Q: Looking more broadly at the question of "powershifts" -- your book on this subject made an excellent case to the effect that "the substitution of information and knowledge for labor has brought us to the edge of the deepest powershift in human history." How, in your view, is the relationship between governments and their citizens changing? In what ways is government going to have to deal with citizens differently?
A: Well, as access to information and misinformation becomes more widespread, all kinds of authority is coming into question.
It is not just that we question the authority of our governments -- and frequently with justification. But we question the authority of the doctor, because when my wife or my daughter goes to our doctor, she knows more about the disease than that doctor who has to deal with 60 different diseases. We are looking at one.
We have access to medical literature. We have access on the Net. We prep ourselves before we go in there. And, therefore, there is a change within the power relationship between the doctor and the patient.
The same thing is true across the board.
Many, many other power relationships in this society, and all relationships have an element of power in them -- the shift of the availability of information changes things.
In business, for example, it has already changed the relative power of the manufacturing sector to the retailing sector.
And now you hear throughout industry, whoever owns the customer has the power, as distinct from the manufacturer or the supplier.
The availability of information -- in the case of retail, it is the information they are getting out of their optical scanners and other kinds of information that they have -- prepares them better to fend off the pressures from competitors and/or, in the case of the big supermarket, the big food companies, the manufacturers. So what you see, as information becomes available, it shifts power relationships.
And I believe that we are, moreover, moving into a pretty dangerous period.
The dark side of the new technologies, with deep political implications, is what we call the end of truth.
First, when you download something from the Internet, you can't always be sure what you are reading is what was input by whoever it says did it.
So there is a great deal of insecurity about the information that is available on the net.
Second, you have technologies now that make deception cheap, easy and available. And these are not just by interfering with Internet-based information.
Look at the movies.
The special effects began a few years ago with a movie called In the Line of Fire. In that movie, producer Jeff Apple digitized an actor, Clint Eastwood, into existing film of the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas. And when you saw that movie, you could not tell that Clint Eastwood had not been a Secret Service man there to protect Kennedy.
Subsequently, you've got movies like Forest Gump, where Tom Hanks meets Nixon and chats with him.
Scientific American did an article on how digitization can be used photographically for deception. It showed a picture of President Bush walking in what seemed like the Rose Garden, followed about six feet behind by Margaret Thatcher. In the next photograph, they are walking side by side. In the next photograph, they are practically holding hands and whispering in each other's ear -- and all of that is easily manipulated.
So there are now tremendous new technologies of deception and, as yet, not very many technologies for verification.
Then you add to that one further feature, and that is not technological but intellectual and philosophical -- the rise of a whole school of philosophy called post-modernism which, in fact, challenges the very conception of truth.
You put all those together, and you are moving into a period, I think, which will feed the political cynicism of the population.
It means that seeing is not believing. Reading is not believing. Hearing is not believing. And that means you are going to have a lot of very, very cynical people, even more so than today.
The flip side of this is the danger that you will also have a fractional population that will believe only one thing and believe that thing fanatically -- the danger of a split between the cynics and the fanatics. And that could have enormous political consequences.
A: Well, as access to information and misinformation becomes more widespread, all kinds of authority is coming into question.
It is not just that we question the authority of our governments -- and frequently with justification. But we question the authority of the doctor, because when my wife or my daughter goes to our doctor, she knows more about the disease than that doctor who has to deal with 60 different diseases. We are looking at one.
We have access to medical literature. We have access on the Net. We prep ourselves before we go in there. And, therefore, there is a change within the power relationship between the doctor and the patient.
The same thing is true across the board.
Many, many other power relationships in this society, and all relationships have an element of power in them -- the shift of the availability of information changes things.
In business, for example, it has already changed the relative power of the manufacturing sector to the retailing sector.
And now you hear throughout industry, whoever owns the customer has the power, as distinct from the manufacturer or the supplier.
The availability of information -- in the case of retail, it is the information they are getting out of their optical scanners and other kinds of information that they have -- prepares them better to fend off the pressures from competitors and/or, in the case of the big supermarket, the big food companies, the manufacturers. So what you see, as information becomes available, it shifts power relationships.
And I believe that we are, moreover, moving into a pretty dangerous period.
The dark side of the new technologies, with deep political implications, is what we call the end of truth.
First, when you download something from the Internet, you can't always be sure what you are reading is what was input by whoever it says did it.
So there is a great deal of insecurity about the information that is available on the net.
Second, you have technologies now that make deception cheap, easy and available. And these are not just by interfering with Internet-based information.
Look at the movies.
The special effects began a few years ago with a movie called In the Line of Fire. In that movie, producer Jeff Apple digitized an actor, Clint Eastwood, into existing film of the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas. And when you saw that movie, you could not tell that Clint Eastwood had not been a Secret Service man there to protect Kennedy.
Subsequently, you've got movies like Forest Gump, where Tom Hanks meets Nixon and chats with him.
Scientific American did an article on how digitization can be used photographically for deception. It showed a picture of President Bush walking in what seemed like the Rose Garden, followed about six feet behind by Margaret Thatcher. In the next photograph, they are walking side by side. In the next photograph, they are practically holding hands and whispering in each other's ear -- and all of that is easily manipulated.
So there are now tremendous new technologies of deception and, as yet, not very many technologies for verification.
Then you add to that one further feature, and that is not technological but intellectual and philosophical -- the rise of a whole school of philosophy called post-modernism which, in fact, challenges the very conception of truth.
You put all those together, and you are moving into a period, I think, which will feed the political cynicism of the population.
It means that seeing is not believing. Reading is not believing. Hearing is not believing. And that means you are going to have a lot of very, very cynical people, even more so than today.
The flip side of this is the danger that you will also have a fractional population that will believe only one thing and believe that thing fanatically -- the danger of a split between the cynics and the fanatics. And that could have enormous political consequences.
