http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_thompson

Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge

Robert Proctor <http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/proctor.html> doesn't
think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when
it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to
information is reversed: Ignorance increases.

He has developed a word inspired by this trend: *agnotology*. Derived from
the Greek root *agnosis*, it is "the study of culturally constructed
ignorance."

As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because
special interests work hard to create confusion.

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