It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.
I was one of those people. I still maintain hope, but the fear of what the algorithms will do outweighs that hope some days.
The thinking was that people’s core opinions are formed while they are young. They are mostly inherited from your family and society around you, so that information bubbles are formed early that are hard to break out of.
I thought that if people were exposed to multiple cultures and ideas from a young age through the Internet, they would understand them better – not just as foreign concepts told to them through a thick lens of bias from their parents and teachers.
However, I failed to predict the opposite powers. First were the echo chambers that formed, strengthening the deepest dark sides of humanity that, before, were kept locked away in basements lacking anyone with whom to discuss and provide validity. Then the corpos and MBAs figured out they could psychology game us all with algorithms. They didn’t necessarily know at first that the negative content would be the best for driving engagement; but they didn’t care either.
So right now I think the bad is outweighing the good. But I don’t think it has to stay this way forever.
