John Gray
Flies in the Web
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You
By Eli Pariser
Viking 320pp £12.99
It is hardly news that the Internet has made privacy all but impossible. More information about us can be accessed on the Web than was available in the past to our closest friends, and practically anything of importance that we do leaves an electronic trace. If we can all expect to have fifteen minutes of fame, it is also true that hardly anyone can hope for even five minutes of anonymity. Less obvious are the ways in which the Internet has made the variegated forms of life of former times decreasingly viable. In the past each of us could show different sides of our personalities in different contexts, becoming different people as we shifted from one situation or role to another. Some people managed to live several lives, successively or in parallel, moving from one to another as circumstances demanded. Nowadays, with so much of what we have done and been preserved in cyberspace, this complexity is harder to maintain. Transparency to others has made us simpler, and in some sense less free. As Eli Pariser notes, quoting from an academic study on ‘The Googlization of Everything’ by Siva Vaidhyanathan, ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby could not exist today. The digital ghost of Jay Gatz would follow him everywhere.’
The impact of the Internet goes far beyond the simplification of our identities, according to Pariser. Our minds are being actively shaped by ‘personalization’ – a process in which information that fits with what we have revealed about ourselves by browsing the Web is relayed back to
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk