I read this post on Patheos about the effects of Google’s complex algorithms on our world. It turns out that our search results are constantly being recalibrated to conform more closely to our interests. In other words, if you and I put in the same search term into Google, we might get completely different results. It’s not just the Internet, of course. We do the same with other media, including the news. Commenters have lamented for some time that some people only watch Fox News, while others restrict themselves to CNN or MSNBC.

This reality came home to me this week, when numerous Facebook friends suddenly expressed their outrage over the not-guilty verdict in the Casey Anthony trial. I had no idea what they were talking about. Who’s she, I wondered. Apparently it was the trial of the century. I missed it, and more surprisingly, I missed the entire event, from its beginning.

The Internet has allowed me to become much more selective in what I read and follow. Google Reader keeps me up to date with all of the blogs and other sites I follow, and I don’t have to go fishing for information. I read what looks interesting to me and ignore the rest. I suppose on one level that’s not so different now than it was twenty-five years ago, when I got my news from NPR, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and watched CNN only when there was some major event taking place. Still, even then I would have been aware of stories that caught the nation’s attention, even if I had little interest in it–like, say, the OJ Simpson trial.