

The Polarization of Extremes - pg
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=w218t7yc6kv2lhqvrq4450bllm36hgjc

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cduan
Cass Sunstein argues here, as he has since he first published his book
Republic.com, that technology will allow us to filter information to bolster
our own beliefs, causing people to form less informed, more polarized
opinions. My issue with his argument has been that information technology
actually has the exact opposite effect. With so many ideas circulating about
the Internet, it is much harder to avoid hearing diverse opinions on any
matter. No matter how hard I try to add only tech blogs to my RSS reader, I
still end up getting some real-world news. ;)

Indeed, in the second edition of Republic.com, Sunstein acknowledges this and
more or less retracted the "Daily Me" prophecy that he apparently is reissuing
in this article (and, I suppose, the most recent version of his book). In
response to a flurry of criticism from his legal peers, he added a postscript
acknowledging the above argument and rephrasing his prediction as a
hypothetical possibility that wasn't actually occurring. I have to wonder if
that cycle is about to repeat itself.

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DanielBMarkham
You may get real-world news, but it's most-likely news of a certain political
nature. It's obvious to me (if not others) that places like Slashdot are
completely different _political_ sites than they were say five years ago. The
topic matter may be close, but the nature of the way articles are presented,
commented on, and ranked is completely different. It used to be you got great
intellectual comments from all sides of the spectrum. Now that sort of
disucssion is down-modded and in its place you get basically political
sloganeering masquerading as comments.

In terms of general subject matter, sure, the Daily Me is probably not
happening. What's happening in its place is a sort of Daily Political Me,
where whatever is "hot" is filtered one way or another based on general
political views of the site. This is a natural consequence of user-ranking.

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DanielBMarkham
This is really good. Thanks.

