Titanium Developer Forum

Part of bit literacy is distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources online. Often called “Internet literacy,” it’s one (but not the only!) essential skill in the management of a media diet.

This Salon interview with the author of Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, caught my eye as it describes the situation well. Excerpt:

Q - On the Internet, it can often be very difficult to tell what’s true and what’s not. Do you think the Web is helping these conspiracy theories become more popular?

A – The Internet is a gigantic version of what they faced in the 1920s, when the first widely distributed pamphlets about “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” came out. They were cheap and easily available. It was an age of increasing literacy. It prefigured what we have on a much bigger scale now. It was hard in these circumstances to distinguish the authoritative from the quack. It’s like medicine in the Wild West: There are some doctors around, but there are a lot of people on strange wagons saying they can cure your blindness.

We always had this problem to a degree, but what the Internet has done is revolutionized the amount of information. We know that Google operates on an algorithm that tells you what’s popular, but it seems to be telling you what’s authoritative.

See also: Bit Literacy