A sudden and historic shift

For 200,000 years, humans used their eyes to judge what was in front them. (Friend or foe? Safe or dangerous?)

“Seeing” was “believing,” and humans often regarded “sight” as the most trustworthy of the senses.

But suddenly the opposite is true. 

One of the hallmarks of digital technology is its ability to make things appear to be something they are not—

— whether it’s something as harmless as automobile dashboard gauges that look like they have moving needles but are really just pictures,

— or whether it is something as harmful as what looks like an urgent alert from your local bank but is actually a scam from a hacker on the other side of the world.

Old habits die hard, but the only safe course from now on is to go against 200,000-year-old habits and choose to NOT believe much of what we see.