Are We Personalizing Our Future—or Polarizing It?

If you know me, you probably already get this about me: I am a firm believer in a personalized future. As a trained foresight practitioner, I feel the future is never complete until we have looked at it from every angle and challenged assumptions, specially our own!!

But this week, as I scrolled through my feeds on YouTube, X (Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook, along with my usual news sites, (Google News, Washington Post, WSJ) , I had a sudden realization. Yes, my feeds are perfectly tailored to my preferences—serving up content I like while filtering out what I don’t. But could this convenience be fueling the very polarization we are seeing today?

The Echo Chamber Dilemma

Think about it for a moment. We’re constantly fed content that aligns with our views, reinforcing what we already believe. We rarely make the effort to challenge or expand our perspectives. As a result, when we get together with friends, family, or colleagues, we are so full of our own "echo chamber" that we fiercely defend our views. And when someone dares to offer a different perspective, it often leads to conflict—or worse, we end up cutting ties altogether (We have all heard about family ties breaking during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, haven't we?)

So maybe it’s not just the politicians polarizing us (They might definitely be playing a role of adding fuel to the fire, but the fire is probably not originally lit by them). Perhaps we need to reflect on our own role and consciousness in this never-ending cycle of selective consumption.

A Look Back at Simpler Times

Thinking further, I found myself reminiscing about my upbringing. Back then, we had just three or four newspapers to choose from. Sure, the news was broad and often driven by journalists’ perspectives, but at least it offered a wider lens on the world. Even if I didn’t enjoy or agree with certain stories, I did still skim through them. TV followed a similar pattern—fixed programming meant that even if I wasn’t interested, I did end up learning something simply because a family member was watching, or sometimes when I had no choice, for example when I was in Slovenia and the only english channel available was CNN news, so that was my entertainment, education all packaged in one for the 4 months I spent there.

This kind of exposure, even if involuntary, was essential. It ensured that we weren’t completely locked into one line of thinking.

Polarization in the Age of AI

Fast forward to today, and the risk of becoming increasingly polarized is higher than ever. Our information diets have become dangerously limited, curated only to please our biases. As we move toward a future where deepfakes are as common as Uber rides and sentient AI shifts from science fiction to reality, I am beginning to wonder:

Is the real threat robots taking over, or is it us becoming so entrenched in our beliefs that we refuse to engage with differing perspectives? Could this refusal mark the end of kindness and humanity as we know it?

Where Do We Go from Here?

We have personalized our digital experiences to the point of near-perfection (Tik-Tok and Instagram run on those algorithms). But maybe it’s time to rethink this perfection. Perhaps a bit of discomfort, a few opposing views, and a willingness to engage with different perspectives are exactly what we need to prevent ourselves from becoming too set in our ways.

The future, after all, is as much about how we see it as it is about how we shape it.