Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble

 TimeFavorites

It's the outliers who make things interesting and give us inspiration. And it's the outliers who are the first signs of change.

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How we behave is a balancing act between our future and present selves. In the future, we want to be fit, but in the present, we want the candy bar. In the future, we want to be a well-rounded, wellinformed intellectual virtuoso, but right now we want to watch Jersey Shore. Behavioral economists call this present bias - the gap between your preferences for your future self and your preferences in the current moment.

Because personalized filters usually have no Zoom Out function, it's easy to lose your bearings, to believe the world is a narrow island when in fact it's an immense, varied continent.

Google is great at helping us find what we know we want, but not at finding what we don't know we want.

The personalized environment is very good at answering the questions we have but not at suggesting questions or problems that are out of our sight altogether. It brings to mind the famous Pablo Picasso quotation: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

Curiosity is aroused when we`re presented with an "information gap." It`s a sensation of deprivation: A present`s wrapping deprives us of the knowledge of what`s in it, and as a result we become curious about its contents. But to feel curiosity, we have to be conscious that something`s being hidden.

George Low(quoted)

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Consuming information that conforms to our ideas of the world is easy and pleasurable; consuming information that challenges us to think in new ways or question our assumptions is frustrating and difficult.

Freedom of the press was for those who owned one. Now we all do.

A. J. Liebling(quoted)

The Internet still has the potential to be a better medium for democracy than broadcast, with its one-direction-only information flows, ever could be.

The only thing that's better than providing articles that are relevant to you is providing articles that are relevant to everyone.

A Web browser is an example of pull technology: You put in an address, and your computer pulls information from that server. Television and the mail, on the other hand, are push technologies: The information shows up on the tube or at your doorstop without any action on your end.

There are two problems with relying on a network of amateur curators. First, by definition, the average person's Facebook friends will be much more like that person than a general-interest news source. This is especially true because our physical communities are becoming more homogeneous as well - and we generally know people who live near us.

I think people care about what other people care about, what other people are interested in - most important, their social circle.

Krishna Bharat(quoted)

We`re used to thinking of the Web as a series of one-to-one relationships. [...] But behind the scenes, the Web is becoming increasingly integrated. Businesses are realizing that it`s profitable to share data.

The word media, after all, comes from the Latin for "middle layer." It sits between us and the world; the core bargain is that it will connect us to what's happening but at the price of direct experience.

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