A cultural barroom brawl........................

Today we drown in data, yet thirst for meaning.  That world-transforming tidal wave of information has disproportionately worsened the noise-to-signal ratio.  According to Taleb, "The more data you get, the less you know what's going on."  And the more you know, the less you trust, as the gap between reality and the authorities' claims of competence becomes impossible to ignore. . . . the public has lost faith in the people on whom it relied to make  sense of the world—journalists, scientists, experts of every stripe.  By the same process, the elites have lost faith in themselves. . . .

Lack of certainty isn't ignorance:  it's a splinter of doubt festering in all we know, a radical disillusionment with the institutions of settled truth.  Once important effect has been a sort of cultural barroom brawl, as every question of significance becomes an irritant and source of strife between interested parties.

-Martin Gurri,  The Revolt of the Public