surrounded by conspiracy

Earlier this month the founder of the web, Tim Berners-Lee said he was worried about levels of trust and the amount of misleading information now propagated on the internet. Around the same time, columnist Jon Ronson in the Weekend Guardian explained how he could not longer take some of the more extreme forms of conspiracy theory and was commiting himself to rationality. Then George Monbiot complained that a piece in the Telegraph casting doubt on climate change had led to his inbox being flooded with people saying "i told you so" and accusing him of scaremongering for suggesting global warming is a serious problem.

My email inbox until recently had daily bulletins from the 9/11 conspiracy theorists with annotated photographs suggesting it proved the planes were actually drones and the towers must have been brought down by carefully placed explosive charges. The 9/11 conspiracists seem to be particularly virulent. People I once assumed were serious have suggested to me there's sufficient "evidence" to suggest it could all be US government plot. Pure Bunkum.

Earlier this year Newsnight examined internet conspiracy theories, concluding that they "never remotely fitted with how any sensible person expects the world to behave" - and in January there is a BBC series on conspiracy theories - although my inside contact in the production team says they didnt remotely stand any of them up. There's a surprise. I'm with Berners-Lee and Ronson - I think we need to reassert the importance of rationality.

Conspiracy theories can be fun - try reading Ron Rosenbaum's Travels with Dr Death for entertainment - but let's not confuse them with a serious view of how the world works. I favour cock-up over conspiracy every time. A judgement born of observation and experience.

(ADD: Will Hutton joins the debate in this week's Observer declaring the information battle to have begun.)

Comments

[Matt Moore]

Dark, paranoid views of the world are paradoxically consoling. If some cabal of evil geniuses are running the world, then at least someone is. And all we have to do is get rid of them and the world is rosy again.

However, if the world is genuinely out of control, if the supreme being is slumped over the wheel then that is far harder to take.

As fond as I am of rationality, human beings are in some fundamental ways irrational. The level of conspiracy theories will only increase in the coming years as people seek comfort in these trying times.