What virus do you think spreads the fastest? For example, is it the Coronavirus, or some other virus like SARS, or the Polio virus, etc.?
One expert in virus detection and control says with sincere certainty that it is the social media virus that spreads the fastest.
More specifically, he says social media INFORMATION is a virus. Information of this type spreads faster than the actual spread of a virus. Social media information travels faster and faster; as it does, it divides and divides, and with each division the information becomes less and less reliable for critical issues of all kinds, including the virus we’re dealing with presently.
In other words, the viral epidemic infecting people is the Information Age. It’s an unintended consequence where objective truth does not matter. What matters is the truth each person creates, and then spreads via YouTube, Instagram, Message, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.
All this information, even though made up, travels at near the speed of light.
This is what divides us today: Customized information which suits the prejudices of each person or group of people. The result is the most serious tribalization of Americans in a generation.
Is there anything, minus authoritarian government take over and control, which has any chance of uniting us in a worthwhile common effort that is real?
I’m thinking it’s already here: It’s the continuous breakdown of our environment, and its destructive impact on our infrastructure.
For example, there will come a time in the very near future when, on the same day, millions of Americans will find themselves ankle deep in water, with temperatures reaching a record high, smog and pollution choking them, and the local government announcing that drinking water will be shipped in from desalination plants along the coasts.
At that moment, it will click in everyone’s minds that “enough is enough. Cut the Information Age bs. Let’s fix the environment.”
At that moment, the broken environment will have united us, and the Information Age will have come to an end.
Eventually, the environment will gradually start to make tiny improvements; the infrastructure will start to be a strong and sturdy 22nd Century one; and Americans will decouple from pseudo tribalization and will have become ardent environmentalists.
That is the future of America (and the world) for the next 25 to 50 years. A new economic era will emerge. It will be the “Environment Economy.”
I am not an apocalyptic kind of person. But, until I can find a better understanding of future trends this will have to do. The biggest downside for family people will be that our grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great, great grandchildren will chide us for not having taken action sooner, much sooner.