6,000 years (or so) of technological progress to achieve a world wide web of instant communication, where any one can talk to any one and what do we have?
Latest posting from CNN on the Ukraine insanity is “photos posted that appear to be from the scene…” (italics are mine).
Instant, global-girdling communications network that has left us unable to tell if any photo is real or fake, if any announcement is real or made up, if the person the message appears to be from is real or an alias (usually with criminal intent(1)). Or if it is even from an individual, or some Mafia-come-corporation outfit in some nation that won’t extradite the villains because the operation means too much money for that nation?
Wonderful.
I just a saw another posting, a personal posting from a guy wondering why that text message he just got had only 6 numbers on it, plus area code — as in “123-456-789”. Well, unfortunately, that’s very simple: SMS (the technology underlying what is generally called “texting”) is not secure. It is easy to modify the “from” number to be anything you wish, rather than what it legally / mannerly ought to be.
Same with email. I’m sure you’ve seen that very popular current scam “umm, I’ve been monitoring your computer activity for some time now and I have completely hacked your computer, as you can see, since this email comes from *you*! You now have to pay me $nn,nnn dollars, preferably in bitcoin, or I will destroy your reputation with all that nasty activity you do.” This is a lie! It means nothing of the sort. I can send you an email claiming to be from you so easily it stinks, and I’m not even a trained hacker, just a normal programmer. It’s a hoax, a complex lie built on top of a very simple security fault, reinforced by the fact that people are not educated into these little foibles of how technology actually works and where it doesn’t. All the average user gets is the hype meant to sell more, more, more. The 21st Century’s version of Dancing Cigarette Boxes.
The “error” messages on your computer, the emails you receive, the postings on social media(2), any and all photos(3), ads that appear to be informative articles, disinformation articles stuck willie-nillie in Wikipedia and other reputable online databases(4), all driven by some need to scam you, control you, influence your opinions, steal your money, hopefully without your even know you’ve been ripped off. Fake. All fake.
How to rate everything you see on the internet:
(-4) Fake
(-3) Probably fake
(-2) Can’t tell if it’s fake, but “feels hinky”
(-1) Possibly true
(0) Seems to fit / Provisionally true
(1) Saw it on something claiming to be “live stream” video
(2) I witnessed it myself, first hand (not computer, tablet
or phone, but actual Eye Balls on the event!)
Fake, maybe fake, can’t tell if it’s fake, possibly true, seems to fit my current understanding of what is… and that’s about all that can be said about anything you fail to witness first hand. I mean (not to even remotely agree with anything some recent former president of America said, but…) turns out all news must at least be treated as fake news. Assume anything on the internet is a lie until “proven” otherwise, and you really you can’t prove it, unless you go there and see for yourself, or if you have enough actual training / knowledge / first-hand experience of the subject matter to be able to judge for yourself — and even then be careful. Remember the Piltdown Man(5) lesson — even professionals(6) can be faked out.
“Seems to be from the scene…” Wow. And that’s CNN adding that proviso on the picture, meaning even a big outfit with lots of resources can not tell for certain if the photo is real or not. It might be propaganda planted by some side or other. (Don’t make the mistake of thinking there are only two sides to this conflict. There’s a lot more going on there than it might appear at first glance. Check out China’s stance in all this, for instance. Then, also, ask yourself why Putin would want to do this? Other than he’s simply “lost it” as some proclaim — maybe he has, but what if he’s actually still got all his marbles? Then what’s really up? Ask questions, ask many, many questions. Always. Otherwise, you’re just being a Good Sheeple.)
War reporting was more accurate in the WWII, Korea and Viet Nam eras. Not more truthful (war reporting is always propaganda, manipulated by various vested interests — national and commercial — if it happens to be true now and then, so much the better [watch Robin Williams’ movie Good Morning Vietnam for a quick refresher in war reporting censorship](7)), but more accurate. A photo was never captioned as “this might even be a real picture” when “put on the wire” by a major news service. That just never happened, you know?
So tell me, how is global communications better now than what we had 70 years ago? Technology is just a hammer: neither Evil nor Good, nor any where in between. Just a hammer. It’s the person (or vested interest, or culture, or klatch) wielding it, not the tool. The intent behind its use.
Unfortunately, the Internet has become the biggest (potential!) set of blinders ever invented. What a waste, when used that way.
Stop it!
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(1) Which, by law (in the US, at least) is the *only* time using an alias is illegal. The Patriot act of 2001 made it mandatory to use your “legal” name and even can tell you what your legal name is, but it did NOT repeal the laws stating clearly that a person may use any name he wishes so long as his intent is not to defraud some one. Another example of the hideous internal conflicts in the law and why the (American, at least) legal system has utterly failed; it just hasn’t quit kicking yet.
(2) Misnamed, “social media” is. Really it is “anti-social media.” But that’s just the facts, and not the common understanding. The Common Understanding and The Facts are often so far removed from each other that there is almost no overlap at all. Further, if you take a detailed look at history, you’ll find it’s nothing new, either.
(3) Another irony is that instant global communications and the explosive availability of cameras everywhere (have we reached the point yet where there are more cameras than people on the planet? — Why bother to even ask?!!) appeared at the same time as such products as Photoshop and GIMP (an excellent and free alternative to Photoshop), leaving us with the utter inability to know if anything we see is real or fake. “Now, that’s what I call ironic,” said the pirate.
(4) Wikipedia tries very, very hard to publish only true facts. But anyone can sign up and start a page and write pretty much anything at all and it gets taken as “fact” by people who were never taught how to detect garbage from possible-truth (there is a science to that, and it’s not all that hard). Not their fault, Wikipedia, they are overwhelmed by the number of pages being created every day, and they are a Free Service meant to be the World’s repository of data. That people should use such a noble and even vital effort for nefarious, criminal and subversive (literally) activities is beyond disgusting, beyond treasonous. Treason to the Entire Human Race. Find the people who so abuse Wikipedia and other intended-to-be-honest information services, exile them from ever having or touching a computer again — not a laptop, not a tablet, not a smart phone, not an ATM, ever again. Tattoo stripes on their forehead for all to see, so others can hide their phones when ever such people show up, be on guard against getting ripped off by disinformation, hacking and scamming. (That’s how the 400 y ear old Anglo-Saxon legal term F**k came about. It was a brand put on the foreheads of adulterers, back when adultery was taken rather seriously by that culture and the legal system. It was a legal term, that’s all. Though certainly in 400 years if some word needs to become the very, very most offensive thing any one can say, it ought to be some past legal term, yes? “Oh probate you!” 🙂
(5) Piltdown Man was a hoax, an “anthropological find” that was tinkered together out of spare parts, not dug up at all. It was presented as “the missing link” and actually fooled some experts for a — short — while. Fake, fake, fake, fake…. By the way “missing link” was and is a fraudulent idea, there is no missing link, just impatient news reporters (and even researchers, dang it!) who want the whole story now and will fill in facts that aren’t facts yet, rather than wait for the discoveries as they occur, years and years from now maybe — as I said, fake news is nothing new.
(6) Professionals — is it just me or are there increasingly few Professionals who actually achieve a professional level of craft any more? No, it’s not just me… If that one’s not obvious, then ask yourself this: how often do you get precisely what you need from some specialist (bureaucrat, doctor, car expert, plumber, roofer, etc) the first time? How many visits or follow ups have now become standard and normal? Bull, that is. You do it right the first time (most of the time — even honest pros make mistakes) or you change professions.
(7) Do you imagine that war reporting can not be censored or manipulated in the Internet Era? Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble then… but it’s even easier now than it was in the era of Walter Cronkite and The Huntley / Brinkley Report. Alas…