“Fake” Knowledge: Knowing and the Illusion of Knowing

This roundtable examines the nature of knowledge as a distributed and socially mediated phenomenon, from historical practices of shared memory to the contemporary influence of digital information systems. It explores how access to vast, externalized sources of knowledge—such as the internet—affects individual cognition, our sense of self, and our ability to distinguish between fact, speculation, and belief. The discussion also considers the relationship between collective intelligence and individual reasoning, and reflects on whether increased information necessarily leads to greater wisdom, as well as the broader implications of emerging human–machine knowledge systems.