The Biology of Disinformation: Interview with Rushkoff, Pescovitz, and Dunagan

Over at Mondo 2000, our old pal RU Sirius interviewed Douglas Rushkoff, Jake Dunagan, and I about the "The Biology of Disinformation," a new research paper we wrote for Institute for the Future about how media viruses, bots and computational propaganda have redefined how information is weaponized for propaganda campaigns. While technological solutions may seem like the most practical and effective remedy, fortifying social relationships that define human communication may be the best way to combat ideological warfare that is designed to push us toward isolation. From Mondo 2000:

R.U. Sirius: In a sense, youre offering a different model than the one most of us usually think in, as regards memetics. Instead of fighting bad memes with good, or their memes with ours, are you suggesting that we look at memes themselves as viruses attacking us? Is that right?

Douglas Rushkoff: Yeah, thats the simplest way of looking at it. Thats why I called memes in media media viruses. Even if they end up forcing important ideas into the cultural conversation, and even if they ultimately lead to good things, they do infect us from the outside. They attack our weak code, and continue to replicate until we repair it, or until we come to recognize the shell of the virus itself.I think what makes our analysis unique, compared with a lot of whats out there, is that were not proposing yet another technosolutionist fix. Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight fake news with artificial intelligence. Great. Hes already over his head in a media environment he doesnt understand. He doesnt know why his platform has led to so many unintended effects. So whats his solution? Build yet another technology he understands even less to solve the problem with yet another black box.Even those with the best intentions see all this as a technological problem, when its really more a cultural or biological one. The difference in our approach is that we still have faith in the human organism and human society to rise to the occasion and increase their resiliency. So were writing for people, not tech companies.

"Memes Are For Tricksters" (Mondo 2000)

"The Biology of Disinformation" (PDF at IFTF)