The discussion in “The Line Between Clarity and Choas” regarding the Internet being democratic to a fault brings up some interesting and troublesome issues for the near future. The massive availability that the Internet provides essentially bombards people with choices. As argued by Barry Schwartz, having so many choices can end up being counterproductive to the decision making process. As such, the Internet will have to eventually develop a filtration system that will help people make good use of the mass amount of information available to them.
While theoretically viable, there are several problems with the concept of an Internet information filter. Namely, the passage in the article that addresses how search engines like Google will have to eventually start filtering information for its users explicitly fails to address how such filtration will be done.
The first problem with how the filtration would be done is that no search engine will be able to meet every individual’s wants/needs in terms of information; what’s relevant to one person maybe be totally innocuous or useless to another. Unless search engines develop some kind of questionnaire to gauge the person’s values, etc. it would be nearly impossible for the search engine to automatically determine what information may be relevant to a given individual. Even then, if such a questionnaire system did exist, it would still be flawed because people can be inconsistent in the type of information they seek online. Such a situation could lead to people missing out on information that may be extremely valuable to them.
http://www.instituteforstrategicclarity.org/dmp.htm
In addition, the article states that another way to manage this filtration would be for Google to have the extremely subjective "interest of truth at heart.” This statement is extremely troublesome because at the end of the day, search engines like Google are companies that want to make a profit. In fact, the companies of many websites pay a lot of money to be able to be among the first search results listed for a search stemming from a variety of entries. For instance, when I type “yoga apparel,” “yoga clothing,” and “yoga gear” into Google, I get Lululemon as a top result every time. This is a very popular concept in online searching; in fact, many companies dedicate huge amounts of money to getting their name of the results list because it acts as a new form of advertising.
Therefore, in order for Google to have the interest of truth at heart, their entire profit driven system would need to change to reflect the value of truth, rather than the value of a dollar… I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
Therefore, while Schwartz may have a valid and supported point that an abundance of choice can sometimes be a bad thing, his proposed Internet filtration system as a partial solution is simply too flawed to be instated into the Internet system as it is now. Given the above points, there would have to be major changes to the structure of the Internet and how companies derive profits in order to implement that kind of system, which right now, is plainly unrealistic.
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