book: "The Filter Bubble"

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

by Eli Pariser

2011, Penguin Press

Count: 300 pages

Until I read this, I was mostly ignorant of the way the internet and the various agencies (search engines, marketers, data miners) purposefully and significantly shift the Internet that I, Janie, experience. Naive, I know. It seems nice on the surface: personalizing each individual's experience for more purposeful surfing. Hey, it makes some things much easier!

But as this book describes in detail the ubiquitous process of online filtering, the knowledge of its impact (individuals get to see personally "skewed" Internet content) becomes alarming. 

One immediate effect of reading this: It encourages me to have a healthy distrust of sharing my personal info too freely.  Personal data, of no monetary value to the owner, is Big Bucks to the markers who get hold of it.

Pariser makes an excellent argument for why we need non-individualized Internet experiences. One example of many in the book: We'll hear less and less of other perspectives if all we receive is filtered to match what we already know and think. Our viewpoint will become increasingly narrowed. 

Shelfari reviewer Adam Thierer didn't like the book: he didn't counter any of Parisi's claims, but rather said we had been experiencing this for much longer than the author claims. Theirer also introduces a great thread: the demise of a democratic Internet. (He argues that it's not happening that much, but that it should happen at all is unnerving.

There is a provcative thread for another post about how this Internet filtering