My Analysis of The Filter Bubble

     Pariser succeeded pulling me into this book. Throughout it he used many examples from numerous credible outside sources to introduce these topics, ideas, problems, benefits, and solutions of the filter bubble. Having the variety of background stories and well-described introductions allowed myself to understand this subject, what with its engaging tone with many moments of humor and interesting stories while avoiding technical jargon that Pariser could have easily used from being educated on the subject and having a background on internet algorithms, formatting, and website management. Pariser managed to lure me into the book using not only this tone and easy to follow wording, but also because the subject of personalization and filtering of the internet was a new concept to me, being one of the many people that originally thought we had almost unlimited access to anything on the internet. Since this day and age seem to revolve around technology and internet use, the book appealed to me even more.

     The concepts in the book overall proved to be fairly convincing, too. While it is true that personalization of the internet can be useful, especially in some areas of what advertisements we see and whose stories pop up on our Facebook newsfeed that we would actually be interest in, there also poses the huge problem of what we are not seeing as a result, hindering a more diverse knowledge of what is going on around us and other information that could create and spread new ideas that would help people to progress technologically, socially, intellectually, and so much more. In Lev Manovich’s article “Trending: The promises and challenges of big social data”, he creates a vision of using the vast amount of data the internet provides to conduct research on humans and their societal relationships. However, he shows that not everyone has accessibility to the data needed to do this research as well as not having the expertise to actually understand the data, proving that Pariser has a point in want the general public to have some knowledge and understanding of algorithms that filter our internet as well as that there are hindrances to not having the access to data needed for research made only harder by the personalization of the web.

     To further back up Pariser’s outtake on the personalized internet, Natasha Singer, author of the article “Secret e-scores chart consumers’ buying power”, delves into the transparency of the filter bubble and what problems may come from it. With e-scores, they take users’ data to find out your spending habits, your income and other related information and sell it to companies that can place advertisements on websites that would appeal to whatever stereotypes of what socioeconomic class you fall into and products or services that generally are wanted by those in that class. This is just one example of how the internet is a scary place as you do not know what information websites are taking note of and what privacy you actually have and that people may actually be getting bypassed by companies and not having the same opportunities as other individuals for certain products based solely on the discriminatory algorithms that Pariser earlier stated that poorly represents ourselves.
     In the end, Pariser made a convincing argument, one credible and verified by sources in his and outside of his. Hopefully knowledge of the problem of the filter bubble can then spread so that internet users may not be hindered but rather be able to have more access to an internet that could help change the world as we know it.

Works Cited:

Manovich, Lev. "Trending: The promises and challenges of big social data," in Matthew K. Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities, 2012. Print.

Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Singer, Natasha. "Secret e-scores chart consumers' buying power". New York Times. August 18, 2012. Print.