: “the nutrient solution in which cells or organs are grown”. But there are times when the two conceptions fuse, and we’re living in one such time now.
Each of these pre-eminent technologies shaped the societies that they enveloped. Print shaped the world for four and a half centuries, followed by broadcast, which ruled for 50 years or so. None of this would have surprised a biologist, who would see human culture as something that grows in an enveloping nutrient. Change the nutrient and you change the culture that grows in it.
If you were a malign superpower that wanted to screw up the democratic world, you’d be hard put to do better than this To make things worse, we also invented a technology that enables every Tom, Dick and mad Harry to publish whatever they like on opaque global platforms, which are incentivised to propagate the wildest nonsense. And to this we have now added powerful tools that automate the manufacture of misinformation on an epic scale. If you were a malign superpower that wanted to screw up the democratic world, you’d be hard put to do better than this.