Rules are rules....
Posted on 10/14/2001 11:23:12 PM PDT by gcruse
Custom-Tailored Online News Can Be Dangerous for Society
By TOM WEBER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
THINK BACK to before Sept. 11, and be honest. How much attention did you give to Afghanistan? What did you know about the Taliban, or the Northern Alliance? How closely did you follow topics like politics in the Middle East, airline safety or the threat of bioterrorism?
Now, of course, all of those subjects are of great interest. But before last month's devastating attacks, they represented a handful of issues among many others. Whether you paid much attention to any or all of them probably depended on your individual interests. Some people are foreign-affairs junkies. Others gobble up science news, including tidbits about biological weapons.
That's the nature of individuality. But crossing that phenomenon with the interactive technology used on many Web sites may lead to trouble. Cass Sunstein, a law professor and First Amendment expert at the University of Chicago, wrote eloquently about this problem earlier this year in a book titled "Republic.com." It's a work with new relevance in this changed world.
In the book, Prof. Sunstein warns of something he dubs "The Daily Me." It's evocative shorthand for the personalization and customization that have become a routine part of life on the Web, as sites encourage visitors to filter news and information according to their preferences.
BUT IF PEOPLE wind up seeing only what they want, they won't be exposed to ideas outside their preconceived areas of interest. To Prof. Sunstein, that's a troubling development for democracy. Ensuring that citizens are exposed to a variety of views helps guard against fragmentation and extremism. And, he argues, discouraging citizens from paying attention only to narrow interests nurtures common experiences, a shared context that strengthens a sense of society.
Recent events have merely underscored this. In the attacks of Sept. 11, the world has tragic proof of what can happen when extremist views are reinforced without any checks, Prof. Sunstein says. Osama bin Laden, he says, seems to have been careful to recruit a core group of people who shun any ideas that don't conform to their extremist interpretations of Islam.
"It's hard to imagine people would become terrorists if they were exposing themselves to different points of view," Prof. Sunstein says.
Yet everywhere these days we are confronted with opportunities to filter and customize the information we see. One of Yahoo's most useful services is its My Yahoo home page. With a free account, users can set up a customized page that shows news in categories they've selected, weather for the cities they've chosen and stock quotes for the companies they want to monitor.
When setting up the "Headlines" section of a My Yahoo page, users can select from a menu that includes such choices as "World News from Reuters" or "Politics from AP." Or they can skip all of those and build their news page around "Video Game News" or "Auto Racing." Once a customized page has been set up, people see only what they asked to see.
Similar technologies are all over the place. Quickbrowse.com (www.quickbrowse.com) will grab Web pages you pick from different sites, then combine them into one for easy viewing. A company called Octopus gathers and combines Web information with data from internal corporate systems to give business users a one-stop knowledge portal.
It isn't just the Internet. The phenomenon exists everywhere technology increases the number of information sources. Television has evolved from a few broadcast networks to 500 channels, many of them super-specialized to cater to interests like food or cartoons. So-called personal video recorders such as TiVo grab and store only the programming we want, creating the equivalent of customized television channels.
ALL OF THIS is a natural consequence of some very beneficial developments.
Filtering is a response to information overload. And information overload is the result of the ways in which technology has opened up vast new frontiers of knowledge to individuals. From the computer screen in your study, it's possible to sample views from all over the world.
To those who have been following recent events online, that ability has been a boon. Web users can read the latest dispatches from this newspaper online -- then surf to news outlets in Europe, the Middle East and everywhere else in the world. Web sites have been home to vigorous discourse, too, with opinions both expressed and challenged.
So how do we guard against technology's potential to fragment and isolate? Prof. Sunstein has a variety of suggestions, including the encouragement of Web sites that foster open, reasonable debate, and economic subsidies for public Internet programming. He also makes an argument for mass media.
Readers may skip over the international pages of a newspaper or change the channel when a report about politics comes on, but it's better than never having been exposed to the material in the first place.
There is also value in simply recognizing the problem, and understanding the benefits that come from addressing it. "People from different walks of life see each other as subject to shared risks in a way that didn't exist before Sept. 11," Prof. Sunstein says. "You see people treating each other as fellow citizens."
