Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Infinite Freedom
Everybody is free from social distinction, physical location and identity on the web. People can express their opinions freely with infinite web capacity. However, it comes with the cost; information overload. If you try to search anything on Google, you would get millions of hits and you probably go through the only first couple of pages. Sure, Internet gives everyone freedom equally, but first website to come up on Google has much more influential power than the other ones. It would influence people more and shape the majority. Debra D’Agostino on his article, How the Web Polarized Politics, talks how the information tsunami causes polarization of ideas which are created by major players of the politics. I think, people are becoming more dependent on the information because we think Web is equal and free. However, each player on the web certainly has unequal influential power. Our commons, web, does not have regulation or control and that is great! However, we need to be aware that the infinite freedom of ours may not be the most equal or reliable thing.
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You bring up a great point. When you mentioned google, you noted that people usually only look through the first couple of pages of information. well, what is located on those couple of pages? 1. Links to sites that people bid on and paid google 2. Links to sites that google chooses with their "secret ingredients formula" that I spent 3 months examining, and came to no significant pattern conclusions. We look at countries like South Korea, where TV and Internet are "parental controlled" and we say " that would never happen in the US", however, you get what others pay for.
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