More treasures, more care. The old saying teaches us that success is often a poisoned chalice that carries within greater complexity and unforeseen troubling consequences.
Connecting everyone in the world to the internet and democratizing access to information was once a noble and unlikely goal – before the smartphone revolution. Today, digital literacy is embedded in the more than 4 billion connected phones through social media applications and their tightening choke hold on personal communications and everyday life. And now that everyone is online, with the power to both consume and produce information, the relevant questions are no longer about access but about filtering. Not about democracy but about power, not about knowledge but about truth.
Conspiracy theories and massive multiplayer games are the new public sphere – where we must now look for useful patterns, dangerous threats, emerging communities, surprising and illuminating trends.