‘Too Much Information’ — Information Paradise or Information Overload?
Assessing the consequences of the Information Age
The rapid growth of today’s digital world has foreseen an explosion of information. As information expands, so too does knowledge. Data-rich platforms like YouTube continue to dominate the web, accumulating 500 hours of video content every minute. It is in this way the world has become an interconnecting hub of knowledge. But this palace of information opens up a darker world of ethics, from misinformation to the division of society, deepfakes to the threat of violence and terror.
Education: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
It’s difficult to imagine that one day if we wanted to find out anything about a subject we would have gone searching in a library. Now, thanks to the World Wide Web’s 5 billion+ pages, we have the biggest library imaginable lying in our pockets.
Data-rich platforms like YouTube continue to skyrocket, offering free education to the Internet’s 4.66 billion users.
No longer do geographical boundaries limit people’s creative and innovative desires. We can learn almost any skill from the digital temples of wisdom that lay on our desks.
This welcomes the expansion of specialised knowledge: specific topics branch out into greater depths, growing in detail and complexity. Whilst much of this knowledge serves beneficial, productive purposes, what mustn’t be forgotten is the exposure given to more threatening knowledge.
Violence, Radicalisation and The Rise of Hate Groups
The accessibility and uniqueness of knowledge opens a dangerous pathway in the world of crimes and violence. As Internet censorship of crime-related knowledge becomes an evermore difficult task to manage, vulnerable groups, especially children, gain an increased risk of exposure. Whether weaponry, violent acts or the spread of extremist views (potentially leading to radicalisation), the free-for-all playground of the World Wide Web acts as a breeding ground for danger, allowing harmful content to fall into innocent hands. In spite of the tools to keep children safe online, Sky Broadband shield being one example, full safety can never be guaranteed.
As the Internet helps join us together, it also helps to separate us. This is something that blogger and author Michael Simmons explores, relating to the theory of ‘echo chambers’. By means of the Internet, communities are given a golden opportunity to connect and share their passions with one another. In time, each group strengthens, becoming a growing base of knowledge.
However, the strengthening of specific groups through digital means is believed by many to be a key contributor to the division and polarisation present in society today. As touched upon by C. Thi Nguyen, as individuals become immersed in their own bubbles, they become less receptive to the views of the outside world.
Perhaps a greater concern arises regarding the ability to connect with the formation of hate or oppositional groups. In these contexts, social media websites such as Facebook provide a perfect space for like-minded individuals to express and validify their viewpoints, regardless of how ethically right or wrong their views may be.
One scenario worth considering is the gathering of an oppositional group. In pre-Internet times, not only do implications of travel exist, individuals must also initially discover like-minded people to grow their group. In modern-terms, these implications cease to exist: this gathering can be achieved with the creation of a Facebook page.
Altered Perceptions
Within the surplus of information supplied by the digital world lies increasing concerns over misinformation.
Rather than the fake news itself, what is less focussed on is how our views of a source’s credibility are tampered with as a result of modern media formats. News has become so instant, flashing and flickering away through our daily lives that we rarely have chance to assess the reliability of sources.
Perhaps newsfeeds are the main culprit here: the never-ending carousel of Facebook’s news feed becomes evermore difficult to stop with the help of dazzling videos, images and advertisements littered around the site — not to mention constant nudges of push notifications. YouTube is also to blame here. It is not difficult for a user to be taken on an unexpected journey through the site’s videos suggestions — a journey of which summons distraction, preventing the user from considering the credibility of what they’re watching in any shape or form.
These issues become inflated when reviewing statistics revealing the most popular news media formats by age group, shown below.
Social media is a clear overall winner, taking prevalence in younger audiences. It is in statistics like these where perhaps most attention should be drawn to the youth population as these are the people who will be the partakers in the future digital world.
Frictionless Information
As technology has developed, information (including misinformation) has become evermore accessible. Companies are finding several ways to decrease the journey time required between ourselves and accessing the information. Many new smartphones now come with fingerprint sensors, placing the carnival of apps on our devices within easier reach. It’s hard to imagine that one day the process of opening an application would require a typed command, such as those seen in the UNIX terminal. Now, in the world of icons, voice commands and notifications, information seems unavoidable.
Truthful Fallacies
Not only is information becoming readily-accessible, new digital techniques are making disinformation incredibly easy to disguise. Deepfakes rely on machine learning to simulate and sync audio tracks onto video footage, making it appear as though figures are speaking words they never said. This becomes an increasingly alarming issue considering the fast-paced development of these newer technologies. The complexity of deepfakes is demonstrated in this video.
As much as this could be used for humour, many are highlighting the threat of deepfakes to society, particularly in the political sphere. All it takes is a clip of false dialogue from a politician to go semi-viral to generate a swarm of misbeliefs.
As computer scientist Professor Hao Li said:
“Elections are already being manipulated with fake news, so imagine what would happen if you added sophisticated deepfakes to the mix?”
It is concerning to think that one day we may live in a society where we only believe what we truly see with our own eyes.
Reflection
I have thoroughly enjoyed being a student on this course. The topics on the course have further opened my mind about the implications of being a digital citizen in today’s rapidly developing world.
Being a medium blogger myself, I couldn’t have picked a more appropriate module from the wide range UCIL has to offer. I was particularly pleased with the appearance of some topics in the course that have parallels with some of the content I have explored on medium in the past. Perhaps the best instance of this is my communication psychology blog on the implications of online messaging, which shared similarities with digital engagement covered in week 2. I feel that having explored relevant issues in the past allowed me to make full use of the course.
Some of my key passions are psychology, neuroscience, productivity and philosophy, and what has fascinated me is how topics concerning the digital world interlink with all of these.
Regarding psychology, I was glad that in digisoc2 I was able to relate to this in digital terms by exploring the advantages and disadvantages of digital note-taking vs using pen and paper, largely in cognitive terms.
Regarding philosophy, I found the philosophy of ethics particularly insightful. Despite week 6 being the main focal point of this topic, the questions proposed throughout the weeks via the anonymous surveys I feel were a great tool to develop analytical thinking.
I think the interlinking of my passions within this course shows just how prominent digital technologies have come in today’s world. It seems that technology is finding itself into every sector and area of expertise present in society. This is perhaps best exemplified in the diverse range of digisoc2 blog posts.
One of the most beneficial elements of the course I believe was the emphasis on critical thinking. I have always been keen to develop an observing mind — one that doesn’t simply consume facts, but places them into a larger empty space to make interpretations from. This is perhaps because as a child, I would believe everything I heard.
This is perhaps evermore relevant today, especially with regard to the rise of misinformation covered in this assessment post.
Having studied Computer Science at A Level, there were some topics that were familiar to me but also more importantly some new ideas I was unaware of. This blend was crucial I believe for my development throughout the course, allowing me to understand concepts by relating them to my pre-existing knowledge and, through new topics, taking my knowledge to the next level.
It has been a pleasure to study on this course.
