The Information Animal

Description

Depending on the news you read, new tools like AI will either save or destroy us. But our response to emerging technology’s ‘unprecedented’ threats actually follows a pattern as old as civilisation. From ancient Athens to COVID-19, social media to spam, Alicia Wanless shows how humans have always consumed information, whether accurate or not.

First a new technology changes how information is shared, broadening its availability and accelerating how fast it travels. Then, as more people engage with this new content, fresh ideas arise, often challenging prevailing beliefs. Some use the new tools to promote their views, win power or simply profit, adding to the mounting information pollution. Competition and conflict follow. We scramble—in vain—to control information flows and use of the new technology.

With democracies worldwide lurching from crisis to crisis, knee-jerk reactions to information conflict won’t suffice. What’s needed is an understanding of our nature as ‘information animals’, in a millennia-long relationship with technology—and of how a content-saturated world impacts the political battle for hearts and minds.

Reviews

‘Alicia Wanless does an impressive job of arguing for an entirely new way of looking at information and communication. Using a number of wonderful case studies from across the globe, throughout history, the premise of the book comes to life. Fresh, original and absorbing.’ — Claire Wardle, co-founder and co-director of the Information Futures Lab, Brown University

‘Clearly, beautifully and passionately articulated, The Information Animal makes an important and unique argument. Rich in detail and with meticulously documented case studies, it is a compelling, substantive and engaging exploration of a critically important subject.’ — Tim Abray PhD, journalist, policy consultant and former radio presenter

‘The Information Animal is an excellent piece of scholarship. With a compelling, original and well-supported argument, it is a very useful and important contribution to the literature.’ — David Scales, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College

Author(s)

Alicia Wanless is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she runs the Information Environment Project. She completed her PhD in War Studies at King’s College London, combining ecology and strategic theory in a new approach to understanding conflict within the information environment.