The Prison of Empire
a result of our information bubble
Alcatraz
Last week I flew home to Norcal and took a cruise that went around Alcatraz. Viewing the eerie island, I thought it would be a good idea to write about how Alcatraz as a symbol of empire.
I’m not doing that.
Sure, it’s a symbol of order and law in empire, but after thinking about recent events and the political mindset many of my peers have, I decided to go on a bit of a tangent instead...
Empires are ships and foreigners are water. Outsiders cannot have the freedom to just come in behind the walls. Just as ships use the water to stay afloat, crushing it beneath its weight and merciless churning, barbarians are stepped upon and taken advantage of by empires.
​
Coetzee in Waiting for the Barbarians describes how the Empire steamrolled over natives, such as how they held public beatings of innocent natives. The townspeople in the novel feared letting the barbarians free into their town – they cowered at the thought of them roaming just outside their wall. Just as a ship’s hull prevents water from gushing in, the townspeople believe the walls of their town are what stood between them and sinking into barbaric chaos.
When I think of empire, I see titanic walls spanning for miles – protection for citizens from outside harm. Ancient empires have always defined a distinction between inside and outside. They coax citizens with promises of protection, prosperity, and the many amenities of being included. Outside is seen as strange and dangerous. Fear of the outside is what drives empires to erect towering walls, station legions of men at borders, and to create that dichotomy of included and excluded. Moreso, foreigners are put under citizens, because it is only natural to prioritize the subjects above strangers. A social divide is made between the walls. Real life empires inspired the Empire in Waiting for the Barbarians, who carried prejudice against the ‘barbarians’ who haunted the fields outside the town walls. The Empire uprooted barbarians from their homes, tortured them, and killed them. From the Spaniard Empire to the Greek Empire, thousands of foreigners suffered under their hand. This separation made empires isolated to the truth of foreigners and the merits of treating them with decency. Empires become like islands to citizens who don’t dare venture out into the water. A fog of stereotypes and uncertainty distort what is beyond the shores of empire.
Walls still exist today, but they’re not as important to us as they were to people hundreds of years ago. Walls no longer protect us from powerful invaders. The importance of physical walls have declined – modern weaponry has rendered them useless for primary protection. Walls serve as a tool to keep citizens from crossing sides, to stop a few dangerous individuals from slipping through borders.
You could also say we are less isolated than ever before. As walls have been teared down, technology has made it possible to easily connect with people beyond borders to the furthest reaches of the Earth. The telephone, car, plane, internet, social media – there are a plethora of tools in our reach to bring us to anyone in any place of the Earth. It takes so little effort to send a friend request on Facebook to a stranger thousands of miles away. There is little excuse for anyone not to connect to someone totally different from them - we have every opportunity to seek empathy to whoever we we as Orient. No longer are our nations, our empires, isolated islands of society.
Right?
the fog settles in
Growing up, I always saw myself as an open minded person. I thought I valued everyone’s opinion and considered all perspectives of every issue. This was especially prevalent in high school, where the International Baccalaureate program encouraged us to be open minded. IB validated my view of myself, teaching me how to approach everything with consideration.
Junior year I enrolled in a two year course called Information Technology in a Global Society, which studies the effects of different kinds of technology on different groups of people. One of the concepts that stuck out to me was the idea of the Information Bubble, which showed me that I was not the open-minded person I thought I was.
"Your filter is your own personal unique universe of information that you live in online"
Eli Parser
The Information/Filter bubble, as portrayed in Eli Pariser's TED Talk
The Information Bubble acts as a virtual wall that surrounds every individual, except many of us don’t even know about it. Worse of all, it is a wall we all put up ourselves without acknowledging it exists. We are creating our own boundaries – little exclusive empires in which foreign opinions are not welcome. The more I think about it, the more I see this bubble as a prison.
How is this possible?
There are several main causes of our Information Bubbles.
The first is more obvious: We each have the freedom to search whatever we want. When you Google something, how often do you deliberately search for something that challenges your opinions?
