In today’s malleable world of Big Data, wherein modern people use Google to know more but understand less, we risk forgetting how knowledge is created and how we can verify a fact. The internet would give us a more democratic and open media environment, but the opposite is true: we live in closed communities online, echo well show us what’s right, bubbles created algorithms which make us encounter only the news that confirms our worldview.This electronic world could lead to a feasible reality based on emotions, opinions, prejudices and places the truth based on objective facts more and more in the shade. All the battles for human rights and the call to freedom and justice will turn out meaningless.
Blog by Nadine Youhat
In today’s malleable world of Big Data, wherein modern people use Google to know more but understand less, we risk forgetting how knowledge is created and how we can verify a fact. The internet would give us a more democratic and open media environment, but the opposite is true: we live in closed communities online, echo well show us what’s right, bubbles created algorithms which make us encounter only the news that confirms our worldview.
This electronic world could lead to a feasible reality based on emotions, opinions, prejudices and places the truth based on objective facts more and more in the shade. All the battles for human rights and the call to freedom and justice will turn out meaningless. The human race will enter a shadowy world of arbitrariness. It could drag the international landscape to a direction of the volatile, intolerant era before World War II , where no facts were necessary just lies.
The recently deceased Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman reasoned a clear link between the Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). Since the Enlightenment the modern people are characterized by their desire for manufacturability. Whereby modern people do not accept the world they see as theirs. Modern people want to recreate the world, clearing everything out of the way which stops the progress, the complexity to overcome their own responsibility. Zygmunt Bauman made a comparison with having a beautiful harmonious design for your garden in mind: Any plant that propagates itself without your approval, you call weeds and you pull them out. Zygmunt Bauman warned that this manifestation of that control drift is a threat and a new Holocaust will always be with us.
As human beings we have the defining human quality to think. Thus, we should not accept or settle for the universe of nonsense as our world. We should stay aware that thought isn’t knowledge, and think about how knowledge is created and how facts should be verified.
A public opinion based on unfounded opinions, gut feelings, prejudices and personal beliefs does not equal a library full of research nor a critical mind set and solid fact finding.
We have to prevent enter the universe of nonsense, when emotions or personal beliefs are related to the truth to influence on the public opinion and objective facts have less influence on the public opinion. Otherwise we are the truth beyond.