trust

What happens to our trust in media when our capacity to generate it artificially improves to the point where we can produce indistinguishable fakes?

Media serves not just as a conduit for messages but as an arbiter of reality itself. Friederich Kittler, the German media theorist, said it best, “Media defines what really is”. These days, the equation is straightforward: if something cannot be verified via Google or substantiated by media outlets, its very existence is questioned.

What happens to our trust in media when our capacity to generate it artificially improves to the point where we can produce indistinguishable fakes?

This creates a wave of "Skepticism," leading to what I term "False Positive Reality." In this state, our pervasive skepticism makes us doubt even the real labeling it as artificial, simulated,... See more

We are very well informed, yet somehow we cannot orient ourselves. The informatization of reality leads to its atomization — separated spheres of what is thought to be true.

But truth, unlike information, has a centripetal force that holds society together. Information, on the other hand, is centrifugal, with very destructive effects on social... See more

Truth illuminates the world, while information lives off the attraction of surprise, pulling us into a permanent frenzy of fleeting moments.

We greet information with a fundamental suspicion: Things might be otherwise. Contingency is a trait of information, and for this reason, fake news is a necessary element of the informational order. So fake... See more

Information goes along with fundamental suspicion. The more we are confronted with information, the more our suspicion grows. Information is Janus-faced — it simultaneously produces certainty and uncertainty. A fundamental structural ambivalence is inherent in an information society.

Truth, by contrast, reduces contingency. We cannot build a stable... See more