I can tell Facebook what I want to see and don't want to see. I can pick my news sources and blogs in Feedly. I can follow only the boards that interest me in Pinterest, make Twitter lists, and select specific Communities in Google+. That's great, right? Sure. In many respects these kinds of choices save us time and make our lives easier. I'm not inclined to read things that don't interest me so why should I bother to weed through them? Well, maybe, just maybe, I'm missing something important.
Remember magazines, anyone? Life, Look, Time, Newsweek? Did you ever read a daily newspaper? These were publications that gave us a little bit of everything. We were exposed to unfamiliar stories and issues and to opinions that differed from our own. Of course, we didn't read every article and editorial anymore than we open every single link today. But they were there for us if we wanted them often complete with pictures. Yes, pictures that we might not otherwise have seen. We were able to broaden our world view and prepare ourselves to be better Jeopardy players just by thumbing through the pages.
The Internet gives us access to just about everything. It's amazing to me what I can see and discover here on the web. How expansive and mind-bogglingly broad it all is! I think we should embrace it and open ourselves up a little more. When we over customize we close ourselves in. We become too fixed and polarized. Have you been watching any of those horribly misleading and divisive political ads? Are you exclusively Fox News or MS NBC? Is it "my way or the highway" ? Perhaps your perspective has shrunk. Maybe you're over customizing.
