From the Washington Post today: “The United States is weaponizing interdependence.” We live in an interdependent world, where global networks span across countries, creating enormous benefits, but also great disparities of power. As networks grow, they tend to concentrate both influence and vulnerability in a few key locations, creating enormous opportunities for states, regulators and […]
The limits of belief
In a recent The Atlantic article on resilient beliefs, Julie Beck writes, “There are facts, and there are beliefs, and there are things you want so badly to believe that they become as facts to you… People often don’t engage with information as information but as a marker of identity.” Humans have many superpowers. One […]
“The first rewrite of the draft of history”
Tom Toles has drawn editorial cartoons for the Washington Post since 2002. The Post published “The first rewrite of the draft of history” in 2005 after British papers broke news about “highly sensitive” meetings of British intelligence officers, Cabinet members, political strategists, and communications specialists, and representatives of the United States. At these meetings, later minuted in […]
Raising our information standards
As long as there’s been an internet, people have forwarded one another stories and photos and award offers, some inspiring, some horrifying, some valid, some fictional. What some reporters are now calling “fake news” is a sub-category of the content we information traders are willing to traffic in and share with each other. During this fall’s US […]
Why information fails
Last month, the London Guardian reported that the mantra of the Brexit campaigners was “Facts don’t work… You have got to connect with people emotionally.” MSNBC’s Maddow Show contributors also fretted about this political information approach spreading to Europe from the United States. But emotion-heavy, data-light appeals have long been part of British and continental […]
A Writing November
I’ve decided to participate in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo 2013), and will be using the 50,000 word-challenge to reboot my research on the British executive branch’s structure, values, personnel, and communications during the 18 months before the UK- and US invaded Iraq.* This year marked the 10th anniversary of the March 2003 […]