Sanity prevails

Wikipedia founder offers hope to those who fear social media has destroyed our access to truth.

- BY ANDREW PAUL WOOD

What is Truth?" asked Pilate in his interrogation of Christ.

Back in the innocent times of 2005, television comedian and political commentator Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” for people making up their own cosy realities that feel “truthy” enough to work. Sometime Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway gave us “alternative facts” in 2017. Since then, you would have to be gobsmackingly obtuse not to have noticed what an adipose froth of lies, propaganda and spin social media has become: mainstream politicians embrace QAnon and antivax conspiracies for votes. We're all going to hell in a handbag, and now the virtual Uriah Heeps of generative AI seem to have cut the brake cable.

Into the fever dream Jimmy Wales's The Seven Rules of Trust trickles as a cool spring of sanity. Wales, Wikipedia's founder, should know about truth. Almost since it was created, educators were warning us that the online encyclopedia's collaborative model was unreliable as a source. These days, it seems almost a quaint reminder of what the internet could have been: free, collaborative and democratic, and in a tsunami of Al-generated pabulum it may be the only remaining online repository of information where there are rules for consistency and humans still check things occasionally.