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Comfortably One


isolation.JPGTime magazine recently published an article (“Bursting the Bubble: Are We Isolated in a World Wide Web of One?”) that discussed how search engines and social networks tailor our searches and pages for us, giving us stuff they think we want. Google and Facebook carefully track how we spend our time online and then, once these entities know what we read, what we watch and what color of socks we like, they’ll fire off more of the same. Consequently, the Internet most of us see isn’t so much a dizzying, wide-open mall of information as it is a corner boutique—one with a ludicrously huge storeroom, but where most of the stuff we see on the shelves looks—well, familiar.

This is a good thing in some ways. When I type “restaurants” in Google, I’m gratified it first pulls up restaurants located in my hometown. I don’t have any immediate need for the best Italian deli in, say, Pensacola, Fla. As Time’s Bryan Walsh says, “We’ve turned to companies like Google and Facebook largely because of their ability to cut through the endless dross of the Web and deliver the one right hit.”

But it’s disturbing, too—in more than one way. Writes Walsh:

Sure, there are some icky privacy issues at play here—after all, to personalize their services, the Internet players need to mine our personal data, and you don't have to be a raging paranoiac to be a little worried about that. But digital privacy isn't exactly what concerns [Eli] Pariser [author of The Filter Bubble]. What's truly pernicious about the filter bubble is that we don't know what it doesn't show. "Privacy is about what you're willing to reveal about yourself," Pariser told me recently. "But here the question is, What is revealed to you about the world, based on who you are?" Google and Facebook may be tailoring their results to my personality, but I don't know what that's based on—because I don't know what they know about me—so I don't know what I'm missing. 

Walsh—who says he’s pretty “progressive” in his political leanings—tested his own browser to see if Pariser had a point. When he typed in the name of a prominent Democratic politician, the results were largely positive and informational sites. When he typed in the name of a prominent Republican, a screen full of negative sites popped up. “Was Google taking [my browsing history and left-leaning Facebook friends] into account when it crunched my searches?” he writes. “Quite possibly, yes.”

In this wide-open media age we live in, it’s human nature to gravitate toward outlets that confirm our point of view. I know people who won’t watch anything but Fox News, won’t listen to anything but National Public Radio. They receive their information about the world from folks they know and trust—i.e. folks who seem to largely agree with them. Now the Internet—at least the one we see during a garden variety search—may be following suit, giving us the information it knows we want, the links it knows we’ll click.

It’s good business, of course. But is it good for us? Is it wise for us to be always confirmed into what we think and believe?

When I was in high school, my dad and I would talk for hours after dinner about politics: At the time, I disagreed with him on pert near everything, so we had a lot to talk about. Sometimes, my dad convinced me that he was right. Sometimes he didn’t. But those conversations still forged in me a better understanding of why he thought as he did … and why I thought as I did. To have your ideas challenged is a great way to clear away the ones that don’t make sense and strengthen the ones that do.

I think having our thoughts and opinions challenged every once in a while is a good thing. It keeps our minds quicker and, maybe, our hearts a little bigger. And truth is, if our information is continually whittled down—either by our own design or someone else’s—to what conforms to our worldview or personal predilictions, and if we exclude the thoughts and opinions of those who disagree with us, we might wind up simply talking to ourselves.