Zizo : Zoom In Zoom Out

I believe that the biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder is the most fundamental story to explain what we are going through by entering into the digital age. Computers and communication systems allow anyone to navigate scales like it was never possible before. The best example is Google Maps. It is nothing short of a miracle when you think of it seriously. I have always loved maps and spent countless hours just looking at them and imagining what they were representing. One thing that was never possible to do is to change scales in a smooth way. Usually you had, at best, to go to the index of the Atlas to find at what page were the maps neighbooring the area you were looking at, or more detailed maps it. Nowadays you can just pinch and zoom in/zoom out. It appears natural but let me just remind you that it did not exist 2 decades ago. There was no technological way to have so many maps on a single place (the screen of your phone). So just like the angels of Jacob’s story that are constantly going up and down on the ladder between the earth and heaven, we move between scales.

The maps and the territory

At times I take a look at Google Maps on my phone while I am travelling. What is strange is that you can look at the map and at the territory at the same time. It always strikes me how much the map abstracts everything. Of course you know it. But to experience it first hand, and live, is worth a try. For instance the map doesn’t change between winter and summer: the same hill looks very different whether the trees are with or without leaves. Likewise in a city you only see blocks on the map. On the streets you may move from a very rich neighborhood to a poor one etc. Now imagine what is going on with how you perceive the world. Until recently we had no real choice but to rely on legacy media for that. But nowadays there is a whole range of media sources: from the legacy media giga corporations like the New York Times, CNN and co. to the X feed of individuals passing by blogs, forums and other inline communities centered around a subject: sportive shooting, knitting etc. or ehtnical, location based, etc. The list of people that you are following on X is a personnal community. Digital communities share some surface resemblance with meat world ancient communities. First because they are not long lasting. You can unfollow/block/mute anyone. Try that in a small town, as they say. Second because such communities are not symmetric by nature: information does not move the same way between you and the community and vice versa in the virtual space and in the meat space. In the meat space you physically encounter people you are exchanging with: be it the school board, chess club, church or city council.

So today you have many choices to get information: from your personal physical experience, your virtual experience (your X timeline basically), and the whole range of virtual communities up to the legacy media.

Establishing truth in a digital environment

Knowing how to establish truth, or how to be less wrong is a timeless preoccupation of humans. As I have just mentioned things have changed in our digitized societies. Our sources of knowledge come from a variety of places and scales. From personal experience to statistical meta studies. We have seen what the “Trust the science” motto has led to: at the very least the product was not really good. I know more vaccinated people that have caught COVID — and presumably transmitted it — than not. If you only listened to what was heralded you have have noted the discrepancy. So what can we do to not (or less) be fooled? Replace the demon of the Cartesian dream by the unholy alliance of three letters agency and big tech. What is the XXI version of “I think therefore I am”?

The first thing is to spot the glitches in the matrix. Because if you only listen to legacy media you have no chance. At best you will have, once in while, a Gell-Man amnesia episode when reading about a subject you master. For many things you have no real choice: war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East etc. It should act as a warning: everything that you think you know might be different from what is happening. But for other things you have your own experience about it: inflation, vaccine efficacy, climate change, bed bugs invasion and other media induced phobias. In those cases you should consider the information you can gather at every scale. If there is a sudden shift in the narrative, it is a sure sign something is not right.

So far I haven't found bulletproof techniques yet to establish truth. Maybe better ways to smell bullshit. The pinch and zoom technique is a new way to exercise skepticism. It requires practice but one should not dismiss it.