What the Internet Knows about You...

The internet as connection to the world and for society.  Filter Bubbles created by algorithms decide what the internet thinks you want to see not what you need to see. Algorithms curate the world for us.  Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Amazon among others use filter bubbles to create personalized spaces for us.  So, the world we think we see as a wide range of possibilities becomes a smaller and smaller piece of the digital pie.

When search engines base their answers on our most recent searches, one person's search for Egypt looks like a travelogue while another's looks like the front page of the LA Times.  In this scenario, the well-traveled become better traveled, the smart get smarter and Snookie gets to find out where in Cairo she can most easily GTL?  I find the idea of filter bubbles interesting and yet scary.

What brings this home is the fact that my ever-widening view of the world could really be hyper-focusing on me and my interests.  The idea that the internet could connect me to the world is actually only as true as I make it.  With this new information, I know and understand that the front page of any search on any engine should be the beginning of the search not the end.  This TED talk is a call to arms to look beyond, go deeper and travel further down the internet rabbit hole.
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