Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995) • Hacker News Board

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#21

Post by gubbrora » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

inflatableDodo wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett - > 'OK, lets say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust didn't happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research that has undergone peer review and so on. There's a kind of parity of esteem of in…

I think they were both kinda right. What Gates didn't foresee was the extent to which trust became centralized and how that created a need to keep the authorities in check and how keeping them in check enabled fake news.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#22

Post by metalchianti » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

This is a fantastic analogy. With so many sources available--mainstream and other--we now have opportunities to get a holistic picture by relying on many different narratives. However, technology also makes it easier for people to seek out sources that support preconceived biases.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#23

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

[deleted]

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#24

Post by dejv » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

Terry Pratchett wrote a book about newspappers that is even more relevant in current age of social media. It is called The Truth.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#25

Post by ptah » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #5

inflatableDodo wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett - > 'OK, lets say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust didn't happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research that has undergone peer review and so on. There's a kind of parity of esteem of in…

Children's comedy novelist?

are you saying windows is a weak joke?

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#26

Post by schnevets » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

Fake news has always existed, and society builds up an immunity whenever it evolves into a new medium. I don't see the illegitimate Wordpress-based sites that peddle lies as any different than the National Enquirer-esque print tabloids or radio conspiracy theorists of yesteryear. Folks who didn't grow up with the internet may have trouble telling the difference, and even Millennials constantly fall for biased social media outlets, but there is already proof that the next generation is seeing through the most flagrant of cheap tricks.

I'm not saying society is immune to propaganda, but the most blatant offenders are a bit like a temporary illness until media consumers wise up.

EDIT: Added context from my original comment.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#27

Post by flattone » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Well - certainly there is the rational that we collectively have no absolute knowable truth in which news sources are valid. But as much as clocks we are still utilizing/referencing them either in passing/conversational thoughts and ideas.

I propose go the other way with the take away: 1) With the increased awareness of fake news comes increased social penetration of FN. 2) We more widely know of fake news existing and simultaneously are more exposed to it.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#28

Post by chongli » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

inflatableDodo wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett - > 'OK, lets say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust didn't happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research that has undergone peer review and so on. There's a kind of parity of esteem of in…

children's comedy novelist

Technically accurate, but extremely crude. Terry Pratchett was brilliant. The Discworld novels are absolutely jam-packed with insightful commentary on our society and its strange values and all of the contradictions we seem to ignore on a daily basis.

Terry is an absolute legend in the hacker community, so much so that he and his works have been immortalized in the official version of NetHack [1] (itself an icon of hacker culture).

[1] https://www.nethack.org/download/3.6.0/announce.360

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#29

Post by umvi » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

This is a great analogy. The scary thing is, there are countries that do only have one clock (totalitarian regimes that control the press), but that's worse than having multiple clocks.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#30

Post by moomin » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

I remember many years ago a journalist at The Register asking Tim Berners-Lee how his semantic web proposals were going to deal with spam.

TBL again, just didn’t get it, because he didn’t see the world through a social lens. The problem of “tag spam” was already pretty prevalent when the question was asked.

Same article has Bill Gates completely correctly predict the death of VHS and DVD and them being supplanted by something like Netflix/Amazon Video. He was plenty visionary, he just had a technologists lens.