The Web Limits our Overall Exposure to Information
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
Recently a newspaper professional from the Sydney Morning Herald put an idea into my mind that I was surprised had never occurred to me. I do a lot of thinking and reading about new media, print media and their underpinning social contribution.
Miranda explained that in a newspaper the reader is exposed to a wide variety of stories and views – it’s an heterogeneous information format. When we read a newspaper we get told a little about a lot of things we normally wouldn’t seek out.
It brings to mind my high school years littered with that most loathed term – current affairs knowledge – with which we were berated bi-weekly in English and Social Science classes.
Now flip that on its head to think about the web experience. Yes we can find information at our fingertips – but only the information that we’re looking to find. So what do we look for? We look for things that agree with the way we currently think… because we’re human beings and as human beings we constantly like to be reassured that the things interesting to us are the most interesting things. It’s a circularity that deprives us of an overview… whether we like to admit that or not.
So the right wing racist seeks out only the information to support their views. And the science denialist. And the pro-political-party-of-choice.
When you think about this for a minute it’s even more worrying because we’re now seriously moving towards a more interactive television-web experience in Google TV… which will push the same paradigm shift through to another aspect of our lives. People will be likely to stop watching the news broadcast and pursue the news facets that appeal… cutting away the chaff.
Because, like Nicholas Carr pointed out in The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains every positive comes with a negative. The proposed learning benefits of the computer interface haven’t necessarily panned out in reality, as scientific studies have revealed. A reduction in the deep processing associated with mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.
Intensive multitaskers are “suckers for irrelevancy” Clifford Nass, Researcher
And the down side of the loss of an effective collective information broadcast mechanism (newspapers and news services) is that we lose a certain social agreement (cultural aspect) to our society. What becomes of that agreed knowledge of current affairs that stitches me to you to everybody else? Shared exposure and understanding are a social glue.
Rather than the popular idea that the web exposes us to everything at our fingertips, it makes more sense to say the web exposes us to everything that we feel like looking for at our fingertips. There’s a fundamental difference between the two.
