PREFATORY NOTE(rev. 240522-1600) IN GENERAL  For a proper reading and appreciation of this text and its numerous links, please refer initially to my General disclaimer. This prefatory note consists of some updating and overlapping texts that were written on different occasions, starting from the publishing of the dissertation in year 1972, and that I have not yet had the occasion of melt them down in a single text, which would amount to an updating and extension of my original dissertation. The doctoral dissertation on Quality-control of information develops the scientific meaning and foreshadows the necessity of what later came to be named the Wiki-concept, especially as related to “Trust and security”. Quality-control in terms of the wiki-concept can be seen as a theory of security of computer systems as indicated in the conclusions expressed at the end of other texts about human-computer interaction - HCI, on Information and debate and about Computerization of the whole society that today unfolds into the hype of Artificial General Inteligence and ChatGPT, while struggling about fake news and conspiracy theories. The implications for Artificial General Intelligence in my dissertation written mainly in 1971 are outlined in its Appendix 11, pages A11.6-A11.9 on “Human thinking and manipulation of symbols”, extended to pages A11.10-A11.13 on “Information quality and Law”, all the while, as remarked on page A12:2, I had not yet available West Churchman’s, at the time newly published synthesizing book The Design of Inquiring Systems. A general problematization of so called fake news and conspiracy theories beyond “alternative facts” (in Swedish “faktaresistens”) or in deeper meaning paradigm shift and worldview, is found in my paper on Information and theology, especially in the chapter on “The Galileo affair”. Such problematization is applied later in my papers on The Russia-NATO-Ukraine information crisis, Information: Massmedia and Israel-Hamas war, and Wikipedia democracy and Wikicracy. The theological dimension of the problem is emphasized by the phenomenon of governmental censorship in democratic western countries of the world, where early censorship based on criminalization of atheism, such as in the historical case of the Atheism dispute of philosopher Gottlob Fichte, has been substituted by criminalization of antisemitism, depending upon its various controversial definitions by controversial mass media, including the “Legality of Holocaust denial”. The narrow academic approach to the discussion of “alternative facts” is, else, basically done in terms of simplified Kantian philosophy, as implicitly done in Sweden. The discussion starts rhetorically with the presentation of an oversimplified conflict between “reason” and overpowering “feelings” that undermine the logic of facts. Philosophically, however, “Reason” was split into (the critiques of) theoretical and practical reason, and both are synthesized in the (critique) of judgment into an aesthetics which is soon reduced to art and further down to “design”, as outlined in the historical criticism of Kant’s approach that I revive in my paper on Computerization as abuse of formal science. The concept of design, that only exceptionally is sometimes problematized in academic research, risks to become a catchword that today lends prestige to all engineering effort, not the least to computer-related efforts.  Design is an approach based on a volume and kind of literature that is routine for philosophers. It is, however “mind-blowing”, overwhelming the minds of most common educated modern citizens (see for instance the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s “Kant’s account of reason”). It divorces the question from common sense and from advanced psychology that historically was derived from philosophy, and from theology and religion, which are replaced by a nominal “democracy” that cannot work without the participation of common educated citizens. The whole approach is criticized in my above-mentioned essay on the phenomenon of computerization of the whole society. In this previously mentioned paper on the Ukraine information crisis, I report the ultimate observation and insight that fundamentally all information is fake (the more so in war, when "the first victim is truth") if it is not accompanied by what my dissertation focused on: an estimate of an error term. And that ultimately the determination of the error term depends upon the people’s ethics and aspects covered in Steven Shapin’sSocial History of Truth, as well as the possibility of citizens' freedom of speech. It is usually guaranteed in democracy, but it is highly problematic as historically analyzed in the classic Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, and forcefully exposed by e.g. Tage Lindbom in his book The Myth of Democracy. Today these aspects tend to be trivialized by their unconscious reduction to (Wikipedia’s) alternative facts(and its section on “see also”), fake news, misinformation and disinformation, seasoned with references to groupthink (and its “see also”). Societal focus on trendy “disinformation” has motivated my writing a special paper on the issue with the title Disinformation as a myth. Further trivialization takes place when information is qualified by ad-hoc terms such as those catalogized in my above-mentioned text on quality-control of information. Examples I give in my dissertation are validity, reliability, dependability, correctness, timeliness, exactness, usefulness, consistency, authenticity, completeness, degree of