The Participatory Decepticon

Futurist James Cascio has written a timely essay about an emerging problem he calls the “Participatory Decepticon”. He explains that there’s a dark side to the proliferation of ubiquitous media capturing devices and easy to use editing software. Cascio says we’ll see a rise in participatory deception: purposeful manipulation of media to discredit individuals and groups. An early iteration of this trend can be seen in the political arena, where the propagation of defamatory memes is only the beginning. Coming next is doctored video that could do far more harm than a rumor.

Cascio explains:

But add easy video manipulation to the mix, and another possibility emerges: the crafting of political videos documenting candidate insults and errors that never happened. Not in a clumsy, easily-detected form, but as a sufficiently-believable web video. There are more than enough audio recordings out there of most major political candidates to allow political pranksters/”dirty tricksters” to make that candidate say just about anything; the cameraphone and flash video media offer insufficient clarity to be able to see if a candidate’s mouth is truly saying the words he or she seems to be saying.

Open The Future: The Participatory Decepticon