I believe…

Tonight I have been challenged and inspired by a conversation with some childhood friends on facebook. As we were discussing a particular presidential candidate (and our opposing views on that candidate’s policies) I began to ruminate on my core beliefs.

Given my “outsider” background, I am dramatically aware that I’ve spent my entire adult life in New York City and San Francisco, surrounded by echo chambers built of highly educated, dramatically skilled, and affluent human beings—Coasters, let’s call them.

Lately, I’ve given a lot of thought to the empathy that my Coaster peers have for anyone outside their demographic. (Hint: not much.) We are absolutely confounded by dissenting opinions Everyone Else holds from what seems so obvious in our circles.

And I say “Everyone Else” with intentional capitalization, because the American median falls way outside this microcosm of Coasters.

There are a number of interesting elements at play here, but the most fascinating to me is the maker/consumer dynamic:

I posit that most authors of tech products belong to this intimate echo-chamber of Coasters, while most consumers (users) of their products belong to the wider population of Everyone Else.

We Coasters have the self-awareness to laugh and joke about the hot new absurd-frivolity-on-demand startup, but isn’t the reality a much deeper extension of this?

Twitter (writ large) was supposed to make the world more accessible and egalitarian, but we’ve seen anecdotally (and in all the data) that it actually makes our echo chambers all the more resonant.

To what end? Where does this lead us?

Pondering,
Anna Marie

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N.B. I’m aware of the US-centric nature of my ponderings, but as I haven’t concluded much from that bucket, it doesn’t make sense to extend to global mental exploration just yet.