Call it Info-Determinism. . . the disassembly of ideas.

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Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism? Increasingly, our networks seem to be steering our history in ways we don’t like and can’t control. Illustration by Josie Norton “Call it info-determinism: the belief that the ways that information flows through the world are actually a kind of web in which we’re ensnared,” Joshua Rothman writes.  The Internet can make it feel as though information is endless, and access can make everyone feel like an expert—or, at least, an expert subreddit debater. The sense that there is always more to know undermines the authority of an article or an institution, as does the thriving trade, among those debaters, in the disassembly of ideas.  Rothman’s column, Open Questions, unpacks open-ended queries each week.  Today, he considers: What is information? Does it matter if it’s true? Are we trapped? Read the story Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today »

From the News Desk

The Lede Elon Musk’s Surging Political Activism The X C.E.O. has been using his platform to sound off on topics including Venezuela’s election, Trump’s campaign, and racial violence in the U.K. By Jon Lee Anderson

In the Dark: In the fourth episode of the series examining the killings of twenty-four civilians in Iraq, two conflicting stories about what happened that day emerge—one from the Marines involved in the killings, and another from a very different perspective. Listen and follow »

Culture Dept.

Cultural Comment In “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” Feeding Your Family Comes First Fifty years on, the film reads like sociology: assembly lines make the working class deranged, technology makes them irrelevant, and unemployment makes them hungry. By Jackson Arn

Persons of Interest Matt Rife’s Sleepless Summer The twenty-eight-year-old relishes his status as a “cancelled” comic. He also happens to be one of the most popular acts in the country. By Carrie Battan

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From the Archival Comedy Issue

Personal History Dead Man Laughing From 2008: Jokes run through a family. By Zadie Smith  The Current Cinema “Funny Girl” Is a Terrible Movie with a Performance of Greatness From 1968: The Broadway musical is a corrupted form, but Barbra Streisand conceals nothing. By Pauline Kael

Fifty Days of Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction “Listening for the Click” Martin eats the baby food in bed and watches porn while wrapped in a blanket with a Betty Boop print. By Johanna Ekström

Read more of our series of very short stories for the summer.