It’s reasonable to some extent to say that there is nothing wrong, as Bill states, with the Pope reading about Catholicism. But I would be troubled by a Pope who only reads pre-Council of Trent theology (Catholic though it may be). The Pope is, as many of us are, subject to the institution to which he belongs. This public presence checks a potentially polarizing pontiff. However, it is the intensely private nature of the internet which allows us to evade these conditions placed on us by society and the market, the very conditions that Bill says should check extremism.
Bill is right to say that it’s harder to isolate ourselves from different views than before, but this variety is offset by an ability to comfortably and selectively access a high volume of whatever it is we feel like. Back when people actually read the papers, you could only get a physical newspaper’s worth of partisan slop to fill your trough at a time. Can this compare to the farrago of articles easily searched and sorted through search engines, feeds, and blogs? Although I relish hyperlink journeys through irrelevant tangents, the ability to search and sift through vast amounts of information ensures that whatever the opposition, I can find a few hundred counter-examples / opinions to suit my personal taste, even if this means the rantings of another extremist on the chat board. The internet still draws from the strange power of print papers did: the faux reliability exuded by a neat typeface.
The internet ends up reinforcing a virtual self free from the economic and social rules that keep our weirdness in check. Many a lonely adolescent has indulged in internet porn-fueled fantasies far more risque than what can be found in your average gentleman’s magazine. However, just as repeated exposure to porn without the emotional and physical limits of another warm body changes an adolescent’s developing sexuality, partisans and extremists can foster pernicious ideologies when not checked by the socially regulating ‘etiquette’ that has governed visual media, print media, and public debates until the advent of the internet. I will concede that these are only a few wackos who feed their extremist hunger, but these small numbers are magnified by the internet’s power to transcend time and space. Chatrooms are more effective than back alley meetings at allowing those small, but terribly nasty elements of society – e.g. terrorists and child pornographers – to lead normal, economically viable lives while indulging in what would be reprehensible actions in any other forum.
I agree with Bill that the internet provides many users with a healthy variety of information – as does the mere fact of living in a free society. However, as the web gives us the bandwidth to expand our consciousness, our computer screens also illuminate our echo chambers and ensure that we feel confident of our prejudices even in virtual seclusion.
You are right to point out that the internet permits a multitude of sins, and that extremism in behavior includes more than merely the political. Such behaviors, however, pose significantly different challenges from the problem of purely political extremism (and the alleged devastating effects on civic life).
Moreover, while the means to the end may be the same, the internet, I don’t believe that the freedom to indulge in wrongful behavior by virtue of secrecy — illustrated in your dissent by child pornographers and terrorists — analogizes well to political partisanship. Among other reasons, the ill effects cited by echo chamber critics focus explicitly on the public effect of such polarization. Insofar as a personal is privately extreme, but apparently moderate in their public life, the problem, as I originally posited it, doesn’t really exist. The same cannot be said for your two examples, rendering them, at best, inapt.