Why does it seem like people disagree so strongly about so many things? Vaccines? Masks? LGBTQ? The Left, the Right. Polarization is nothing new. Political parties, media concerns, the press, industry, and people who seek wealth have always used division and fear to drive people to do what they want.

So why is this a bigger issue now? In his book, Collective Illusions, author Todd Rose explains that the rise of the Internet has given everyone a powerful voice. And some factions and people are getting voices far more powerful than they would otherwise have. As we have seen the Internet is a breeding ground for everything that mankind has to offer. There’s lots of love, encouragement, friendship, social connection and sharing of helpful, useful and even vital information. However our highly connected world is awash in speculation, derision, conjecture and outright lies. Rumor spreads among people like wildfire and the Internet is an amplifier for this. Posts go ‘viral’ and the social media sites, seeing they are becoming popular, amplify them as trending.

Does this mean the content is worth your attention? Is it helpful? Or is it speculation on some important local, national, or world event that has no basis in fact. This isn’t confined to random people on the Internet. It’s often once-trusted news sources who pick up the first whiff of a story and rush to publish it before anyone else, so they don’t get scooped. Then it gathers momentum, as other outlets who don’t want to be scooped, do the same thing.

Have you ever noticed the content of a lot of stories and ancedotes is suspiciously identical? It’s literally just copied and pasted or poorly transcribed repetition. Sometimes it’s the same five seconds of carefully edited video, designed to convey a crafted narrative. The messages, attitudes and mindset that get propagated are often of the most dubious kind. And it’s more likely to affect you if you live in an ‘echo chamber’ of people who all spout the same ideas or ideology. Your natural filter begins to let ideas and information in simply because it resonates with whatever you already think or believe. But this can be dangerous. What if it’s wrong? And worse, what if it’s spread deliberately to manipulate you into doing something for the benefit of someone you might not even agree with?

I found the book Collective Illusions to be very enlightening. A lot of what the author shares seems like common sense, and much of it is. But Mr. Rose does a good job of putting it all in our contemporary technological context.