The Daily Me

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Of course, filtering occurs in real life as well. When you read the newspaper, take a scenic drive, or decide what to have for dinner, you are guided by your tastes. However, outside of cyberspace, you might read an article about Egypt on your way to the sports section. Turn the dial toward your favorite radio station and you might stumble upon an old blues song you discover you love but would never have selected as part of your ?Daily Me.? Or, like me, you might walk into a library intending to research vacation accomodations but walk out knowing more about an interesting and hopeful development within the conservative movement. With the advent of personalization software, how will you ever catch something out of the corner of your eye in cyberspace?

Sunstein believes the very fabric of our democracy, which is dependent upon multiple voices and a range of common ground, could be at stake. Creating a ?Daily Me? and engaging in cyber-discussion only with like-minded people, he says, might breed an excessive clubbiness, ignorance of and perhaps contempt for opposing opinions, and, in some cases, even violence. After all, a group like Al Qaeda is as much an outgrowth of the Web?s ability to bring niche interests together as are people who log on to talk about their mutual love of Virginia Woolf, snowboarding, or the Kansas City Royals. Sunstein is not advocating curbing Web discussions, but he suggests we seek ways to address the group polarization that occurs when like-minded people are talking only to each other.

In other words, instead of sitting in front of a computer screen all day, why not go out and experience the beauty of the unexpected, of randomness, and of diversity that you find on the street, in a park?even at the local grocery store? ?No man and no mind was ever emancipated,? as the philosopher John Dewey once said, ?merely by being left alone.?

Anjula Razdan is assistant editor of Utne.

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