Post-Truth and New Realities: Algorithms, Alternative Facts, and Digital Ethics

Data & Society

Maurizio Ferraris and Martin Scherzinger - Recent scandals around alternative facts, post-truth, and hacking have raised a constellation of questions regarding the intersection of digital tools, the construction or verification of reality, and issues of power and authorship. Such questions have been at the center of theoretical and literary discussions in continental philosophy and critical theory for some years, drawing from or pushing against post-structuralist assertions regarding the death of the author and the relativism of ontology. Today, these questions are articulated in the realm of techno-politics with a new urgency.

The talk was moderated by Jessica Feldman from New York University’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, and hosted by Robyn Caplan from Data & Society Research Institute.

Chapters

1. What do Noam Chomsky and Donald Trump have in common? Is our contemporary moment the perverse realization of the postmodern? (00:00:00)

2. Not an issue of people lying–What happens when we elevate documentality to a guardian of reality? (00:12:50)

3. Fantasies of genocide; the question concerning the question. (00:19:31)

4. What happens when false facts become social objects? (00:27:45)

5. The precedent, and financial incentives, for producing a social object of post-truth. (00:32:43)