The fact checking generation

RotativeI'm not very good at predicting the future (because I'm just one individual out of several billion) but I'll give it a shot today, and try to make it some sort of message of hope.

The greatest revolutions in the history of Mankind, the ones that moved humanity forward in a measurable and long-term fashion, such as the invention of the movable type, owe their success to the way they made knowledge more easily available to more people.

We are in the middle of such a revolution.

The generation of my children is the first one in the history of Mankind for which information will be ambient, and where the entirety of human knowledge will be available all the time to everyone and everywhere.

This fact gives them an amazing power: whenever an extraordinary claim will be made, someone will go "ORLY? Let me check that (LOL)… Oh look, that's actually BS." Or, even better: "that's an interesting idea. Did really nobody come up with that before? Let me check it out… Wow, you really are up to something here. Let's see how far we can push it."

Seriously, gullibility should have no excuse with this generation and I'm convinced that should make it the most successful in the history of Mankind.

Here's to hope on this Christmas 2010.