The Reality Game by Samuel Woolley

The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth
by Samuel Woolley
PublicAffairs, 2020

Online disinformation is nothing new. Encouragingly, discussions around the topic are increasing in number and solutions being sought by individuals and technology organizations. With this seemingly heightened focus on a pernicious and pervasive problem, one would hope that “fake news” would soon be old news. If you’re sensing a “but” here, you’d be right. Because what most people don’t know is that emerging and future technologies possess the powerful potential to manipulate and control the flow of disinformation to disrupt the democratic political process.

Samuel Woolley, a digital propaganda expert and the research director of the Digital Intelligence (DigIntel) Lab at the Institute for the Future, takes us on a hair-raising tour of the “frontier of fake news” in The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth. The book is a timely and proactive treatise on the dangers of online and social media disinformation today, how bad it could get tomorrow, and what we can start doing now to combat the abuse and misuse of social media and other emerging technologies.

Specializing in the study of automation/AI, emergent technology, politics, persuasion, and social media, Woolley is well-placed to discuss the nature of our hyperconnected society, one in which the internet has become the prime supplier of news for billions of people. The snakes in this veritable garden of free information and interconnectivity are the bad actors who seed lies for a harvest of rotten consequences, mostly political. As Woolley describes the devolution:

Social media, and the internet more generally, were originally envisioned as utopian tools for spreading free speech and strengthening civic participation, but they were quickly co-opted by states and other powerful political entities seeking control of them … the web has become as much a tool used to control people as a means to connect and empower them.

The fact that these tools are so easily used to mislead vast numbers of people, particularly politically, is Woolley’s main concern throughout the book. In his estimation, the future of online disinformation is a distinctly undemocratic one. Even while more and more people become wise to fake news on social media, advances in emergent technologies will soon open up “an online world where the distinction between human and machine is increasingly blurry,” contends Woolley. These newer and evolving technologies include artificial intelligence (AI), used for “deep fake” videos and images, human-like automated voice systems, machine learning, deep learning, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and extended reality (XR). Woolley’s focus is on how these technologies currently warp reality, endanger democratic practices, and violate basic human rights.

“We should bake the values of democracy and human rights into our technology,” he argues throughout the book. He suggests that technology companies seek to build in these values during the development phase of new products, rather than fall back into damage control mode after they’re used to twist truth and distort reality. Woolley is keen to remind the reader that technology “tools are not sentient—they do not act on their own,” so we need to look at who is behind this Twitter bot or that VR experience. Technology is a tool that humans can wield for either positive or nefarious purposes. It’s up to us, says Woolley, to speak up against online disinformation and ensure it doesn’t silence voices or impinge on a people’s basic human rights. It will take work—as individuals and as a global collective—but it’s work that is already underway.

The great contribution of The Reality Game to the thorny problem of digital deception is its optimistic outlook. While the hypothetical scenarios he uses to illuminate potential danger in the future are indeed troubling, the book distinguishes itself from others in that it proactively seeks solutions to them. Woolley outlines concrete steps for legislation and policy changes that can help educate the public and stem the flood of computational propaganda. The Reality Game is a valuable and timely wake-up call to everyone who cares about truth. It’s also a clarion call to fight the good fight of reclaiming democracy in the online sphere.

—Peggy Kurkowski holds a BA in History from American Public University and is a copywriter living in Denver, Colorado