I Could Never Sell

We are convinced that our social lives were more diverse when we lived in a town of 3,500 than now, when we live in our hip neighborhood in a city of 1.8 million.

– Bill Bishop, The Big Sort

Why?  Because the “hip neighborhood in a city of 1.8 million” has thoroughly sorted itself over time, to spare itself views at odds with its own.

Who would do that?  People concerned what their kids might absorb at the neighborhood barbecue or school picnic:

…when I’d visit co-workers for dinner parties in Fairfax or Loudon Counties, I’d hear comments like—and all of these are 100 percent real—

“You live in D.C.? It’s too dark for me over there!”

Or “aren’t you afraid of someone ‘confusing you’ in Dupont Circle?”

Or “How can you stand living with so many people? I don’t want to see anyone on my street or anyone from my back yard. My favorite time is August when I know I won’t have to see anyone else on my block.”

Comments that either were directly racist or just too weird to be a part of. People who were normal in the office were filled with anger and hatred at their own parties.

We can laugh.  But if your kids hear this on all sides throughout their first ten years of life?

So people choose neighborhoods with care, for views they want their children to grow up with.  Prosperous neighborhoods, that is;  with the means for that ultimate luxury.

We’ve just run some numbers here at dailyyonder.com that show widening economic disparities by county—in other words the economic divisions are growing from place to place. Austin, Texas, booms while part of my home state of Kentucky fall into a deep hole of depression, premature death and prescription drug abuse.

– Bill Bishop, The Big Sort

Ah, you say, but TV and the Internet sweep away these local considerations.  You can no longer control what your kids hear.  For good or ill, the Internet brings us every view known to man, from every era, from every corner of the earth.

Right?

Wrong:

…stock-pickers cluster.

Those who think Apple is going up talk to each other on one thread.

Those who think GE will fall even more find their way to the same little spot on the Web.

Technology doesn’t help people find new ways of thinking or seeing the world — even when it might be in their financial interest.  We still hunker down with those who hold our opinions.

– Bill Bishop, The Big Sort

But the next generation Internet is bringing its best minds to this issue.  We suffer from information overload, they say.  We see and hear too much that we have not chosen, that does not match our preferences.

The Semantic Web promises: 

…more of the one driving benefit everybody — at the exception perhaps of last-stance Luddites — wants to see happening: machines doing more of the boring stuff for US, so we can focus our energy on works of imagination and creativity instead!

– Semantics Incorporated

Haven’t we heard this before?  Where was that?  Isaac Asimov’s I Robot?  Where the robots kindly explain their curfew for humans, confining humans at home for their own protection?  Or from the guys who ran The Matrix?

Oh, but that kind of control is impossible anyhow, you say?

No.  Presidential campaigns have gotten good at sorting us:

Full-size pickup drivers support John McCain at the same rate as white evangelicals (66 percent), according to a survey by Kelley Blue Book. Seven out of 10 Mini Cooper owners back Barack Obama.

– Bill Bishop, The Big Sort

Already Amazon is better than NetFlix at predicting what I like.  At Amazon I use search words of all kinds.  At NetFlix, only names of directors, actors, awards.

So yes, it can be done.

One day a smarter browser can keep me from hearing “noise” in the sense of topics or views that don’t match my preferences.

Will that smarter browser make me smarter?

Or surround me with yes-men?   Surround me with an echo chamber?  Extend my blind spot so far that I no longer catch the tiniest  glimpse of it?  Wrap me in fond opium dreams?

Always the same question.  As technology races ahead, can wisdom keep up?  Will we use technology to make the contest of life bigger or smaller?  To beat bigger challenges, or forget them?