The Mice and the Bubble

Two things about a recent Real Time with Bill Maher got my cylinders clicking.  The most astonishing was the New Rules piece using the story of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse as a way of explaining away any contradictions in Trump's recent collusion with 'city mice' Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi at the expense of 'country mice' Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

And this is the existential crisis of our president: He's an asshole, but he's not a hick.  He represents one group but belongs to another.  I hate to break it to you real Americans, but what Trump likes about Chuck and Nancy is that they're not you.  And he's not one of you. Trust me when Trump watches the Beverly Hillbillies he roots for Mr. Drysdale. And when he tells a crowd, as he often does, "I love you" what he means is that in middle America he found something he had long ago run out of in New York: suckers. Trump voters were played for rubes by the ultimate fast talking city slicker who saw vulnerable people nervous about jobs and the melting pot getting too melty and he told them he'd build a great wall and get their jobs back at the mine and they said, "where do I sign?"  Folks, you didn't make America great again.  You enrolled in Trump University.

Trenchant commentary, reminding us once again that the core agenda of this administration is to con the rubes, and at that it continues to succeed, literally wildly, the way con jobs tend to play out.  Not enough to convince all observers but plenty enough to keep everyone off balance.

The other was more in line with my usual feelings about Bill Maher lately, and gives me an opening to discuss something I've been wanting to write about for a while.   The topic was political correctness and free speech, and specifically an atmosphere increasingly charged with the former ("on both sides" to borrow a phrase) making the latter increasingly difficult to stand up for.   I don't have a quote since it was mostly in conversation, but it could be summarized by these snippets:

Martin Short: ...lack of reading, breakdown of reading
Maher: ... That is all of us when you don't read or you read just what's on your phone, or what's on your computer, what is just fed to you, what you already believe comes back to you.
Rick Phillips: The interet bubble where they self-select what they're going to follow.
Maher: We live in this echo chamber now where you can tune out anything.

Valid kernels of points certainly, although I increasingly find that Bill Maher, omnivorous though he takes pains to be -- he's made a career out of it-- is on the subjects he cares most about as calcified as any of us.  But what about the self-selected internet bubble?  I won't say that I never search for answers that I already know, but while it may not yet be formally proven, the anecdotal evidence is convincing to me that what Eli Pariser has called the filter bubble is real.   It's just that the selection may not be an entirely conscious thing.  Facebook news; Amazon, YouTube and Netflix recommendations; Google searches filtered according to your behavior.  Search results tailored not only to your zip code but to your habits and whims.  We shouldn't completely excuse anyone for stacking the deck of their reading material in favor of their prejudices and preconceived notions.  That's not informing yourself, that's self-medication.  But when search engine algorithms do it for you, for everyone, without their knowledge or consent, you can lose sense of where the boundaries of your knowledge are.

We should be suspicious of solutions to the filter bubble that rely on gatekeeping and tweaking of the algorithms, although both are to some extent in order.  Rather we should cultivate a sense of vigilance and awareness in ourselves.  We should learn ways around the limitations, and use them.

Smart search algorithms that keep us ignorant are just one example of how often and how unwittingly we yield control over the choice of possibilities to Commerce.  Companies take away what you want - subway cars getting smaller and less comfortable while fares go up, iTunes removing features and degrading the "user experience" and air travel. Air travel!  Let's just forget I mentioned it-- and then tell you it's what  "you asked for!"-- unsolicited ads "tailored to your interests", required intelligence-gathering cookies that "enhance your user experience", videos playing automatically when you load articles.

I don't ascribe the tyranny of corporate hegemony over every aspect of our lives to evil.  Certain personalities may be more inclined to take advantage of loopholes that have been widening everywhere for corporations since the dam was burst on corporate participation in governance-- think Citizens United as the crowning achievement of that project.  But evil does not explain the choices actual people make when doors open in turn to greater and greater power, when one's choices of what to do with that power promise greater and greater freedom for oneself and one's own and fewer and fewer obstacles, no matter the price for everyone else.  That response to an irresistible stimulus is an algorithm.