<http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/10/war-goes-viral/132233/> Lungo e interessante articolo, denso di fatti e opinioni, sulla weaponization dei social. Riporto i passaggi col paragone particolarmente interessante e preoccupante tra i social (volatili amplificatori facilmente polarizzabili e possibili strumenti di segregazione ideologica), e il ruolo catalizzatore del telegrafo nello scoppio della prima guerra mondiale. ciao, Alberto The internet has long been celebrated for its power to bring people together. Yet as it turns out, this same technology is easily weaponized. [] Social media has already revolutionized everything from dating to business to politics. Now it is reshaping war itself. [] In an exchange of congratulations, President James Buchanan expressed to Queen Victoria his belief that the telegraph would “prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument designed … to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world.” Within a few days, Britain would use the same cable to send orders to its military. [] Indeed, the more we’ve learned about behavior on social media, the more apparent it has become that the mirror is distorted—or rather, that it distorts us. For all the hope that comes from connecting with new people and new ideas, researchers have found that online behavior is dominated by “homophily”: a tendency to listen to and associate with people like yourself, and to exclude outsiders. Social networks are bad at helping you empathize with people unlike you, but good at surrounding you with those who share your outlook. The new information ecosystem does not challenge biases; it reinforces them. [] When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914, few thought that global conflict was at hand. But over the next several weeks, diplomats and monarchs were left feeling helpless as their nations barreled toward World War I. For some, the prospect of disappointing their own nationalist citizens scared them more than the war itself. German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg lamented how the public clamor for blood constrained his choices, while Russian Tsar Nicholas II feared the very loss of his throne if he chose any other option than a march to war. He chose war, and the people eventually toppled him all the same. Reading the frantic diplomatic missives that traversed the telegraph lines in the final days before hostilities commenced, one is struck by how the threat of conflict quickly adopted its own terrible logic and momentum. Impassioned populations and real-time reports of mobilizations and countermobilizations helped fuel a sense that, far from a conscious choice, war had become inevitable. [] Today, national leaders engage in Twitter spats, and rapid-fire hashtags draw international attention. Public sentiment can be readily manipulated or even manufactured. And events, filtered through social media, can quickly go viral—the very definition of spinning out of control. Perhaps the greatest danger in this dynamic is that, although information that goes viral holds unquestionable power, it bears no special claim to truth or accuracy. Homophily all but ensures that. [] This extreme ideological segregation, the authors concluded, “comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.” As smartphone cameras and streaming video turn every bystander into a reporter (and everyone with an internet connection into an analyst), “truth” becomes a matter of emotional resonance. [] The emergence of a truly interconnected world has long been hailed as a step toward cross-cultural cooperation and global enlightenment. As societies communicate more freely, the thinking has gone, empathy will be nourished, the truth will be easier to find, and many causes of conflict will wither. Thanks to the mobilizing power of social media and the resultant “wisdom of crowds,” citizens will exert more direct control over their governments, helping solve disputes without need for violence. The age of social media, in other words, should be an age of peace and understanding. The same was once said of the telegraph.