Is the Internet a wonderful development for democracy?

comments to : Cass R. Sunstein, "The Daily We: Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?." Boston Review, October 20, 2003

Is the Internet a wonderful development for democracy?

In many ways we can say yes, but there are lot of threats.
One of them is tendency of consumers to "filter" what they see.
In the article is a lot of good examples like Broadcast.com, Sonicnet.com about music and fashion.. but example like Zatso.net is the most important one. I think that, is not so good innovation to filter of the news from ordinary live. For example I prefer one TV News in my home, but I´m still watching the TV News in other TV station, and this give me a much bigger view on social and public live. We can´t choose only infromation from one political party, because any political party is for 100 % good and another for 100% bad.

In my opinion is good to filtrate in entertainment (music, TV shows..), but we cannot loose our touch with public live and filtering only information in which we are interested, because live around us changing us like one peace. Also information in which we are not interested changing our ordinary live.
We have to keep our heterogeneity in view on the life !!!
Some one can say, this was here before, you could choose which newspaper u can read. I agree, but how author saying and he is right : The difference is that a dramatic increase in individual control over content, and a corresponding decrease in the power of general interest intermediaries, including newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters .

Common people, we are creating our new censorship!!

Example from life : „Your eyes may come across a story about Germany, or crime in Los Angeles, or innovative business practices in Tokyo, and you may read those stories although you would hardly have placed them in your "Daily Me."
There was also good examples from "censoring" in our normal lives and our „second lives“ 

Two good ideas from article :
„A fragmented communications market will change things significantly. “ Good example white people in US and for African Americans and the ten most highly rated programs of this people.
„It is exceedingly rare for a site with an identifiable point of view to provide links to sites with opposing views; but it is very common for such a site to provide links to like-minded sites. “
Another good question from article is : Why does group polarization occur?
I prefer more the first explanation. :)

In the end i would like to say again something filtering. It is about our choice, if we still would like to hear view from the other side. I hope so that we still want hear!!

It´s up to us to make a good decision and don´t use the filter for information about life around us!

Btw : very good article 