Tobias Ley - Breaking out of the Filter Bubble
In this era of information overload we need filters to sift out the important from the rest. However, the internet giants have created a bubble in their attempt to generate those filters. A bubble, which narrows our choices and our view to the world, explains Tobias Ley, a professor at Tallinn University.
In this era of information overload we need filters to sift out the important from the rest. However, the internet giants have created a bubble in their attempt to generate those filters. A bubble, which narrows our choices and our view to the world, explains Tobias Ley, a professor at Tallinn University.
In 2010, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Googe said we create as much data every two days as we did from the beginning of the civilisation until 2003. We live in a world where the mass of information is increasing with incredible speed.
This unprecedented growth is aided by the fast development of the Internet and we can see no end to this. On the contrary, we receive more and more gadgets and machines that are connected to the Internet and generate more data.
The Internet has become a part of our everyday life. We use it to find the news we are interested in, to choose the next film to watch or plan our future holidays. For every simple action we must work our way through such an amount of information that exceeds our own capabilities.
To handle such information, make sense of it and then make a decision we need various filters, which help us understand what is important and what is not.
Most filters we currently use are based on a simple principle – what people like me deem important, is important to me, too.
The news we read on Facebook come as recommendations from our friends. Amazon offers us books other people have bought. These systems are called collaborative filtering and they have proven to be very successful.
However, they also harbour a great threat. They lead us into so-called . We only get recommendations for the things we already know, opinions we already agree with and products that are largely similar to the ones we already bought.
How is it possible to break out of those search frames or the filter bubble? We can do two things.
1) As Internet users, we must remember that Google, Amazon and Facebook are not the Internet. They make the decisions as to what we see and find for us, but this is just a small part of all the information available. So we must teach people to question the decision processes these services make for us. This alone will not suffice, as many of our choices are automatic and we do not spend too much time thinking about them.
2) The task of researchers is to generate new algorithms and new filters, that would lead us out of the filter bubble and enable us to discover new information, which would, at times, make us step out of our comfort zone.
This is the only way we can preserve the diversity of opinion in our society and find creative solutions and new ideas.
Thus, let us break out of the frames and hear the variety of voices around us!
Tobias Ley is a professor at Tallinn University, who researches various aspects of the information society and their effect on the learning, thinking and creativity of people. He is the coordinator of the Learning Layers project, which develops technologies for workplace learning