Data, fake news and Breakfast...
How the Light get in festival last week was simply sublime. I started the weekend with a ‘Philosophy Breakfast’ with a New York author named Stanley Fish. It was an additional supplementary charge but I'm so glad I did it.
Fish claims that, who he refers to as ‘Techno-utopians’, support no fettering of free speech, and open access to all information. They believe the more freedom and less curation the better, for freedom and for society. The counterpoint, which Fish supports, is as you bypass the gatekeepers of wisdom and authority, you open the gates to bullshit and fake news. Essentially, transparency and full democratisation of data literally enables bullshit and fake news. He went on to argue that the democratisation of data would also open us to ever growing volumes of data with no way to filter truth from bullshit... no curation... His closing was that transparency is the MOTHER of fake news!
This is all somewhat true, of course, When anyone can write a blog, an article, a post on Social Media and claim their views as true, there is an onus on the reader to apply some critical thought to the process; to seek peer reviewed citations; to read a number of articles on the topic and uncover different viewpoints before deciding the ‘truth’ of it; to be critical and cautious when reading anything, and at least do some basic fact checking before sharing more widely. These things seem eminently sensible and a small price to pay for freedom and transparency. The suggestion some central, or higher, power should curate our data, to save us from fake news, infantilises us, surely? Plus, critically, how is that power held to account and free of spin and obfuscation? How many of us would trust our government, or the BBC, to do that for us now?