Multiple Perspectives

The TED Talks by Eli Pariser goes into detail about this idea of filter bubbles and how it is something that is bad for the internet, This filtering is going on on many websites like Facebook or Google among others. What is happening is there is this hidden algorithm that dictates what you see when you search things. Pariser uses the example of Egypt; he had two friends search up Egypt in Google and they both got many different results. One friend saw crises in Egypt and how there are many protests; his other friend only saw the an advertisement for the Egypt Daily News and different vacation options should he decide to visit. Eli argues this is happening on various websites; websites purposely dictate what is available for you to see depending on what you look up without gaining your consent. Pariser says this is a bad thing for democracy because we get trapped in these bubbles and are, unbeknownst to us, unable to be exposed to more information and remain uninformed due to no fault of our own. He says a problem with the filtering is websites only feed you what you click on first and it is not a fair divide. So most people will get a lot of things about media and reality television and stay blind to more important politics and things going on in the world. One of his final points is that the internet bubbles only show you what is relevant and nothing that would be considered "challenging," "other points of view," or something that would make you feel "uncomfortable." We are not able to see multiple views on things and are only limited to what is relevant to what we click on which is a detriment to democracy.

There was another report by Sue Halpern titled "Mind Control & the Internet" that relates to how technology is changing how humans live and to the TED Talk by Eli Pariser. There was a report of a woman who could move a computer mouse simply by looking at it. Another tested interface called BrainGate made it possible for a paralyzed woman to move a cursor just by thinking about it. In many other instances as well, people who could not see well or hear well get their full vision and hearing back thanks to various technological advances. Later in the article, Halpern talks about Chorost who said "our brains are too limited to sufficiently apprehend the world." He later says that the human I.Q. has risen but "the rate of increase is much slower than technology's." He argues that this is becoming a problem because things like Google search curates the internet and deems what is important for a viewer to see based on what the viewer thinks is important. She uses information from Eli Pariser who stated that Google will contour "every search to fit the profile of the person making the query," One of the biggest problems that this report finds is that the consequence of the information be personally tailored is that Google will direct you to "material that is most likely to reinforce your own worldview, ideology, and assumptions." With searches being filtered, users of the internet are remaining uninformed and forced to only see their own ideas over and over again rather than being exposed to more information.

The last article is "Clive Thompson on High-Bandwidth Buddies" by Clive Thompson who takes a very different view from Halpern and Pariser. He acknowledges that people are afraid of being filtered on the internet; the term he uses is homophily that is when those who search on the internet are having their searches filtered and tailored to what they normally search, He also takes note that homophily is said to diminish diversity in our searches and prevents us from seeing fresh and diverse facts, But then he argues that it is not a bad thing out searches get filtered. He gets his information from research done by economists Sinan Aral and Marshall Van Alstyne. According to their report, the information that is filtered out comes from "weak ties" and these ties do not do two things: they do not account for how often we talk to other people nor does it frequently bring us new information. What is really important is bandwidth. When you see the same things over and over it actually gives you more information; they use the example of talking to the same friend a lot. If you interact with your friend ten times more often, they will evidently teach you new information. They relate that to internet searches; the more you search , the more likely you are to find brand new information.