Waking up in my San Francisco hotel room yesterday, I immediately knew something was wrong. It was something rod.Faktisk was throughout the hotel's breakfast. Blankets un-vacuumed, brassware unpolished, rooms unserviced, newspapers delivered. It was a story in a broad sense across the entire city – leaves piled up knee-deep on the sidewalk, restaurant tables uncleared and water glass un-refilled. It was as if all essential – but secular – the service had stopped, immediately and without advarsel.Kun when I reached the Civic Center, I realized what was going on: all Mexicans were gathered there protesting Arizona's new Senate bill, SB1070. " ; Stop! "I cried," stop the nonsense! Put your bilingual protest signs and your American flag and get back to work! "My hotel room was not to purify themselves, and I was hungry for enchiladas. But Mexicans ignored me – maybe because I do not speak a word Spanish or perhaps because they could not hear me over the chanting, but probably because I'm white. Racister.Faktisk this week, the issue of racism is on everybody's lips. First Arizona turned the concept of innocent until proven otherwise on the head, becoming a law to force people who look Mexican to carry documentation proving that they are not in the U.S. illegally or face six months imprisonment. (British readers may be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu.) Interval across the Atlantic, we Brits have our own race-related scandal, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on a live microphone to call 66-year-old voters, Gillian Duffy "hypocritical" after she harangued him about the number of Polish immigrants "flooding" to Storbritannien.Til his eternal shame, apologized Mr Brown vigorously for his comments the next day, claiming he had misunderstood Mrs. Duffy words, despite Like many older white voters, her accusing polish immigrants for many of the UK's problems are clearly a form of chauvinism (the Poles are Britain's equivalent Mexicans in the U.S., except the Poles are allowed to immigrate to Britain free and without a visa). I would say I am shocked, Arizona's new law, or by an old white lady who lives in northern England is afraid of foreigners – but of course I am not. Arizona is a state with a growing population of white people over retirement age, and study after study has shown this group to be the most likely to hold anti-immigrant, or even out-and-out racist views. But, I am heartened – and I mean in no way heartless – these people are literally a dying demographically. Growing up in their place is a generation who, thanks to the Internet are exposed daily to people of different races, colors and trosbekendelser.Takket be the many social networks, which recognizes no national or social boundaries, it is now as easy make friends with someone in Africa as it is to connect with a person in Arkansas. At Munich's DLD conference two years ago, spoke Randi Zuckerberg inspiring about how Facebook was young collectors from both sides of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict through their common membership in Facebook groups. Just last week, Slate cited a paper from the University of Chicago, which showed that people who get their news from online sources are more likely to have a balanced news diet (ideologically) than those who get their news online now. As an avid Internet user, the study argues that, I'm likely to visit both the New York Times and Fox News to get a balanced picture of events than one based on a single avis.Den trend, according to proponents of Internet Diversity is clear: The Internet makes us less afraid of people with different ideologies, backgrounds and skin colors to our own. And this is obviously a good thing. In just one generation, which was adopted in Arizona and opinions, laws like the so expressed to Prime Minister Brown in Rochdale will hear the past, and thanks to social media, we will all live together in perfect harmony. Ebony and Ivory, etc etc etc. In fact, as far as I can see, there's only one problem with the vision of Christmas still to come … The total horseshit.Lad us start with the Chicago study. Provisional results paint a positive picture of online diversity: the numbers clearly show that online news 'consumers' visit an ideologically balanced range of sources each day, especially over their offline counterparts. But what the study does not and can not show why they visit these kilder.Et quick look at my browser history shows that in the last 24 hours I have visited BBC News Online, the New York Times and The Guardian. Liberal news organizations all. But at the same time, I also checked in the Murdoch-owned Sun, the Drudge Report and even Fox News (several times). According to the survey, so I see an open-minded person with a balanced news diet. But of course, I nothing of the sort. In fact, my reasons to visit FoxNews.com the same as for most of my cheese-eating, US-hating, Osama-hugging, socialist liberal friends – I check in on the enemy, hoping to find something scandalous that hill up my already existing bias against the American right. And before anyone Proud Hannity-waving Patriots are reading this get too upset that confession, admit it: you visit The Guardian and The New York Times exactly the same if the polar opposite årsager.Sandheden is if we are not careful, the Internet will make us more, not less, remote from people who do not share our views or heritage. In the real world – at work, in bars or just walking down the street – it's almost impossible to avoid interacting with people different from ourselves. Of course some people still try to avoid the inevitability – think apartheid in South Africa, or the recent story of a British tourist who insisted that a hotel in Florida with all "colored people" (or those with "foreign accents") away from him and his family. But fortunately in 2010, believes most people examples to be (in the former case) reason for regime change, or (as with the latter), bizarre front nyheder.Og however in the online world such filtering and sorting happens every day without be the least bit remarkable. Just think of the news that – according to a survey conducted by Edison Research (reported by Business Insider) – "black people represent 25% of Twitter users, roughly twice their share of the population in general". As a white person this number surprised me a bit – and if you're white, I bet it surprised you. Twitter feels like one of the whitest places in the world for me, full as it is with even solemn middle class hipster children retweeting New York Times stories and the fact that they are having sushi for frokost.På Facebook or other social networks, which better reflects my real world relationships, I see a far more representative number of non-white faces in my buddy lists and on the pages of friends-of-friends, while Twitter – in contrast – is hideously white. In fact the only time I see a high concentration of faces that are different from my own is when I venture into the strange world of Trending Topics, and specifically hashtag memes. There, I can guarantee that at least one of the daily Trending memes will have been started by (most) African American teenagers, exchange # jokes on topics such as # and # funeralrules iWantMyMoneyBack (both grabbed from Twitter's home page right now). Like the confused 30-year-old white person I am, I use a few minutes to browse jokes, get confused and romp back to the safety of my own feed and its talk of trendy Japanese food and how horrible racist Arizona er.Uden real significance I have created my own little bubble of Twitter People Like Me: racially, politically, linguistically and socially. And each day via the Internet a new tool or service is launched, making it easier for people to do exactly the same: to filter large amounts of information available online after their personal beliefs or interests. Hashtags, follower lists, RSS feeds, personalized news sites – all the better to surround ourselves with people and views as ourselves and our egne.Der are two basic types of dystopian future: the 1984 and future Brave New World future. In 1984 the future of the government forcing us to think and act in a certain way, drive undesirable in ghettos and threaten physical harm those who think or act differently. In Brave New World future (or maybe Neil Postman future), the government not doing anything to strengthen our behavior. Instead, we get the tools to do what we want to create an illusion of total freedom that no matches or questions until its too late and we understand that we have lost the ability to critically tænkning.Hvis apartheid or the new laws in Arizona representing the 1984 future, then there is a real possibility that the Internet – and social media specifically – will eventually lead us into an even more horrific Brave New World future. A future where the tools that once promised to help us to meet people with different backgrounds and ideologies of our own actually end up being used, even inadvertently, to separate ourselves from the same mennesker.Og given the increasing influence , online behavior, how we act in the real world, perhaps a generation from now – rather than laughed at Arizona's long-passed SB1070 and years-dead concept of racial or ideological segregation – we will find ourselves sitting in our electronically filtered and hashtag- segregated ghettos, looks back at the good old days. The days back in 2010 when it was only the very old or very stupid thought that finding ways to filter and separate us from those who are different was a good idé.Monterey Bay Clothing Company now has a coupon available for $ 15 discount on all orders of $ 15 or more. Plus, you get 6% cashback from ShopAtHome. Here's how::: Log in or sign up for a few account with ShopAtHome and search for "Monterey Bay Clothing Company". 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