Recently, BBC Future Now launched a series about the grand challenges we face in the 21st Century. Many on their panel of experts named the breakdown of trusted sources of information as one of the most pressing problems today. Among them was Paul Resnick, professor of information at U-M. Working out who to trust and what to believe has always been a part of human civilization. But the difference today is how we get our information. “The internet has made it possible for many voices to be heard that could not make it through the bottleneck that controlled what would be distributed before,” says Resnick. “Now…there is great concern about how we control the dissemination of things that seem to be untrue.” In other words, we need new ways to decide what, and who, is trustworthy.
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