Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by figbucket 4760 days ago
Everyone already has a bubble around them. The difference is whether you consciously choose to let information/ideas/people/news in or not.

Making the conscious choice to filter to your preferrences is important and liberating because it enables you more control over the kind of life you want to live.

1 comments

i question the placement of the filter.

by filtering at the source, you will never be exposed to something outside your bubble. the NYT front page (as an example) is great as it covers such a wide array of topics, just browsing over them gives you the chance to learn something new.

if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones?

or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know how your audience/target group/customers tick if you never see the world through their eyes? look at all the nerd-startups solving nerd problems (asana?...) - and how frustrated they all get by the success of tumblr, instagram, etc.

good retail CEOs watch fox news and read the ny post (or equivalents) to get a feel for their customers world.

You're right however part of the freedom comes from choosing where your bubble ends. Consciously choosing where you filter what you allow into your bubble be it NYT front page or fox news etcetera.

>if your current interests and beliefs act as filters, then how will you ever develop new ones?

This partly comes down to being another personal choice and also consider that many things are linked in a way that enables you to develop new interests and beliefs.

One example of this is Wikipedia. Starting from pretty much any point of interest, you can find a great depth of chain linked resources to information you can choose to read and allow influence your interests and beliefs

>or, coming down to the core topic of this site, how will you know your audience... ?

Best to start by building what you know however I realise that's unrealistic. After that you just accept that you can't filter everything because somethings you want in your bubble have baggage. "Every rose has its thorne" as the saying goes.