As a life-long fixer and teacher, I feel that, if I do nothing to try to help the world understand a danger we face, it will haunt me.
What danger, you say?
As Brian Klaas wrote in his book Fluke
".... the printing press, newspapers, radio transmission, and TV broadcasts all expanded the number of people who could consume information. The internet is fundamentally different. It's a revolution that has, for the first time in history, created an explosion in who can create widely disseminated information. It's a fundamental shift: from few-to-many communication to many-to-many communication. Ideas, even false ones, spur action, and billions are now being exposed to new ideas at a rate greater than has ever before existed."*
While the internet changed everything, artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the change. At one time seeing is believing was a good rule. That is no longer true with AI and its ability to create false video and soundtrack. We have the choice to either check the source or risk being mislead.
I don't know how, but somehow we as a society must sell a new fundamental knowing to ourselves and our children:
Truth and reality can only be found in first-hand experiences, and more, that experience cannot be coming through some electronic device. If we read it on our computer, or see it on a screen it could be, likely has been made up, edited, or severely altered by somebody or something.
George Carlin said:
"[It’s] not important to get children to read. Children who wanna read are gonna read. Kids who want to learn to read [are] going to learn to read. [It’s] much more important to teach children to QUESTION what they read.Children should be taught to question everything. To question everything they read, everything they hear. Children should be taught to question authority. Parents never teach their children to question authority because parents are authority figures themselves, and they don’t want to undermine their own bullshit inside the household. So they stroke the kid and the kid strokes them, and they all stroke each other ..."**
Question what you read or see online or in the media. We can change the future, but only if we take time to question things.
*p.103 FLUKE - CHANCE, CHAOS, AND WHY EVERYTHING WE DO MATTERS; Brian Klaas, Scribner, 2024
