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I think the problem you describe-- of being unsure of the origins and level of distortion of one's information on its journey between "reality" and "perception" is an old problem, which is rather quickly being solved by transparent technology. It used to be that you had to trust the institution, because they were the best suited and capable to verify and validate the data and the individuals. Trust problems were both not publicized widely, and also did not have any obvious solutions. Today, we are technically capable of validating and verifying the entire chain of custody or traversal for any given piece of information, and the only thing missing is the infrastructure to do so. On the other hand, if an institution demonstrates untrustworthiness, it is difficult to conceal. I think that, more and more, we will demand to see the entire chain of creation and origin for a piece of information, and either validate it ourselves, or delegate that validation to a party we personally trust. That validation can then itself be validated with reputation. Imagine, for a minute, if an article came with a list of all the writers, contributors, scientists, interviewees, editors, etc., who contributed to the article. And not only that, imagine you can see the entire social graph between you and those people. That is what the future looks like, IMO. |