For the more familiar readers I can suffice by saying that once again I was inspired by You-Know-Who, while commenting on a blog post. It wasn't a typo, but suddenly it jumped to my mind that it's all a matter of peerception
Media and trust, it's always been a moving target. Our correspondent in... used to be someone we sent overseas months, maybe even years ago to provide us with information (talking centuries and decades ago here, they didn't have Twitter yet...). Whatever he or she said to us would be the absolute truth, usually prevailing even over what the place or country itself would consider news fit to bring forth
Why? Where does this blind trust come from? Based upon a silent standard of agreements grown into our system long ago, it seems. In my On The Acquisition Of Knowledge 1/2 I stress the fact that we are
extremely people-oriented when it comes to believing the thruth
We look at our peers, and only at our peers. The rebellious among us might challenge that notion and even discard it, but as a rule, we look at our peers. Whatever they say becomes our truth
Who are our peers? There are people who call almost everyone their friend, there are people who say they don't have friends, or maybe only one or two. Some iconise their teacher, some praise their preacher, others worship their guru
Who are our peers? Who is likely to be be iconised? Back in October 2009 I made a wild prediction about the amount of followers Tim Berners-Lee would get within the next days and even hours. Boy did I get excited! And boy was I wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but really very utterly wrong
Which showed me that it's really hard to predict peerability, if that's a word (making them up as we go here)
I promised to do some hatching on answering those questions, I find them very interesting. One thing I know for sure: there are some rules, and some exceptions - as always. And it's the perception that counts - as always - as well as the peer:
Today's general perception of Jesus, although changing, is very different from the probably ordinary yet enlightened man he really was. But that icon is still being used by the Catholic Church to undo his work
I wonder what this statement, coming from me, does to you...
