blogcutter

When my paternal grandmother died, I was around nine and we got the news via telegram. About a decade later, my other grandmother died and the news came via telephone, which in those days was a stationary, wired device located in a specific, usually common area of the home such as a hallway.

Back then, those two methods of communication were the most effective ways of conveying important news quickly, if not quite instantaneously, although only the telephone call was interactive. And if the deaths or other important events occurred in another country and another time zone, that could be a consideration as well. Getting a phone call at an unusual time of day or night was generally a clear indication that it must be important. Spam calls and scammers were not so prevalent in those days and overseas calls were expensive, not to be undertaken lightly.

My brother would have turned 79 today, but he died in the summer of 2004, also overseas. I learned the news via a local telephone call from one of our sisters, but she was informed at home in person, after being tracked down through Interpol. The three of us then flew overseas to plan his funeral and piece together what we could of the rest of the story. That story is still incomplete to this day.

Not all important news is bad news, of course. I learned of the birth of my first grandchild via a late-night phone call, and of the birth of my third one via a fairly early morning one, having hosted young grandchildren nos. 1 and 2 the previous day and night. News of the birth of my first nephew, 2 or 3 decades earlier, was also conveyed via a late-night phone call.

I don't remember exactly when we got an answering machine, let alone useful features like call-display (which nowadays is unreliable anyway as numbers are often spoofed), although I do recall getting cell phones in the early-to-mid 1990s. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with them, and the one I use now is still a very basic model.

I do like e-mail, though, because it's easy to properly think through a message, save it and come back and revisit or edit it, and add any necessary attachments before sending it. When our daughter went away to university, it was a good way to communicate because we could keep in touch with her without being overly intrusive or making her feel we were breathing down her neck or cramping her style. The message would reach her, she'd answer whenever she was free. Phone calls were still better for really important news, of course, but by that time we had answering machines and could at least say "Please call back as soon as you can!"

I dislike texting and social media. I have a LinkedIn account that I use every once in a while, and occasionally encounter people I haven't seen or heard from in years. I sometimes wonder what happened to all the penpals I exchanged letters with when I was in my pre-teens and throughout my teens. Nowadays, many folks say the postal service is irrelevant. I say "Keep those cards and letters coming!"

Then there's blogging. I do like to blog when there's something on my mind. But that's another blogpost for another day!

I rarely agree with Diane Francis' columns but I know a lot of people do. Here's the one that appeared in yesterday's paper:

https://www.seaforthhuronexpositor.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-the-disturbing-world-of-deepfakes/wcm/09a248a0-6145-4cca-a135-49e55615fe88

And here's what I think. Yes, fake news and doctored photos, audio and video are problems. But I don't entirely agree with the solutions she proposes. She states that "A fake filter, or authentication process, along with new laws must be created to protect the public, consumers and voters from such fakes."

I'll deal with the second part of her proposal first: new laws. And yes, laws might be good. I mean, what kind of a society are we if we don't protect our weakest or most vulnerable members? But they tend to be of limited use out in cyberspace which tends not to respect national boundaries. International agreements? Even better, but even harder to enforce. And in cases where they do get enforced, the resultant penalties tend to be a drop in the bucket or a slap on the wrist for the rich and powerful, but a pyrrhic victory for more disadvantaged groups.

Now what about the fake filter? I guess she's subscribing to that old adage that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. But in this instance, I disagree. The trouble is that in her lexicon, "fake filter" seems to refer exclusively to electronic screening processes, which of course may be malevolent as well as benign. She mentions that "social media giants like Google are staging contests to come up with software antidotes." Hmmm... that sounds to me suspiciously like putting the the fox in charge of the hen house and setting the cat amongst the pigeons!

What makes the best bullshit-detector? Most likely a bull, I should think! And who has the most powerful incentive to sift out all the nasty stuff that is injurious to human health and well-being? A human, preferably one with a sufficient level of intelligence and reasoning power to identify the most egregious examples of falsehoods in truth's clothing and refer the ones that look or sound or smell suspect to experts in the appropriate field.

Artificial intelligence may have come a long way over the years, decades and centuries, but we shouldn't confuse a web-crawling search engine with a human mind. Nor should we assume that the geeks designing the filters and authentication processes have no personal or corporate axe to grind. In the hands of a spin-doctor, outrageous statements can all too easily be recast as "key messages" or "expert advice".

So while electronic tools may indeed have a legitimate role to play, the most crucial element by far is the human element. We need better media literacy training and we need to constantly upgrade our skills and awareness or at least know where to turn to address the gaps in our knowledge. While avoiding absurd conspiracy theories, we can still cultivate a certain reasoned scepticism and adapt our thinking as new information or hypotheses emerge.

That's not easy during a pandemic like this one, when so much of our information is coming from online sources and even the state of expert knowledge is very much incomplete. We just have to do the best we can. The future of human civilization depends on it!