The irony of the Internet: Getting stuck in our small world

The Internet was supposed to democratize information, breaking apart the stranglehold that big media channels had in determining what we had access to. Yet, in recent years, Internet sites such as Google and Facebook have become better and better at automatically personalizing and tailoring content to each user. This means we are becoming trapped in a circle of information that we find interesting and exciting, with other - often contrary - information edited out from our view. Instead of editors at big media channels determining what we can see, algorithms are now playing this same role.