I am concerned about the rise of personalised media presentation of "facts" and news. More and more these days I find that when I read web pages some parts of the page relate to other pages I may have viewed recently, or even to emails. Advertising gurus may think this is a good thing, but now my concern is that I can no longer have even approximate certainty when I view a web page that others viewing the "same" page will see the same textual representation. Common discourse will become harder as each individual will see different texts, very possibly biasing the significance and meaning.
At present I think the core text is being presented without modification, though in the future even this may not happen. Arguably ths presentation is still suficiently crude that readers can see through it, and attempt to filter out any presentation bias, though this can surely still cause problems.
Those of us who still read standard non personalised printed material can still be reasonably sure that we are accessing well defined resources, but the rise of electronic dissemination seems to be making this harder.
At present I think the core text is being presented without modification, though in the future even this may not happen. Arguably ths presentation is still suficiently crude that readers can see through it, and attempt to filter out any presentation bias, though this can surely still cause problems.
Those of us who still read standard non personalised printed material can still be reasonably sure that we are accessing well defined resources, but the rise of electronic dissemination seems to be making this harder.
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