Uncertainty is an acid, corrosive to authority. Once the monopoly on information is lost, so too is our trust. Every presidential statement, every CIA assessment, every investigative report by a great newspaper, suddenly acquired an arbitrary aspect, and seemed grounded in moral predilection rather than intellectual rigor. When proof for and agains... See more

Narratives, which once imbued gatekeepers with authority and prestige, are now instantly fact-checked by a skeptical public. Less than a generation ago, when the production and distribution of information was prohibitively expensive, the public had limited access to information.