I had a discussion with a friend on the weekend. He was arguing that he had no interest in blogging, tweeting or any other form of IM. He preferred to remain anonymous. Until recently I shared the same opinion – I had no Facebook or Twitter profile, website or any other online blog or “persona”. I was concerned. Afraid of identity theft, spammers, criticism for my views or any form of public scrutiny. Bad things happen, but perhaps not to the extent we are led to believe.
What changed for me was the realisation that the beneficial effects of having an online presence greatly outweighed the bad. The new paradigm is all about sharing.
Blogs, reports and reviews are useful. Becoming informed without the information filtration of governments, corporations and the media. Now anyone can publish “news”.
But how do we sort the fact from the fiction? Wheat from the chaff? And there is a lot of chaff. Anyone can claim to know the the “truth”.
I am talking here of things that the reader has not directly witnessed.
To function in this world we need to make some assumptions without proof. I don’t believe in absolute truth because it is always based on personal perception. You may think you own a red car and your cat’s name is Fluffy. But under infra-red light your car is black and your cat is known by other cats in the neighbourhood as “Lord Oberon”.
A firmly held belief by one person may be considered by another as a delusion. You can’t always believe what you read, but a sense of the “truth” can be garnered from various blogs, reports, reviews. The internet dilutes any facts with conjecture, but by averaging a range of anecdotes we can come up with our own concept of what is real.
To the open-minded, the “truth” is always malleable. Every new piece of information that comes along can either reinforces or reshape our notions. Or have no effect at all
I call it “Truth by Consensus”. I believe this is the underlying philosophy behind Wikipedia.
