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So imagine that you had
your smartphone minituarized

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and hooked up directly to your brain.

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If you had this sort of brain chip,

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you'd be able to upload and download
to the Internet at the speed of thought.

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Accessing social media or Wikipedia
would be a lot like --

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well, from the inside at least --

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like consulting your own memory.

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It would be as easy
and as intimate as thinking.

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But would it make it easier
for you to know what's true?

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Just because a way
of accessing information is faster

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doesn't mean it's
more reliable of course,

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and it doesn't mean that we would all
interpret it the same way.

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It doesn't mean that you would be
any better at evaluating it,

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in fact you might even we worse

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because, you know, more data,
less time for evaluation.

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Something like this is already
happening to us right now.

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We already carry a world of information
around in our pockets,

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but it seems as if the more information
that we share and access online,

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the more difficult it can be

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for us to tell the difference between
what's real and what's fake.

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It's as if we know more
but understand less.

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Now, it's a feature of modern like,

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I supposed,

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that large swaths of the public 
live in isolated information bubbles.

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We're polarized not just over values
but over the facts,

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and one reason for that


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is that the data analytics
that drive the Internet

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get us not just more information
but more of the information that we want.

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Our online life is personalized,

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everything from the ads we read

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to the news that comes down
our Facebook feed

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is tailored to satisfy our preferences.

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And so while we get more information,

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a lot of that information ends up
reflecting ourselves

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as much as it does reality.

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It ends up,

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I suppose,

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inflating our bubbles rather
than bursting them.

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And so maybe it's not surprise

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that we're in a situation --

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a paradoxical situation --

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thinking that we know so much more

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and yet not agreeing
on what it is we know.