Читать книгу Living in Information - Jorge Arango - Страница 16

Increasingly, we socialize and get a sense for what’s going on by interacting in information environments. Social networks such as Facebook (which as of December 2017 had 2.17 billion active monthly users), WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Twitter are where many of us catch up with our friends today. Whereas Oldenburg’s third places reinforce a sense of local community by being grounded in a particular place, digital social networks are unfettered by such constraints.⁹ The opinions we’re exposed to in these systems are not those of our neighbors, but those of the people whom algorithms have determined will keep us engaged. The effects on democracy of having citizens inform their world views in such environments is a topic of ongoing study. That said, I can confidently say that engaging with each other in a context where over a quarter of the world’s population is present is bound to have some effect on our ability to act collectively.