Reality in the Digital Age

It’s comforting to view social and intellectual progress as a continuous, positive process, particularly with the rapid innovation of tools to improve access to information.  From this perspective, we applaud the Internet, and the ease with which one can now find answers to questions which previously would have required effort, special access, and perhaps training to research.

But easy access to knowledge is not a panacea for ignorance.  Along with a nearly endless variety of other media available—including a plethora of 24/7 news channels—the Internet is indeed a conduit for data and access to knowledge.  But it is also a misinformation superhighway.  People are deluged with competing assertions of reality; without a solid foundation of critical discernment skills that allow them to filter reality from myth, it is overwhelming.  In order to resolve the resulting dissonance, many simply default to the beliefs and prejudices they already hold. 

This tendency is well understood by those who wish to exploit it for their own purposes.  Their web and cable networks provide palatable, easy to digest solutions to complex problems; tying traditional values inextricably to the agenda they wish to promote – likewise casting those who oppose their agenda as opponents of these same comforting traditional values. 

Viewed from outside the beguiled bubble, these sleights of conflation and misdirection are obvious and amateurish.  But within the bubble, these have become so frequent that they are really no longer discreet events, but now comprise an entirely separate reality. 

Mark Twain famously said that, ‘A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’  That was well over a hundred years ago.  As valuable as are our advances in information technology, their ability promulgate the dissemination of myths leaves those who attempt to correct, or even monitor them with a task that would make Sisyphus appreciate his lot.