Information is Janus-faced

“Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative.”

Information goes along with fundamental suspicion. The more we are confronted with information, the more our suspicion grows.

Information is Janus-faced, produces certainty and uncertainty. A fundamental structural ambivalence is inherent in an information society. 

Truth, by contrast, reduces contingency. We cannot build a stable community or stable democracy on a mass of contingencies.

Democracy requires binding values and ideals, and shared convictions. Today, democracy gives way to infocracy.