Truth is Overrated

Don’t believe everything you’re told on the internet. That is a sentiment that is drilled into you repeatedly in University, and for good reason. The internet is full of fraudsters and phishers and charlatans and people who just like to give misinformation for the hell of it. Here’s an example of how relying on the internet as your source of information can be costly:

Google Map error sparks international conflict

The article above describes how Nicaraguan troops ‘accidentally invaded’ Costa Rica after allegedly using Google Maps as their cartography source. As an Australian on the other side of the world, the article seems almost comical, but I assume that it’s no laughing matter in the disputed territory. It’s scary that Google, a company started by a couple of post-grad students in 1998, can now have an impact on world politics. But maybe it isn’t that scary, after all major misprints such as 'Dewey defeats Truman' have appeared in print media before and have the potential to spark similar incidents.  

However, on a personal level it could be argued that we are taking an increasingly large stake in the internet as our source for irrefutable truths. Perhaps it is due to Facebook’s insistence that people use their real identities online that we are becoming slacker with our online vigilance. Our expectations of the internet are shifting, from the AOL/MSN other online chat days when it was rare for people to use their real name online, to today where not only are our real names used but images of us are tagged to that name. After all, what’s the point of social networking if nobody knows who their ‘friends’ are?

Perhaps our slackening vigilance is also due to - despite still being constantly reminded that the internet is a dangerous place - our increasing tendency to conduct important matters such as major purchases and banking with ease online. I’ve personally never had any trouble with online fraud and I can name countless friends who haven’t either. From my perspective then, the internet seems like a pretty safe place. But perhaps banking and other online transactions are more to do with using the internet as a tool to complete objectives rather than the internet being used as an irrefutable source of truth, as appeared to happen in the Costa Rican situation.

Perhaps we are inclined to believe what we see on the internet because we often actively search for it. As opposed to television or newspaper, in which information is presented to you, the internet invites you to look around and find something yourself. Perhaps by doing this, we - consciously or unconsciously – end up at a webpage or article that matches our previously held assumptions about the topic, and therefore we cease our search. There is an old quote ‘For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes’ which could perhaps sum up people’s attitudes to trawling the internet for information. That article supports your views on abortion? Good. Read it, bookmark it, and don’t search any further for views which might challenge it.  Of course, this quote had nothing to do with the net: it was Francis Bacon who wrote it and that was in 1620.

But old Frank was probably onto something, and maybe what happened in Costa Rica was simply an extension of this theory. Allow me to play devil’s advocate here: Perhaps the Nicuraguan troops knew, in their heart of hearts, that the territory they trespassed onto was Costa Rican. But, with Google’s error in their favour, perhaps they thought they could get away with it anyway. They had found a (usually reputable) source that backed up their claim, and looked no further. This theory of looking only as far as you want to is strengthened by the fact that Microsoft’s Bing map servers displayed the correct border. The right answer was only another two or three clicks away for the Nicuraguans, but they didn’t pursue it. I doubt that the whole affair was as black and white as that, but it’s a good exercise in speculation.

On a slightly different tangent, I don’t think the internet has knocked books off their perch as the most reputable source for any given topic. But, if one cares to think somewhat laterally, think about the authors of those books. How often do you read the ‘bibliography’ of a non-fiction book that you have just read? If you don’t (which I suspect is the majority of people) how do you know that the author didn’t just get all his theories off the wacky and unreliable internet and then write them down and print them? This is a pretty unlikely situation, but it does lead to the question: does the very existence of the internet mean that other sources are now less reliable by default? If the whole world is using the ‘untrusty’ internet as a resource, is the web eventually going to replace all other sources of information?

This proliferation of the internet could lead to tricky situations where fast information is held in higher regard than accurate information. Consider online newspapers. A rather competitive market now exists in the online world to break the story on the website before any competitors. This makes the paper look good. So if you’re the stressed out online-editor and a journalist comes to you with a story, a big world-changing, career-making, holiday-paying story, do you ask her to double check the facts, or do you run it online, knowing full well that facts can be edited online on the fly? 

You do the latter. Your online readership may read the initial breaking story, which misrepresents a few facts. If the reader is like an ever increasing number of people, they will get their dose of news from off the internet and perhaps they do not cross check their information with other sources such as television or radio. They might not visit the website regularly (perhaps once a day, over breakfast) and in the time period between when they read the initial story and when they read the updated, correct version hours or even days later, they might have already accidentally invaded Costa Rica.