Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Beware of Online Filter Bubbles (Review, Video) *Your Internet information is being controlled!*

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Map of the Internet by the Opte Project


What We Want to See Versus What We Need to See Will the Internet continue to be beneficial to democracy and freedom? Eli Parser raises concerns that the information we are receiving via the Internet is filtered by providers such as Google search and Facebook. Facebook edits the friends' posts you see by the pattern of interests you have shown, what you have clicked on. Pariser calls this an "invisible algorithmic editing of the Web". Google reviews 57 signals about you, including your location, the type of computer you use, and the Internet browser you use, to personally tailor the search results you receive, i.e. customized query results. Therefore, everyone sees their own individual results. Pariser gives an example of his and friends' different Google results for the search query "Egypt", illustrating the vastly different results each received. It's not just Facebook and Google, this is pervasive across the Internet, including Yahoo News, Huffington Post, Washington Post, New York Times, et. al. are all provide some degree of personalization and therefore filtering. Pariser notes, "This results in an Internet showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see".

Filter Bubbles and Your Information Universe Eli Pariser continues quoting Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, "It will be very hard for people to watch or consumer something that has not in some sense been tailored for them". Pariser says a filter bubble is all these algorithms, personalizations, and customizations combined to tailor the individual Internet experience. This is "your own personal, unique Universe of information that you live in online". The problem is that you don't decide what is in your filter bubble, the providers and their algorithms do. "More importantly, you don't actually see what gets edited out."

Important Information Versus Irrelevant Information Your future aspirational self versus more impulsive present self determines what you see on the Web. These algorithmic filters weight what you click on first, therefore your impulsive, perhaps less relevant, clicks are more important in designing your Information Universe. Therefore, Pariser says this "information diet" of yours can be skewed to "information junk food".

Myth of Internet Freedom of Information? In our prior broadcast world, there were gatekeepers, editors who controlled the flow of information, who determined what see saw on TV and what we heard on the radio. The emergence of the Internet removed these gatekeepers, at least initially. Eli Pariser maintains, "that is not actually what is happening right now". "What we are seeing is a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones." Further, these algorithmic gatekeepers do not have "embedded ethics" while they "curate the world for us" and decide what we get to see and what we do not get to see on the Internet.

Filter Bubble Parameters and the Web of One These algorithmic gatekeepers are determining what we see, our Information Universe, by sorting by relevance. Eli Pariser asserts that additional parameters, filters should be included, such as important information, uncomfortable information, challenging information, and other points of view. He also notes that a good functioning democracy needs a good flow of information. Pariser gives the example of newspapers circa 1915. Are we back in 1915 on the Web? Do we need to break the information logjam again? Pariser thinks so. The new algorithmic gatekeepers need to add more parameters and open the flow of information to include a sense of "public life" and "civic responsibility". Further, these algorithmic gatekeepers and what is being filtered should be transparent. Ultimately, we need control of the algorithmic gatekeepers to decide "what gets through and what doesn't", what is in our Information Universe on the Internet. The Internet needs to introduce, connect, add perspective to people and ideas for us. The algorithmic gatekeepers are creating a Web of One.

Beware Online "Filter Bubbles" As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our world-view. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.




About Eli Pariser



Shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Eli Pariser created a website calling for a multilateral approach to fighting terrorism. In the following weeks, over half a million people from 192 countries signed on, and Pariser rather unexpectedly became an online organizer. The website merged with MoveOn.org in November 2001, and Pariser -- then 20 years old -- joined the group to direct its foreign policy campaigns. He led what the New York Times Magazine called the "mainstream arm of the peace movement" -- tripling MoveOn's member base and demonstrating how large numbers of small donations could be mobilized through online engagement.

In 2004, Pariser became executive director of MoveOn. Under his leadership, MoveOn.org Political Action has grown to 5 million members and raised over $120 million from millions of small donors to support advocacy campaigns and political candidates. Pariser focused MoveOn on online-to-offline organizing, developing phone-banking tools and precinct programs in 2004 and 2006 that laid the groundwork for Barack Obama's extraordinary web-powered campaign. In 2008, Pariser transitioned the Executive Director role at MoveOn to Justin Ruben and became President of MoveOn’s board; he's now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

His book The Filter Bubble is set for release May 12, 2011. In it, he asks how modern search tools -- the filter by which many of see the wider world -- are getting better and better and screening the wider world from us, by returning only the search results it "thinks" we want to see.


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Sunday, May 8, 2011

Spiritual Transhumanism (Review, Video) *Human 2.0: The Relevance of God in a Transbiological World*

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Human 2.0 and God in a Transbiological World: The Compatibility of Religion and Transhumanism


[Editor's Note] This post is one of a series to explore spiritual transhumanism. The speaker reviewed is Dorothy Deasy, a Christian existentialist, who spoke at the Transhumanism and Spirituality 2010 seminar held by the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Ms. Deasy presented a good overview of what spirituality and organized religion will be encountering in a post-human, trans-human, trans-biological world. The world view of some religions is much more compatible with this future society than others and will be explored in a future post. For the purposes of this post and Deasy's presentation, Methodism and Mormonism are incidental and not specifically relevant. Ms. Deasy asked important questions and made good points to utilize as a framework for reviewing Human 2.0 and God in a transbiological world.

