For a lot of you it may feel very special to know that Amazon, and Netflix and Apple and Gilt and Google tailor their results just for you. The idea and power of customization is currently the holy grail of the web. The reasons these sites tell us they need to aggregate so much information about us, is so that they can better server us. Lucky us! But what happens when the same principals, the same algorithms apply to our searches for information, our news sources? In this way essentially our algorithms shape how we view the world. This is not science future. This is happening right now. And its net effect is both frightening and corrosive. Rather than expanding our world, which was the original promise of the Internet, it is arguably shrinking our world. MoveOn.org founder Eli Pariser takes us inside this world of The Filter Bubble.
My conversation with Eli Pariser:
