Hi Dave,

You’re right – the ability to understand important messages in a climate of manipulation is an increasing vital skill. I think you’d find this series on CBC to be of interest: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/spincycles/index.html – they explore the spin cycle of traditional media. An excellent series. Or consider Stuart Ewen’s “PR: A social history of spin”. Simply, the manipulation of messages has a long history…and if history provides any insights into our future, as we become more distributed, so do the “creation of mirrors”.

A quick example. Over the last few months, I’ve been getting several PR messages a day…stating “we have a new product” or “your readers would like to…” or whatever. We are now in an age of micromarketing. Bloggers are approached by marketing firms in the same manner that press releases used to be issued to newspapers/radio/TV. My question: Does the increased distributed nature of marketing make us more or less immune to false messages? When a large percentage of a distributed informal information ecology is saying “think this…vote for her/him…have this opinion”, is that message more powerful than seeing it on TV or hearing it on the radio? i.e. are we better off to be distributed in purity of message? or centralized? or does it become the old telephone game where messages are obscured as they move through the chain?

You’ve highlighted an important point here Dave…

George