Eric Schmidt, who used to be the CEO of Google captures this idea excellently:
“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them”
Eric Schmidt
I know I rarely break out of that comfort zone. Back in high school, while priding myself in my ‘open-mindedness’, I do not recall taking the initiative to challenge my own beliefs. I never took that step of independence. I lived my life comfortably and ignorantly, just like the townspeople in the beginning of Waiting for the Barbarians. This lack of action is what allows the bubble to form – nothing is trying to pierce the membrane, break out of this prison. No one in the town every tried to understand the barbarians, leading the townspeople to feel righteous in their mistreatment of the barbarians. I can only imagine what kind of negativity I have inflicted on other people due to my lethargic ignorance.
​
​
​
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO BRING THE FOLLOWING NEWS
Before you read further, I just found the Ted Talk I watched in my ITGS class back in high school. I highly encourage you to watch it as it applies to the rest of this post. It’s short I promise. Thanks.
The next reason for the existence of this Information/Filter bubble is mostly out of your hands. Whenever you browse the web, your browsing data is being recorded. Search engines log your searches, your Internet Service Provider keeps records of every site you visit, and many websites track every movement of your mouse. All this data allows companies to figure out exactly what you like so that they can advertise products that you will likely enjoy. Search engines like google optimize your search results based on your previous clicks. Thus, whenever you search the web, it is unlikely that you’ll see something that challenges your likes or beliefs. A wall made of algorithms is formed, keeping you isolated from ideas that do not match your consumer profile. Companies, like prison guards, ensure that you always remain contained in this bubble. Similarly, the Empire fed the townspeople in Waiting for the Barbarians ‘rumors’ about the barbarians to antagonize the barbarians and justify their army’s actions.
The last reason is what hits most of my peers and I the most – social media. The election is an exceptional example of this. Prior to the election, many of my friends would talk about how they didn’t know any Trump supporters. Heck, they barely knew any Hillary supports. Their social media platforms, such as Instagram, were flooded with all sorts of Bernie Sanders campaign ads. My peers were confident that Trump had no chance – Bernie would win by a landslide.
And to think that Mr. Sanders didn’t get past the Democratic Primary!
And then Trump won the election…
It caught all of us in shock. How did we not see this?
Social media functions similarly to how search engines optimize results based on your previous clicks an searches. Whatever you ‘like’ on social media, algorithms take note and bring similar content on your feed.
‘Likes’ are just the tip of the iceberg.
Your friends list is what solidifies the iron bars in your Information Prison. Using platforms like Instagram, which my peers used, I can guarantee you that 100% of the time, you will not see content outside of your following list (except for advertisements). And we all follow our friends, who mostly share the same beliefs. Here, the bubble is most evident. The same information is trapped in this bubble – news is stagnant, uniform, and predictable. If all of your friends like Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders will be the only thing you see. You will never realise that there is a whole other region of social media full of Trump supporters. I know this because I lived this.
The isolation of the Information Bubble is best summed up by Mostafa M. El-Bermawy from Wired.
“ The global village that was once the internet was has been replaced by digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day. From your Facebook feed to your Google Search, as your experience online grows increasingly personalized, the internet's islands keep getting more segregated and sound proofed. “
Mostafa M. El-Bermawy
Thus, prison of empire is evident in this Information Bubble. The worst part is that this is not a prison within empire; rather, empire is the prison! The virtual walls being built keep us trapped and isolated from new, raw, challenging ideas. To even see such ideas at this point – it can seem barbaric in nature.
Now more than ever, we need to be conscious of such walls and always, always, always, empathize with different sides and be aware of the most radical of perspectives. It is necessary for us to overcome the empirical nature of news aggregation sites, social media, and search engines. In both our news and how we obtain information - we must stay vigilant in our search of credible and balanced knowledge. Without such initiative, we risk a fog to settle and isolate us from seeing outside our bubble.