Welcome to the new digital reality. Hint: It is whatever you made it.
As real estate agents, we're used to creating custom searches for our buyers. When a buyer contacts us, we carry on a dialog intended to help us find out how best to assist them. We find out what they want in a house and how much they feel comfortable spending, their time frame, and whether or not they've been prequalified for any necessary financing. Then we sit down at the computer and create a search which we save under their name. We usually set the search up to email them whenever any new properties that meet their requirements come on the market. They appreciate this and it helps them understand what is available that might suit their needs.
What we don't do is to send them houses in areas and price ranges which they don't want and can't afford. "Sure," you say. "That would be a waste of time and only confuse them." It's only common sense to give them what they want, isn't it.
Unfortunately, this concept, when utilized by many of the common search engines on the Internet, can lead to unfortunate and divisive results. I'll explain.
We all tend to read information which either confirms or agrees with the knowledge and opinions we already have. This is nowhere more true than when applied to political opinions. Progressives like to read information written by other progressives. Likewise with conservatives. People may sometimes read an article which espouses diverging views, but they usually stay with material which makes them feel comfortable.
When applied to the real estate community, many people may be excused for only reading articles which are oriented towards how the housing crisis is getting better and how real estate is a good investment. Please note that I'm not arguing with the orientation of the articles, I'm only using this as an example.
When you do a search on Google, the software uses 57 different metrics to identify you. It retains a record of your prior searches and it custom tailors the results of any particular search based on what it already knows about your interests. This information is also used to place advertisements. After you've built up a little bit of history browsing the Internet, you might be surprised to consistently see ads based on things you've looked up or clicked on in the past. The same thing goes with search results. This is a nice touch and conveniently allows us to interact with only information which we find interesting.
Now, here's the problem. When we run searches, the information is tailored to our interests and we never even see conflicting information. In a non-digital environment, we may screen out conflicting materials, but at least we are given that conscious choice. We aren't even informed that there might be more material available, when a search engine pre-screens its results for us.
My fear is that this will inevitably lead to even greater divides in society than we already have. If people are only given information which confirms their opinions, then they will have an extremely difficult time believing that anyone could have a different set of facts and opinions. This makes the people on the other side of the spectrum appear to be totally irrational. After all, your information is complete (as far as you know) and, yet, they have somehow drawn an opposing conclusion. It's only natural to think that they are "nuts."
This sort of thing could actually be dangerous. I saw the results of a search on Egypt that was requested by two different people. One person got information on the soccer riot deaths and political unrest and the other person only received information about how great Egypt was to visit on vacation with not one result pointing towards possible violence and danger.
I submit to you that we, as a society, are being unwittingly divided by unintended consequences of software which is supposed to be helpful.
The next time you run into someone from the "other" side of the political spectrum, perhaps it would be helpful to keep this possible bias in mind and be a little more polite. They're not totally wrong and you're not totally correct. The truth always lies somewhere in between both ends.
Namaste!
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