“All I Know Is What’s On The Internet” | Vol. 4 / No. 12.5

Photo: NASA Hubble Space Telescope, CC BY 2.0

A few thoughts about writing for this blog after today.

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Today, Donald J. Trump becomes the president of the United States. That’s not fake news, it’s a fact. But as has been pointed out elsewhere, our incoming president seems to have an issue with his sources. As he said in a recent NBC interview, “all I know is what’s on the internet.”

And you know what? In that, he’s not alone.

A whole lot of people get their information mostly from the internet. And a whole lot of people don’t have very strong vetting skills to be able to determine what is and isn’t a trustworthy source.

Here at This Week In Tomorrow, one of the things we’ve been trying to do all this time is tell our readers the truth. Sometimes we screw up, misread the science, misread the situation, and we admit that. But everything we do here, all the topics we cover — science, technology, skepticism, feminism — they all rely on the same process.

Doing things over and over to make them better.

It takes work, but it’s work we love to do. Nobody’s born a perfect feminist (if that’s even a thing). Nobody’s born a perfect skeptic. Nobody’s born with their doctoral degree in physics already prepared in their head, or their plans for the next technological breakthrough in hand. Science, technology, skepticism, feminism — these are ongoing projects. And so is our attempt to bring them to you.

So in light of today’s inauguration, I’d like to invite every person who stumbles by this blog to stay for a while. Because if you’re one of the millions and millions of people who only really know what’s on the internet, well, we’re trying to help with that. Maybe we can filter some posts for you, or maybe even give you some filtering skills of your own. And also, because you know what?

We’re on the internet, too.

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Thanks for reading! Except for the very *very* occasional tip (we take Venmo now!), we only get paid in our own (and your) enthusiasm, so please like This Week In Tomorrow on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @TWITomorrow, and tell your friends about the site!

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Richard Ford Burley is a human, writer, and doctoral candidate at Boston College, as well as Deputy Managing Editor at Ledger, the first academic journal devoted to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, feminism, and futurism here at This Week In Tomorrow.