Ignorance is strength [Communications Social Media]

People love stories, and when they see a story they love, they love to share it. And where better to share stories with friends, colleagues and people you only vaguely know than through social media? More than 25 years after the sudden burst in usage of the web made possible by DARPA's decision to allow universal access to the internet and the development of the web browser, the world seems to be drowning in artificial stories. Rumours and fake news that warn of dark conspiracies spread through internet echo chambers like legionnaires' disease through dodgy air-conditioning ducts. The lofty goal of the memex has given way to the internet mere: a pithy slogan in compressed, reversed-out type superimposed on a photograph and spread through the channels of social media.