Thursday, April 19, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Google news is the devil!
So the other night I attended a lecture for extra credit and believe it or not I actually learned something. The internet is bad for you! Not because we are spending countless hours doing nothing, or wasting money on eBay, and not even because the largest population of websites are pornography (have you seen the Paris Hilton video?) No this brilliant professor told us that the worse part of the internet can be found in the news, to be more specific google news… Let us take a few steps back.
His main argument was that with the invention of cable television people began to only expose themselves to stuff they wanted to see. No longer did I watch TV and have to watch the news but I could watch my favorite celebrities box, or watch cartoons. With the increase in the amount of channels came the increase of the amount of topics covered, and thus allowed people to specialize. By allowing ourselves to focus on our own ideas and opinions we are increasing the polarity of our views and not expanding our horizons. A test was done where 20 people were taken off the street; 10 “conservative” and 10 “liberal”. These people were asked their opinions on certain issues and then put into a discussion of 10 like minded people for 15 minutes and then asked their opinions again after the 15 minutes were up. They were very surprised to find out that peoples opinions towards the discussed topics increased!
The conclusion that was derived from this data is that by talking to like minded people you are increasing your own polarities toward issues and decreasing your acceptance of others. Thus by using a service like a internet news page, or even worse google news, where you can pick and choose articles at your own discretions allows you to skip articles or websites that may have a view you do not like. This was all brought back by the notion that doing this goes against the “town hall clause” (I have never heard of this nor could I find anything on the net about it) that states every group, person, or organization should be given the right to express their views to other in a public place.
Alright, so do I agree with this? Hell no! I agree with the basis or his argument but is specialization of interests a bad thing? Not at all! Specialization of society is a very good thing, before the formation of hydraulic societies when everyone was a farmer there were no long-lasting civilizations. As humans began to specialize new and better things came about. We need specialists such as doctors, lawyers, and even comm. teachers to advance. His whole argument was founded on this test he ran with the 20 people, yet a little bit of thinking can show the flaw. If I talk to you for 20 minutes about lets say… President Bush your views are going to be stronger after we are done talking than when you were not thinking about it. If he wanted real data he would have talked to them at least a day, if not a week, later.
Yet the essential flaw in his argument is that for a majority of people in a majority of situations being exposed to an idea opposite of theirs can also increase their polarities. Think about all the times that your parents have came and yelled at you not to do something. Your ideas about why you should do said activity become even stronger than they were before your parents mentioned it. The same thing applies to other situations as well. So all in all I am glad we have people thinking but seriously… if you’re going to write a book one something you need to think about all the possible flaws of your theory.
