While reading 'Panopticon', I came upon the term 'datagogues'. This predicts a reactionary media tactic developed by authoritarians and other deceivers in response to the effective sousveillance of a public defending itself against repression: throwing massive, sheer walls of data into the public media in order to overwhelm and deter dissenters and critics. From page 17 of 'Panopticon': The response many organizations adopted then ... is to provide overwhelming amounts of data to the public. This provided a two-fold defense. First, it allowed immediate deniability to any charge of withholding data. Second, the sheer volume of data available meant that almost any argument could be made or refuted with selective referencing and correlation to other publicly available information. This is a rapid, cheap response that puts the onus back on the accuser to make detailed and documented claims of specific wrongdoing, thus aiding efforts to discredit detractors. Given the hyperabundance of information, few had the time or desire to sort through it all to get a complete understanding of what was going on. The switch to the disclosure model created a new service opportunity for datagogues, interpreters, and self-described experts (read: pundits, emphasis mine)to sort through all of the information and provide ready-made arguments in support of whomever paid them. With selective correlation, virtually any position could be defended. Analysts with decent reputations often garnered more followers and interest than the actual data released. This has in fact already happened, at least in the theater of debate. Not only do pundits somewhat do this, but also fundamentalist theologans, and presidential candidates during debates. The specific tactic to which I refer, and of which the above-referenced term reminded me, is an argumentative fallacy known as the Gish Gallop. It was named for a creationist who employs this technique in debates with scientists, Duane Gish. From Wikipedia.org: "Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, has dubbed approach the "Gish Gallop," describing it as "where the creationist is allowed to run on for 45 minutes or an hour, spewing forth torrents of error that the evolutionist hasn't a prayer of refuting in the format of a debate." An even better definition comes form Newsvine, which is essentially a user-contributed 'news wiki'. http://redsfan.newsvine.com/_news/2012/10/04/14226423-romney-won-using-a... "The Urban Dictionary defines the Gish Gallop thusly: "Named for the debate tactic created by creationist shill Duane Gish, a Gish Gallop involves spewing so much bull@!$%# in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more 'talking points' that has a tiny core of truth to it, making the person rebutting it spend even more time debunking it in order to explain that, yes, it's not totally false but the Galloper is distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. Thus, we are now in an age wherein a Wall of Data is like a gauntlet thrown down as a challenge to the public's intellectual autonomy. Naturally, as the media continues to evolve in the direction predicted in Eclipse Phase, this will become even easier and more commonly practiced. It will be a vast challenge even for someone's Muse to sort it all out so they can debate even via written mails. Thus, there will be a new kind of pundit in the future, although vastly sooner than 2500 A.D.: the datagogue. Hit'em with the Wall of Data, and they'll get so dizzy they won't bother questioning anything. They'll just give up. Once again, technology designed to liberate will be twisted into a tool of repression. This is a crucial challenge to users of technology today, and will continue to be so for the long-term future, assuming a technologically-capable (trans)Humanity survives.