Exercise: Investigative Exercise 8 - Current Awareness Post

Exercise:

Investigative Exercise 8  - Current Awareness Post 

I watched both of the suggested Youtube videos and found them great food for thought.

I was particularly fascinated by the first one, "Eli Pariser- Beware online "filter bubbles".

I think most of us are regularly surprised by the presumptuous fashion in which our computers behave whilst we use our search engines. I remember receiving advertising prompts from on-line accommodation companies for destinations I had previously booked to go to, for years after I had returned from those same places. 

Eli Pariser is similarly alarmed about how many search engine companies are tailoring 

individual search results via invisible algorithmic editing.

He spoke and showed examples of how two friends of his, had both "googled" the word,

"Egypt" and received vastly different results. 

He warned that "invisible algorithmic editing of the web" may "limit our exposure to new information and narrow our outlook."

He quoted that Google used 57 different signals from each individual, to determine what search results it would tailor for them. Some of these signals included the type of computer you used, the browser chosen, and the location you were in.

Eli is concerned that "the internet is showing us what it thinks we need to see, and not necessarily what we need to see".

He recognises a major shift in how information is flowing online nowadays. He sees "a struggle developing between our future aspirational selves and our more impulsive present selves". 

Eli made a final plea to those in charge of these massive internet companies to allow individuals more of a say and some control in determining what gets through our filters,

because "we really need the internet to be that thing that we all dreamed of it being. We need it to connect us all together, we need it to introduce us to new ideas and new people and different perspectives, and not leave us isolated in a web of one"!!!

Really interesting and incisive talk which gets all of us thinking!!