I am fascinated with information isolation and manipulation these days. I’ve written about the separation between the social networks like LinkedIn, Blue Sky, and Mastodon, but I am also interested in the Dunning Krueger Effectification that occurs via the isolation. When you are isolated to a specific network, as well as your specific network of people, your confidence that you have your finger on the pulse of things tends to go through the roof. People are increasingly getting their news from a single social media source, which contributes to their low competence regarding what is going on, as well as their overconfidence in their abilities to engage in politics and economy, as well as investment in artificial intelligence.
Facebook is my poster child network for Trump supporters as it has been my window to this world from where I grew up in rural Oregon. LinkedIn is my poster child for technology entrepreneurs and investors from my experience in Silicon Valley. I see people in these siloes as being in a similar state of information isolation and confidence about how the world is working. Technology is an amazing series of abstractions, of which the impacts on further separating people, while simultaneously winding them up about an issue, will continue having a devastating impact on society. I remember thinking about the Facebook API in which Trump’s campaign used to target and wind people up about the election, and how Russia has used the same mechanisms, but now the technology sector has signaled they are 100% cool with this being how shit works.
Doing APIs has taught me how much I do not know about specific layers of our economy and society. I am an API expert and people come to me from the top of leading industries to understand how to apply APIs, and in turn I tend to learn about how these industries work (or don’t). I’ve learned just how complex things are, but also just how much of a hustle most industries are, and how they depend on the supply and demand on people being in the know or being completely ignorant. The Trump voters really believe what he is saying because they get their information from a single source which he dominates. The AI champions really believe that AI is taking over the work because they get their information from a single source of information in which they dominate. Living in echo chambers can make you believe some outlandish things and put you in a place to regularly get your chain yanked.