This would be as successful as Amtrak or the Post Office.
Really, this is why I welcome "disruptors" for the most part - some of them have turned out to be really cool.
Really, this is why I welcome "disruptors" for the most part - some of them have turned out to be really cool.
It is precisely because the Internet is not publicly subsidized that it contains such a range of opinion. Prof. Sunstein would prefer the sort of "open, reasonable" debate that is found on NPR.
This would be as successful as Amtrak or the Post Office.
I can't think of a less appealing idea, myself. Thanks
for picking up on that.
I have always been exposed to ideas I do not want. PC, multiculuralism, feminism, gay activism, marxism, maoism, PETA, zero tolerance. What is he talking about ? Apparently, homogeneity of traditional media does not bother him. We were all fed with same propaganda. Of course, what is the point of arguing with people who have more in common with Wahabis ? Their only goal is to maintain their orthodoxy. Jerry Falwell is practically the champion of diversity compared with "Cass", the fervent supporter of anti-impeachement and Florida debacle.
Not close attention at all, but then our media was too busy giving us placebos like Chandra Levy and Gary Condit non-stop to tell us what the hell was really going on in the mid-east and that there were probably many signs that this war was on the horizen.
Now, of course, all of those subjects are of great interest. But before last month's devastating attacks, they represented a handful of issues among many others. Whether you paid much attention to any or all of them probably depended on your individual interests. Some people are foreign-affairs junkies. Others gobble up science news, including tidbits about biological weapons.
This just shows you how desensitized we've become. This is no surprise since we don't flinch about the vast numbers of slaughtered babies--Why then should we have been concerned about mosloms suicide bombing innocent men, women and children?
"It's hard to imagine people would become terrorists if they were exposing themselves to different points of view," Prof. Sunstein says.
Ahhh..this is the crux of the matter--These people are not being taught anything but hate.
To those who have been following recent events online, that ability has been a boon. Web users can read the latest dispatches from this newspaper online -- then surf to news outlets in Europe, the Middle East and everywhere else in the world. Web sites have been home to vigorous discourse, too, with opinions both expressed and challenged.
Bump for FR!
Actually, we do differentiate:
Why blowing up Israelis is different from blowing up Americans
Foreign Affairs
Source: IMRA
Published: Sept 27, 2001 Author: US Dept of State
Friday, September 28, 2001
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher
explains why blowing up Israelis
different than blowing up Americans
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, DC
September 27, 2001
...
QUESTION: To what extent does this campaign -- as you constantly review your
Middle East policy, what -- how much influence does this campaign against
terrorism have in that? What's the input? How does it weigh in here? See
what I mean?
MR. BOUCHER: No, I don't.
QUESTION: It's obviously a factor --
MR. BOUCHER: We have talked about this on and off over the last few days. We
recognize that there is an influence. Some have said it affects the
atmosphere, the Palestinian/Israeli issues affect the atmosphere of
cooperation. But, essentially, there are, on some planes, two different
things. One is that there are violent people trying to destroy societies,
ours, many others in the world. The world recognizes that and we are going
to stop those people.
On the other hand, there are issues and violence and political issues that
need to be resolved in the Middle East, Israelis and
Palestinians. But we all recognize that the path to solve those is through
negotiation and that we have devoted enormous efforts to getting back to
that path of negotiation.
And we have called on the parties to do everything they can, particularly in
the present circumstance, to make that possible.
I guess that's about as close as I can come to the kind of sophisticated
analysis I'm sure you will want to do on your own. But they are clearly
issues that are different, not only in geography but also, to some extent,
in their nature.
One FReeper's "BARF ALERT" is very often another FReeper's "Voice of Reason." I probably spend about 80-90% of my online time at this site. There are FReepers whose opinions on certain subjects disgust me. These same FReepers on different subjects, I will stand next to in full agreement. Custom-Tailored? Not Free Republic by a long shot. And that is what is so addictive about this site.
Rules are rules....
Trouble for who...the liberal voting block?
Ensuring that citizens are exposed to a variety of views helps guard against fragmentation and extremism.
...do I detect an effort to "politically correct" the internet coming?
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