As an off-shoot of a side conversation Dan and I have been having here on this post, I got to thinking about the main drawback (in my eyes) of the new “subscription” culture (for lack of a better term) that RSS and the internet in general affords us. Obviously, being able to consolidate the stuff you read and listen to (news particularly) is very convenient, and probably even essential in the days of information overload we live in. The problem is that when there is so much that you have to prioritize what you can read and listen to just for the sake of there never being enough time to read and listen to half the stuff you’d really want to.
While this leads to a very pleasing diet (so to speak) of media consumption, I wonder whether it could be considered a healthy one. To extend the analogy further, no one in their right mind would plan a meal schedule that consisted only of the foods they enjoyed eating the very most, because it would almost certainly lack vital elements that would not make the top of the taste list. Likewise, when we restrict our media input to only what we consciously choose to consume, I can’t help but get the feeling that we will always be missing stuff that we “need” (or should be seeing / hearing), especially the stuff that we can’t imagine or think of being interested in now.
I’m constantly in a state of re-evaluating and trimming my podcast subscription list, because even listening to them for a good number of hours every day while working & driving, there are still too many out there to keep up with. One discipline I’ve had to force myself to maintain is to as it relates to this post is listening to the radio every now and then to hear stuff that I haven’t pre-selected and may hopefully catch me by surprise. Of course, when I say that I’m referring to non-commercial radio; I still get the occasional small dose of the mid to right portion of the dial too (since Emma always wants to listen to B95.1 these days), but like any junk food, I tend to try and stay away from the commercial stations whenever possible. 
After going through a recent round of cleanup on my RSS feeds over the last couple days and starting fresh / caught up with a more manageable sized list, I kind of feel the need to go back out and add a few more blogs and sites I don’t generally agree with to the list, or at least ones that tend to give a wide range of perspectives on the issues.
TV is notably lacking from this list and I don’t feel too bad about being “unbalanced” in leaving that out of my media diet either. It’s generally too inefficient (time-wise) for me to handle, although I will make exceptions for rare shows like Lost.
At first glance, this may seem like another boring tech post, but in my mind it goes a little deeper than that. I think that our culture in general is experiencing this same phenomena (selective media consumption) in a way that was never before possible, and I honestly think it’s a great danger to any society. Considering (even seeking out) other points of view and new information is vital to living together in any context, and maybe my perspective is whacked out but that’s something I see as seriously lacking in our culture today. Whether it’s politics, religion, or any other subject that generally divides us, there is a constant barrage of information in all sorts of formats that strives to hammer home the party line of whatever the source’s side is supporting, and if we embrace those streams that we tend to agree with to the exclusion of the others we are setting ourselves up for division and lack of understanding.
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[...] Sounds like Steve didn’t learn from the Enron scandal or maybe he did learn it from Enron. I also love how this isn’t big news on Digg, where everything Apple is pushed to the top. It reminds me of the discussion on Jared’s blog. [...]
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I think you are touching on a concept that I recently read about in _Wisdom_of_Crowds_ called groupthink. I vaguely remember DaveZ using the term before. Anyway, it happens when a bunch of people who pretty much think the same about the world get together and slap each other on the back about how great each other are because they all think alike. The problem with groupthink is that it breeds intellectual laziness and allows really stupid things to seem really smart. One example the author used was the Enron disaster, where a large group of really, really smart people failed to call each other on their crack ideas. The problem, he argued, was that Enron was filled with people who had basically the same education, professional experience, and outlook on life. Regardless of their cultural diversity they were not diverse in thought, and stupid ideas passed through the lousy filter they made.
Groupthink makes people think better of themselves and worse of their detractors, if you ever even hear from them. Groupthink ends up just arguing against ideas that don’t really exist because it’s so circular and nobody in the group can hold up a diverging opinion. Lately, If my world view hasn’t been challenged by what I read I get bored. Maybe I’m being reactionary against the groupthink I see taking up so much space on the internet but I’m sick of being cheated out of all the angles in all their nuanced glory. More and more I’ve been relying on a person’s tone as an indicator if I should give their material my time or not. A gentle tone that can argue multiple positions with clarity and rigor is a godsend.
Well said.
Nate: That is very interesting because I think the same about Digg. However, I do have it as one of my top priority feeds that I keep up with regularly. I know this is on a smaller scale of what you are referring to but I think Digg was one of the main reasons Jared posted on this subject. I think your comments are interesting and true about “community” sites like digg because a large majority of the media from those sources is centered, look at digg it’s full of wii, apple and linux. Proving I need to be very cautious of patting myself on the back.
Jared: I really get Nate’s point but I’m not clear on yours. If your point is the bombardment of media, I tackle it by organization and priorities. I do this with all my e-mail and feeds. My feeds as you know are prioritized to what I “need” to read most. Digg is on the top because it categorizes most of my already subscribed feeds, even though it is centered it does filter out the good (even with the bad) and it’s very fast to scan through. Most importantly if I miss all other feeds prioritized below digg/techmeme and the few others I wouldn’t miss too much since the majority was already dugg.
I do agree that subscribing to media that you may not normally want because you need multiple viewpoints.
My main point on this post wasn’t really about Digg specifically, although it is somewhat related. It’s almost a counter argument to my previous statement about not liking Digg and preferring to subscribe to a larger number of lower volume feeds from people I trust more to deliver good content.
I branched it off into this post because I think there’s a danger in taking a more selective approach (like I advocated as an alternative to following sites like Digg).
But the point of this one is broader than that - I think that it’s a problem anytime you fill your list of things to read / watch / listen to with only those things that you know you already like or agree with. (see Nate’s example about “groupthink”).
The problem with that is that you never expose yourself to stuff that you don’t already approve of or agree with, and that leads to eventually forming invalid opinions on many subjects. It further leads (more often in politics and religious arenas) to very heated but artificial divisions / disagreements because the group that all thinks the same way starts building up their own strawman picture of what the other side thinks or believes, only to knock it down, which is easy to do, since the built it for that purpose.
The obvious fault in that is that they are not only making up stuff about what the other side thinks (which is wrong in itself) rather than talking with them about it and honestly listening, but it’s compounded by the fact that since they have isolated themselves from ever really hearing what the other side says, those made up positions are totally inaccurate, so they end up arguing against something no one actually believes (like Nate mentioned above).