> How naive we were back then, thinking that tech alone would suffice to bring us freedom.
You've completely misunderstood what the phrase actually means. The notion of access to information doesn't imply access to a selected, curated subset of it: in fact it means quite the opposite. Access to a deluge of information unbarred by gatekeepers is precisely at the heart of the concept, in contrast to the highly-curated and high-barrier world of (e.g.) three broadcast networks, and thousand-dollar encyclopedias.
Don't get me wrong: I certainly don't think that it's only the "dumb" that find handling the information deluge to be challenging. From the perspective of the individual's access to information, "Information Wants To Be Free" is still very much alive and well; it just requires a little more maturity than "tell me what to believe". Every single time I've heard someone complain about the fact that they see reliable sources say seemingly contradictory things about an issue, it's because the issue in reality is more complex than their oversimplified model would like it to be. Amazing access to information doesn't even remotely mean the same thing as "every issue is now magically simple enough that you don't have to put any effort into understanding it".
FWIW, "Sharing is Spamming" is utter nonsense. If you put the time in to curate whose sharing you read, you won't end up with garbage in your proverbial in-box.
You've completely misunderstood what the phrase actually means. The notion of access to information doesn't imply access to a selected, curated subset of it: in fact it means quite the opposite. Access to a deluge of information unbarred by gatekeepers is precisely at the heart of the concept, in contrast to the highly-curated and high-barrier world of (e.g.) three broadcast networks, and thousand-dollar encyclopedias.
Don't get me wrong: I certainly don't think that it's only the "dumb" that find handling the information deluge to be challenging. From the perspective of the individual's access to information, "Information Wants To Be Free" is still very much alive and well; it just requires a little more maturity than "tell me what to believe". Every single time I've heard someone complain about the fact that they see reliable sources say seemingly contradictory things about an issue, it's because the issue in reality is more complex than their oversimplified model would like it to be. Amazing access to information doesn't even remotely mean the same thing as "every issue is now magically simple enough that you don't have to put any effort into understanding it".
FWIW, "Sharing is Spamming" is utter nonsense. If you put the time in to curate whose sharing you read, you won't end up with garbage in your proverbial in-box.