Explosion of Media Sources Fragmented Knowledge Hubs

Your assessment that this is a systems problem is correct. Like a supernova, the explosion of media sources unleashed decades of pent up distrust of political institutions and politicians, which fragmented all the traditional consensual knowledge hubs — the old system.

The resulting debris field resembles the rings of Saturn awaiting sufficient gravity to congeal into a new system of trustworthy hubs. Eventually this will occur, though when, how and what precipitates it is unclear.

Does seem unlikely, however, that the new hubs in this system starts with news. Rather, something more personal, like knowledge content people need to know that affects their quality of life. If so, as these satellites emerge and trust grows their gravity will pull in more reliable sources.

While a slow process, it also seems likely that the mainstream expansion of conversational virtual assistants, and eventually augmented reality, only succeed with a system of reliable, trustworthy knowledge content hubs. Said differently, we’re moving toward ubiquitous on-demand, ambient information devices and services that require reliable, trustworthy knowledge content to be useful. Together, that is the “system” that moves us past this repugnant post-truth era.

On my Medium publication, A Passion to Evolve, there are numerous articles on this topic. For example:

What Truthiness and Post-Fact Era Means

Reducing Education & Knowledge Gaps

Curated Knowledge is THE Future of All Power

Doc Huston