Petrus Minor Post #5

 Responding to Anushka’s Core Post 5…

I enjoy your reference to the flaneur in the context of McPherson’s and Parks’ works on TV datification! Indeed while flipping channels can be understood as a form of flanerie, the peering into content intended for a variety of audiences with differing ideologies, today the gaze seems to have flipped: now data systems observe us, and makes evaluations based on our behaviors across a variety of digital platforms, ensuring that only imagery and ideology, supporting our existing beliefs, is laid before our eyes. Imagine a world in which, while strolling the city arcades, we can cater the storefronts, interactions, and events around us to those that satisfy us, rather than potentially challenge us. Isn't such a world a boring, and indeed dangerous one? Could data-driven content distribution (and indeed, increasingly data-driven content creation) cause greater rifts in an already divisive world, with spheres consuming its own media that seeks merely to satisfy?