Robot Culture

I've become increasingly aware of the progression of media in our lives.

This morning, I was bombarded by a wealth of information about the changes taking place in the social realm.
For example, did you know that we are currently witnesses to a cold-war between Facebook, Twitter and Google?

Read the Article!

As each site struggles to become more relevant to users, it makes me wonder when (not if) the day will come when we go through one site to receive all our information. Facebook will have a world news feed (no not status updates), weather features, political debates, email, chat, phone conversations, recipes, blogging features, etc. all within the company's own platform. We will never have to leave!

This worries me.

Thanks to the genius of online marketing, all of the advertisements, daily news, networking suggestions that I see and more are tailored very specifically to me, the user, via the information that I make available, read, and search for.  Don't get me wrong. I have a significant stake in the progression of social marketing. It will influence nearly every aspect of my future career and likely my children's education and how I connect with the world. While this a fantastic opportunity for businesses to grow and marketers, like myself to reach their audience on a much more targeted level, it makes me question how this information will shape us.

In generating media from a users network, do we risk creating a culture that is spoon-fed it's information thereby jeopardizing our generations intelligence? For example, because my LinkedIn profile is filled with resume data that alludes to interests in social media, marketing and event management, all the news stories filtered to my homepage are related to such. What about politics or environmental issues? What about education or world issues? What about information that we don't know we should know?

We are fed content that only perpetuates our niche of interests. What is the likelihood that an individual will actively seek out information contrary to what is currently provided to them? Probably slim to none without a significant catalyst to initiate such a change. Even if a change is initiated, then they just become part of another niche group that largely seeks out A but also has a small interest in B. Eventually, wouldn't we all just end up in little specialized information-demographic groups? 
Specialization over differentiation.

Wouldn't this lead to our media being controlled by those who have the greatest stake in the content?
Are we to become something of a robot-culture that is taught what to think about, what to talk about, and what to do based upon this extreme media marketing?

1984 anyone?