There's been a disruption in the flow of information.
The Trust loop from source to citizen has been blown out
into a million little pipelines, tilted lying still on the
ground with the rest.
Newspapers, daytime talk shows, nighttime talk shows, radio broadcasts,
magazines, all mediums that once held the trusted respect of the citizen
in the recent past, and each one now struggling to hang on to any kind of
relevance in the current era. These mediums haven’t disappeared completely,
instead transforming into their digital counterparts, splitting apart into
countless reflections on the path from continuous to discrete, showing bare
for a moment how primal and real the inner workings of these information
systems really are, and it humbled everyone that caught a glimpse, shook
them loose for a bit. Then the digital versions of these avenues thrived
in a way their plastic predecessors never could have dreamt. For decades
it was a veritable information paradise, individuals being able to find
any information they could think of, online, open source.
Trust was built not in reputation alone, but through a networking
consensus between users, who would be able to cross-reference
every piece of information independently. The internet hive mind
would begin to flex their investigative muscles as well, becoming the
place where new information breaks, far more just an archive of
information from the past, it becomes an integral part of the
information feedback loop at large. It was a glorious time, a
nostalgic one remembered fondly by users of every server.
Something seems to have shifted since then though.
We’re somewhere new now…