Why this, now
The world sucks, for so many reasons that it's depressing to list them all. People are angry, and running out of options, and it feels like everyone is screaming into a void. Peel back all the different ways that the world sucks, and one thing keeps coming up:
Information. Specifically, misinformation and disinformation – information pollution and poisoning.
Our IT and many of our social tics try to treat information as though it is either right/wrong, us/them, good/bad, and focused on the simplest summation. When we approach information that way, it hobbles problem solving. It urges us to wait for absolutely clarity. It dilutes meaning when we stand our ground. When information is presented as only viable as a binary, it's far easier to lie and get away with it.
And information...it is seriously so cool. As we can tell the good information from the bad, with information literacy, we can fix things. And the thing is, once we get good, recognized, functional information in a domain: it spreads. Humanity mimics what works crazy fast.
It doesn't take everyone. It just takes enough. Enough everyday people interested in learning information literacy and breaking free of a binary worldview. Enough people in IT to smudge the binary, to humanize it and stop repeating the binary pattern ad nauseam, so more and more people will feel comfortable in their skins and lives again.
That's our goal: smudge the binary
with two threads to pull
and guidelines
to work to manifest something different