The digital world is increasingly allowing us to only be exposed to the thoughts and ideas that we like or agree with.

I can’t stop thinking about Jonathon Harris.

His latest project World Building in a Crazy World is based on a series of 15 vignettes about the reality of life in a digital world. Its beautiful, simple and intriguing thoughts and ways of understanding, although not new, are welcome reminders.

I have been reading about homogenization: to make equal, uniform, corresponding, or matching. It’s an idea that permeates all discussions surrounding culture, always has and always will. The process of homogenization is sometimes referred to as the McWorld or the McDonaldization of culture that promises to bind us together through consumption of so-called “cultural” commodities.

Should we think digital culture would be any different? If content is created simply with the intent of responding to and re-hashing similar and popular ideas with the goal of attracting page views, why would we think we have access to a broad range of new ideas, theories and thought?

The digital world provides the opportunity to have access to “everything” at anytime. All the information we could ever hope for is at out fingertips. But is it?

Maria Popova tells us that “the smart and systematic culling of off-mainstream interestingness” is the method to counter this imbalance.

Harris talks about this in Our Digital Crisis.

“Most online experiences are made, like fast food, to be cheap, easy, and addictive: appealing to our hunger for connection but rarely serving up nourishment. Shrink-wrapped junk food experiences are handed to us for free by social media companies, and we swallow them up eagerly, like kids given buckets of candy with ads on all the wrappers.”

And as humans we will still tend to act in very human ways.

Have you read Jonathan Harris lately?

In Part 2 I give an example of what I found while doing a little curating for off-mainstream interestingness of my own.