The Reason-unable Age

According to Domo, 90% of all data today was created in the last 2 years - 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. That is a number so large, Chrome requests me to add "quintillion" to my dictionary. It's something so big, I can't comprehend it – I just know it's a lot.

Reality has split into a multi-verse where there is an entire 90's sized-internet devoted to lizard-people walking among us, another internet-multiverse to the flatness of earth, and so on. No matter your preference, there is an internet that will cater to your beliefs, true or not.

So much data – so much content is generated that we can't possibly comprehend it all anymore. The meme, "But Can It Run Crysis?" has become the "joke is on us". We are trying to process a stream of information that our brains were simply not designed to handle.

In face of such information overload we have come to distrust truth itself, leading us to a cynical distrust of facts and retreat into an age where it's impossible to reason with each other.

Already we are off-loading our decision making process to algorithms. It has slowly made its way in your life, and you've grown dependent on it. Case in point: Google Maps Navigation. You can't memorize all street and traffic data, so you trust and rely on AI to sort through it for you.

Much of the current chaos in governance and world affairs can be attributed to a lack of foundational agreement over facts. Initiatives such as USA Facts and the technical innovation that drives them will be critical to forge the path ahead.

We're at a pivotal moment in history where us humans begin realizing that we can't advance without relying on a common set of facts to make the infinite data stream manageable.

Because without it, we're unable to reason.