Sorting reality from ‘truthiness’
A digital media awash in “truthiness” needs “trustiness.” That became clear during a high-octane symposium at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology that examined comedian Stephen Colbert’s definition of a truth that is known in the gut and can’t be swayed by facts or logic. “Truthiness is a rhetorical poker game that the ’net let people play,” said Charles Nesson, founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, in giving a midday “inflection point” of a two-day symposium on “Truthiness in Digital Media,” co-hosted by the Berkman Center and the MIT Center for Civic Media and supported by the Ford Foundation. On Tuesday, prominent Web activists, researchers, and opinion makers gathered at Harvard to lay out the challenges of truthiness. On Wednesday, they went to the MIT Media Lab for “Hack Day” to try to come up with new technical tools to address those challenges. Those were myriad, as indicated by...