A couple of weeks ago I watched a really inspiring TED talk from Eli Pariser titled ‘Beware the Online Filter Bubble’ – I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought ‘finally someone else that sees through the smoke of the personalized world’.
I’m not in anyway against personalized content, I have used it in projects myself and in a lot of cases (if used correctly) it invaluably enriches experiences online and offline. However, I am a little wary that in some cases we are slowly being cut off from our informational 5-a-day and in the long run this could be detrimental to our creativity.
Here’s a couple of quotes from the people in power to get your brain lubed up, is this really what we want?:
“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa” – Mark Zuckerberg, Facbook
“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not, in some sense, been tailored for them” – Eric Schmidt, Google
A Balanced Informational Diet
Like nutrition, to grow as rounded healthy individuals we need nourishment from many different sources. Like we need to balance our diet between vegetables and desserts, we need to expose our minds to things in the world that are shocking, challenging, exciting, disturbing and inspiring.
For example, only eating one type of food is bad for you. Even if it’s pineapples. As yummy and healthy as they are, eventually you’re going to develop some deficiencies if all you eat is pineapple. So what do you think will happen if Google, Yahoo and Facebook are all feeding you only pineapples and nothing else?
A Tunnel Full Of Mirrors
Content based on content that you’re already looking at – you end up in a loop of only one kind of informational nourishment. It’s like when you hold a mirror in front of another mirror to create a never ending tunnel. Google, Yahoo and Facebook are projecting reflections of ourselves, back on to ourselves. Instead of giving us content that challenges our morals and opinions to create new trains of thought and ideas, we are in danger of constantly reaffirming our own opinions with similar opinions, just from other sources.
How This Will Effect True Innovation
The internet is our greatest tool. It’s a research trip to ancient Egypt when you have no funding, it’s a trip back in time to the mesozoic era until we can invent time machines, it’s a university course in design when you don’t have enough money to go back to school. Most of all, it’s a piece of social technology that allows ideas to spread faster and further than ever before. It allows you to implant a thought from your mind, into the mind of someone else and alter the way they think forever.
Creativity is the greatest tool I have. But I don’t come up with new ideas by reading or watching things that I already know about. New ideas appear when researching areas I know nothing about. The greatest feeling is when two completely unrelated areas of knowledge and experience suddenly collide in your mind. It’s the true ‘lightbulb moment’. The birth of something truly innovative.
So if the internet is most peoples first choice research tool, how are we supposed to encourage more of these ‘lightbulb moments’ if we’re always surrounded by familiar content? I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this, so if you have an opinion please leave a comment. Maybe you’ll change the way I think forever.
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