the filter bubble
Here's an important article by Lynn Parramore, a media writer, interviewing Eli Pariser, author of a new book that explores what he calls the filter bubble.
I've always been turned on by the internet's possibility of providing tons and tons of information, the panoply of knowledge, viewpoints from everywhere, research, learning, literature, opinion that would have been previously closed off, now freely available. "Information wants to be free," they say, and that's in both senses of the word: free of charge, and free of shackles.
It turns out that things are more complicated than that, because the very wealth of information and opinion means that one must choose, and it turns out that one generally chooses what one already pretty much agrees with. You select news and research and opinion and learning and literature that reflects your existing biases. Of course, we know that we have a tendency to reject stuff that goes counter to our biases, even when presented with it, even when it's undeniably fact. It just vaporizes, and whatever confirms our biases sticks.
But now it's possible to live in a false Eden where you don't even have to encounter much of the other stuff, the stuff that challenges your biases. The person in the house on one side of you thinks that the richest one percent of people shouldn't be taxed higher, because after all the money is theirs and to tax them too high is redistributionist and veers toward socialism; the person in the house on the other side thinks that the richest one percent of people should be taxed higher, because it is a way of giving back to the society that prospered them, often by laws and policies that subtly subsidize the rich, and to tax them too low veers toward darwinist frontierism. They each may have a point, but may never really know that the other does: in today's environment, those people can choose to make it so that neither ever has to encounter a persuasive and intelligent version of the other's view, never has to encounter anything other than a cartoon.
What kind of society does that lead to? What kind of discourse on art and politics and humanity? Look around.
Meanwhile, Pariser says it's even worse than that: his compelling message is that, now, the information is selecting itself. Or, to be fair, our conduits for the information select it invisibly for us.
So now, your neighbors on each side of you may not even need to cherry-pick their news. Pariser compellingly casts it in terms of diet: American bodies are being swelled into ill health by salty sugary calories that they were meant to conserve in normal human times of scarcity. But there's such thing as a mental diet. You enjoy the feeling that "you have all the right ideas and all the right opinions — our brains are calibrated to love that stuff because in nature, in normal life, it's very rare." It turns out that our minds are being swelled into ill health too.
Superb interview.
I've always been turned on by the internet's possibility of providing tons and tons of information, the panoply of knowledge, viewpoints from everywhere, research, learning, literature, opinion that would have been previously closed off, now freely available. "Information wants to be free," they say, and that's in both senses of the word: free of charge, and free of shackles.
It turns out that things are more complicated than that, because the very wealth of information and opinion means that one must choose, and it turns out that one generally chooses what one already pretty much agrees with. You select news and research and opinion and learning and literature that reflects your existing biases. Of course, we know that we have a tendency to reject stuff that goes counter to our biases, even when presented with it, even when it's undeniably fact. It just vaporizes, and whatever confirms our biases sticks.
But now it's possible to live in a false Eden where you don't even have to encounter much of the other stuff, the stuff that challenges your biases. The person in the house on one side of you thinks that the richest one percent of people shouldn't be taxed higher, because after all the money is theirs and to tax them too high is redistributionist and veers toward socialism; the person in the house on the other side thinks that the richest one percent of people should be taxed higher, because it is a way of giving back to the society that prospered them, often by laws and policies that subtly subsidize the rich, and to tax them too low veers toward darwinist frontierism. They each may have a point, but may never really know that the other does: in today's environment, those people can choose to make it so that neither ever has to encounter a persuasive and intelligent version of the other's view, never has to encounter anything other than a cartoon.
What kind of society does that lead to? What kind of discourse on art and politics and humanity? Look around.
Meanwhile, Pariser says it's even worse than that: his compelling message is that, now, the information is selecting itself. Or, to be fair, our conduits for the information select it invisibly for us.
For example, on Google, most people assume that if you search for BP, you'll get one set of results that are the consensus set of results in Google. Actually, that isn't true anymore. Since Dec. 4, 2009, Google has been personalized for everyone. So when I had two friends this spring Google "BP," one of them got a set of links that was about investment opportunities in BP. The other one got information about the oil spill. Presumably that was based on the kinds of searches that they had done in the past. If you have Google doing that, and you have Yahoo doing that, and you have Facebook doing that, and you have all of the top sites on the Web customizing themselves to you, then your information environment starts to look very different from anyone else's. ...
We thought that the Internet was going to connect us all together. As a young geek in rural Maine, I got excited about the Internet because it seemed that I could be connected to the world. What it's looking like increasingly is that the Web is connecting us back to ourselves. There's a looping going on where if you have an interest, you're going to learn a lot about that interest. But you're not going to learn about the very next thing over. [emphasis mine]
So now, your neighbors on each side of you may not even need to cherry-pick their news. Pariser compellingly casts it in terms of diet: American bodies are being swelled into ill health by salty sugary calories that they were meant to conserve in normal human times of scarcity. But there's such thing as a mental diet. You enjoy the feeling that "you have all the right ideas and all the right opinions — our brains are calibrated to love that stuff because in nature, in normal life, it's very rare." It turns out that our minds are being swelled into ill health too.
Superb interview.
Comments
Implying just what about the thoughts of the person living in your humble, middle dwelling abode?
Hee hee. Sorry Goldilocks, you set yourself up for that. ;)
Jason
But I will tell you it's juuuuuuust right.