A fully Customizable Echo Chamber

More and more I have been thinking about the Internet and its supposed effects on the society that we live in.

I am coming to the conclusion that the net effect is more pernicious than you can imagine.

Look, folks just don’t change their minds, and the ideas implanted were laid down by their families and friends, they either absorb these or react against them. Then, once their way of thinking is established, they gravitate toward those people and places where and with whom those ideas are held and then integrate into that mini-society within a society.

Then they live with those folks and basically harden off their beliefs. Over the years the number of folks in the little pseudo-enclave of agreed on thought starts being weeded of non-believers. A casual word of disagreement becomes a irreparable rift. A long-ignored foible becomes intolerable. But there is always a point where you stop the fracturing because you are just losing too much.

But, in the new world of the Internet, ALL non-believers can be weeded freely, because of the access to all the on-line folks who allow you small glimpses into those parts of life that are discussed in that little community and you have a little echo chamber where no new thoughts can intrude.

So the end of the day, you have a completely atomized society of close-minded.

Just what we need.