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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
What the Internet is Hiding from You
In "The Filter Bubble," Eli Pariser explores the dangers of personalized internet content and the impact it has on politics, society, and individual perspectives. He proposes solutions for a more diverse and informed online experience.
It’s not unusual to feel overwhelmed by the seeming infiniteness of the internet.
After all, there is a mind-boggling amount of data out there.
Here are some numbers that’ll give you a sense of what’s going on: Over the course of a typical day, 900,000 blog posts are created, 50 million tweets are sent, 60 million updates are logged on Facebook and 210 billion (that’s right, billion!) emails are sent. And this is just the tip of the internet iceberg.
If that’s still difficult to comprehend, here’s another way of looking at it. As the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, puts it: To record and store the two thousand years of human communication prior to 2003, one would need five billion gigabytes of space. Yet this amount of storage would only hold two days of communication in 2011.
This overwhelming amount of data is the main reason people have embraced the personalization of the internet. Filters such as the recommendation features that many sites offer simply make the internet a more navigable place.
Media analyst Steve Rubel even has a term for what people experience when faced with the unfiltered vastness of the internet: the attention crash.
Today, it’s so easy and cheap for people all around the world to communicate and create content that there’s no way to catch it all. People jump from an email to a YouTube clip to a news site and so on without any focus or capacity to identify what’s relevant.
This is why the giants of the internet – companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon – started offering personalized filters that uniquely match results with a person’s individual tastes and preferences. With these filters in place, scrolling through the data becomes less overwhelming and finding and identifying relevant information is a whole lot simpler and faster.
Imagine if Netflix, Amazon or iTunes offered no personalization features. You’d have to scroll through hundreds of thousands of titles, categorized alphabetically or by genre alone, making it the type of daunting task that you’d be loath to undertake at all.
The Filter Bubble (2011) offers an insightful and critical look at the internet. Specifically, it puts under the microscope the dangerous consequences of data collection and the way it is used to personalize the internet. Discover just how many things are being hidden from you every time you click the search button, and why you shouldn’t always take internet search results at face value.
The Filter Bubble (2011) explores the hidden algorithms that shape our online experiences and how they limit our exposure to diverse perspectives. Here's why this book is worth reading:
…personalized filters limit what we are exposed to and therefore affect the way we think and learn.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Get startedBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
What is the main message of The Filter Bubble?
The main message of The Filter Bubble is how personalization algorithms shape our online experience and limit our access to diverse information.
How long does it take to read The Filter Bubble?
The reading time for The Filter Bubble varies, but it typically takes several hours. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.
Is The Filter Bubble a good book? Is it worth reading?
The Filter Bubble is a thought-provoking book worth reading. It sheds light on the importance of being aware of the online information bubble we create around ourselves.
Who is the author of The Filter Bubble?
The author of The Filter Bubble is Eli Pariser.