Rob Campbell was quoted in Campaign yesterday lamenting the tendency of people to gravitate online towards views that exactly reflect their own, rather than exploit its diversity and breadth to hear and learn from those expressing a different way of looking at things.
How, in effect, a medium predicated upon openness seems, paradoxically, more to be fueling closed-mindedness than challenging it.
It was an interesting point.
But I guess what it says to me is that the most profound need of the many the internet satisfies is the longing to feel that we are not entirely alone in this world – to be reassured that at least someone, somewhere, also feels how we feel, thinks what we think, likes what we like.
Better, faster, more conveniently than any medium ever invented it helps us advance our desire to be mirrored.
So we don’t see it as the place to look for convergent voices (we’ve felt surrounded by those since birth.)
We see it as the place to seek our twin.
In which case, little wonder so many of us already feel we couldn’t live without it.