Episode 5.04 – Series 5 Predictions: Has social media turned us all into conspiracy theorists?

The Capitol Insurrection, #wallstreetbets and Facebook’s brief war with Australia demonstrate the power of social media to change how we believe – and behave.

At the end of this decade, could social media drive us all into our own private worlds of fantasy, conspiracy, and fakery?

Episode 2.10 Vaporised Media with Rob Tercek

Returning guest Rob Tercek shows how software turned newspaper into web pages – vaporising business models that kept us well informed.

In his 2016 tour-de-force Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World, Rob looked at how software replaces hardware.

Printing presses are hardware. Newspapers – they’re hardware too.

So what happens when something vaporises? Here’s Rob:

We’re living in a time of vaporised media – and we got here suddenly, with no preparation, or any clear plan on how to make this work for us.

How do we stay well informed as news organisations find their dollars taken instead by search engine giants Google and Facebook?

Rob talks about “the Gerasimov Doctrine” – using the collapse in the media to wage a sort of covert war against a government – and here’s an article Rob recommends in this episode, exploring that whole topic.

Also highly recommended is the Peter Pomerantsev book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, about how this has become the new reality for Putin’s Russia.  Read more in this article from The Guardian

 

 

 

 

Listen here — or on iTunes.

Episode 2.01: Where the Truth Lies with John Allsopp

It’s growing increasingly difficult to know where the truth lies. We’ve gotten very good at our electronic fakery – from photoshop to ‘deepfakes’ to synthetic audio of Obama so accurate it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.

All of this feeds into a growing online community which instantly separates into tribes, then tunes out any competing with a cry of “fake news!”

Series Two of The Next Billion Seconds takes a look at the intersection of technology, truth and our future, beginning with frequent guest John Allsopp, revealed in the ways he teaches his children the spirit of inquiry, to help them discover where the truth lies.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Here’s a few links to topics covered in our conversation:

Those famous faked photos of faeries from the early part of the 20th century.

Lawfare on ‘deepfakes’, security and privacy.

The Register on Human voice cloning.

Wikipedia on ‘Rough Music’… 

And that poor woman who got pilloried for a tasteless tweet

Listen on iTunes

Listen on PodcastOne.com.au