detail, recency, controllability, goodness, trueness, relevance, pertinence, acceptability, refinement, approximation, currency, rightness, coverage, etc. A final and definitive example of trivialization appears in a cynical interpretation of simplified post-modern thought that, I have seen, appeals to careerist post-doctoral students who promote their dissertation by means of “socialization” in an academic subculture of “sense-making”, by adducing the additional qualifier of information “plausibility” where People favour plausibility over accuracy in accounts of events and contexts […]: "in an equivocal, postmodern world, infused with the politics of interpretation and conflicting interests and inhabited by people with multiple shifting identities, an obsession with accuracy seems fruitless, and not of much practical help, either." Wikipedia’s page on the Big Lie, can be finally seen as an oblivion of the basic problem of the myth of democracy since it forgets the basic problem and presupposition of democracy, namely the question of who wants what and why, and that a majority, even if feeling of having a good conscience, does not necessarily want the good and right. A whole book that logically illustrates the limitations of democracy but without theological grounds ends in a sort of cynicism is the not yet translated Brazilian essay by J. Cavalcanti Netto, Democracia, um Mito [Democracy, a Myth]. Anybody who perceives having a good conscience can feel authorized to conceive a big lie, with all the complexity which is hidden in the theological discussions under the classical label of Credo quia absurdum [I believe because it is absurd].  The intellectual insight obtained from the mentioned sources regarding the myth of democracy was finally supported by other insights obtained during my above-mentioned work in understanding the information system of the Russia-NATO-Ukraine crisis. A complementary demonstration came from the debacle of democratic free expression, or official mistrust of freedom in communication and power of argumentation, as displayed in governmental western censorship of news from the Russian network Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik News. In Sweden this was directed by decision of The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority(corresponding to USA’s FCC), following EU imposed sanctions announced 2 March 2022, while all those western countries are not in war. This is one main reason why the quality of information ultimately converges on theological questions that motivated my blog on Conspiracy theories, my early essay on Belief and Reason, later on Information and Theology already mentioned above, and finally a comment on Conscience and Truth.  WITH REPEATED AND ADDITIONAL DETAILS The dissertation, written long ago in 1971-1972 in a naturally narrow disciplinary context of a university, and prior to all above-mentioned refinements, forestalls the possibilities of computer technology more than twenty years before the advent of its initial partial implementation in the WikiWikiWeb (see below). An ultimate most known example is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the most popular wiki-based website, and one of the most widely viewed sites in the world. It also foreshadows by 40 years the scientific meaning and one main answer to the problem of “fake news” as triggered by social media.  The consequent problems of all this were addressed later in articles about Wikipedia democracy and wikicracy: editing Wikipedia, and conceptually in Information and debate, while the search for ultimate theological implications is outlined in essays on Information and Theology, and Reason and Gender. The main ideas of the dissertation itself and their juridical implications are summarized in the book (in Swedish) Systems development and rule of law. Further technical details are found in the account of the computer programmer who developed the first wiki by starting to code the WikiWikiWeb in 1994: Ward Cunningham with his book The wiki way (2001), co-authored with Bo Leuf. The latter also expressed the core of the consequent idea of participatory design and computer-supported cooperative work in his book Peer to peer: Collaborating and sharing over the Internet (2002).  An example of more recent research on related detailed secondary issues is Effects of moderation and opinion heterogeneity on attitude towards the online deliberation experience (CHI'19 Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Human Factors in Computing). At a less detailed level, with the diffusion and increased use of the Internet news areas of research have been opportunely created building upon the very same basic idea, displaying new problems and old ones under new names. New split areas that are often divorced from basic considerations of philosophy of science have been catalogued under such names as Computer-supported cooperative work, Participatory design, Collective intelligence, and Cooperative overlap/Turn-taking (see also other related areas in their respective Wikipedia-sections named “See also”). Contrasting artificial and human intelligence, in lack of understanding of what intelligence is to begin with, leads also to studies such as Human trust in artificial intelligence. It requires, in turn, an understanding of The design of inquiring systems (complementary index here) and The meaning of human-computer interaction that today is challenged when seen in the context of Artificial General Intelligence and ChatGPT. For a proper reading and appreciation of this text and its numerous links, please refer initially to my General disclaimer.Please proceed here to the main page.