I really enjoyed this video. The message was very good and so was the way to communicate it.
I like
the way Eli Pariser presents the issue and I agree with his view point: the way
we see the world depends on how others think we want to see it. This can easily
generate a vicious circle (or a virtuous one!), as “they” are more likely to
think we want to see things we have already seen. The point is: do we click on
links we like? Or do we click on links we get attracted to easily? Is junk
information more likely to be available this way?
I agree
that it would be better if search engines and social networks sorted out
results based not just on how “relevant” they are but how “important”,
“uncomfortable”, “challenging” or simply “different” are. Otherwise we end up
moving towards a boring, uniform civilisation.
Sometimes
it is good to move out of our “comfort zone” (see video “Do you dare to dream?), and to do that we need to be exposed to different stimuli.
Charles Darwin’s evolution is based on differences. A society without
differences is a society of losers, in order to improve we need to change
sometimes and repeat if it has improved our results.
A
little constructive criticism on Pariser’s presentation is that he does not
really make any serious proposal for a change, though this has been expanded
elsewhere (see link below). There are
two things that I would like to suggest here:
1- There are many ways to “lie” to search engines so that they do not know who we are:
- Not registering/ deleting cookies and history.
- Use a different domain (eg google.es)
- Use a different server/mirror (difficult).
- Changing the settings
- Going to 2nd pages in the list of results.
2- There
are ways in which a search engine could add “real interest” to their
algorithms:
- · Adding “relevance” to items that are visited during a long time by a user, not just items which are visited many times .
- · Adding items randomly and then investigating the above.
References
Eli Pariser’s video: Beware online "filter bubbles":
Other
relevant links:
Do you dare to dream? : http://youtu.be/HhFxQlDPjaY
The
filter bubble and 10 things we can do to avoid it: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/10-things-you-can-do
How
Google Search Engine works (by google): http://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html
Thank you for your post and sharing the additional two videos, very interesting, and do a wonderful job of complementing the two areas you raised in your own posting, moving out of ones own comfort zone, and how important being different can be for balance and preservation of ones ability to engage at multiple leves with multiple views.
ReplyDeleteYour strategies shared are helpful, and provide some concrete options to consider. I agree I feel too that Pariser's expose should maybe have had more strategies
I use the following for my own browsing in Firefox
a. Abine lets you opt out of targeted advertising and tells you if a site is tracking you.
b. Collusion is an add on that works with the Mozilla
It would be nice if we could individually control this set up and parameters of personalization in our social media and search tools, any takers to design this :)
continued excellent ideas, resources and conversation on this topic.
Kind regards
John