Informational Cascades

Thinking in class and further reading Cass Sunstein's Republic 2.0 I thought of the ways in which people give meaning to and believe false information because of the repetition of it and because they can always find an answer they agree with or one that aligns with their point of view. It also further interested me when I woke up and the first thing that popped up on my internet was an answer to the birther's questions and concerns over President Obama's birth certificate and the authenticity of the long form certificate. All of this concern sadly made me pay attention to the 20 minute or so speech Donald Trump gave today in which he touted himself as the reason the long form certificate was released and further seemed to claim information that had been cascaded and uncertain as the truth. He often said that "he has heard" or that people have told him sensational things and that all of todays problems "he heard" could be fixed easily if he was to run for and become President. If his claims are true that he is leading the polls at this stage in the next election, I feel bad for our country and feel that people must be as Cass Sunstein puts it being fragmented and led to believe whatever they want to. It also makes me wonder how Sunstein can even be optimistic or have a hope that the internet will become a deliberative ground and a powerful democratic force, when people are just finding others that are like-minded and creating and circulating news that may not even be true or authentic, and some just flat out false. It is sad to see masses of people gradually and somewhat quickly become dumber or misinformed as the internet continues to become the main source of information to most. While it is fast, massively distributed and disseminated these also are the problems with internet information. Now anything anyone says can be doubted and things that used to be counted as credible and true can be disputed with no deliberation. With media decadence and informational cascades, people continue to be misinformed and they all seem to be happy with it.

To change thoughts for a moment, I have been thinking constantly of Kurzweil's foreseen future of man and computer interfacing and merging, and the chapter in Sunstein's book about internet v-chips made me wonder if we could see a future like the creators of South Park did when they came out with the South Park movie. If v-chips are widely spread on computers could we eventually v-chip our children if they were connected to machines? The scene is all in jest, but it can paint a grim picture if you dwell on it for very long.