Just yesterday (May 4th 2011) I was viewing a very interesting site called TED TALKS which presents eloquent speakers who have examined in some depth some quirky aspects of the world around us and are so enthused to share their findings with the public, that they use this platform to present their ideas in concise talks that could range in time from five to twenty minutes. TED stands for ‘Technology. Entertainment. Design’ and not, as I had mistakenly thought, a forum sponsored by someone called Ted.
Yesterday’s Ted Talk that I viewed was by a guy called Eli Pariser and was titled ‘Beware Online Filter Bubbles’. It referred to what is innocently being done by computer algorithms, what otherwise humans do more insidiously and directly in an almost callous way.
Pariser yesterday was talking about how search engines like Google, Yahoo and even other internet sites like Facebook use algorithms that are designed with the innocent objective of being more efficient, but end up dangerously filtering out data that may be of critical significance to the user. These internet sites are designed to collect information from the keystrokes or mouse-clicks that a person makes and use that information to build up your on-line personality, and depending on the sites you would have visited or the ideological leanings of the friends whose personalities have similarly been built up and on whom you would have most often clicked, present only such data that the program presupposes by its programmed logic, you would definitely be most interested in.
Pariser found that on Facebook, his strongly progressive and liberal intellectual leanings, gradually eliminated his more conservative contacts from being presented. Similarly search engines like Google and Yahoo probably would not care to present a carefully considered ‘conservative viewpoint’ if you have built up a liberal on-line personality, even if in actuality and in real life you would probably have liked to consider that viewpoint.
Pariser rightly says that around the year 1915 newspapermen, because of the sheer volume of material seeking to be published, became active gatekeepers for the twentieth century to ensure that only worthy ideas fit to be publicized were chosen to be published. Almost a hundred years later and presently, for the twenty-first century, search engines and other internet programs are becoming digital and algorithmic gatekeepers and are threatening to polarize the world by unwittingly filtering out data from a user’s consideration on the basis of ‘efficiency of search’.
It may not be too evident and we may not even acknowledge it, but every human functions as a gatekeeper and selectively rejects and throws out ideas that may not suit his current personality. Even I have been guilty of such a thing. Till about seven to eight years ago I prided myself to have rationalistic leanings and would have scrupulously avoided picking up a book like ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahamsa Yogananda or ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’ by Swami Rama. Back then, if I happened to read an article on Sai Baba like ‘God on a phone line’ by Sheela Reddy or ‘Holy Smoke and Mirrors’ by Rahul Singh or ‘That Irrational High’ by Ajith Pillai, (all articles in OUTLOOK magazine dated May 9th 2011) I would feel a sort of contempt arising in me for those poor credulous blighters who were so gullible as to be fooled by the wily godmen. Then the inevitable thing happened. Even I happened to experience one of ‘those ones’ and I was converted. Now when I read these articles I am confused why the Universe is designed in a way as to confuse people! I feel like asserting that there are some genuine people among these miracle-workers. While it may be true that a substance looking like vibhuthi may be able to be produced by a frame of aluminium and mercuric chloride in the presence of moisture, I feel like questioning what if the miracle-worker is not using this means? What if there is a genuine alternative method that does not use these chemicals. To put it in rational terms - while it is possible to produce vibhuthi type of material out of aluminium and mercuric chloride and water vapour, it does not logically eliminate other ways of producing it - perhaps even using an apparently miraculous process. To take the investigation a step further, it may be useful to analyse the vibhuthis produced by the two processes and compositions compared for Al, Hg, (OH) and so on.
It was only then that I started to even consider reading those books that I had scrupulously avoided buying. On reading some of these books, the latest one being ‘Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master’ by Sri M, I feel that it is a great tragedy that genuine experiences of many people who have related their true tales in all earnestness and sincerity are at worst not being read at all by large sections of the human society, or in the outside chance that they are read, these writers of genuine human experience are totally brushed aside by people who are so impressed by the obviously stupendous success and impact or rationalism and science. Often genuine human experience is brushed away as hallucinations. But then two persons cannot be privy to the same hallucination. And I have been witness to two such events that were a common experience shared by others.
It is time we stop acting like ideological gatekeepers and start examining what the other section of the society has to say. If only one has the openness to read the books written by the other section, they would learn of the amazing things that exist in this Universe.
Given below is a link to the interesting TED Talk on Filter Bubbles:
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