A video of renowned broadcaster James Burke has gone viral after he summarised how politics would change in the digital age with chilling accuracy.
The recording, shot in 1985, has been circulated by author Carl Miller on Twitter and has so far garnered tens of thousands of interactions.
Burke, who is known for his work on the BBC1 science series Tomorrow’s World, Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, appeared to predict the culture of confirmation bias that exists today, saying:
“We could operate on the basis that values and standards and ethics and facts and truths all depend on what your view of the world is.
“And that there may be as many views of that as there are people.”
He also predicted that a microchip could keep a tally on those opinions and record them in a way that has never previously been possible.
The theory underpins Facebook’s role in recent elections, which became a global phenomenon on the back of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
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