Tunnel Vision (or, the Algorithmic Universe)
Much has been said about the alleged, ever-shrinking attention span of humanity (and maybe we’ll cover that topic in the future), but, there is something that is happening that is much more obvious, blatantly real, and, indeed, very dangerous: Tunnel Vision.
We’ve all heard of Tunnel Vision before, we all know what it means, but what does this article mean by it? And what does it have to do with algorithms?
Have you ever seen the movie, “The Number 23", starring Jim Carrey? If not, it’s a movie about a man who becomes obsessed (focused) on the number 23, and starts seeing it everywhere, and in everything. This is certainly not a new phenomena, nor is its linkage to the number 23 new (hail Eris); but, it is woven to a cliché as old as time: “what you see is what you get"-*.
In the movie, as Jim Carrey’s character continues to search for the number 23, he keeps finding it and synchronizing with it, until it becomes the central point of his paradigm; it becomes the focal point of his Tunnel Vision (aha!).
More and more, we are seeing the Internet as a whole, and certainly all of the social media platforms, rely on algorithms to keep their users interested and engaged. It certainly satisfies that need for the platforms themselves, and the advertisers who fund them; however, these algorithms end up serving as a double-edged sword, cutting both forward and back!
Speaking of back, let’s take a step there. Have you ever noticed the algorithm at play? I’ll give an example: I rarely use Twitter anymore, but when I was logged on to it recently, I clicked like on a picture of Katy Perry, that I absolutely adored, and then when the feed refreshed, there were many more posts of Katy Perry in my feed. This is the work of the algorithm.
“So what?”, you might say, “why is more Katy Perry dangerous?”. Well, more Katy Perry is certainly good for everyone, IMHO, but the problem isn’t with Katy Perry, it’s in this function of the algorithm, and how it leads to our earlier point: Tunnel Vision!
So let us take the example of a young man who is heavily online. He might see a post on the fringe of what might be called extreme, agree with it a little bit, and click like. No harm, no foul, right? Next time his feeds refresh, he’ll see more of that content, maybe he likes a few more of those posts. Next time his feeds refreshes, he’ll see even more of that content, begin to identify himself more with those ideas, and the more he continues to engage with it, the more of it he gets: *-“what you click on, is what you get.”!
The previous example doesn’t even have to go into extreme ideas to still be dangerous (referencing the YouTube rabbit hole of the late 2010’s), but even things as simple as republicans vs democrats, and all the various sources of division within our society. Each time this young man, or, for that matter, any person logs onto their Internet, they are being fed a more stringently exclusive set of ideas that are tailor-made to hold their attention and focus (Tunnel Vision), and is continuously put in front of their eyes via the algorithms, to the point where these are the only ideas, and everything else is on the peripheral — out of sight!
In conclusion, I don’t believe the algorithms were made for this purpose, yet it is a consequence of their existence, and if one were to wonder why the ideological environment is so inextricably polarized, and continues to grow so, this is the issue we all need to look at, think upon, and begin to draw some solutions.
— complexpoints.
