The Future of Oral Tradition in a Technological World
How Knowledge is Transferred and Valuable Things Preserved in a World of Permanent Competition and Little Collective Memory
This article was originally published on Wonk Bridge
Unlike many-a yesterday’s bad idea, Fake News is not getting any less popular.
At least, that’s what an impartial history of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed across the length of his administration thus far suggests. Judging by the the frequency with which the term is used by the concept’s avatar and most invidious anti-success story, Fake News is ‘it’ and, presuming it is ‘it’, is only becoming more itself as the long four years go by. Trump tweeted 183 times about Fake News 2017, 186 times in 2018, and an astonishing 284 times in 2019. The economic value of the hashtag ‘#fakenews’ was, at last measurement, £2,394.64. In the West — if for no other reason than for the fact that it keeps alive vast cottage-silos of outlets and publications in the digital economy’s one dependable growth sector, news — Fake News remains as big a business and as valuable as strategically directed misinformation has ever been.
That’s the Western view. The kind of misinformation we’re talking about, as damaging as it might be to crucial processes…
