NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] "Texts Without Context" [An important article]
"Texts Without Context" http://bit.ly/9rzpgF (New York Times) A very interesting and important article regarding the real world impacts of our digital cultures. My question of long standing is ... how can we as the designers and purveyors of these systems, help to avoid the kinds of pitfalls and "narrowing of focus into extremism" that may be exacerbated by some of these digital environments? --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator - - - Excerpts: ... "Digital culture, he writes in "You Are Not a Gadget," "is comprised of wave after wave of juvenilia," with rooms of "M.I.T. Ph.D. engineers not seeking cancer cures or sources of safe drinking water for the underdeveloped world but schemes to send little digital pictures of teddy bears and dragons between adult members of social networks." ... "At the same time the Internet's nurturing of niche cultures is contributing to what Cass Sunstein calls "cyberbalkanization." Individuals can design feeds and alerts from their favorite Web sites so that they get only the news they want, and with more and more opinion sites and specialized sites, it becomes easier and easier, as Mr. Sunstein observes in his 2009 book "Going to Extremes," for people "to avoid general-interest newspapers and magazines and to make choices that reflect their own predispositions." "Serendipitous encounters" with persons and ideas different from one's own, he writes, tend to grow less frequent, while "views that would ordinarily dissolve, simply because of an absence of social support, can be found in large numbers on the Internet, even if they are understood to be exotic, indefensible or bizarre in most communities." He adds that studies of group polarization show that when like-minded people deliberate, they tend to reinforce one another and become more extreme in their views." ...