Topic | reboot9
Does custom content drive us apart?
Can we occasionally bring people back from the comfort of their personal islands on the web?
In the early days of the web, people who would never have spoken to each other in real life were thrown together because of an initial common interest in technology, and a lack of other options. That interest alone did not guarantee similar opinions or points of view on other topics. As custom "spaces" on the web increase, and we move towards increasingly fine distinctions between subgroups, will we become blind to the existence, and even humanity, of people unlike ourselves?
Since time is a limited resource, but content on the web is limitless, it's natural that we pick and choose what we are exposed to. Most of us would rather be exposed to pleasant things that reinforce our image of the world than seek out rejections of our worldview. However, as we do this, we risk never hearing the rationally argued other side to what we take for granted. What happens to our ability to think when the web fashions itself into a mirror and provides nothing but yes-men (or ridiculous boogey-men) for our views? Is it an inevitable result of comfort-seeking human nature, or are there ways to redirect this tendency?
Real world example: Whereas in theory there is no technical reason now preventing the citizens of one country from talking to those of another at times of political tension, this seems to happen pretty rarely. Sometimes blogs break through (like Baghdad Burning: riverbendblog.blogspot.com/) , but blogs are by nature still centered around the opinions of one person. Wikinews is an interesting experiment in mixing local biased detail with global impartial vagueness--is there anything else?
