Thoughts about blogging:

Could blogging obsolesce the idea of conspiracy theory? If information travels with perfect efficiency, and people are able to deal with an infinite amount of information (through the internet, search engines, databases, and blogs, i.e. virtual experts on every conceivable subject) does the conspiracy theory disappear?

What is a conspiracy theory? A non-proveable, non-falsifiable theory that usually relies on a number of assumptions that are in themselves non-proveable and non-falsifiable. So, the conspiracy theory exists because of things we cannot prove.

But what if these assumptions and theories were to suddenly become things that people could REASONABLY form opinions about? For example, think of how you _know_ that your stomach is empty when you get hungry. Have you ever seen the inside of your stomach? But because you know a bit about human biology, and you make a reasonable assumption that biologists and doctors aren't all getting together to make up an elaborate lie that your stomach empties itself of the food you eat (after it digests it partially), or that you have a thing called a stomach in the first place. You ASSUME that you have a stomach, and that when you're hungry, it's empty.

A conspiracy theory is the same thing, except you assume too many things for anybody else to believe you.

But if you convince enough people, your belief goes from conspiracy theory to speculation, to commonly accepted, to reasonably assumed truth.

Does the internet have the potential to affect society to the point that truthful ideas can travel and dominate at a considerably faster rate than before? Do all ideas germinate as speculation?

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". The result will be that society will spot conspiracies, debunk them wherever possible, relegating a vast number of them to snopes.com or some other clearinghouse of incorrect ideas. Of the remainder, some ideas will be based on truth, some will not. So, the _idea_ of a conspiracy cannot mean that it is false. Conspiracies do happen, as do evil acts.  

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". We will see our leaders under microscopes, with full coverage of their every move, at the touch of a button. We will have little excuse for not knowing who's the good guy, unless of course, you believe that the media controls what we see and know, so you don't believe your eyes. Bush over Kerry? Please?! I'd take Bush over a lot of people, folks, but not over Kerry. That's not to say Kerry is the bees knees, to retrieve a saying from his era, (or was that his Mom's era?), but you cannot be paying attention and not take Kerry over Bush. Seriously, Kerry threw away some medals. Event taken out of context and blew up into...nothing. Nobody cared. I didn't care (not that my cold Canadian opinion counts for anything). You know why?  Because it still didn't compare to what Bush did to Iraq. Bush has so little going for him, and it's taking armies (literally) to keep him in power. But seriously, when even a WAR can't save your Presidency...well, you're probably named Bush.

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". If we can sift the truth from the lies in this vast landscape of information, does a truth of a greater magnitude than ever thought possible emerge? Could we begin to see patterns that were previously hidden under conditions of less-than-electric-speed media? I believe the conspiracy may be on its way out, folks. In terms of the mechanistic effects of various media, the idea of conspiracy is indeed, a conspiracy itself, that is, a conspiracy of effects.

This is to highlight that it is not a group of shady characters meeting in an abandoned warehouse somewhere who are trying to dupe the general public into believe certain things. It is the cumulative _effects_ of our surroundings that conspire against our ability to understand the world. And somewhere along the way, it became the norm that without pure, uncontested proof, any "theory" was not to be believed.

The idea that, by definition, all conspiracies must be false is a huge lie, and one that many people, without even knowing it, implicitly accept.