Never in the history of humankind have we had the ability to communicate rich information with practically anyone on the planet instantaneously. Each new innovation from the printing press to the telephone and eventually the computer has been regarded as a milestone in human technological advancement, but the invention of the Web will outstrip them all in terms of its impact on the human race. Now we can potentially communicate with anyone. We can harness the collective power of multiples brains. Many of us are amazed by what computers and software can do. For example, there is more technology and power in today’s programmable microwave oven than was needed to put a man on the moon. Moore’s Law tells us that computer power doubles approximately every two years, which is one of the reasons I always seem to delay replacing computers in anticipation of the more powerful model just around the corner. Eventually we will reach a technical limit to Moore’s Law and require a new type of computing. But the Web is different. The Web will not be so limited. This is because the Web is primarily a medium for sharing knowledge and ideas generated by brains.
Every normal human brain is more powerful than any computer so far built. By connecting them together through the Web, we have the potential to harness the collective thinking of millions of individual brains that are constantly checking and rechecking material on the Web. In 2005, the premier science journal Nature declared that the online encyclopaedia ‘Wikipedia’, created entirely of voluntary contributions from Web users, was as accurate as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the multi-volume traditional source of knowledge produced by teams of paid experts, first published at the end of the eighteenth century. Web users were simply motivated to distribute their knowledge free of charge and, to this day, Wikipedia is funded almost entirely from public donation.
Consider decision-making and the problem of analysis paralysis which occurs when there are too many choices. Much of that problem is solved for us on the Web. When was the last time you made a purchase online and ignored the ratings and comments left by others? When did you choose the third or fourth rated item on a list? I expect never. Whether it is choosing a book, film, hotel or microwave, we ignore the expert review and pay more attention to other users’ feedback, as we trust their experience as being more honest. They have no vested reason to lie. Everywhere we are invited on the Web to give our opinion with gladiatorial thumbs up or down to make pronouncements. According to the 2010 Neilson report mentioned earlier, up to one in five Web users regularly provides feedback on movies, books, television, music, services and consumer products. The collective experience of multiple users produces a consensus of opinion that shapes our decisions. Of course, you are the one making the choice, but it is a decision based on what others think.
This hive mind process is not flawless, however, as we tend to follow the herd mentality as evidenced by stampeding, but this compliance effect is much reduced on the Web. There is more honesty and dissent when we can remain anonymous online. Of course, there are always those who attempt to subvert the process with false recommendations and condemnations, but they are eventually rumbled with time. Last year there was an almighty hullabaloo in academia when eminent British historian, Orlando Figes, was accused of trashing other historian’s books on Amazon in the guise of an anonymous reviewer who simply called themselves ‘Historian’. Figes threatened to take legal action only to discover to his embarrassment that it was his own wife who had been writing the reviews to discredit her husband’s competition.23 Some would call that charming wifely support.
With all its benefits, the spread of the Web will be relentless. Over the next few years, accessing the Web will no doubt improve in ease, efficiency, speed and volume as platforms increase our ability to interact with each other. We may even one day make the unsettling transition of being integrated to the Web through biologically compatible interfaces, but the basic fundamental change that is most important to human civilization is that, in the West, we are all now potentially connected to each other. We can benefit from the wisdom of the crowd – the collective power of billions of brains. We have become the human equivalent of the Borg – the science fiction race of cyborgs from the Star Trek series who are all simultaneously interconnected. But we are not drones. We are independent autonomous individuals – or at least that’s what we think.
Mining the Mountain of Data
The march of the Web may be relentless but there is a big problem with it – literally. Natural selection tells us that when something increases in size it becomes inefficient. In the case of the Web, it is becoming too big – too unwieldy. Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking, estimates how much data are generated and stored on the Web. According to their Chief Futurist, Dave Evans, one of the guys who plans the future strategy of the company, ‘Humans generated more data in 2009 than in the previous 5,000 years combined.’24 With numbers like that, you might as well say the whole history of humankind. There is simply too much information out there to process. Most of it is junk – nuggets of gossip or titillation. As social media scientist danah boyd (she avoids capitalizing her name for some reason) has commented, ‘If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We’ll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.’ 25 Much of what is on the Web is the equivalent of information junk food so search engines like Google sift the knowledge for the relevant information using clever modelling algorithms. Whenever we look for information, search engines analyse Web pages that have been viewed by other users seeking similar information and then rank the most relevant pages for review. It harnesses the power of the crowd to establish what we are looking for. This is wonderful. We can use the collective knowledge of others to mine through the impossible mountain of data to filter out what is not relevant to us.
The problem is that filtering excludes information. Every time we surf the Web, the search engines are recording what we do and what information we provide about our selves. It’s not evil. It’s not spying or an attempt to control our behaviour. The machines are simply trying to provide us with the most relevant information. However, Eli Pariser thinks this is a big problem. In his book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, he explains why search engines are potentially dangerous.26 Try this out for your self. Log on to Google and search for information about ‘Egypt’. Then call up a relative or friend in a different part of the country and ask him or her to do exactly the same thing. What Eli noted was that his friends received totally different lists of links.27 This difference is important because most people only look at the first page of links. In other words, they are not being allowed to see the full picture.
The reason for this discrepancy is that Google produces a personalized search result tailored for each user by using a filter. According to an unknown engineer from Google to whom Pariser spoke, the filter is based on a profile created from fifty-seven variables known about the user. (One wonders if the engineer was pulling Eli’s leg given the famous Heinz marketing ploy of fifty-seven varieties!) Eli noted how personalization was distorting the sorts of information that were being retrieved for him. For example, in an attempt to broaden his view on issues, Eli had deliberately followed Conservatives on his Facebook account even though he mostly had Liberal friends. However, after a while he noticed that the Facebook software was deliberately filtering out the postings from the Conservatives because these were deemed less relevant than the majority of his Liberal friends. Filtering software was encapsulating him inside a bubble of ignorance about contrasting views. This was the filter bubble.