Do We Want Technology to Kill Spin, or Would the World as We Know It Fall Apart?

Kevin Maney wonders: The latest item is the live launch of a site called SpinSpotter, which offers a little software download called Spinoculars. It's supposed to analyze any news article you pull into your browser for "spin" -- i.e. media bias -- and highlight it. This way, you can apparently be aware of how the propogandists at The New York Times or Fox News are messing with your mind.

This comes on the heals of my report a month ago about the software that can analyze the audio from a company's earnings conference call, and tell you if the CFO or CEO is hiding bad news.

Now, this is all interesting, and maybe even helpful, but how far do we want that to go? Technology seems to be on the verge of being able to sort truth from spin. It's an interesting societal question: How much human interaction is actually made better and easier by not-so-truths? ("No, baby, you don't look fat in those jeans." "If elected, I will create more jobs!") If we made every bit of spin transparent, might we, like, kill each other?