Filter Bubbles: The End of Democracy?

I read Eli Parisner's book The Filter Bubble this summer and it was absolutely fascinating. His disturbing thesis  really stresses the need to keep ourselves from creating our own "filter bubbles," which are feeds of information that are tailored specifically to your interests through your own choices and algorithms. What you or (more insidiously) someone else chooses to filter out can actually make us more skewed toward our natural inclinations rather than more balanced. Like someone being forced to eat their vegetables, news about genocide or conflicts around the world aren't always desirable to learn about. However, it's necessary for forming an opinion that makes better citizens. But as personalization becomes more and more a part of our Internet experience, personified with the Facebook "Like" icon, we are choosing what to read but also what NOT to read.  A nice summary below:

We are beginning to live in what Pariser calls “filter bubbles,” personalized micro-universes of information that overemphasize what we want to hear and filter out what we don’t. Not only are we unaware of the information that is filtered out, but we are unaware that we are unaware. Our personal economies of information seem complete despite their deficiencies. Personal decisions contribute to this pattern, and ever more sophisticated technologies add to it. Google’s understanding of our tastes and interests is still a crude one, but it shapes the information that we find via Google searches. And because the information we are exposed to perpetually reshapes our interests, we can become trapped in feedback loops: Google’s perception of what we want to read shapes the information we receive, which in turn affects our interests and browsing behavior, providing Google with new information. The result, Pariser suggests, may be “a static ever-narrowing version of yourself.”

This self-reinforcement may have unhappy consequences for politics. Pariser, who is inspired by the philosophy of John Dewey, argues that ideological opponents need to agree on facts and understand each other’s point of view if democracy is to work well. Exposure to the other side allows for the creation of a healthy “public” that can organize around important public issues. Traditional media, in which editors choose stories they believe to be of public interest, have done this job better than do trivia-obsessed new media. Furthermore, intellectual cocooning may stifle creativity, which is spurred by the collision of different ways of thinking about the world. If we are not regularly confronted with surprising facts and points of view, we are less likely to come up with innovative solutions.

We processing information in new and different ways. The advantages are obvious; information is more accessible than ever. But what about the costs? How much has the recent polarization been the result of individuals who navigate a narrow set of news networks, websites, and blogs that reinforce their worldview instead of challenging and testing it? How guilty are all of us of this? And how can we do things differently to make 21st century safe for democracy? Important questions to consider.