Being economical with truth and data
THE truth, in its purest form, can only relate to the past. There is no future truth. A fact is something that has already happened. This is the binary beauty of truth — it either is or it isn’t. We cannot make up facts, or can we?
Things have changed. In the (very) old days the truth was observed, in the physical world, right there in front of you — the truth existed only for those who were there, at the scene of the event.
Seeing is believing, as the saying used to go. There was no packet networking, no internet, no instant access, no “retweet”, no “like”, no “share” — whatever your umbilical medium of staying connected may be.
We live in different times. What is “fake news” if it is not some sort of oxymoron? News is mos news, right?! There used to be a clear delineation between news and opinion, fact and analysis, between certainty and conjecture.
Those lines have blurred. There is no true or false. Just information. We have moved from weighing up the facts (or not) to weighing up the source. When the source becomes more important than proof, we have a new dynamic. We move out of the world of information to the world of power.
US President Donald Trump plays with the truth as a matter of course, selectively quoting a source to backfill his claims, to lend credence to his chain of persuasion, however crude, illogical or absurd the tweet. It works; he’s in the White House. He may even believe what he says, sometimes, but that doesn’t make it true. Should statements of the US president be regarded as the truth? Trump may have uncoupled that integrity.
Social media and the tweets and twits of people of influence are only part of the problem. The real issue is that pervasive personal technology allows a speculative spark to become a raging fire in seconds. We are familiar with the terminology. When #whatever goes viral, it becomes a fact. The compound effect of retweeting or liking is beyond exponential growth, it’s instant.
And so it is that truth can be manufactured. So what? At stake is the ability to influence thought or even precipitate action, based on something completely unfounded.
Volatile currency markets are an obvious consequence of multiple concurrent statements, all aspiring to be or simply impersonating the truth. But markets are just about money, so caveat emptor. The real issue is the control of undue influence on ordinary lives.
Data capture has primarily grown out of economic exploitation. If you can access people’s data, you can access their cash, one way or another. As wrong as that is, it’s only data capture 101. The next level is data mining, which explores and seeks to predict personal purchasing patterns.
Your historical behaviour, preferences, weaknesses, habits and urges will profile accurately your next likely purchase and, before you know it, they’ve sold you what
From weighing up the facts to weighing up the source
you didn’t realise you wanted.
Economic data capture is but a foundation for political influence. Once I own your economic life, I can pretty much tell you what to do, by either loosening or strangling your economic lifeline. Fabricate enough fantasy, convince enough believers, and you’ll have enough followers to manufacture facts and drive behavioural results.
Will truth ever be discovered? It will, in courts. People will gather in the stark physical reality to look each other in the eye, to test and tease out the reality, by deduction or substantiated evidence. It is there that we will have to separate the truth from the perceptions, opinions and downright lies. It’s happening already. Barnes is CEO of the South African Post Office