海角大神

鈥淏ecause we鈥檙e all able to produce such professional-looking information, it鈥檚 getting harder to tell good from bad, professional from amateur, authority from ignoramus 鈥� and, even more alarming, reality from fiction.鈥�听

So laments Charles Seife in Virtual Unreality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do You Know It鈥檚 True? Seife is a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of the critically acclaimed 鈥淶ero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea,鈥� among other works. Strictly speaking, his latest book doesn鈥檛 include much that鈥檚 original, but Seife proves meticulous in amassing much of what we know about the perils of the Internet and explaining its significance for anyone trying to separate truth from falsehood. 鈥淰irtual Unreality鈥� should be faulted for one major omission, but otherwise it is informed, nimble, endlessly quotable, and timely.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking parts of the book come in the form of the author鈥檚 warnings about the possible ramifications of the Internet鈥檚 emergence as 鈥渁 great democratizer鈥� of knowledge. The problem, Seife points out, is that 鈥渒nowledge is inherently anti-democratic.鈥� Facts are no less true if they鈥檙e unpopular 鈥� and it鈥檚 often the facts that the majority refuse to accept that are the most important.鈥澨�

Certain of Seife鈥檚 premonitions sound a bit too ominous. 鈥淲e are at the beginning of an information famine,鈥� he declares at one point. A little later, he adds that 鈥渙ver the next few years, even the news media may well become increasingly indistinguishable from spam.鈥� Take such prognostications with a grain of salt if they seem portentous, but don鈥檛 fall into the trap of denying the myriad internet-related dangers that the author, in his characteristically deft and sometimes witty manner, highlights throughout 鈥淰irtual Unreality.鈥�

Consider reinforcement theory, which posits that we often gravitate toward information that seconds our views. Seife shows how the Internet has strengthened this tendency by making every conceivable argument and idea, however half-baked, readily accessible. He also points out that Internet web sites and search engines have begun to exploit our innate desire for reinforcement by recommending items that jibe with our previous searches or selections 鈥� for example, articles or books advancing the same argument. 鈥淲ith news and data that is tailored to our prejudices,鈥� he remarks, 鈥渨e deprive ourselves of true information. We wind up wallowing in our own false ideas, reflected back at us by the media.鈥�

Seife guides the reader through various manifestations of this phenomenon. Like Lebanese-French novelist and essayist Amin Maalouf, who, in his nonfiction book 鈥淒isordered World,鈥� bemoans the web鈥檚 creation of 鈥済lobal tribes,鈥� Seife worries that the Internet has strengthened far-flung extremists by enabling them to establish contact with one another. But whereas Maalouf is interested in how people across the globe with the same ethno-religious 鈥渋nherited allegiances鈥� are uniting online, Seife shows how the Internet forges entirely new communities out of conspiracy-mongers and purveyors of scientifically discredited theories.

For the author, 鈥渢he Internet doesn鈥檛 represent a revolution for free speech as much as a revolution in free audiences.鈥� And media outlets have learned that in order to maximize those audiences, they must engage in 鈥渟earch-engine optimization.鈥� SEO, as it鈥檚 called, consists of using simple keywords in your headline so that Google ranks your story first. Seife doesn鈥檛 hesitate to single out media giant AOL for the sloppy, SEO-oriented journalism of its 鈥淪eed鈥� project, as well as 鈥渢urn[ing] the newsgathering process on its head鈥� by instructing its writers (in a now notorious leaked 2011 memo) to build stories around keywords trending on the Internet. He also blasts popular blog The Huffington Post (which AOL purchased in 2011) for some of its disreputable ploys to secure web traffic. Not only would the site churn out highly derivative articles, but it would trick Google into considering them the original or 鈥渃anonical鈥� source, meaning that, for a time, the search engine listed the HuffPo article above the one from which it took its information.听听

Yet this book isn鈥檛 some sort of jeremiad; from the start, it emerges as multi-faceted. Alongside his cataloging of the various ways in which the Internet can fool us, Seife dispenses concrete advice on how we might 鈥渓earn to see through the haze of unreality that鈥檚 settling around us.鈥� (He even provides an appendix compressing his earlier recommendations into nuts and bolts.) Let鈥檚 consider a few basic examples.

Don鈥檛 rely on Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia, for accurate information. Also, note that if you pick up something false from a Wikipedia page and reproduce it in an article or blog, chances are that someone will see to it that the aforementioned Wikipedia page will then cite you as a source for its claims, creating 鈥渁 particularly insidious kind of circular proof.鈥�

Don鈥檛 always assume that people you鈥檙e corresponding with electronically are who they claim to be, especially if they ask you for money. You鈥檝e probably grown accustomed to the Nigerian scam (a variation on the old Spanish prisoner swindle), but might fall for a similar email ostensibly from a friend. In such a situation, the message could have originated with someone who hacked into your friend鈥檚 account. Seife emphasizes the importance of trying to determine the origins of such messages through their IP addresses (he recommends consulting websites such as and ).

Sometimes you鈥檙e not even dealing with a human. Chat rooms, dating sites, and Twitter overflow with computer-generated stand-ins for real people. In fact, dating sites have faced lawsuits alleging they employ software that creates fake accounts of women in order to lure men into signing up or subscribing. The author suggests putting the photo of the person you鈥檙e purportedly in touch with into a reverse-image search (on or ) to find out whether it appears under other people鈥檚 names elsewhere, which would indicate that something is amiss.

For a book that seeks to make us aware of who and what might take advantage of us over the Internet, there is precious little here about government snooping. Seife briefly addresses attempts by China and the US to spy on adversaries 鈥� including each other 鈥� through sockpuppetry (false identities), as well as the police鈥檚 use of this method to catch suspected criminals. Yet what about governments spying on (their own) ordinary citizens? It is almost inconceivable that in the age of the Edward Snowden leaks, which revealed the extent of covert telephone and internet surveillance by the US鈥檚 National Security Agency, a book such as this one would not explore the issue.

Moreover, Seife worked briefly for the NSA in the early 1990s; following Snowden鈥檚 revelations, he published expressing his unease with the reluctance of his former colleagues to speak out about the agency鈥檚 encroachment on people鈥檚 private lives. Rather than revisit and expand on the NSA leaks controversy in his book, however, he chooses to omit discussion of the subject, leaving one with the feeling that 鈥淰irtual Unreality,鈥� while an indispensable guide to almost everything sinister about the Internet, could have enjoyed even greater resonance.