On May 25, I posted McLuhan Revisited, inspired by this link, a lecture by Eli Paliser. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s&feature=channel_video_title
A friend, James R. Johnson, forwarded the link to his son, Richard Johnson, who replied to him, and it then came back to me. I am taking the liberty of quoting Richard Johnson’s comments here, more or less entire.
He’s [Paliser] illustrated for us the first law of magic. As above, so below. Yes we have information filters on the web. They exist because the web is an extension of humans. Every human wears reality filters all the time. Some don religion glasses, others scientific methodology glasses, and at least one by his own admission a pair of “liberal” spectacles.
If the long-term effect of net filtering is for some of us to see and recognize that we all filter, all the time … and take some more individual responsibility for who we are and what we do, then they are good. (I’m reminded of a good conversation we once had with Herb Grosdidier about what consciousness might actually mean.)
The speaker went into that talk with a specific agenda–to get people like me who build the web every day to think about ethics. Unfortunately he is a little malinformed. Not misinformed–the facts are there–but his judgment has been colored by his personal filters. For instance the web is not the internet. Not even close. The web is a huge pile of storefronts piled alongside the net that masquerades as an information highway.
We implementers already think about ethics. All the time. But therein is the battle he didn’t see or at least didn’t mention. “Journalistic Ethics” came about not because of some feeling of social responsibility but as a professionalresponse to the likes of Hearst and yellow journalism. Anyone can write from a press release. It takes a real investigator to tell at least some semblance of truth and get it past the managing editor.
Today’s real information gatekeepers are search engines in precisely the same way newspapers were a hundred years ago. They have the same business model … we give you all the information you ask for and sell some piece of your attention and mindspace to our sponsors. It is paramount the sponsors get that information. *That* information–who’s reading what, when, where, how– that keeps the search engine in business. The information we seek is secondary, almost an afterthought.
And that brings us to the mechanics of the digital filter. It’s not there for us. It’s there for the people who want to sell us something. We who implement can cry about ethics all day, but it will do no more good than complaining because the New York Times has very light coverage of fringe political movements.
Solutions exist. Use other search engines; many are available, many are even better than Google. Manage your own filters. Routinely delete your cookies.If you really can’t stand it, set up your own information search methodology.Storefront space on the information highway is still inexpensive. Finally and most importantly, recognize that you too have filters. Try to see through and around them, at least once in a while.