(2018-08-20) Schroeder Noon In The Antilibrary

Karl Schroeder: Noon in the antilibrary. ...today I’m talking to Marius Rivas, the founder and CEO of Augmented Manners.” She turned to him with a smile. “Marius, you’ve called it ‘the first true political app.’ It’s just a phone app, but it has this magic ability to get people working together. How does it do this?”

people who think they share the same language are talking past one another (Communication)

Augmented Manners uses simultaneous translation technology to translate within the English language, rather than between it and another one

“I started thinking about it differently, focusing not on what fake news is but what it’s for. What’s its product? The answer is simple: doubt

If fake news is a technology of doubt, we needed to build a technology of trust (Reputation Management). “Cather had a different plan. Why not beat them at their own game?

“The project was all about defanging fake news. The problem was, these guys couldn’t actually see what was wrong with it to begin with. To them, there was no such thing as real news—never had been

Cather rebranded us as Project Antilibrary

I could see where Cather’s work was leading. And I felt, morally, I had to counter it somehow. But we’d worked together, analyzing how disinformation operates. I knew there was no way to attack it directly, so I designed Augmented Manners.

Fake news is designed to break down our ability to trust one another. So I built something that would help you see the real person you were talking to. It would be like your own personal diplomat.

It didn’t try to attack the vector of the fake-news disease; it’s designed to immunize us against its effects.

See, if you’re purely political (politics), you might think that there’d be no consequence to faking everybody’s news and social media.

But the whole modern economy runs on accurate data

Some coders came to me a while back,” he said. “They explained about the Internet of Things blockchain that all these sensors report to... “Because if you can build an incorruptible pyramid of facts out of IoT sensor data,” said Marius, “you can do the same thing with journalistic facts (Journalism).” (Claim-Refactoring Service)

“Their system lets anybody ask the IoT blockchain for its testimony as an incorruptible witness to anything, provided the data doesn’t violate somebody’s privacy. So, for instance, there are hundreds of diagnostic systems in this room—in the lights, the walls, even the chairs—that report wear and tear up the line to the manufacturers, building owners ... But that data can be used to testify about other things that’re happening in the room. Or aren’t happening. Like, from pressure-­wave readings, whether someone has fired a gun in here.”