Washoe County Library System

"From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone...

"The nineteenth century saw European empires build vast transport networks to maximize their profits from trade, and it saw Christian missionaries spread printing across Asia to bring Bibles to the colonized. The unintended consequence was an Asian communications revolution: the maritime public sphere expanded from Istanbul to Yokohama. From all corners of the continent, curious individuals confronted the challenges of studying each other's cultures...

A leading social researcher explains why humans so consistently misunderstand the outside world. How often are women harassed? What percentage of the population are immigrants? How bad is unemployment? These questions are important, but most of us get the answers wrong. Research shows that people often wildly misunderstand the state of the world, regardless of age, sex, or education. And though the internet brings us unprecedented access to information,...

"Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Cancel culture. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy...