Everyone is something, and that something is a product of circumstances. Who your parents are, where you live, and the choices that you make. It all shapes you. Then, you shape your circumstances and move your environment in the direction you want.

It’s a sort of paradox. Which comes first?

Missouri, my home, has been moving to the right over the past ten years. It’s a mix of Midwestern, Southern, and traditional Americana. So, it comes as no surprise then that given the stagnation of the middle-class and rapid changes brought by globalism there’s a tenancy here to hold on. For dear life. Our nickname is the “Show-Me” state. We don’t trust idealistic prescriptions.

Off-shoring jobs will help everyone? Really? Global warming? Where’s the bulletproof proof? Government can solve our problems? Show me how.

This isn’t to say we’re dyed in the wool conservatives. We’re not. We just just have a tenancy to be skeptical of fantastic claims. You say taxing less won’t hurt the deficit? I call bullshit. There’s a reason Harry Truman was a Democrat.

But, if who we are is a product of our circumstances and personal choices, then I can’t but help wonder what the consequences of globalism will be for us. Missouri’s two biggest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City are fighting suburbanization. Cheap transportation has relegated us to “flyover country” status. Cheap labor and free trade has extended the “rust belt” west.

It’s difficult for us to compete for “creative” knowledge-based jobs too.

Certainly, there are areas in-state that can compete, but they tend to be removed from today’s issues. Springfield, my hometown, can fight back with a low cost of living and lax regulations. Jackson County can’t. And, this environment is pitting urban against rural, members of the working class against business owners. Evangelical Christians against non-believers.

In short, we’re a microcosm of America… as it was.

You see, Missouri is too white to reflect America today because it’s not changing with the country. We’re staying Christian. We’re staying isolated from trendy cultural centers, and we’re staying rooted in the past. That’s why we’re “moving” right. That’s why our  bellwether trend ended in 2008. Our healthy skepticism targets what is actively hurting us and ignores what isn’t. When you are a WASP you don’t tend to have the problems that people on Welfare do.

Then again, if who we are is a product of where we live and the choices we make… all of that could change. There could be a realization that what happens abroad impacts us in St. Charles County. Or a limited government model could fail to provide on it’s promise.

If that does happen, just as quickly our skepticism will turn on other things.

What scares me the most, however, is that if we keep moving from being a political bellwether what  happens? I don’t know. But, I am afraid that it would cause us to lose our “Show Me” mentality. It’s been created by a longstanding of balance powers. One forged in the depths of guerrilla warfare during the Civil War, solidified after World War II, and maintained through today.

It’s loss would be a shame.

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has an interesting podcast from last month. From their Digital Campus website:

Check it out at: http://digitalcampus.tv/.

For a free country, the United States is a bigger fan of censorship than it likes to admit. Sure, the Constitution protects free speech. We have an independent judiciary, and we govern ourselves through elected representatives. But, Americans censor themselves everyday without realizing it. Most importantly, our ultimate fear of a strong and centralized power may not be worth the attention that we lavish on it.

There’s another threat out there, and we ignore it all of the time.

Big Brother, in our current situation, isn’t who we think he is. He can be an overly powerful person or group, but in America I’d argue that he doesn’t just take this form. He’s us. And we love him.

Take the Tea Party. Championing small government and free markets, this group of conservatives have hyperventilated over the past two years about an alleged infringement of our liberties by the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Conversely, liberals routinely are up in arms about powerful monied interests like the Koch brothers… who, they argue, wield a disproportionate amount of power.

In each case, there is a fear that “other” groups are trying to control what we see, know, and hear. Be it Rupert Murdoch or NPR, Americans distrust other people’s interpretation of fact. We’re vigilant for external censorship, but never seem to be when looking in the mirror.

Over the past few years, I’ve railed against what I see as technology-enhanced information biases. Among their problems and causes:

• The Internet makes it easy to produce, proliferate, and share information. So [...]
• [...] traditional news sources have segmented allowing people to pick among them. Moreover, [...]
• [...] our biases provide an incentive for us to read, watch, or listen to things that fit our world-view. Worse yet [...]
• [...] this is made worse by a saturated media market full of producers competing for our attention. Of these, those those who reinforce our world-view usually win out. [Also,]
• [...] many cost barriers to media production have disappeared, so professionalization has decreased. So, [...]
• [...] anyone can pretend to be an “expert” while [...]
• [...] it’s difficult to tell who creates what.

Yes. I know that this is an argument that I’ve repeated ad-naseum, but reading Wired today I came across another example that changed my perception of the problem.

In a TED presentation, Eli Pariser argued that the Internet has allowed us to encase ourselves in “information bubbles.” Taking my assessment of bias, he attacks it from another direction by highlighting  ”junk food algorithms.”  You see many web tools are behaviorally driven. Using Facebook as an example, if I click on links from liberal friends then it will eventually learn to show only links from my liberal friends.

Pariser argued, essentially, that we as a society have moved from an age were people acted as the gatekeepers of information to one where programs do. Next, he pointed out his desire for developers to make sure that their programs ensure diverse and representative information continues to be shared. A diversity of viewpoints is, after all, necessary to arrive at an informed conclusion.

While his point is interesting, I’d argue that he still opens himself to a dangerous counter-argument.

Algorithm driven or not, web search results are queried by people. Not programmers. Ultimately, people are responsible for the material they search for; both past and present. Since this is the case, doesn’t tinkering disregard their ability to choose? Doesn’t it amount to censorship? Here is where my perception shifted.

The answer, I would argue, depends on how “freely” you believe that people can choose to search for information, and how biased they can be.

On one hand, if people can independently and freely choose what they search for, then creating an algorithm which “learns” preferences isn’t a bad thing. Adjusting to ignore past choices must then amount to censorship. But, on the other hand if they are like I argued – they have biases and habits (exacerbated by new media) which create a self-reinforcing cycle – then the answer is no.

The answer is no because algorithm programmers aren’t choosing winners and losers. Instead, they are directly combating censorship. They’re targeting self-censoring behavior.

Sometimes, people get so caught up in the pursuit of personal liberty that they fail to realize it’s possible to censor oneself without consciously choosing to do so. In a way, then, we arrive at an instance of Big Brother not being an external person. It’s one where Big Brother is us.

It’s ironic then that the mirrors and televisions from 1984 were windows into people’s lives; a tool for direct censorship. In America today, the same is true but it just as quickly reveals a rarely noticed source. Oneself.

You can’t search for what you don’t know about or want to see. And if you can’t search for anything, then you aren’t truly free.