Truth Trials
Exploring the implications of a post-truth world through an experiential engagement
2022
Speculative Design
Introduction
What does the future of truth look like, in a post-truth world? How will we manage understanding what is true for us in a sea of misinformation and untrustworthiness? What does truth look like for others, not only humans?
These questions form the basis of an experiential future engagement, where we propose that the truth of any topic can be decided with a democratic vote from citizens that are informed by multiple sources of evidence. However, this opens up the opportunity for manipulation and unintended consequences from truths working against, or amplifying each other.
The goal of this engagement was to show how simple decisions on what is true or what is false can stack on top of each other and lead to large scale unforeseen consequences. We also wanted to show how the amount of information that people are presented with can overload the senses, and can be easily manipulated to drive a narrative.
This project was done as part of Prof. Laura Forlano’s Designing Futures class at the Institute of Design in Fall 2022, along with Jorge Martinez Arana, Pranjal Shah, and Ran Konana.
Experiential Engagement
The speculative, post-truth future was presented as a 20-minute long Experiential Engagment.
Participants were first asked to don a white coverall. They were then given badges with their “Trust Score”, that reflect their engagement with unreliable information sources. They were then led to a room that was prepared with physical artifacts. The participants were divided into groups based on their trust scores, with some groups given seats and tables, while others had to stand.
The participants were shown videos explaining how the Truth Trials work. They were then introduced to the topic: “Do blood type defines personalities?”.
We present our participants with different sources of evidence and varying degrees of trustworthiness, before letting them discuss on what their final vote will be. Afterwards, the results of the vote were fed into a system that re-analyzes the truths, and presents them for the public to adopt.
We expected that the majority of the audience would be against the topic. Our intention was to blur the boundary between truth and fantasy, so we asked one of the members in each group in advance to act as a “conspiracy theorist” to drive the discussion.
During the discussion, we told the audience to disregard the human testimony from the historian because she supported the information which has just proven to be false in the different trial. At the same time, we announced that one of the conspiracy theorists no longer had a right to vote, because we found that her social media post contained misinformation, in order to demonstrate that truth (and trust scores) can change over time.
The participants were then asked to vote on their topic using a futuristic voting machine. The results of the vote had been planned in advance, with the results of this vote stacking up along side the results of other votes (i.e. Should Personality Determine Jobs).
Videos Artifacts
We used the software Synthesia to create videos from the Ministry of Truth.
Introduction Video
We showed an introductory video from Rosie Tanaka, director of the Ministry of Truth, to explain why we are voting for the truth, how it affects our daily lives, and what the Trust Score means.Evidence from Humans
We showed a series of testimonies from humans including a scientist, a psychologist, a doctor and an historian.Evidence from Non-Humans
Finally, we displayed evidence from non-human including animals such as gorillas and a dog, and technologies such as blood bags and wearable devices.
Physical Artifacts
We created a range of artifacts for world-building :
Posters: To prime audiences before the scenario, and set up the world. These were placed around campus before the actual engagement
Aprons, Name tags, Posters and Stickers: To immerse people in the future state.
Voting machine: To allow people actually participate in the scenario. This box “reads” a person’s intentions when they place their hand inside the box, changing color to indicate a vote has been cast. This artifact placed the experience in a near-future scenario, while allowing us to control (and manipulate) the actual vote.
We also created a range of “post-trial” artifacts to show the impact(s) of the results of the vote.
Newspapers : To briefly show the consequence of the trial, we created the hypothetical newspaper. It included an announcement of the results of the trail, and the impacts on society.
Resume Templates: To show how the nature of work would change as a result of multiple “Truth Trials” changing the definitions of jobs.
Reflection
The combination of a wide range of physical stimuli (artifacts, clothing, video evidence, prompts, quick changes), combined with a rapid discussion and voting created a space that blurred the line between truth and fantasy. Participants were intentionally made to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed with the amount of information they were being presented with.
The evidence presented was fairly realistic, and analogues could easily be found on social media sites today. Combined with some participants pushing a certain narrative, the larger group was easily swayed to make a decision they would not have initially agreed with.