Each major advance in information distribution technology, brings a corresponding period where we haven't built the proper defenses to sort out the nonsense from the real. We've all heard that you shouldn't believe everything you read, but there is an undeniable additional weight of authority from the printed word. After all, if you're going to go through the trouble of producing something on a printing press, the information better be important, if not true. By the 21st century, we've built up some healthy skepticism. We know just because something is printed, it isn't necessarily true, and, yes, there may be forces at work trying to manipulate us. In some cases, the memes are designed to exploit a hole in our psyche and the result becomes difficult or impossible to eradicate.
(image from http://kryz.tumblr.com/post/3787659677)
I sometimes worry about the kinds of defenses my kids haven't built to television advertising. They grew up in a post-tivo household, and we don't have cable, so it basically records stuff from our local WGBH station. We like the tivo as a parenting tool because it allows us to precisely control media dosage. A few months ago, my son came to me with a slight edge of panic in his voice and he informed me "DAD, THE TV HAS GONE ALL WEIRD." This was the first time he saw a commercial.
A few weeks ago, we went to the Museum of Science where, in the gift shop, we saw a video loop of a product they were selling, a kind of furry snake on a nearly invisible string that you can make appear as if it is threading through your fingers. Of course, the video avoids revealing the 'trick' to the product, but this was not apparent to my son, who desperately wanted to buy the product.
Radio, and television were hugely influential in the 20th century, but the distribution of content was centralized. In the 21st century, the internet is clearly the most dominant mechanism for information dispersal, but distribution is decentralized. Again, we're moving though a period where we're exposed and relatively defenseless to a new breed of information hacks and hoaxes.
Information is a virus, and we are the host. Speed of propagation is accelerated by technology. Skepticism is a defense, but can be circumvented by by appeals to greed (419 scams), or other mechanisms such as bootstrapping onto an existing belief system. The first step to protecting yourself is to understand we're all more or less as defenseless as my son watching the wiggly snake.
