I learned today a dirty little secret about the Internet and what we see when we're out there surfing, particularly when you use something like Google or Yahoo! to do searches.
It seems that our Internet experience will be different than someone elses depending on WHO you are. What this means is that if two people performed a Google search entering the same exact search string, they will most likely get very different sets of results. In other words, the Internet if being 'filtered' and we have no control over what is being filtered out or allowed in, or even being aware that filtering is taking place. It's all being done autonomously, in the background without our knowledge or control.
For more about this, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s
As one person I shared this with said today in response:
"It has to mean that each side of an argument will find itself Googling and moving further apart and further away from any resolution because each side is actually fed the information that supports their case and denied the information that refutes it."
Think about the consequences of this in terms of the political discourse in this country. It's bad enough when we had zealots editing Wiki entries to reflect someone's political agenda, now there's some 'big brother' algorithm out there deciding which chunks of data will be shown to me and which chunks will be suppressed and since it tends to take you in the direction it thinks you're already gravitating toward, your inquiries are becoming nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecies.
Anyway, what do you all think?
OCU
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