Zuckerman: the Internet encourages cultural myopia, that 'double rainbow' guy
At a recent TED talk, entrepreneur and Harvard scholar Ethan Zuckerman (above, in the most embarrassing pic we could find of him), highlighted the ways that our Internet use might be counter-productive. While potentially a great source of information, perspective, and communication, he points out that "[w]hen we look at what's actually happening, our world-view might actually be narrowing" because we tend to stay within a certain small group of websites -- and perspectives. In the UK, for instance, more than 95% of news consumers send their traffic to domestic news sites, while social networks encourage you to limit communication to the small group of people who share your world view. "The wider world is a click away, but whether we mean to or not, we're usually filtering it out." he said. Lest you think this topic is all gloom and doom, Ethan & Co. are actively looking for ways to correct this and bring the Internet closer to the Utopian vision we all have of it. "We have to figure out how to rewire the systems we have. We have to fix our media, we have to fix the Internet, we have to fix education."
