Public knowledge

On the one hand, there are things that anyone could find out -- that Diebold election machines are easy to rig, that airport security contains more security theater than actual precautions. On the other hand, there's stuff that people actually learn and think about. The two are not the same.

One problem is that attention is valuable. Another is that many people have sacrificed choice for convenience. Allowing a proxy to select news for you is common: newspapers are proxies, TV news is a set of proxies, SlashDot is a proxy. If you let one proxy dominate your attention, or one set of proxies with similar biases, your information flow will be biased as well.

People seem to like that. Question answerable by Google but not to be found by Googling: to what extent do people add RSS feeds that were mentioned in existing subscribed feeds, vs. no immediate connection?

Public knowledge

On the one hand, there are things that anyone could find out -- that Diebold election machines are easy to rig, that airport security contains more security theater than actual precautions. On the other hand, there's stuff that people actually learn and think about. The two are not the same.

One problem is that attention is valuable. Another is that many people have sacrificed choice for convenience. Allowing a proxy to select news for you is common: newspapers are proxies, TV news is a set of proxies, SlashDot is a proxy. If you let one proxy dominate your attention, or one set of proxies with similar biases, your information flow will be biased as well.

People seem to like that. Question answerable by Google but not to be found by Googling: to what extent do people add RSS feeds that were mentioned in existing subscribed feeds, vs. no immediate connection?