CIBS Conference: ROBERT JOHNSON Institute for New Economic Thinking, Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (USA)

ROBERT JOHNSON Institute for New Economic Thinking, Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (USA)

At Sea without an Anchor

Absolutes are rarely available in a world of evolving structure. Yearning for order to alleviate fear is human. But the quest for certainty creates dangerous temptations when faced with the new technologies of large scale, rapid-fire and sometimes synthetic information bombardment. The discord that emerges through ”infostorms” beckons us to look at these human construction with an eye toward openness. Neither anarchy nor authoritarian information structures are satisfying. I will argue that a danger lurking beneath our sea of unknowing is to idolize notions such as truth and facts that lead toward...