The impact of technology on reality
By: Vuk Ivanovic
Tags: Technology, Internet, Fake News, Truth, Future

The impact of technology on reality

What is truth in 21st century?

Source: author

I used to be one of the conspiracy theorists, but that was back in the day when we would be discussing hidden truths about UFOs, Alien abductions, and JFK assassination, and similar. Then I grew up, intellectually, and accepted that evolution in technology suddenly made it easy for various hoaxes to be presented in a hard to dispute ways, for the masses at least. “Truths” in the form of deep fakes, and usually more accessible to anyone compared to what doctored images and audio used to be in the past. One had to spend some serious money on equally serious equipment that would in return take up some real space instead of megabytes/gigabytes/etc. And, today it’s easier to manipulate and disseminate all that b.s. which, if done correctly (or incorrectly, depending on your point of view) can become the truth by simply being promoted by “trustworthy” sources of information. Then by being repeated enough times, no one can actually tell its source, and if enough people agree that it’s a fact, then it’s a fact, or you’re the crazy one.

The truth

What does it mean? As someone who has been enjoying learning various languages, seeing similarities, or simply curious word usages eventually lead me to become interested in etymology. With the whole chaos of what is true/false in the news, it occurred to me to look into the etymology of the word truth.

The word truth has many roots. The interesting one, the one that is not as supported has surprisingly the most truthfulness to it :) See what I did there? Anyway, “deru” (from Proto-Indo-European root) means solid/firm, https://www.etymonline.com/word/*deru- and in Sanskrit “dru” translates to tree/wood, in Serbian “drvo” translates to tree as well, and I could copy paste the rest of it from the link, but the point is that from tree -> true -> truth and the logic behind its assigned meaning is: “as solid as a piece of wood/oak”.

Why not question the truth?

There are valid reasons why a person would accept certain truths — fear. Fear of the unknown. Another source of the word truth is: trod in Nordic which means faith among other adjacent definitions/translations. What do people usually seek from faith? A comfort. A meaning to the horrible and also wonderful events in their life, in the lives of others.

Why believe the lie? It’s easier, quicker, fast food for the soul.

How to invalidate truth, how to validate a lie

It’s hard to prove things. Sometimes, it’s not even about the validity of the truth, but about the agreement of what is true. If you’re in a room with a hundred people and you are all looking at the same image, and you see a bird while a hundred people see a horse, well, the “truth” becomes that it was an image of a horse that you were looking at. As per the old Twilight Zone episode, the truth is in the eye of the beholder. If you are the only one who disagrees then you’re the one who is in the wrong or in other words — you should be committed.

How to fight it today

Challenge it. But, that requires work, and why would anyone want to work for a quick tweet or a facebook update, etc. In the end, it depends if you’re looking to spread the information or to apply it on something silly or serious. If it’s about spreading the information, you better be sure it’s the real deal. If it’s something as silly as the youtube prank clips of unlocking the car with a tennis ball, give it a go, it can’t hurt (unless if you find yourself locked out of your car). And of course, if it’s something more dangerous like… well, I guess I better not give examples, just in case :) , but you do understand that the greater the risk from something turning out to be false the more you have to make sure of its validity.

How to fight it tomorrow

Blockchain/bitcoin approach. Data/information that can’t be manipulated. But, I have no idea how to apply it without risking the old, who watches the watchmen, or in this case, who watches the ghost in the machine question/concern. Because, there is the dark side of this approach as well — manipulation of the data that we all have access to, but can’t verify any of it first hand, and therefore it becomes easy to miss what is true and what is false.