The Internet Echo Chamber

In recent days I've read two provocative articles on the power of the Internet to both spread rumors and misinformation. Elizabeth Kolbert's article "The Things People Say" appeared in the Nov. 2 issue of The New Yorker and addressed Cass R. Sunstein, the Obama Administration's choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. (If ever there was an office with a vaguely Orwellian name, this would be it.)

The second piece comes from Foreign Policy, and its hooked to the tragedy at Fort Hood. In "A Web of Lone Wolves", the author Evan Kohlmann says that radicals of all stripes now have the power to inflame and trigger loners and small groups of individuals to commit horrific acts.

What ties the two articles together is the understanding that as the amount of content available on the Web becomes more and more diverse, it also becomes far more specific and granular; a reader can now completely eschew content or ideas that contradict or negate any and all their prejudices by choice, until all they have left is an intellectual support system completely devoid of alternatives. (I use "intellectual" loosely here, especially when in regard to the "birther" phenomenon.)

Both articles point out that this self-imposed echo chamber allows for unconventional, erroneous and just plain stupid ideas to develop a life, and sadly, an audience of believers. Often, as we are learning, with deadly consequences.