At the heart of the Persuasion Paradox lies a profound contradiction between the transformative promise of the Information Age and its unintended consequences. Initially, the internet was envisioned – and widely celebrated – as a revolutionary tool for democratizing knowledge, dismantling barriers to information access, and fostering global understanding. Yet, we now face a reality starkly different from that optimistic vision. The abundance of information, rather than elevating clarity and truth, has birthed a “noise-to-signal” problem, where misinformation, disinformation, and emotionally charged narratives often obscure the truth. This phenomenon resonates deeply with themes I’ve explored previously – the democratization of knowledge and the unintended consequences inherent in rapid technological and societal transitions.
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The Future Of Information Ecosystems
Fellow Futurist and TCS colleague Kevin Benedict has been exploring the topic of information and the ecosystems that support it. In this wide ranging series, he looked at things like social engineering, device dependence, and behavioral science. In a world where information is weaponized, this is an important discussion. Below is a summary of the series in Kevin’s words, followed by a link to each article.
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The Passion Economy
In 2014, I had this to say about the trend of putting a word in front of the word economy and declaring a new era: Something Economy: seems like a popular trend – stick a word in front of economy and use it to describe the next big thing. Some of these words are: Peer, Maker, Sharing, Gig, Collaborative, Green, Circular, Mesh, Digital, Innovation, semantic, and more.
Reimagining the Future 