Lew, your blog gets to the essence of the Establishment's concerns about information sources they don't control (e.g., the Internet). The "Wired" article contains a most telling quote by Angelo Genova: "If the internet becomes a vehicle with people tied to their anonymity, and people engage in negative tactics and disinformation . . . it could deprive voters of the ability to judge the credibility (and value) of the information." WOW! The truthfulness of a statement is to be judged on the basis of who made it? Individuals are to forego making an independent, substantive analysis of the observation?
This comes back to what I have, for many decades, considered the most important question we must continue to ask ourselves: the epistemological question . . . how do we know what we know? The Establishment has long thrived on one of the most intellectually sloppy of all practices: creating a category of "recognized authorities," admission to which is dependent upon accepting the Establishment mindset. Major universities and the mainstream media have accepted their mantles of "recognized authorities" in exchange for never offending those who can withdraw such status with ease.
Now you know why, a few years ago, Hillary Clinton proposed a "gatekeeper" for the Internet, to prevent just "anyone" from being able to freely communicate information or ideas to others. The Establishment has never fully recovered from Gutenberg's invention, as it continues its struggle to subdue the minds of hundreds of millions of people into a manageable herd. What if a "discouraging word" should emanate from the herd and start a stampede?
