It is no longer Chinatown, Jake, so you needn’t forget it. But still you often do.

There was a time in America of Manchurian Candidates, Warren Commissions and Parallax Views, when the facts were tantalizingly, frustratingly beyond our reach. What schemes were being hatched beneath the surface, what cabal was making secret plans? These people had more information than we did, access we could only dream of. They always seemed one step ahead. Even if we learned what deal was, that knowledge would soon retreat into a welter of confusion. The innocence would end and then begin again. The status quo would be restored.

But technology changed all that. Or was supposed to. Now there’s a diffuse media and data trails. Things have never been clearer.

And, yet. What if everything is transparent, what if it is all laid out for us to see and little changes? It doesn’t matter if we have access to the facts if we refuse the facts, if we choose to live inside a narrative. It doesn’t matter if we have unlimited channels if we only accept the ones that congratulate our prejudices. What if knowing isn’t enough? What if the problem all along hasn’t been a lack of information but a lack of some other kind?•