Nice article on echo chambers by Dave Weinberger over at Salon. A few key quotes:
Posted by bug to Media at February 21, 2004 5:55 PM | TrackBackConversations iterate differences within agreement... The fact that conversations start from a base agreement is not a weakness of conversations. In fact, it's a requirement.
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No, if you want to see a real echo chamber, open up your daily newspaper or turn on your TV. There you'll find a narrow, self-reinforcing set of views. The fact that these media explicitly present themselves as a forum for objective truth, open to all ideas, makes them far more pernicious than some site designed to let people examine the 8,000 ways Hillary is a bitch or to let fans rage about how much better Spike was on "Buffy" than he'll ever be on "Angel."
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We are at a dangerous time in the Internet's history. There are forces that want to turn it into a place where ideas, images and thoughts can be as carefully screened as callers to a radio talk show. The "echo chamber" meme is not only ill-formed, but it also plays into the hands of those who are ready to misconstrue the Net in order to control it. We'd all be better off if we stopped repeating it and let its sound fade.
I recommend Seth Finkelstein's analysis on this issue, http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/000546.html . Seth draws a distinction between an "echo chamber" and a "choir" (as in preaching to the...). A choir is a bunch of people who believe the same thing. An echo chamber, in contrast, is a room where you think you are hearing a lot of voices, but they're mostly echoes. In other words, the problem with an echo chamber is that institutional effects magnify the apparent numbers and depth of agreement, so that only a few commited voices sound like a crowd. An echo chamber is a fundamentally misleading phenomenon, while a choir is simply the natural tendency for like minded people to associate.
I disagree somewhat with Seth in that I think even a choir can be a problem, as it reduces the possibility for self criticism. But if you're already convinced that you're right, then maybe that's not much of a concern.
Posted by: Cypherpunk at February 22, 2004 1:13 PMI like that distinction. And extending the analogy, when preaching to the choir one might play the Devil's advocate, but that's different than letting the Devil himself set the terms of the debate. The former is deliberately structured to improve the choirs thinking, the latter to weaken it.
Posted by: Bug at February 22, 2004 10:16 PM