“I Am Because We Are”
The first advice I received was to create a virtual machine using a computing framework called Ubuntu. The meaning behind the name jumped out as fitting for the project. The name is drawn from concepts of identity and community in parts of Southern Africa.
The idea of Ubuntu captures a simple truth: “I am because we are.” In every era, the “we” is stitched together by the stories we tell about ourselves and our environment. How that news travels, who selects it, and the speed at which it reaches us have always shaped both our self-image and our sense of belonging.
The Velocity of Information
For most of history information moved at the pace of the fastest messenger. Local identities thrived; the “we” rarely stretched beyond a day’s walk. Town criers, troubadours, and church sermons created a common narrative only within earshot.
Gutenberg’s press (1450s) changed the scale and permanence of those narratives. Pamphlets, broadsheets, and eventually newspapers let strangers imagine themselves as part of the same cause or country; Benedict Anderson later called these shared readers “imagined communities.” Coffee-houses in London or Boston became hubs where news pages forged political consciousness that could topple kings and launch revolutions.
Wires, waves, and the age of simultaneity
The telegraph (1840s) introduced real-time reporting. For the first time, events in Crimea or California could be headline fodder the very next day, compressing geographic distance into a single conversational present. Radio (1920s) and television (1950s) added voice and image, creating truly national audiences who laughed at the same jokes and grieved the same tragedies in near unison. The shared living-room screen nurtured a broad, sometimes bland, consensus about who “we” were.
Yet gatekeeping was tight: a handful of editors and broadcasters decided which stories entered the national bloodstream. When Walter Cronkite famously ended a Vietnam War report by doubting victory, public opinion pivoted. The bottleneck gave individual journalists enormous agenda-setting power. Power that could unify but also exclude.
Digital floodgates and algorithmic mirrors
The web dismantled those bottlenecks. Blogs, then social platforms, turned every smartphone into both printing press and broadcast tower. The news cycle accelerated from days to minutes; the gate multiplied into millions of micro-gates. As algorithms learned to privilege engagement, they began feeding each of us stories that confirm our interests, our identities, or our fears.
The result is a splintering of the “we.” Instead of one large imagined community there are countless overlapping micro-publics, each with its own facts and emotional cadence. Add synthetic media, AI-written articles, deep-faked video and the challenge is no longer mere speed, but verifying whether the story is even real.
Learning to see the currents
To live Ubuntu in this environment, we need information literacy alongside compassion:
| Old Question | Necessary New Skill |
|---|---|
| Is this headline interesting? | Trace the provenance: who published it, and why? |
| Did this event happen? | Cross-reference sources, check timestamps, watch for AI artifacts. |
| Do I agree? | Map the network effects: how is this story amplified, and who might be invisible within it? |
We we think in terms of information flow; we consider sources, velocity, amplification, feedback. We need to step outside the feed and notice how identity is being nudged. It reminds us that slowing down can be a civic act: seeking out slower investigative outlets, subscribing to diverse perspectives, and sharing responsibly recalibrates an ecosystem that otherwise rewards outrage.
Re-imagining “we”
The Ubuntu worldview insists that my flourishing is tied to yours. Healthy news systems make that interdependence visible: local reporters who surface community voices; international desks that humanize distant crises; technologists who design algorithms for pluralism rather than polarization.
Understanding how news moves, from its historical arcs and present-day mechanics, helps us choose better inputs and demand better institutions. In doing so we keep expanding the circle of “we,” honoring Ubuntu’s insight that who I become is inseparable from the stories we choose to carry together.
Last year, I spoke at an event on the importance of rebuilding the marketplace of ideas for the AI age. Hopefully this project is a small first step.