How Do We Reconcile Spirituality With Transhumanism? Atheists versus Religious Fundamentalists: Are Spiritual Transhumanists the Middle Way? This post reviews the first 6:15 of the presentation and video below by Dorothy Deasy.

What Does Spirituality Mean? Is an Electronically or Pharmacologically Induced Religious Experience the Same as Spirituality? Dorothy Deasy answers, "Both give us a sense of euphoria, both allow us to step outside our own egos to observe our own neurotic behaviors, both may trigger feelings of unity. So what's the difference? A drug wears off. Spirituality is incorporating insight from peak experiences into our everyday lives. Spiritual engagement is ongoing, allowing access to that part of us that is more fundamental than the 'I', that which creates the 'We'. It teaches that our lives are interconnected with lives of others. It reshapes our being, so that we strive not to simply repeat the peak experience, but to live up to and into those images of ourselves and others. It is not simply a feeling, but a call to action and interaction. Spirituality is the growing realization that we are connected to all of humanity and that to do harm to others is to do harm to ourselves. The uniting role of spirituality is borne out by science." She adds, "Empathy is a part of our evolutionary development". Deasy quotes Jeremy Rifkin, "We are actually soft-wired...for sociability, attachment..., affection, companionship, and the first drive is to actually belong".

Spiritual Experiences Are Biological Experiences: We Are Biological Beings Dorothy Deasy states that spiritual experiences are actually biological experiences. "Through brain research, we are actually able to see the biological processes underlying our experiences of transcendence and our connections with others. Therefore, "it is not an either/or experience, but two different, and non-conflicting, ways of describing the same [spiritual] experience." That is, science and religion are describing the same experience, but from different viewpoints. Deasy mentions and quotes from "The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World" by Zach Lynch and from research by Dr. Andrew Newberg ("The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience"). The point is that "Western culture, rooted in dualism, poses false choices between belief systems, such as religion versus science, free market versus justice, and mysticism versus biochemical reactions. We are biological beings and as such we experience everything, even our most profound of experiences, through our bodies. Because we understand how the machinery works, does not negate the importance of what that experience means."

The Transhuman Road Ahead Deasy begins, "It is becoming clear as we move further into the 21st century, that humanity has within reach the ability to alter the body human and to influence the trigger points of life itself. What is less clear is whether our ethical, moral, and spiritual development can keep pace with our technological prowess." Transhumanist describe the biological, medical, and technological developments as the "next stage of evolution, which is perhaps more accurately described at Human 2.0. It is not so much evolution as industrialization applied to biology." Deasy notes that transhumanists, by referring to evolution and a new species, could place unenhanced humans as inferior and outcasts. She quotes Jeremy Rifkin and the critical role of empathy in human development. "He notes we went from blood ties to religious affiliation to nationalism, and currently emerging is the extension of empathy to the biosphere."

Two Concurrent Paradigms Dorothy Deasy sees a natural evolution paradigm, driving individuals towards empathy to the biosphere and "radical cooperation". The other paradigm is the transhuman evolution paradigm, that, "without attention to spirituality, and its emphasis on interdependence, will take us someplace altogether different." She quotes theologian Ted Peters, "We should play human in the imago dei sense - that is, we should understand ourselves as created co-creators and press our scientific and technological creativity into the service of neighbor love, of beneficence." Paul Tillich, a Christian existentialist, said, "It is not the technologies that represent the risk, it is how we develop and apply the technologies."

The Compatibility of Religion and Transhumanism by Dorothy Deasy Presented at Transhumanism and Spirituality 2010, held 1 October 2010, 9:00am to 5:00pm MDT at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Marriott Library, Gould Auditorium.

Abstract: As we move further into the 21st century humanity has within reach the ability to alter the body human to such an extent as to give rise to a new post-human species. What is less clear is whether our ethical, moral and spiritual development can keep pace with our technological prowess. This paper will take the position that our faith communities are in a unique position to speak up for the need to hold both God and science together in our lives, to check human hubris and offset individual motives in exchange for ethical standards that support social justice.



About Dorothy Deasy


Dorothy Deasy is a freelance design researcher. She specializes in the user’s context and strategic qualitative projects using techniques such as immersion, ethnography, observation, and indirect inquiry. Her undergraduate degree is in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. She is currently working on her Masters of Applied Theology. A Christian existentialist, her thesis is on spirituality for a transhuman age. “Still we struggle against the tides, against the magnets in our genes, which pull us together, reminding us that we are not alone, but the universe itself.” (from the poem Magnets In Our Genes)

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