4 ms·

Neal Stephenson's Anathem: “‘Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downrigh

Neal Stephenson's Anathem: “‘Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information,’ Sammann said. “‘Crap, you once called it,’ I reminded him. “‘Yes—a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.’ “‘What is good crap?’ Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone. “‘Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate documents and inserting errors—swapping one name for another, say. But it didn’t really take off until the military got interested.’ “‘As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy’s reticules, you mean,’ Osa said. ‘This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid-First Millennium…’”

jillesvangurp 2y ago
There's a similar theme running in his "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" book where a fake nuclear attack and subsequent social media storm leads to a collapse of the internet and the emergence of its replacement based on human or automated editors filtering out all the "crap". This then leads to confirmation bubbles where people believe whatever they want to believe because their edit streams lock them into whatever they want to hear. Ku clux klan like militias taking control of rural parts of "Ameristan" and people keep on remembering the victims of a nuclear attack that never happened. He published that book just before the first Trump administration. A lot of the stuff that probably seemed a bit overly dramatic at the time has actually happened. People disagreeing about the last election outcome would be a prime example of some alternate truth that seems hard to weed out. And a lot of that is of course fueled by quite intentional media coverage sponsored by the likes of North Korea, Russia, and China who have definitely been trying to militarize misinformation for quite some time and run bots on a large scale on social media platforms. As a social commentary, both books are spot on. Anathem is probably my favorite NS novel though I love them all. Also don't miss out on the definition of Bullshytt. Classic Neal Stephenson.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

There's a similar theme running in his "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" book where a fake nuclear attack and subsequent social media storm leads to a collapse of the internet and the emergence of its replacement based on human or automated editors filtering out all the "crap". This then leads to confirmation bubbles where people believe whatever they want to believe because their edit streams lock them into whatever they want to hear. Ku clux klan like militias taking control of rural parts of "Ameristan" and people keep on remembering the victims of a nuclear attack that never happened. He published that book just before the first Trump administration. A lot of the stuff that probably seemed a bit overly dramatic at the time has actually happened. People disagreeing about the last election outcome would be a prime example of some alternate truth that seems hard to weed out. And a lot of that is of course fueled by quite intentional media coverage sponsored by the likes of North Korea, Russia, and China who have definitely been trying to militarize misinformation for quite some time and run bots on a large scale on social media platforms. As a social commentary, both books are spot on. Anathem is probably my favorite NS novel though I love them all. Also don't miss out on the definition of Bullshytt. Classic Neal Stephenson.