Part 3: Awareness, Knowledge and the Future11

Chapter 11: Contention in Awareness: From Domination to Meaning

The longest chapter in the book, because its arena is the most dangerous of all: the mind. It begins with Galileo before the Inquisition, and with Darwin and then the genetic code, until the human being became both the subject and the object of science; it then moves to the battle over information: WikiLeaks, the image of Muhammad al-Durrah on Al Jazeera, the Pentagon Papers, the masks of Anonymous. It goes on to trace how the great paradigms shift, the mind’s journey from certainty to doubt to the chaos of information and artificial intelligence, the contention between truth and “parallel truth”, the difference between reading history through divine laws and reading it through conspiracy, and language as a battle no one sees. Its conclusion: no liberation without awareness, and no renaissance without a battle over meaning.

The book is being prepared for publication, in Arabic. These pages offer glimpses of it, not its text.

Cases in this chapter

• 30

  Galileo

  When the telescope becomes a weapon

  1633Chapter 11Knowledge and media
• 31

  Darwin and the genes

  When the human being becomes the subject and object of science

  1859–2018Chapter 11Knowledge and media
• 32

  WikiLeaks

  When information becomes a weapon

  2010Chapter 11Knowledge and media
• 33

  Al Jazeera and the Second Intifada

  When the microphone becomes a weapon of contention

  2000Chapter 11Knowledge and media
• 34

  The Pentagon Papers

  When the government takes the truth to court

  1971Chapter 11Knowledge and media
• 35

  Anonymous

  When the mask becomes a weapon

  2010Chapter 11Knowledge and media

The Cases