We live in a world that constructs itself
more and more over the internet. The emergence
of electracy has facilitated a tremendous
rise in the social and political implications
of the information created and circulated
online.
As an active Egent of the rapidly developing
electrate apparatus, it has become my project
to inquire further into the ways in which
truth and falsities are constructed in electracy.
In recent decades, we have witnessed, and
even contributed to, the intensely polarized
filter bubbles, the rapidly circulating fake
news, the algorithmic text-spewing bots and
the “post-truth” conspiracy theories exploding
in prominence on the electrate apparatus.
Part I- Doxa (Greek- Belief)
After consulting with my colleagues in the
EmerAgency, I’ve set out to examine exactly
how constructions such as truth and deceptions
operate within the electrate sphere. The rapid
changes the internet is cultivating in our
culture have radically reshaped how we exchange
information, how we come to know and define
ourselves , and how we come to conceive of
our relations with others. One change, according
to theorist Gregory Ulmer, is a fluctuating
and unstable definition of Truth that is developing
within the electrate apparatus.
According to Ulmer in his book Electronic
Monuments, Truth has been transformed within
electracy by what Ulmer terms Aura. For Ulmer,
aura is for electrate truth what clairty was
for literate truth. There is an intimate connection
between style and knowledge in electracy that
isn’t present within literacy. For Egents,
truth is what feels right, what feels good.
This contrasts with truth in orality, which
is based upon myth, religion or intuition
or to truth within the literate mindset, which
is based upon science, reason and empirical
evidence. Electrate Egents are less concerned
with what circulating texts and images mean
to others than they are with what those texts
mean to them personally.
Importantly, Ulmer reminds us that truth is
always an effect specific and unique to an
apparatus.
Electracy is customizable, meaning egents
are free to amplify the voicesthat maximize
their happiness, meaning they are not always
exposed to differing viewpoints that may lessen
the affinity pleasures of being around those
with similar viewpoints. This is what researchers
of internet cultures call an “infobubble”
or a “filterbubble.” These filterbubbles
polarize social formations such as the global
public, and are responsible at least in part
for the rise of far-right populism in the
United States and Europe in the opening decades
of electracy’s domination. Within these
filterbubbles, credibility is earned from
affinity and relatability. Ethos and especially
pathos rise to the forefront, at the expense
of logos, and the gap between what is true
and what is believed is bridged by aura. We
as contemporary electrate citizens have fallen
into a trap: we are combating electrate truth
with only the tools of literacy, which electracy
is immune to. Close readings, evidence-based
practices, even reason itself fade in prominence
in the electrate apparatus. These tools of
literate truth are replaced by what ancient
Greek rhetoricians would call doxa, meaning
common belief or common opinion held by a
person without regard for data, reason or
empirical evidence. We are, as Walter Benjamin
predicted, in an age in which criticism and
critical thinking have partially outlived
their usefulness. We exist in an age of Digital
Doxa, and we’re responding to it with the
outmoded and outdated tools of literacy. What
are we to do?
Part II- Apate (Greek- Deception)
In academic circles, a social-epistemic model
of truth has risen to the forefront, a model
which rejects the existence of a central,
definitive, clear-cut and authoritative truth
perceivable by human beings. Instead, the
social-epistemic model of truth, drawing on
a diverse list of theorists and thinkers such
as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger,
Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jean Baudrillard,
affirms the multiplicity of truths. They stress
the plural- truths. Every speaker, thinker,
writer, and electrate composer produces different
truths, all of them equally valid. Electracy,
and the social media apparatus where it is
enacted, democratize the ability to compose
and circulate claims to truths. The question,
then, becomes how do we form and reform our
electrate practices not so that they’ll
mimic literacy, but to form wholly-electrate
approaches to truth formation that are what
we as a public want them to be: productive,
healthy, democratic, and inclusive. In other
words, we’re going to have to figure out
how electrate truth functions within a democracy.
We’ve entered a period in which we’re
supposedly post-truth. Many blame the internet;
others blame Donald Trump; still others blame
thinkers like Nietzsche and Lyotard who decentered
a one, absolute truth in favor of a model
featuring many competing claims to truth.
A better take is that we are not post-truth
currently because we were never in truth to
begin with, only believing ourselves to be.
The fact remains, however, that we’re going
to have to learn to live in a world in which
truth is unstable, uncertain, and rapidly
transforming in our networked, circulating
infosphere. We’ll have to live in a world
of fake news, algorithmic Twitter bots, of
digital deception. The Greeks had a word for
this, too: Apate, deceit, deception.
Digital deception has gripped our global conversation:
one need not look further than the 2016 Brexit
Referendum or the election of Donald Trump
as president of the United States.
Digital deception created the infamous #PizzaGate
conspiracy theory that circulated among right-wing
infospheres just before the election, claiming
Hillary Clinton to be involved in a fake human
trafficking ring. Digital deception has also
been weaponized politically and socially by
Russian social media bots spreading misinformation
to deceive the American public right before
major elections.
Digital deception is getting even worse: we’ve
only recently seen the development of what
are being termed “deep-fakes,” digitally-altered
video and sound that are realistic and seemingly-genuine
that viewers aren’t able to distinguish
reality in a video or sound file from deceptive,
misleading material.
Deep Fakes are a next step in the progression
of digital deception: weaponizing the public’s
belief that video and sound are indisputable
renderings of reality, which is of course
not always the case.
Deep fakes hold tremendous power as propaganda,
an example being white house press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeting out a digitally
edited, doctored, and falsified InfoWars video
of a reporter supposedly violently pushing
a white house employee. Even a casual view
of the original, undoctored footage reveals
this to have not been the case, of course,
but the public was fooled. One can only imagine
how autocrats and tyrants around the world
will learn to use deep fakes as a form of
information violence against their people.
Part III- Parrhesia (Greek- Saying the Truth)
The paramount public policy question for egents
of the 21st century to answer, then, is how
to empower truth tellers within electacy to
write, code and design truths that can be
circulated, networked and recycled productively
in a rapidly globalizing world.
Here, I’d like to outline three strategies
for reinventing truth in electracy to help
it mutate as a practice into something unifying,
something beneficial, something constructive.
First, we should teach electracy and its values
in schools and especially in first-year college
composition classes. Second, we should teach
our students not to flee from electracy and
electrate practices, but rather to embrace
them so as to mold them. We should remind
students that just as the Greeks invented
literacy and literate practices, it’s up
to them to invent electracy, to design electrate
practices that build the society they want
built. Third, we should conversate with students
on how truths and cultures are constructed
collaboratively and socially, in concert with
others and with our technological tools. Lastly,
we should ask students to examine whether
there’s a place for empiricism, reason and
evidence-based practices in electracy, and
if there is, where are they and how to we
productively harness them?
It was Martin Heidegger who said “We do
not know the essence of truth. Therefore it
is necessary for us to ask about it and to
be pressed toward this question so as to dignify
the essence of truth with a question. This
question is that we take up thinking” (Parmenides-
162). And so we’ll do just that- keep thinking
about truth, and keep asking questions about
truth, and keep responding to electracy with
questions and thoughts about truth. A final
Greek word rises 
to mind here: Parrhesis, meaning “saying
the truth.”
It’s our job to invent what truth will be
in our electrate society. We need to put the
truth-telling, truth-coding, truth-designing
power into the hands of our emerging egents,
and we must ask them to invent away.
