8 minute read
Editorial
Carl Sagan
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Parallel to this, the Dark Ages began, and often seen by some historians as being caused by the fall of the Roman Empire. Along with the fall of the Empire came another: the loss of knowledge. Libraries fell into disrepair. The unifying languages of Greek and Latin fell out of social use and people could no longer communicate with each other. With Rome no longer producing a safe environment for learning, philosophy, or science; nobody could keep up the Great Conversation, or make scientific discoveries. The architecture and learning and thoughts of the Empire were completely forgotten in the wake of its fall from greatness, plunging the world into darkness. Perhaps the fall of the Roman Empire provides us with a historical timeline for when the dark ages emerged, but it can be strongly contested that one of the true causes of the Dark Ages was due to the loss of information, learning and understanding that had been cultivated for thousands of years until then, and destroyed within years. What emerged during that period? Famine, extreme climates, plague, and a major reduction or halt in global travel. In Carl Sagan’s series ‘The Cosmos’, he states, if he could travel back in time, it would be to the Library of Alexandria.
Carl Sagan The critical issue of information loss in the dark ages was not simply the loss of any information, but rather, the loss of quality information. Through the dark ages, information was still plentiful; however, this information was often based on the perspectives of rulers and conquerors rather than scholars; and a boom in misleading information and false understanding of the way in which the world works. Flat earth theories and many more ‘fake news’ stories became ‘fact’ of the time. In a world basing everyday decisions and making collective choices on false information, human progress was stalled by irreparable atrocities and a slowing of progress for hundreds of years in an era of Witch Hunts, Crusades, constant violence and extreme inequalities.
Moving 1500 years later, we have entered into an era where the thought of libraries burning down, or the risk of depending on a single ‘Empire’ is no longer the same concern. Even more, all the world’s resources are no longer in a single building in a city in Egypt, but rather, in the hands of millions of people around the world. Every time you turn on a digital device such as a phone, tablet or laptop, you are opening a library that is larger than all the paperbacks of the world combined. Every time you turn on a digital device, you can connect to any family or friend no matter where in the world they are. Every time you turn on your digital device, you can access news as it’s happening. Whilst most social progressions can take decades or centuries, progress on the access to information has boomed. Since 1991, the internet has gone from 1 to 1.72 billion websites on the world-wide-web.
So, does this mean we have surpassed the library of Alexandria? In quantity, yes; but what about quality? The library of Alexandria was contributed by scholars and academics to create references and a storage of important academic scrolls. The internet however is a vastly different landscape. The internet is a great demonstration of globalization – anyone in the world can contribute and add to the digital library. Not only can you contribute from wherever you are, but for the most part, you can contribute whatever you like.
FAKE NEWS
Whilst this has its benefits, this great power does not demand great responsibility. Fields like medicine, law, science, and history; all at a university academic level requires research publications to go through intense protocols and procedures, followed by intense scrutinizing and reviewing for validity, quality, integrity, and reliability from experts in the given field before it is made available for anyone to read. Often years of work goes into a single academic paper. Meanwhile the internet is a platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish anything unchecked, unverified, unconfirmed, under any name. Information that can be twisted, fabricated, and crafted to push a political agenda, commercial investment, or simply a personal belief or opinion which an individual wants to be taken as fact. There’s many people reading this that would say: “We’re adults. We’re smart. We can tell truth from lies. We know when things are made up”. Unfortunately, recent studies would suggest otherwise. A study published by MIT found that falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted than truths. MIT also found in other studies that people may support information due to the person or group sharing the information, even if they know the information to be false. They also found social media algorithms create ‘knowledge bubbles’ whereby people are only exposed to certain information, or a single perspective, and not exposing them to the entire story or entire picture of a subject- thereby giving people a false reality of their own knowledge and understanding. This issue is not just for adults. The UK Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills, run by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Literacy and the National Literacy Trust, found that only 2% of children have the critical literacy skills they need to tell if a news story is real or fake.
Daniel J. Boorstin
One of the thoughts is to develop an ‘information police squad’ that would discern false information and flag websites or content as false through factchecking. This was deemed by MIT as more likely to exacerbate the issue with people believing anything that does not contain a fact-check warning must therefore be truth; coined the ‘implied truth effect’. When the volume of information entering the internet is exponentially increasing, the fact-police will never be able to keep up, and no algorithm would have the nuances needed of academic peer-reviewing. The logic to only have people of a certain expertise or academic proficiency create online content makes sense in the development of scholarly information, but realistically, this will never happen for the internet- a platform that is designed to democratize information and knowledge and allow everyone to have a voice.
So what can we do to tackle this? Think of the internet like an earthquake. Whilst we cannot control the earthquake itself to any degree of confidence, we have learnt ways to control the impact of earthquakes.
From this train of thought comes two emerging forms of literacy: digital literacy and media literacy. Media literacy is a subject that aims to teach critical thinking in the process of navigating and reviewing media. It aims to teach not only critical thinking, but also teach people to become smarter consumers of products and information, recognize opinion from fact, and also teach people how to create media content responsibly too. Whilst not everyone can become an expert in every field, and whilst we will always be playing ‘catchup’ to people creating or spreading misinformation or false information, PTW hopes to start delivering education and support not only to grassroots development projects on media literacy, but also community engagement projects. Alongside our existing work on digital literacy, we hope to provide our current generation and next generation with the tools to navigate our modern world.
In a new and modernized way, the world is yet again at a similar crossroads when presented with two options: to grow and evolve the ‘library of Alexandria’ and create a world of scholars and learned people, each furthering the collective progress of humanity through knowledge and understanding or turn back to the dark ages through false information, misinformation and ‘fake news’. Much like a vaccination, the only way to protect people from misinformation and false information is to give them a jab of knowledge and skills development that will hopefully protect themselves, and their community. Working together, as a community, taking responsibility to educate ourselves, and be open-minded to the process of quality information, will be the only way forward to bring peace and unity to what we often see as a divided and confused world fighting a war on information.█
Albert Einstein
Chirag Lodhia
Director | Positively Transforming World
KIRAT RANDHAWA
Kirat is a UK-born meditation instructor and inspired student of Tibetan Buddhism now based in Brooklyn of New York city. Her personal journey and deep course of study has led her to craft a pathway to guide others in personal development, conscious exploration, transformational practices, and life’s shifts. With qualifications from Columbia University and The Nalanda Institute, Kirat merges contemplative training with the field of psychology to identify how these practices can be used as instruments for individual and societal change. From her research at The Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia to working with underserved communities across the city, she seeks to understand and deconstruct the multilayered conditioning that prohibits human flourishing.
Her training at The Tibet House, MNDFL Meditation, and in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction lineage has allowed her to develop a multidimensional approach to support clients on their path
