KNOWLEDGE & TECHNOLOGY
PERSPECTIVES
STARTER
“I hope we will use the Net to cross barriers and connect cultures.”
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web.
1. Do you think we use the Internet in the way Berners-Lee hoped we would?
2. What might prevent us from using the Internet in this way?
Students should read the quote, and write or say whether you (and others) use the
Internet to share ideas, cross cultural and ethnic barriers, and generally widen their
horizons when they use the Internet
PROBLEM 1: ALGORITHMICALLY MEDIATED
MEDIA
Video: https://youtu.be/prx9bxzns3g?t=3
3.
Why is it becoming increasingly difficult to encounter different
views, tastes, and outlooks to our own online?
4.
Why is it a problem for us as knowers that the editorial bias of
news feeds on social media are usually non-transparent?
5. ChatGPT opportunity: ask ChatGPT how we can overcome the difficulties of
algorithmically mediated media.
6. Can ChatGPT itself help us? Or will it only enforce the related biases?
PROBLEM 2: ECHO-CHAMBERS
Video: https://youtu.be/LHN8hGbg9HU
7. Why does Keen think the Internet causes:
a) The separation of people from opinions and cultures
b) An “echo chamber”
c) The return to a “pre-Copernican” vision of the universe”
d) A feeling of alienation, isolation, and fragmentation?
SUMMARISING THE THREE VIEWS ABOUT THE INTERNET
Task: Choose one of these viewpoints, and research it further. Be ready to make
your case in a debate.
View 1: The Internet connects us to different ideas, values, thinkers, and
perspectives about the world.
View 2: The ‘algorithmically mediated media’ means we cannot connect with
different ideas, values, thinkers, and perspectives about the world.
View 3: Our own inclinations and biases prevent us from connecting with different
ideas, values, thinkers, and perspectives about the world.
Journal entry:
Does technology ensure that we live in an echo-chamber, or enable us to
connect with different ideas about the world?