Projects: February 2007 Archives
PolarFox, my thesis, now has its very own domain. Please thank johnny internet squatter for the silly .info instead of a normal .com. Such is life.
What in God's green Earth is a PolarFox, you might ask? See below for most recent elevator [to the Moon?] pitch.
The average person's media consumption habits are predictable. Individuals tend to reinforce their current beliefs, at most expand the scope (in a rather limited fashion) rather than explore completely new areas, biases, territory. This concept is called polarization - and I think media polarization is a bad thing on the individual level, and a terribly dangerous thing on the group, the aggregate, the societal level. The staggering wealth of information and resources available to the average media consumer does nothing to help them avoid media consumption polarization - in fact doing the exact opposite, even limiting the average consumer to mainstream media (MSM) distribution channels.
My thesis (PolarFox) will explore a number of issues surrounding media consumption biases and polarization. PolarFox will provide a tool to allow individuals an opportunity to escape from the stagnation that can often arise from polarization. The proposed app requires no abnormal action from the individual using PolarFox - the process is transparent and pervasive. PolarFox will force individuals to consume media content that they would otherwise be ignorant of, or consciously [or unconsciously] ignore. This introduction of diversity is paramount in the current climate of information saturation. The future will bring about more and more tools that enable people to search and parse through the vast wealth of available information. The current trends of recommendation systems do not allow for true exploration, they provide links to content that would be of interest - both in subject and bias. These systems place a premium in banality. Revolutionary content is only found in passing internet memes, a powerful but unreliable and unpredictably subjective distribution method.
