it is quite plausible that we do not reference any kind of antithesis to information or the logical, structured and relatively well-ordered patterning upon which cognition as much as civilisation depends. Rather, disinformation is a functional representation of the inconsistencies and discontinuities that are endemic, irreducible and omnipresent to (and […]
Finding myself endlessly questioning the reality of all that with which I am presented, two things become clear. First, that which is true can often appear as a lie but in most cases a lie will assert infallible truth and this is in itself a key differentiator and indicator of that which can or should […]
Some general philosophical questions and reflections on disinformation: To what extent is disinformation not only evidence of directed or (even, in a limited sense) desirable artefacts, belief systems or entities, and to what extent is disinformation itself an irreducible property of large-scale sociotechnical systems? Our languages and institutional, geopolitical and self-organisational logics require we leverage […]
The old Nietzschean idiom about the abyss staring back seems apt here – as we gaze into an abyss of political chaos, partisan insecurity, confusion and intractable information complexity. This is precisely what is being done in the US right now through externally (and internally) sourced disinformation. Notice that, agnostic of truth-value, distributed patterns of […]
Disinformation is a mirrored labyrinth that no one can escape, but escaping – like truth – was never really the most important thing. A point worth noting is: these technologically-mediated information systems possess characteristics of what is known as “emergent complexity”. The form and flow of information and energy across (and as) these systems leverage […]
Information, like entropy, is always created. When considered in gestalt: successful cultural, technological or socioeconomic systems (and their diverse artefacts or entities) are autonomously-oriented towards self-propagation as biological as much as material facts of information and energy-processing. One of the common errors we make when we engage the growing presence of both amateur and professionally-bespoke […]
Fake news (as disinformation) is real, it is not new, it is used against all of us in every place and context or belief system and it is successful precisely because it exploits preexisting, foundational psychological symmetries and insecurities which have never been maturely or adequately analysed, assessed, addressed and neutralised. This is of the […]
In what ways does regulation, interdiction, surveillance and retrospective analysis or definition actually and inadvertently (re)produce the problems it seeks to diminish? Distinctions between legal and illegal are clearly and self-evidently important but in terms of comprehensive analysis and aspirations towards effective problem resolution they may also be a foundational misdirection. It is becoming clear […]
Context: Facebook staffers walk out saying Trump’s posts should be reined in It is interesting to reflect that, shameless Executive bloviation notwithstanding, information and communications technologies from (for instance) Lascaux through emojis have never really been about truth and falsity so much as they have been about naked self-replication of the encoded system they bear. […]
This issue of Fake Brands and commercial “knock-offs” represents interesting problem. These clearly exist on a spectrum that begins with the dodgy Rolex bought from a street vendor and ends with potentially life-threatening fake medicines. Most solutions appear to be retrospective, reactive and post facto attempts to influence behaviour or punish those purposefully profiting from […]
Context: HyperNormalisation… “HyperNormalisation is a yearning for simplicity, certainty and knowing — a fake simple world — in a world of complexity and uncertainty — a complex real world.” – Richard Schutte There are resonances here with Jean Baudrillard’s conceptually-labyrinthine Simulacra and Simulation; a conversation regarding that dissimulation which never conceals the truth, but is rather – “the […]
