A phenomenon I am becoming more and more aware off, and mentioned in previous blogs, is the overwhelming amount of information being pushed at people. As a result, people are becoming more selective about what they read, who they 'follow' and are creating more and more 'filters' through which they absorb information. Below an article by Albert Gumbo on this topic.
I borrowed this title from Eli Pariser who was getting increasingly concerned at the results he was getting from the Internet.
On a hunch, he asked two friends to Google Egypt at the height of the Nile Revolution.
The one friend, who has an interest in politics, received links pointing him to political news on the country while the other received links to many travel and tourism sites linked to the same country!
Presenting his findings on Ted.Com and in answer to a Q and A session with Amazon.com Pariser says: “We’re used to thinking of the Internet like an enormous library, with services like Google providing a universal map. But that’s no longer really the case.
Sites from Google and Facebook to Yahoo News and the New York Times are now increasingly personalised, based on your Web history, they filter information to show you the stuff they think you want to see. That can be very different from what everyone else sees, or from what we need to see.
Your filter bubble is this unique, personal universe of information created just for you by this array of personalising filters. It’s invisible and it’s becoming more and more difficult to escape.
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