"Enough about you"

“Does it endanger what passes for the national conversation if we're all talking at once? What if "talking" means typing on a laptop, but the audience is too distracted to pay attention? The whole notion of "media" is now much more democratic, but what will the effect be on democracy?”
This quote is taken from an Editorial in Time magazine written by Brian Williams (anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News).

This quote draws our attention to a potentially dangerous effect that the blog culture, as well as some emerging “personalized” features of Mass Media, could have on people’s perception of world’s events and news. The recent burst in blog’s activities creates unlimited opportunities for everybody to get into Cyberspace and express one’s opinion but are they necessarily being heard? Should all of them to be heard? Would we find ourselves to be preoccupied with talking or with listening to only what we want to hear? Otherwise, as this editorial article noted correctly, we will become “too busy celebrating ourselves and listening to the same tune we already know by heart”.

This article emphasizes the important rising trend in Cyberspace that comes along with a dissemination of blogs – creation of personalized and one-sided “Universes” that are shut off to the incoming breeze of different views and analysis. I believe, many times blogs are overwhelmed by one person’s opinion (not surprisingly, by that blog’s host) even when it welcomes the opposite views. I would guess it has to do with Psychology - the blog sites are more likely to attract the posts from similar-minded people that are united under an umbrella of shared experiences and comfort of close interaction. That is important to keep in mind because, as once was said in another editorial article,- “... the blogs often resort to blood sport in their commentaries on politics and life, with many repeating and reporting without fact checking” (The Wild, Wild web).

If we take this tendency and multiply it by “television networks that already agree with your views, Internet programs ready to filter our all but news you want to hear” then, yes, we could form the soft informational cushion that does not disturb our personal world. After all, we usually have enough to worry about in our own lives than to add up more unfamiliar, “out-of-the-box" information to it. On the other hand, if we want to keep our mind active then we should intentionally keep it open to different sources of information as well.

References:
Enough about you (editorial). Williams, Brian. Time, 0040781X, 12/25/2006, Vol. 168 Issue 26, p78-78
The Wild, Wild Web. Zuckerman, Mortimer B.U.S. News & World Report; 12/5/2005, Vol. 139 Issue 21, p76-76