Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates believes we are stuck inside “filter bubbles,” hardly making use of the wealth of information out there on the Internet, television and social media, our worldviews reinforced inside our own private echo chambers.

But all is not lost, Gates said in a recent interview with Quartz. Gates, whose philosophizing on the future often takes an optimistic slant, said that eventually people will break out of their filter bubbles, opening themselves up to the vast amount of information out there.

“Do people really wanna be in a microcosm where the facts are wrong?” asks Gates. He gives the examples of vaccines and certain pharmaceutical drugs, areas of healthcare that have provoked controversy and confusion among the public.

Fringe groups, Gates believes, will remain outside on the peripheries, while most people will engage in attempting to reach what he called “a more common set of understandings.”

Finding the information and investigating the facts has never been easier, Gates said, in spite of the amount of polarizing information on the Internet. “I think the positives of modern digital communication do today and will in the future outweigh these fragmentation challenges.”

Nonetheless, Gates admitted that this fragmentation, the polarization of the public into their sometimes irreconcilable filter bubbles, has turned out to be a much bigger problem than anyone anticipated. Gates is echoing what people have been saying for years, that access to so much information can be dangerous as well as beneficial to humankind.

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a recent 6,000-word manifesto that his company is working on ways to help people become more engaged and less divided. Facebook, which has endured criticism over these filter bubbles for quite some time, is about to shape up, he said. Giving people a voice through social media has been a positive force, he added, although he added it has also “shown it may fragment our shared sense of reality.”

The two biggest issues this year Facebook faced were fake news and filter bubbles, said Zuckerberg. Still, he insisted, “Social media already provides more diverse viewpoints than traditional media ever has.” Facebook will work on helping people see a wider range of perspectives, accurate sources of information, said Zuckerberg, eventually helping people break out of their filter bubbles.

Photo: Tristan Ferne via Flickr