Daily Me

I think it was Greggman who brought it up first. About the Daily Me, the concept of personalized news. Portals began on the Internet offering general news, the big ticket headlines that were circulating at the time, the memes that had entered our collective consciousness. But as time went by, and portals evolved, sites like Slashdot popped up offering a more targeted experience. As a programmer, am I more interested in the U.S. spy plane or about the next version of Perl? Maybe both, but I'd probably want to check out the Perl story first. So these newer news "portals" (are they even portals anymore?) cater to niche markets. And everyone loves it. We get just the information we care about. The internet is able to bring together typewriter collectors from around the world for the latest in antique Smith-Corona pricing.

But at what price? I can see an immediate downside to all this personalized news: Where are the common threads that hold us together? What if one person made a President Bush joke and no one got it because everyone only knows about their little corner of the news world?

It doesn't matter who you are — because of television and the newspapers, there are topics that everyone has heard about. These are things that we all have in common.

There's a huge backlash against commonality, against people following the herd. I just watched Josie and the Pussycats...

Josie. Rules. Must. Buy. Soundtrack. At. Target.

Of course, taken to the extreme, it'll result in homogeneity. But, then again, you've got to have shared experiences. Cass R. Sunstein sees a hazard in the rise in personalized news. This specialized news leads to fragmentation and polarization, he argues. I agree to a certain extent. But the Internet is like any other medium and when it finally reaches its equilibrium, I think you'll find generalized news is going to survive. And personalized news is not a new thing. Think Guns & Ammo, Stereophile and Dog Fancy.

The question is: Where is that equilibrium?

I feel this is like MP3

In the sense of it may have a bad effect but there's nothing you can do to stop it.

I do wonder though is it really changing? I've personally never read a newspaper. Really. Somebody might have clipped an article for me but I've never opened a news paper and read the articles. The closest I've come is reading the classifieds or looking up movie times. Some people think that's evil. I always looked at it as growing up in an age where I get my info from other places.

Sunstein seems thing think we get introduced to new ideas by the mass media. Isn't that exactly the opposite argument most people have. That the mass media feeds us what they want and leaves out all the stuff that would make it diverse?

Right now my news is actually limited to www.danchan.com and what ever is linked there and maybe www.ascii24.com and if I heard about an important story from someone else I'll go check it out at MSNBC.com so I'm pretty filtered. Also a little Japanese TV.

I do wonder though how much exposure to other ideas helps people see the other point of view. I'd like to believe that I'm open to other points of view but there's the opinion that we all see the world through are own personal filters and that those filters generally discard anything that doesn't fit our world view.

My recent example would be the breast implant issues. I tended to believe Frontline's report that basically the public turned their minds off and awarded the poor sick people with money from the big evil corp even if there was no evidence that the big evil corp had any connection. They're big, they're a corp, they've got money, lets give it to the poor sick people.

But, I did find a link to another point of view on the Frontline site and I only read a little of it. It claimed many of the things Frontline said they claimed. That all the studies that showed there was a connection were funded by the big evil corp therefore they must be bad. I don't buy the "they must be bad" part but they claimed even more about how the results were adjusted or fudged and different things. I still tend to believe the Frontline conclusions and the opposite point of view people did not have links to proof, you just had to take their word for it but still, my mind was pretty much already made up. I didn't feel like digging further.

So, the question is, will having the "Daily Me" really change anything?