I’ve been thinking about feedback loops lately.
In fact, the industry I currently work in thrives on a feedback loop.
Even though English is not the most widely spoken language in the world, the industries and markets it is used in are all highly influential and strategically important.
For instance, because many, if not all web standards and Internet-based communications were designed in the English-speaking world, in order to jump into the game, you really need to learn a bit of English. The same can be said for the sciences and various fields of engineering (i.e., most of the basic and applied research in these specialties are published in English). Wikipedia has a good entry explaining the positive feedback loop and why English will probably continue to dominate and grow (yey for my livelihood!).
I mention this because I came across a recent piece from The Economist discussing political segregation and neighborhoods, here is the money quote:
“We now live in a giant feedback loop,” says Mr Bishop, “hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear and the neighbourhoods we live in.”
If there is one thing that I do not miss in my life and times in Texas it is residents that have all the tools and access to information, yet only look at certain material that they agree with. I am hardly saying I’m the picture perfect example of cosmopolitan thinking (which of course, I am), but let’s look at an easy example: Christian fundamentalists.
Many of them (at least the ones I was familiar with), only read books written by fundamentalists. Only watch movies and tv shows that are Christianized or music that is blessed by various I-Heart-Jesus groups. Many conversations are entirely unoriginal as they are merely reverberations within an echo chamber.
I should point out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with hanging out or talking to like-minded individuals. Nor am I favor of criminalizing this kind of selective or discriminatory behavior (i.e., if you don’t want to hang out with non-Fundamentalists, go for it). But as noted in that piece in The Economist, much of the mantra devolves into petty group-think.
And fundamentalists are hardly the only group that can be identified and faulted for creating self-fulfilling feedback loops. I’ve met so many hippies out here that personify all of the pot-head stereotypes and unsurprisingly, they all hang out with one another and reinforce that lifestyle.
Again, feedback loops are neither inherently good nor bad but as The Economist notes, when taken to the extreme they have the potential to become violently divisive (or in virtual-space as seen in games like World of Warcraft: the Horde versus the Alliance…). Yankees/Dodgers, Star Trek/Star Wars, Lakers/Celtics, Tyson/five-year olds.