In today’s world, the heavy presence of internet and social media in out day-today life is undeniable. But how will this impact in the longer run is a point to ponder over. We are in the age of ubiquitous computing. Internet has got algorithms that function according to the slightest of the biases of the user to provide him/her with appealing, pleasing, convincing content to scroll on for longer time. The videos we stumble upon, the searches we make, the posts we like, comment on, personalities whom we follow- everything is recorded in the database of the search engines and sold for a bomb in the data market . What for? Just to know our interests, likes, dislikes, preferences, ideology, our entire blueprint in short! Our feed leads us to the length and breadth of the Echo Chambers designed for people having similar ideas like ours. Our slightest of beliefs start to ossify, get radicalised to such an extent that we reject to accept any dissension against our views, perspective.

 

What are its effects? The society gets polarised into extreme set of views and thus fraternity comes under threat. In interactions, there arises a strong vendetta amongst people over some or the other topic. People are radicalised and aroused to get set for a rebellion while they are making use of internet or other such devices. Their extremism is taken to such an extent that they start imposing rather than expressing their views. Thus, there is a degradation all the way. ‘My way or highway’ attitude can get ingrained amongst people. This antagonism is intensified to such levels that there remains no room for having peaceful exchange of thoughts, synthesis of beliefs. It ultimately ends up sabotaging social order, tolerance, unity, rationality of individuals, dividing society into fragments. You can connect this to Robert Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy.

 

There’s no scope for episodic accountability here as there aren’t any effective provisions or compliances to regulate their influence. We are living in that phase when society is neither divided on caste, money, race, gender but into Echo Chambers. In C Wright’s book ‘The Power Elites (1959)’, he proposed how American society is skillfully manipulated by its three elite classes, which work in a cohesion, via the medium of mass media. I too believe that our society is being controlled by a handful of powerful institutions and their repercussions are seen in rest of the society. We are heading towards a dystopian world where thoughts will be a product of trends, profiteering debates, controversial- commercial ideas stemming out of the ' happiness of the greatest numbers' and not an individual. Social media is acting as an agent to, both, reach and pixelize the truth for a common man like you and me. And even if we somehow manage to know the truth, we won’t be having people to believe it. My concern is about its effects over Indian society that is already pluralistic. Indian society is going to be in a havoc if this radicalisation starts ( has already started). Reliability is the key to sanity in this situation.