[thoughtgypsy]

Audiovisual technology has progressed to the point of such high advancement, that it's becoming more and more difficult to distinguish artificial creations from reality.

There have been major advancements in holographic projection:

As well as facial recognition and replication technologies:

If this were to progress to a sufficient level of technological maturity, it may become hard to tell the difference even amongst experts.

If this capability were to fall in the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous. Think of the possibilities. It would be possible to frame others through holographic projection, edit what they did or did not say.

Law enforcement and the legal system would have to undergo an enormous transformation in considering the viability of video and audio evidence.

It would be impossible to tell whether what you watched on the news was fabrication or reality.

Thoughts?

[deus_ex]

This gives me a fantastic startup idea; actual red pills for people to buy in bulk and swallow to shield themselves from disinformation and propaganda. I could make a variety of flavors: cherry, watermelon, raspberry, pomegranate, apple, strawberry, etc. Thanks man, now I won't have to worry about the student debt I'm about to get buried in.

[infowarrior1]

(07-22-2016 04:47 PM)thoughtgypsy Wrote:  

Audiovisual technology has progressed to the point of such high advancement, that it's becoming more and more difficult to distinguish artificial creations from reality.

There have been major advancements in holographic projection:

As well as facial recognition and replication technologies:

If this were to progress to a sufficient level of technological maturity, it may become hard to tell the difference even amongst experts.

If this capability were to fall in the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous. Think of the possibilities. It would be possible to frame others through holographic projection, edit what they did or did not say.

Law enforcement and the legal system would have to undergo an enormous transformation in considering the viability of video and audio evidence.

It would be impossible to tell whether what you watched on the news was fabrication or reality.

Thoughts?

I think there will be inherent limitations to the technology imposed by the laws of nature.

However it does seem more and more freaky the way this is going.

[Kalkin]

Good question. The answer is that deception has always existed, and technology is available to both sides of the equation.

In the 12th century, many European peasants fell for the hoax of "Prester John", who was probably used to motivate donations and military service. In those days, they would have had no way of obtaining information that contradicted what they had been told. Of course, they could have retained a reasonable doubt about matters that they were unable to independently validate.

There have been numerous other deceptions played on unwitting subjects, utilizing whatever technology was available at the time. For example, from something like the mid 19th century through both world wars, there was a great deal of photographic hoaxing done for political propaganda reasons. Some famous iconic war photos are either staged or airbrushed.

A good modern example of fake evidence is the incident in which numerous radio stations played an audio supplied by someone working for Oksana Gregorieva, without disclosing that it had been spliced in a sound lab, in order to defame Mel Gibson. Numerous media outlets also claimed to have proof that he knocked her front teeth out, even though it was a simple matter to adjust the gamma on her obviously photoshopped photo, and her teeth magically re-appear.

Nowadays we have sophisticated forensics to detect tampering with audio, video, and other media. Assuming that anyone goes to the trouble. And assuming that whoever does go to the trouble, has access to the same media that the hoaxer does, which unfortunately isn't the case.

Technology doesn't make the situation worse except to the extent that the same level of technology is available to validate information; if anything the information race creates more sources of competing information to try to validate against. Like when US Congress attempted to hoax the American public with a fake photo of Russian troops and military vehicles supposedly descending on the Ukraine, I and many other people who know geography were able to quickly alert other people to the fact that the Ukraine is one of the world's largest plains, the mountains in the photograph occurring nowhere in the Ukraine.

There is a new problem though that I personally don't have the solution for. That is "push content", where news and entertainment are shoved into your face without you asking for them. What that does is it displaces competing sources of news, and it gets people out of the habit of taking the initiative to find things out for themselves. I think this is a serious matter. And if the audio or video hoax is propagated through push media, then that reduces the probability of other information streams exposing the hoax.