Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble - What the Internet Is Hiding from You was first published in 2011. The Boidem's extended silence between April 2010 and July 2015 thus explains why the only mention of Pariser's phrase is a passing one in the July 2015 edition. The concept is certainly one that I would (and should) have dealt with in these pages, but the timing was wrong. In his introduction Pariser writes:
More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.And this reinforces a recursive process via which the more those interests are presented to us, and we then click on them, our choosing to click on them strengthens the algorithms that present us with what we're interested in. It becomes difficult to change our interests and, more disturbingly, without our noticing, our access to information that is outside of our interests or beliefs is narrowed. Since we assume that the process via which the information served to us an objective one, we're hardly aware that this is happening. Thus the bubble. Google and Facebook want us to be happy users, and we're no doubt happiest when the information we receive confirms our point of view. Our worlds have contracted, keeping threatening or stressful information out. The algorithm does its job, and the public sphere suffers.