In an age where information floods our senses at lightning speed, societies face a critical challenge: the information rate problem. In a nutshell, the velocity of misinformation today disrupts institutions, erodes trust and undermines democracy. The lesson is that understanding and managing this velocity is vital for the survival of truth.
For most of human history, information travelled slowly. It was slow enough to be filtered by institutions; slow enough to be debated, contested, absorbed; and slow enough to allow meaning to form before reaction was required. That slowness was a feature of historical progress.
As societies generated more knowledge, innovations evolved in step to control how and where information was distributed. The town crier, the printing press, the newspaper editor, the nightly broadcast bulletin – each acted as a throttle on the rate at which information entered society. These innovations were not guarantors of truth.
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Rather, each acted – in their historical time – as a governor on speed. Today, it is not uncommon to hear that societies, especially democracies, are threatened by both misinformation (false, inaccurate or misleading information that is spread regardless of whether there is intent to deceive) and disinformation (false or misleading information deliberately created and spread with the specific intent to deceive, manipulate or cause harm). It is not, however, the mere fact of encountering false information that creates serious social and political challenges.
The problem is its speed. I call it the information rateproblem: when the rate of information exceeds the rate at which humans and institutions can metabolise it, societies falter. False information is as old as politics itself.
Rumour, myth, propaganda and manipulation are not new. During the 20th century, propaganda was central to two of the most evil systems invented: Nazism and Stalinism. Whatis new about misinformation in this century is scale multiplied by velocity.
For most of history, information shocks were localised. A false rumour might destabilise a court, a city, a kingdom. But notwithstanding the examples above, it rarely overwhelmed a whole society.
Even the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, often cited as a revolutionary rupture, did not break the system. Because distribution was still slow, literacy was uneven, and institutional buffers adapted. The internet removed the physical constraints on distribution.
Suddenly, information could travel globally, instantly, and at near-zero marginal cost. But for a time, this did not feel destabilising. And this “friction” was manifest in various forms: limited bandwidth; technical barriers, specialist communities; delayed feedback loops.
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