The world that “has it all” or in which everything can be found, is much more limited than we really think. Algorithms enclose man in a bubble in which the only thing they allow entry is that which has already shown interest, in a way that reaffirms and enhances it, without being able to see beyond.

Many times we live with the idea that we can do whatever we want, see everything that happens, and get all the answers through the Internet. However, the infinite access to information that we believe we have is nothing more than a fallacy.

One way to understand it is to think of an ordinary bookstore: there we know that there are thousands of titles, but the first ones we look at – and often the only ones we look at – are those on the news table. Even when we leave those tables and look at the other ones available from other categories, we will not be seeing everything, we will not even be seeing everything that the category of that table could be showing: we will be seeing what the bookseller chose to put on the tables, what he put on the “display”.

Algorithms are what organize the tables of books. They learned so much from user interactions that they anticipate and suggest that we watch the next video or notification from the ex-girlfriend.

In this way, the world of the Internet, and above all, social networks, give us the false sensation that we can choose a piece of news or content from among the infinitely many available when, in reality, we are almost condemned to choose among very few that have already been curated to maximize our satisfaction.

As a professional magician, I see this as the perfect magician's trap. The good trap in magic is not the one that is hidden, in which the spectator feels that he missed seeing something, but it is the trap in which one can see through, the trap that was in sight all the time - like Edgar Allan Poe's Letter - but is not noticed. It is the false illusion of freedom of choice.

Added to this is the concept of confirmation bias. If one naturally tends to read things that one agrees with, with the algorithms choosing what to show us, this is reinforced to the maximum. Now, by definition, they are going to show us only what interests us or what we believe in, so that we will continue consuming and ratifying our opinion but, to make matters worse - as far as a critical view is concerned - with the false feeling that it is not like that, that we are seeing everything because 'everything is' on the internet.

In this context, we can understand that the permanent improvements presented by social networks have a clear and explicit commercial objective: advertising. What that great advertising agency that is Google (Facebook, and Instagram, etc.) sells is the ability to carry the advertising of the product that you want to offer to the public that wants to buy it. To this end, they perfect their algorithms.

It is about understanding, in short, that this Babel Library does not lack librarians.

By Gustavo Guaragna, CEO of Snoop Consulting